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whence attacks are made in all directions on villages, which they hope to surround or surprise. The savages live only in small hamlets consisting of a few huts, and they are powerless to resist the attacks of men armed with guns. These razzias are usually made only against the independent savages who reject the authority of the Lao princes and refuse to pay tribute. But I have noticed that the compact by which the savages consent to surrender a part of their independence, in order to preserve their wives, children, and themselves, is far from being always respected; and the unfortunate Gnia-heuns, for example, who dwell within a few leagues of Bassak, are in the greatest terror of the prince, refusing on any consideration to leave their forests or inaccessible villages."[1] The convoys of slaves, purchased chiefly by Chinese and Malay dealers from Camboja, are forwarded mainly to Bangkok, Korat, and Phnom-penh, the present capital of Camboja. This organized slave trade is the great curse of the nation, and tends more than all other causes combined to retard the natural development of the Lao country.
The mixed Lao peoples are distinguished from the pure stock chiefly by their more regular features, tall stature, lighter complexion, sub-dolichocephalic crania, and generally lower social condition. Most of them, although nominal Buddhists, are in reality still nature-worshippers, who make offerings of sticks and stones to the local genii, and guard their homes against evil spirits by means of brooms, cotton threads, bunches of herbage, and other curious devices. Some of them are quite as savage as the wild tribes, and, although acquainted with the use of firearms, still use the characteristic crossbow, a formidable weapon, which in skilled hands will kill a buffalo with a simple bamboo arrow at considerable distances. In some parts the confusion of types and usages is so great that the true Khas can be distinguished from the Laos only by the lobe of the ear, which is pierced for the insertion of large bone, ivory, or wooden ornaments like those worn by many of the Oceanic races.
Apart from the passions associated with the infamous slave trade, encouraged by their rulers, the Laos are an inoffensive, unwarlike, and peace-loving race, fond of music, and living chiefly on a diet of rice, vegetables, fruits, fish, and poultry. Pure and mixed, they number altogether perhaps some 1,500,000.
LÂO-TSZE, or Laou-tsze, the designation of the author of the celebrated treatise called Tâo Teh King, and the reputed founder of the religion called Tâoism. The Chinese characters composing the designation may mean either "the Old Son," which commonly assumes with foreigners the form of "the Old Boy," or "the Old Philosopher." The latter significance is attached to them by the Rev. Dr Chalmers in his translation of the treatise published in 1868 under the title of The Speculations on Metaphysics, Polity, and Morality of "the Old Philosopher," Lâo-tsze. The former is derived from a fabulous account of Lâo-tsze which appeared in the Shăn Hsien Chwan, "The Account of Spirits and Immortals," of Ko Hung, in our 4th century. According to this, his mother, after a supernatural conception, carried him in her womb sixty-two years (or seventy-two, or eighty-one – ten years more or fewer are of little importance in such a case), so that, when he was born at last, his hair was white as with age, and people might well call him "the old boy." The other meaning of the designation rests on better authority. We find it in the Kiâ Yü, or "Narratives of the Confucian School," compiled in our 3d century from documents said to have, been preserved among the descendants of Confucius, and also in the brief history of Lâo-tzse given in the historical records of Sze-ma Ch'ien (about 100 B.C.). In the latter instance the designation is used by Confucius, and possibly it originated with him. It should be regarded more as an epithet of respect than of years, and is equivalent to "the Venerable Philosopher."
All that Ch'ien tells us about Lâo-tsze goes into small compass. His surname was Lî, and his name Urh. He was a native of the state of Ch'û, and was born in a hamlet, which we must place not far from the present prefectural city of Kwei-teh in Ho-nan province. What is of more importance, he was one of the recorders or historiographers at the court of Châu, his special department being the charge of the whole or a portion of the royal library. He must thus have been able to make himself acquainted with all the history of his country and of the men who had played the most distinguished part in its affairs. Ch'ien does not mention the year of his birth, which is often said, though on what Chinese authority does not appear, to have taken place in the third year of King Phing, corresponding to 604 B.C. That date cannot be far from the truth. That he was contemporary with Confucius is established by the concurrent testimony of the Lî Kî and the Kiâ Yü on the Confucian side, and of Chwang-tsze and Sze-ma Ch'ien on the Tâoist. The two men whose influence has been so great on all the subsequent generations of the Chinese people, and whose views are now more attentively studied by thinking men of other nations than ever they were before – Khung-tsze and Lâo-tsze had at least one interview, in 517 B.C., when the former was in his thirty-fifth year. The conversation between them was interesting. Lâo was in a mocking mood; Khung appears to the greater advantage.
If it be true that Confucius, when he was fifty-one years old, visited Lâo-tsze, as Chwang-tsze says (in the Thien Yun, the fourteenth of his treatises), to ask about the Tâo, they must have had more than one interview. Dr Chalmers, however, has pointed out that both Chwang-tsze and Lieh-tsze (a still earlier Tâoist writer) produce Confucius in their writings, as the lords of the Philistines did the captive Samson on their festive occasions, "to make sport for them." Their testimony is valueless as to any matter of fact. There may have been several meetings between the two in 517 B.C., but we have no evidence that they were together in the same place after that time, Ch'ien adds: – "Lâo-tsze cultivated the Tâo and virtue, his chief aim in his studies being how to keep himself concealed and unknown. He resided at (the capital of) Châu; but after a long time, seeing the decay of the dynasty, he left it, and went away to the Gate (leading from the royal domain into the regions beyond, – at the entrance of the pass of Han-kû, in the north-west of Ho-nan). Yin Hsî, the warden of the gate, said to him, 'You are about to withdraw yourself out of sight; I pray you to compose for me a book (before you go). On this Lâo-tsze made a writing, setting forth his views on the tâo and virtue, in two sections, containing more than 5000 characters. He then went away, and it is not known where he died." The historian then mentions the names of two other men whom some regarded as the true Lâo-tsze. One of them was a Lâo Lâi, a contemporary of Confucius, who wrote fifteen treatises (or sections) on the practices of the school of Tâo. Subjoined to the notice of him is the remark that Lâo-tsze was more than one hundred and sixty years old, or, as some say, more than two hundred, because by the cultivation of the Tâo he nourished his longevity. The other was "a grand historiographer" of Châu, called Tan, one hundred and twenty-nine (? one hundred and nineteen) years after the death of Confucius. The introduction of these disjointed notices detracts from the verisimilitude of the whole narrative in which they occur.
- ↑ Dr Harmand, Tour du Monde, July 5, 1879.
