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APP. VII. THE STONE TABLET TO LAO-8ZE.
Wine-cups and stands the board adorned, And shields and spears the country filled. The close-meshed nets the fishes scared: And numerous bows the birds alarmed.
St. 4. Then did the True Man1 get his birth, As 'neath the Bear the star shone down 2. All dragon gifts his person graced ;
Like the stork's plumage was his hair. The complicated he resolved 3, the sharp made blunt3, The mean rejected, and the generous chose ;
In brightness like the sun and moon, And lasting as the heaven and earth3.
St. 5. Small to him seemed the mountains five1, And narrow seemed the regions nine*; About he went with lofty tread,
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And in short time he rambled far. In carriage by black oxen drawn 5, Around the purple air was bright. Grottoes then oped to him their sombre gates, And thence, unseen, his spirit power flowed forth.
St. 6. The village near the stream of Ko
Traces of him will still retain 6;
But now, as in the days of old,
With changed times the world is changed.
1 This of course was Lâo-zze.
2 See above, p. 313, par. 4.
In the Tâo Teh King, p. 50, par. 2, and p. 52, par. 1. The reading of
line 7 is different in my two authorities:- in the one
日角月角;
in the other. I suppose the correct reading should be
, and have given what I think is the meaning.
Two well-known numerical categories. See Mayers's Manual, pp. 320, 321, and p. 340.
5 So it was, according to the story, that Lâo-zze drew near to the barrier gate, when he wished to leave China.
The Ko is a river flowing from Ho-nan into An-hui, and falling into the Hwâi, not far from the district city of Hwâi-yüan. It enters the one province from the other in the small department of Po (H), in which, according to a Chinese map in my possession, Lâo-zze was born. The Khang-hsi Thesaurus also gives a passage to the effect that the temple of his mother was hereabouts, at a bend in the Ko.
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