The translation *is exceedingly well done: and no-one reading it can fail to got an insight. into Chinese life-under the Emperors and into the modes and manners of, thought of an educated and wealthy family." But it is an_adaptation rather than a-translation. Were the whole -book translated it would require several volumes, the size this one, to tell the whole story. Foreign ' readers—and it is for those this book is published—would find long stretches of the narrative tedious. The translation of poems with which the book sbounds— ind literary allusions has-been but sparingly attempted; to do this thoroughly would be beyond the capacity of any but a very accom plished Chinese scholar and the re-ull, translated into English, would] often seem absurd, One quotation may illustrate this. Tt is related that one of the principal characters; in the story: was reading idly in his library. "He fell asleep and dreamed that he saw a monk and 4 taoist priest deep in conversa He followed them and came to th "Land of ilustion.". On the arch. way: that spanned the entrance was 1 couplet. which read—
"We wel yn churyu wan wa"
This" is translated,—and well translated This/shows how.the. English must be expanded to, make senso More literally the ight read true, then true is] the original and: the meaning is perfectly clear to one family nese Buddhism. " Buddhist philoso-Phy is based "on the assumption that the things we see—the cosmos <is an illusion; it is: false. If you assume the world of -bei l, then you are: believing an illusion. and the warld of reality—the unseen: world—is, to you, illu sion. " The second line is.merely the converse of the first. Now before this as nonsense let us expresses resent day scientific thought..No scientist believes that one senses lo truth about the cosmos. A writer in a recent New York paper..says, "From science and reason' we as yet know neither what I ain that read this, nor what it is that I read; what is energy or space or matter. Or what is light or heat or-electricity, thought imagination or love." This is science but this is also Buddhism and one wishes some wite man would rise up and tell us how Buddhism, 2,500 years ago. anticipated; the latest findings of science.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.