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4
THE TEXTS OF TAOISM.
say that the Tâoism taught in them is the Tâoism now current in China, or that has been current in it for many centuries; but in an inquiry into the nature and origin of religions these are the authorities that must be consulted for Tâoism, and whose evidence must be accepted. The treatise, 'Actions and the Responses to them,' will show one of the phases of it at a much later period.
CH. II.
CHAPTER II.
THE TEXTS OF THE TAO TEH KING AND KWANG3ZE SHU, AS REGARDS THEIR AUTHENTICITY AND GENUINENESS, AND THE ARRANGEMENT OF THEM.
I. 1. I will now state briefly, first, the grounds on which I accept the Tâo Teh King as a genuine production of the age to which it has been assigned, and the truth of its authorship by Lâo-jzc to whom it has been ascribed. It would not have been necessary a few years ago to write as if these points could be called in question, but in 1886 Mr. Herbert A. Giles, of Her Majesty's Consular Service in China, and one of the ablest Chinese scholars living, vehemently called them in question in an article in the China Review for the months of March and April. His strictures have been replied to, and I am not going to revive here the controversy which they produced, but only to state a portion of the evidence which satisfies my own mind on the two points just mentioned.
The evidence of
2. It has been said above that the year B. C. 604 was, probably, that of Lâo-jze's birth. The year of his death is not recorded. Sze-mâ Khien, the first great Chinese historian, who died in about B. C. 85, commences Sze-mâ Khien, his 'Biographies' with a short account of Lâojze. He tells us that the philosopher had been a curator of the Royal Library of Kâu, and that, mourning over the decadence of the dynasty, he wished to withdraw from the world, and proceeded to the pass or defile of Hsien-ku 1,
the historian.
1 In the present district of Ling-pâo, Shan Kâu, province of Ho-nan.
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