________________
256
THE TEXTS OF TÂOISM.
APP, II.
and many of them hold that this Kwang Khăng-jze was an early incarnation of Lào-zze himself, so that the Yin Fû might well be placed before the Tâo Teh King! Lî Hsîyüeh is one of the scholars who adopt this view.
I will not say that under the Kâu dynasty there was no book called Yin Fd, with a commentary ascribed to Thâikung , for Sze-mâ Khien, in his biography of Su Khin (Bk. lxix), relates how that adventurer obtained the Yin Fa book of Kâu,' and a passage in the Plans of the Warring States' tells us that the book contained the schemes of Thai-kung 1.' However this may have been, no such work is now extant. Of all the old commentaries on it mentioned in the Khien-lung Catalogue, the only one remaining is the last,—that of Lî Khwan; and the account which we have of it is not to be readily accepted and relied on.
The story goes that in A. D. 441 Khâu Khien-kih, who had usurped the dignity and title of Patriarch from the Kang family, deposited a copy of the Yin Fa King in a mountain cave. There it remained for about three centuries and a half, till it was discovered by Li Khwan, a Taoist scholar, not a little damaged by its long exposure. He copied it out as well as he could, but could not understand it, till at last, wandering in the distant West, he met with an old woman, who made the meaning clear to him, at the foot of mount Lî; after which he published the Text with a Commentary, and finally died, a wanderer among the hills in quest of the Tâo; but the place of his death was never known.
The Classic, as it now exists, therefore cannot be traced higher than our eighth century; and many critics hold that, as the commentary was made by Lî Khwan, so the text was forged by him. All that Hsî-yueh has to say in reply to this is that, if the classic be the work of Lî Khwan, then
1 See the Khang-hsi Thesaurus under the combination Yin Fa.
See the account of Li Khwan in Wang Khi's continuation of Ma Twan-lin's work, ch. 242; and various items in the Khien-lung Catalogue.
Digitized by Google
