[34] See Li-chi, ch. 1, p. 1, and Chu-hsi’s note.
[35] Compare on this, other topics mentioned by Lao-tzŭ, the character of the 儒 in the Li-chi, ch. 10.
[36] Legge’s Ch. Classics, vol. i., p. 21.
[37] See Legge’s Shu, &c., vol. ii., p. 491.
[38] For the duty of self-denial at certain times see the Li-chi, ch. 3, p. 53, and Callery’s Li-ki, p. 31.
[39] The Great Learning. See Legge’s Ch. Classics, vol. i., p. 222.
[40] In the Li-chi, Confucius says that as a parrot does not cease to be a bird though it can speak, so though creatures have the appearance of men, yet if they have not Li they are not men. Ch. 1., p. 4.
[41] Li-chi, ch. 4, p. 60.
CHAPTER IX.
CONCLUSION.
It would be a very interesting study to examine the points of similarity and difference in the writings of the early Buddhists and the teachings of Lao-tzŭ; but this cannot be attempted here. There is one circumstance, however, to which I shall allude, that is, the resemblance of the Buddhist Bodhisattva (Pʽusa) Mandjusri to Lao-tzŭ. The Nepaulese traditions about this Pʽusa also make him to be a foreigner and to have come to their country from China, though other accounts represent him as returning from the latter country to his home in Nepaul. A full and very interesting account of Mandjusri, or “Mañdjuçri,” as Burnouf writes it, will be found in that accomplished scholar’s “Le Lotus de la bonne Loi.”[1] Rémusat and Pauthier insist on the western origin of Lao-tzŭ’s doctrines, and there are certainly not a few points of resemblance between them and some of the early Indian systems of religion and philosophy. Of these the doctrine of annihilation, or at least of final absorption, is one of the most striking.