Page:A Chinese Biographical Dictionary.djvu/436

Rh passages in the works of Chnang Tsti apon which this belief is based are beyoiK} all doubt sparions, and the interyiews were clearly invented for the mere purpose of turning the Confhcianists into ridicule. He is said to have foreseen the fall of the Chou dynasty and to have turned his footsteps towards the west. At the p^ ^ Han-ku pass. Tin Hsi, the Gk)vemor, besought him to leave behind some guide-book for erring humanity; whereupon Lao Tzti is said to have produced the work now known as the ^ ^ ^ ^^^ ^ Ching^ and then, riding upon a black ox , to have disappeared for ever. But the Tao T6 Ching is only a clumsy foi^ery, probably of the early years of the Han dynasty (see Ma Jung). It is never once mentioned by Confucius or Mencius, or even by Chuang Tzti, the great disciple of Lao Tztif whose writings are devoted exclusively to the elucidation of Tao as taught by his -master. The internal evidence against its genuineness is overpowering; quite apart from the fact that Lao Tzti himself declared in reference to Tao that '^those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know'* (see Po Cha-4). It was first adopted as a ^'Canon" in A.D. 666 when the pure Tao of Lao Tzti began to be mixed up with alchemistic research and gropings after the elixir of life, Lao Tzti himself being at the same time canonised by the Emperor Eao Tsung as
 * ik Jt il TC M # • I» ^'^' 743 this title was still further

enlarged by the Emperor Hsflan Tsung, an ardent votary of the debased Taoism of the day; and in A.D. 1013 the Emperor Chto Tsung of the Sung dynasty added ^jlC JL ^ ^ *^ *^® ^®*- I^®^^ had already been busy with Lao Tzti's name. He was said to have become incarnate in B.C. 1321, being born of a woman in the ^ ^ Ch*fl-jen village in the State of Ch*u. His mother brought him forth from her left side, under a ^ Li plum-tree, to which he at once pointed, saying, ^*I take my name from this tree." At his birth, his hair was white and his complexion that of age; hence