Book Title: Questions of King Milinda Part 02
Author(s): T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford


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Page 1618
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138
THE TEXTS OF TÂOISM.
BK. VIII,
The last paragraph is an ingenious and interesting allegory relating how the gods of the southern and northern seas brought Chaos to an end by boring holes in him. Thereby they destroyed the primal simplicity, and according to Tâoism did Chaos an injury! On the whole I do not think that this Book, with which the more finished essays of Kwang-zze come to an end, is so successful as those that precede it.
| BOOK VIII. PHIÊN MÂU. This Book brings us to the Second Part of the writings of our author, embracing in all fifteen Books. Of the most important difference between the Books of the First and the other Parts some account has been given in the Introductory Chapter. We have here to do only with the different character of their titles. Those of the seven preceding Books are so many theses, and are believed to have been prefixed to them by Kwang-zze himself; those of this Book and the others that follow are believed to have been prefixed by Kwo Hsiang, and consist of two or three characters taken from the beginning, or near the beginning of the several Books, after the fashion of the names of the Books in the Confucian Analects, in the works of Mencius, and in our Hebrew Scriptures. Books VIII to XIII are considered to be supplementary to VII by All-yang Hsiû.
The title of this eighth Book, Phien Mâu, has been rendered by Mr. Balfour, after Dr. Williams, Double Thumbs.' But the Mâu, which may mean either the Thumb or the Great Toe, must be taken in the latter sense, being distinguished in this paragraph and elsewhere from Kih,' a finger,' and expressly specified also as belonging to the foot. The character phien, as used here, is defined in the Khang-hsî dictionary as anything additional growing out as an appendage or excrescence, a growing out at the side.' This would seem to justify the translation of it by 'double.' But in paragraph 3, while the extra finger increases the number of the fingers, this growth on the foot is represented as diminishing the number of the toes. I must consider
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