num_pages: 429
description: In the Preface to the third volume of these Sacred Books of the East (1879) I stated that I proposed giving in due course in order to exhibit the System of Toism translations of the To Teh King by Lo-ze (sixth century bc) the Writings of Kwang-ze (between the middle of the fourth and third centuries bc) and the Treatise of Actions and their Retributions (of our eleventh century); and perhaps also of one or more of the other characteristic Productions of the System. The two volumes now submitted to the reader are a fulfilment of the promise made so long ago. They contain versions of the Three Works which were specified and in addition as Appendixes four other shorter Treatises of Toism; Analyses of several of the Books of Kwang-ze by Lin Hs-kung; a list of the stories which form so important a part of those Books; two Essays by two of the greatest Scholars of China written the one in ad 586 and illustrating the Toistic beliefs of that age and the other in ad 1078 and dealing with the four Books of Kwang-ze whose genuineness is frequently called in question. The concluding Index is confined very much to Proper Names. For Subjects the reader is referred to the Tables of Contents the Introduction to the Books of Kwang-ze (vol. xxxix pp. 127-163) and the Introductory Notes to the various Appendixes. The Treatise of Actions and their Retributions exhibits to us the Toism of the eleventh century in its moral or ethical aspects; in the two earlier Works we see it rather as a philosophical speculation than as a religion in the ordinary sense of that term. It was not till after the introduction of Buddhism into China in our first century that Toism began to organise itself as a Religion having its monasteries and nunneries its images and rituals. While it did so it maintained the superstitions peculiar to itself:some like the cultivation of the To as a rule of life favourable to longevity come down from the earliest times and others which grew up during the decay of the Ku dynasty and subsequently blossomed;now in Mystical Speculation; now in the pursuits of Alchemy; now in the search for the pills of Immortality and the Elixir vitae; now in Astrological fancies; now in visions of Spirits and in Magical arts to control them; and finally in the terrors of its Purgatory and everlasting Hell. Its phases have been continually changing and at present it attracts our notice more as a degraded adjunct of Buddhism than as a development of the speculations of Lo-ze and Kwang-ze. Up to its contact with Buddhism it subsisted as an opposition to the Confucian system which while admitting the existence and rule of the Supreme Being bases its teachings on the study of mans nature and the enforcement of the duties binding on all men from the moral and social principles of their constitution. It is only during the present century that the Texts of Toism have begun to receive the attention which they deserve. Christianity was introduced into China by Nestorian missionaries in the seventh century; and from the Hs-an monument which was erected by their successors in 781 nearly 150 years after their first entrance we perceive that they were as familiar with the books of Lo-ze and Kwang-ze as with the Confucian literature of the empire but that monument is the only memorial of them that remains. In the thirteenth century the Roman Catholic Church sent its earliest missionaries to China but we hardly know anything of their literary labours.
language: English
title: The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of Taoism
publisher: None