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APP. VII. THE STONE TABLET TO LAO-8ZE.
315
Khin Shih went to condole (with his son), but after crying out three times, immediately left the house1.' This was what is called the punishment for his neglecting his Heaven (-implanted nature), and although it appears as one of the metaphorical illustrations of the supercilious officer, yet there is some little indication in the passage of the reappearance of the snake after casting its exuviae 2.
[At this point the author leaves the subject of the Tâo and its prophet, and enters on a long panegyric of the founder of the Sui dynasty and his achievements. This sovereign was the emperor Wăn (), the founder of Sui (B), originally Yang Kien, a scion of the House of Sui, a principality whose name remains in Sui-kâu, of the department Teh-an in Hû Pei. He was certainly the ablest man in the China of his day, and deserves a portion of the praise with which Mr. Hsieh celebrates him after his extravagant fashion. He claimed the throne from the year 581. While doing honour to Confucianism, he did not neglect the other two religions in the empire, Tâoism and Buddhism; and having caused the old temple of Lâoze to be repaired in grand style in 586, he commissioned Hsieh Tâo-hǎng to superintend the setting up in it a commemorative Tablet of stone.
I pass over all this, which is related at great length, and proceed to give the inscription. It occupies no fewer than 352 characters in 88 lines, each consisting of four characters. The lines are arranged in what we may call eleven stanzas of equal length, the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth lines of each rhyming together. There is a good deal of art in the metrical composition. In the first six stanzas the rhyming finals are in the even tone and one of the deflected tones alternately. In the last five stanzas this arrangement is reversed. The rhymes in 7, 9, and 11 are deflected, and in 8 and 10 even. The measure of four characters is the most common in the Shih King or Ancient Book of Poetry.
1 Vol. xxxix, p. 201.
Referring, I suppose, to the illustration of the fire and the faggots.
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