In passing on from quotations to the complete text, I will clinch the assertion that Chʽien was well acquainted with our treatise, by a passage from the History of the Former Han Dynasty ( BC 206– AD 24), which was begun to be compiled by Pan Ku, who died however in 92, and left a portion to be completed by his sister, the famous Pan Chao. The thirty-second chapter of his Biographies is devoted to Ssŭ-ma Chʽien, and towards the end it is said that “on the subject of the Great Tao he preferred Huang and Lao to the six ching .” “Huang and Lao” must there be the writings of Huang Ti and Laozi. The association of the two names also illustrates the antiquity claimed for Taoism, and the subject of endnote 4 .
We go on from quotations to complete texts, and turn, first, to the catalogue of the Imperial Library of Han , as compiled by Liu Hsin, not later than the commencement of our Christian era. There are entered in it Taoist works by thirty-seven different authors, containing in all 993 chapters or sections ( pʽien ). Yi Yin, the premier of Chʽêng Tʽang ( BC 1766), heads the list with fifty-one sections. There are in it four editions of Laozi’s work with commentaries:—by a Mr. Lin, in four sections; a Mr. Fu, in thirty-seven sections; a Mr. Hsü, in six sections; and by Liu Hsiang, Hsin’s own father, in four sections. All these four works have since perished, but there they were in the Imperial Library before our era began. Chuang-tzŭ is in the same list in fifty-two books or sections, the greater part of which have happily escaped the devouring tooth of time.
We turn now to the twentieth chapter of Chʽien’s Biographies , in which he gives an account of Yüeh Yi, the scion of a distinguished family, and who himself played a famous part, both as a politician and military leader, and became prince of Wang-chu under the kingdom of Chao in BC 279. Among his descendants was a Yüeh Chʽên, who learned in Chʽi