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THE TEXTS OF TÂOISM.
CH. v.
tion of Ma-twan Lin's encyclopedic work by Wang Khî, first published in 1586, the fourteenth year of the fourteenth emperor of the Ming dynasty. In Wang's supplement to his predecessor's account of Taoist works, the sixth notice is of 'a commentary on the Thâi Shang Kan Ying Phien by a Lî Khang-ling,' and immediately before it is a commentary on the short but well-known Yin Fû King by a Lû Tien, who lived 1042–1102. Immediately after it other works of the eleventh century are mentioned. To that same century therefore we may reasonably refer the origin of the Kan Ying Phien.
As to the meaning of the title, the only difficulty is with the two commencing characters Thai Shang. Julien left The meaning of them untranslated, with the note, however,
the title that they were 'l'abréviation de Thai Shang Lâo Kün, expression honorifique par laquelle les Tâo-sze désignent Lào-zze, le fondateur de leur secte l' This is the interpretation commonly given of the phrase, and it is hardly worth while to indicate any doubt of its correctness; but if the characters were taken, as I believe they were, from the beginning of the seventeenth chapter of the Tâo Teh King, I should prefer to understand them of the highest and oldest form of the Taoistic teaching?.
3. I quoted on page 13 the view of Hardwick, the Christian Advocate of Cambridge, that 'the indefinite expression
1 See .Le Livre des Récompense et des Peines en Chinois et en François' (London, 1835).
2 The designation of Lâo-zze as Thai Shang Lâo Kün originated probably in the Thang dynasty. It is on record that in 666 Kâo Zung, the third emperor, went to Lâo-zze's temple at Po Kâu (the place of Lâo's birth, and still called by the same name, in the department of Făng-yang in An-hui), and conferred on him the title of Thâi Shang Yüan Yüan Hwang Tî, The Great God, the Mysterious Originator, the Most High.' "Then,' says Mayers, Manual, p. 113, 'for the first time he was ranked among the gods as “Great Supreme, the Emperor (or Imperial God) of the Dark First Cause." The whole entry is
# Later on, in 1014, we find Kăn Zung, the fourth Sung emperor, also visiting Po Kâu, and in Lâo's temple, which has by this time become the Palace of Grand Purity,' enlarging his title to Thâi Shang Lâo Kün Hwun Yüan Shang Teh Hwang Ti, The Most High, the Ruler Lâo, the Great God of Grand Virtue at the Chaotic Origin.' But such titles are not easily translated.
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