Questions of King Milinda Part 02

SR No.: 007682
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1894
Total Pages: 2240
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 38 MB

Page 1834

354
THE TEXTS OF TÂOISM.
BK, XIV.
and pummeloes, which are different in flavour, but all suitable to be eaten. Just so it is that the rules of propriety, righteousness, laws, and measures, change according to the time.
'If now you take a monkey, and dress it in the robes of the duke of Kâu, it will bite and tear them, and will not be satisfied till it has got rid of them altogether. And if you look at the difference between antiquity and the present time it is as great as that between the monkey and the duke of Kâu. In the same way, when Hsi Shih 1 was troubled in mind, she would knit her brows and frown on all in her neighbourhood. An ugly woman of the neighbourhood, seeing and admiring her beauty, went home, and also laying her hands on her heart proceeded to stare and frown on all around her. When the rich people of the village saw her, they shut fast their doors and would not go out; when the poor people saw her, they took their wives and children and ran away from her. The woman knew how to admire the frowning beauty, but she did not know how it was that she, though frowning, was beautiful. Alas! it is indeed all over with your Master 2!'
5. When Confucius was in his fifty-first year 3, he had not heard of the Tâo, and went south to Phei 4
taegus cuneata and pinnatifida, common in China, and much esteemed for its acidity.
1 A famous beauty, the concubine of king Fu-khâi of Wa.
2 The comparisons in this paragraph are not complimentary to Confucius. Of course the conversation never took place, and must have been made up to ridicule the views of the sage.
3 This would be in B.C. 503 or 502, and Lao-ze would be more than a hundred years old.
* Probably in what is now the district of Phei, department of Hsü-kâu, Kiang-sû.
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