Ebook The Taoist Religion

Not many years after this, Lao-tsz really did quit civilisa tion, and made for the Pass, near the Yellow River bend, a little to the eastward of modern Si-ngan Fu. The Pass was then practically the western frontier of federated China, and beyond it lay the powerful state of Ts'in, which ever since the ninth century before Christ had lain outside the pale, and had become, in the minds of the more orthodox federals, a semi-barbarous or foreign country — destined, however, soon to conquer China. The royal officer in charge of the Pass did not like to see so distinguished a philosopher as Lao-tsz disappear into space without leaving behind something of his doctrine to show to future genera tions, so he begged him to write a book first. (it must be explained that books were then thin plates of wood or bamboo, painfully scratched upon or cut into with a style; that composition was laconic and that the written character was much more clumsy and bulky than it is now.) Lao-tsz did so; and after that he went west, nothing more ever being heard of him. Many centuries later there were traditions of his having passed through Khoten all further developments of these traditions are mere yarns. It is supposed that one of his disciples may have Obtained this book from the keeper of the Pass, and subsequently given it out for copying, but there is no specific evidence upon this point, although under the name Kwan-yin-tsz the said keeper himself has left us a work on Taoism.