IF the popularity of books must be measured by either the number of copies in which they appear or the devotion of their readers, the T'ai-Shang Kan-Ying P'ien, i. e., "The Treatise of the Exalted One on Response and Retribution," will probably have to be assigned the first place of all publications on the globe. Its editions exceed even those of the Bible and Shakespeare, which of all the books published in the Western world are most numerous, and many millions of devout Chinese believe that great merit is gained by the dissemination of the book.
The T'ai-Shang Kan-Ying P'ien is a work of Taoist piety and ethics. It is not so deep as Lao Tze's Tao-Teh-King, but its moral maxims which are noble and pure, are presented with a more popular directness.
The main idea of the title is expressed in the words Kan, "response," and Ying, "retribution," which mean that in the spiritual realm of heaven there is "a response" to our sentiments, finding expression in "a retribution" of our deeds.
T'ai-Shang, literally, "the Grandly High" or "the Exalted One," is a current name of Lao Tze, the old philosopher, author of the Tao-Teh-King, who is revered by Taoists as the great teacher of mankind, the superior man, and the highest authority of religious truth.
Lao Tze's philosophy has percolated into the Chinese nation and we can distinguish three strata: the first represented by the Tao-Teh-King, the second by the T'ai-Shang Kan-Ying P'ien, and the third by the stories appended to it. The first is profound though partly obscure, the second elevating, yet mixed with those popular notions which belong to the domain of mythology, and the third is devout in tone, but sometimes silly in its details.
The text of the T'ai-Shang Kan-Ying P'ien consists of several parts: (1) an introduction, (2) moral injunctions, (3) a description of evil-doers and their penalty, (4) sayings from various sources, and (5) the conclusion. Internal evidence suggests that we have before us a compilation in which we can distinguish at least three authors of decidedly different characters. The introduction (being itself a compilation) and the passage "Punishment of Evil-Doers" apparently come from the pen of the final redactor, presumably a Tao Shih, a Taoist scholar or priest, while the second part, "Moral Injunctions," constitutes the most valuable portion of the book. The third part, "The Description of Evil-Doers," is written by a moralizer, or even denouncer, rather than a moralist. Possibly (nay even probably) he is identical with the final redactor, but scarcely with the author of the "Moral Injunctions." He has incorporated quotations from an unknown Taoist source (e. g., the beautiful passage, 1170-1198) and lines from the Buddhist Dhammapada (1210 ff.)
