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172
THE TEXTS OF TÂOISM.
BK. I.
6. A man of Sung, who dealt in the ceremonial caps (of Yin)", went with them to Yüeh ?, the people of which cut off their hair and tattooed their bodies, so that they had no use for them. Yâo ruled the people of the kingdom, and maintained a perfect government within the four seas. Having gone to see the four (Perfect) Ones 3 on the distant hill of Kû-shih, when (he returned to his capital) on the south of the Făn water 4, his throne appeared no more to his deep-sunk oblivious eyes ó.
7. Hui-zze told Kwang-zze, saying, “The king of Wei? sent me some seeds of a large calabash, which I sowed. The fruit, when fully grown, could contain five piculs (of anything). I used it to contain water,
1 See the Lî Kî, IX, iii, 3. 2 A state, part of the present province of Kieh-kiang.
3 Said to have been Hsü Yû mentioned above, with Nieh Khüeh, Wang I, and Phî-î, who will by and by come before us.
• A river in Shan-hsî, on which was the capital of Yao ;-a tributary of the Ho.
5 This paragraph is intended to give us an idea of the Perfect man, who has no thought of himself. The description, however, is brief and tame, compared with the accounts of Hsü Yû and of the Spirit-like man.
6 Or Hui Shih, the chief minister of 'king Hui of Liang (or Wei), (B. C. 370-333),' with an interview between whom and Mencius the works of that philosopher commence. He was a friend of K’wang-zze, and an eccentric thinker; and in Book XXXIII there is a long account of several of his views. I do not think that the conversations about the great calabash' and 'the great tree' really took place; Kwang-zze probably invented them, to illustrate his point that size had nothing to do with the Tâo, and that things which seemed useless were not really so when rightly used.
7 Called also Liang from the name of its capital. Wei was one of the three states (subsequently kingdoms), into which the great fief of Zin was divided about B.C. 400.
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