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44
THE TEXTS OF TÂOISM.
CH.V.
fail to wean from their wickedness. Those manifestoes are published by the mercy of Yü Hwang Shang Tỉ that men and women may be led to repent of their faults and make atonement for their crimes. They emanate from the temples of the tutelary deities which are found throughout the empire, and especially in the walled cities, and are under the charge of Taoist monks. A visitor to one of the larger of these temples may not only see the pictures of the purgatorial courts and other forms of the modern superstitions, but he will find also astrologers, diviners, geomancers, physiognomists, et id genus omne, plying their trades or waiting to be asked to do so, and he will wonder how it has been possible to affiliate such things with the teachings of Lâo-zze.
Other manifestoes of a milder form, and more like our tractate, are also continually being issued as from one or other of what are called the state gods, whose temples are all in the charge of the same monks. In the approximation which has thus been going on of Taoism to Buddhism, the requirement of celibacy was long resisted by the professors of the former ; but recent editions of the Penal Code? contain sundry regulations framed to enforce celibacy, to bind the monks and nuns of both systems to the observance of the Confucian maxims concerning filial piety, and the sacrificial worship of the dead ; and also to restrict the multiplication of monasteries and nunneries. Neither Lâo nor Kwang was a celibate or recommended celibacy. The present patriarch, as a married man, would seem to be able still to resist the law.
1 Called Khăng Hwang Miao, Wall and Moat Temples,' Palladia of the city.
? See Dr. Eitel's third edition of his Three Lectures on Buddhism,' pp. 36-45 (Hongkong: Lane, Crawford & Co., 1884). The edition of the Penal Code to which he refers is of 1879.
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