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郭店楚墓竹書‧老子乙

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Text ID
KR2p0148
Date
-400–-300
Dynasty
周

Guōdiàn Chǔmù Zhúshū‧Lǎozǐ Yǐ 郭店楚墓竹書‧老子乙

Chu Tomb Bamboo Books from Guōdiàn — Lǎozǐ Text B (Lǎozǐ yǐ běn 老子乙本)

(anonymous; early Daoist text)

About the work

One of three separate bundles of Lǎozǐ 老子 (Dào dé jīng 道德經) passages found among the bamboo-slip manuscripts from Guōdiàn 郭店 Chu Tomb 1, Jīngmén 荊門, Húběi, excavated 1993 and sealed ca. 300 BCE. The Guōdiàn Lǎozǐ texts collectively represent the earliest manuscript witnesses to the Lǎozǐ and predate the Mǎwángduī 馬王堆 silk manuscripts by roughly a century and a half. Text B (Yǐ běn 乙本) contains portions of eight chapters of the received Lǎozǐ.

Abstract

Provenance. Guōdiàn Tomb 1 at Jīngmén, Húběi, was excavated by the Jīngmén City Museum in October 1993. The tomb is dated to the late fourth or early third century BCE, probably ca. 300 BCE, on the basis of bronze vessel typology and the nature of the Chu script. The occupant is widely believed to have been a tutor or close associate of the Chu royal family based on the composition of the library. The tomb yielded 804 bamboo slips covering sixteen distinct texts, of which three separate bundles are identified as Lǎozǐ A, B, and C. The editio princeps — 荊門市博物館, 《郭店楚墓竹書》(文物出版社, 1998) — remains the standard reference.

Content. Text B (乙本, this entry) opens with the passage corresponding to Chapter 59 of the received Lǎozǐ: “治人事天，莫若嗇” (“In governing people and serving heaven, nothing compares to frugality”). The text continues with passages corresponding to chapters 48, 20, 13, 41, 52, 45, and 54 of the received text (in that order). These chapters are not presented in the numerical order of the received Lǎozǐ, confirming that the chapter division and ordering were established only after the Guōdiàn manuscripts were copied. The passage from chapter 59 (on sè 嗇, frugality or husbandry) that opens this bundle matches an important opening passage in Guōdiàn Lǎozǐ C (see KR2p0149).

Textual significance. The Guōdiàn Lǎozǐ texts (A, B, and C together) contain approximately 2,000 characters, covering roughly two-fifths of the received Lǎozǐ. Several chapters of the received text are entirely absent, raising the question of whether they had not yet been composed by ca. 300 BCE, or simply were not included in the bundles buried. Key differences from the received Lǎozǐ include:

  1. No “anti-Confucian” polemic: The Guōdiàn texts lack the passages in chapters 18 and 19 of the received Lǎozǐ that explicitly reject rén 仁 (benevolence) and yì 義 (righteousness) — a finding that has transformed scholarly understanding of early Daoist and Confucian interaction, suggesting that the sharp anti-Confucian strand in the received text was a later addition.
  2. Graphic variants: The Chu-script bamboo slips use variant characters that illuminate the etymology and early meaning of key Lǎozǐ terms.
  3. Chapter ordering: The non-sequential arrangement of chapters in each bundle supports the view that the received chapter order is a later editorial arrangement, not original to the text.

Dating. The text was copied ca. 300 BCE; the composition of the original material now assigned to chapters 59, 48, 20, 13, 41, 52, 45, and 54 of the received Lǎozǐ is uncertain but probably dates to the fourth or fifth century BCE at the earliest. The date bracket notBefore: −400, notAfter: −300 represents a conservative estimate for the compilation of the passages in this bundle.

Translations and research

  • 荊門市博物館, 《郭店楚墓竹書》, 文物出版社, 1998 — editio princeps with photographs, transcription, and notes.
  • Henricks, Robert G. Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching: A Translation of the Startling New Documents Found at Guodian. Columbia University Press, 2000 — English translation of all three Guōdiàn Lǎozǐ bundles with commentary.
  • Cook, Scott. The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation. 2 vols. Cornell East Asia Series, 2012 — comprehensive study and translation of all Guōdiàn texts.
  • Allan, Sarah, and Crispin Williams, eds. The Guodian Laozi: Proceedings of the International Conference, Dartmouth College, May 1998. Society for the Study of Early China / Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2000 — key scholarly forum on the find.
  • Holloway, Kenneth. Guodian: The Newly Discovered Seeds of Chinese Religious and Political Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 2009 — accessible introduction with translations.
  • Shaughnessy, Edward L. “The Guodian Manuscripts and their Place in Twentieth-Century Historiography on the Laozi.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 65.2 (2005), pp. 417–457.
  • Ryden, Edmund. “The Guodian Manuscripts: Their Relationship to the Laozi.” Early China 25 (2000), pp. 175–230.

Other points of interest

The Guōdiàn Lǎozǐ discovery in 1993 was one of the most significant finds in the history of Chinese textual scholarship, fundamentally reshaping understanding of early Daoism and its relationship to Confucianism. Prior to the discovery, many scholars assumed the received Lǎozǐ was a unified composition; the Guōdiàn texts suggest it grew through accretion. Text B should be read alongside Text A (a separate bundle in the same tomb, not included in the Kanripo KR2p corpus in this range) and Text C KR2p0149.

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