道德經古本篇

Dàodé jīng gǔběn piān 道德經古本篇

Ancient-Recension Edition of the Dàodé jīng

edited by 傅奕 (555–639)

Ancient-Recension critical edition of the Dàodé jīng 道德經 in two juàn, edited and collated by the early-Táng Tàishǐlìng 太史令 (Grand Astrologer) Fù Yì 傅奕, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (DZ 665 / CT 665, 洞神部本文類). Fù Yì’s edition is based primarily on a gǔběn 古本 (Ancient Recension) manuscript discovered in 574 CE at Péngchéng 彭城 in the tomb of a concubine of the Hàn-era warlord Xiàng Yǔ 項羽 (233–202 BCE), collated against the Wáng Bì 王弼 and Héshàng gōng 河上公 commentary-editions of Fù Yì’s own day. The text presents the plain Dàodé jīng without commentary, organised in the classical 81-chapter zhāng jù 章句 arrangement of the Héshàng gōng tradition, with the character count of each chapter noted in a marginal colophon (e.g. yòu dì yī zhāng wǔ shí jiǔ yán 右第一章五十九言 — “the above is chapter 1, 59 characters”). The total character count is 5,556 — c. 300 more than the received Héshàng gōng commentary edition (DZ 682, with 5,274 characters).

About the work

The edition is a signal witness to early-Táng philological practice and to the textual prehistory of the received Dàodé jīng in three respects:

• The 574-Péngchéng manuscript — Fù Yì’s base-text was a manuscript recovered from the tomb of Xiàng Yǔ’s concubine in 574 CE, recorded in the Hùnyuán shèng jì 混元聖紀 3.20a (DZ 770). This is one of the earliest known instances of manuscript discovery from an identifiable Hàn tomb influencing received Daoist textual practice, and in some respects anticipates the 1973 Mǎwángduī 馬王堆 discovery by fourteen centuries.

• Character counts — Fù Yì reported (as preserved in DZ 770 Hùnyuán shèng jì 3.20a) specific character totals for the various Dàodé jīng editions he consulted: 5,722 characters for the Péngchéng manuscript, 5,683 or 5,610 for the Wáng Bì commentary edition, and 5,555 or 5,590 for the Héshàng gōng commentary edition. The present edition’s total of 5,556 does not correspond exactly to any of these, suggesting Fù Yì’s editorial hand in resolving discrepancies between his sources.

• Relationship to the Mǎwángduī witnesses — Modern scholarship (Schipper in his TC entry; Xǔ Fùguàn’s “Bóshū Lǎozǐ” study) has demonstrated that the stylistic characteristics of Fù Yì’s Ancient Recension show close affinities to the Western-Hàn 馬王堆 silk-manuscript witnesses (1973), dating to c. 168 BCE — in both lexicon and phrasing. Fù Yì’s text is consequently taken to preserve a pre-Héshàng-gōng, pre-Wáng-Bì textual layer. Schipper however notes that the present text shows “greater affinities to the extant Wáng Bì edition than to that attributed to Héshàng gōng.”

The edition’s chapter arrangement follows the 81-chapter Héshàng gōng zhāng jù 河上公章句 division, with the first 37 chapters as Dào jīng 道經 and the last 44 as Dé jīng 德經. Schipper notes that the chapter-count conformity with the Héshàng gōng standard is probably Fù Yì’s own editorial intervention, since the Mǎwángduī witnesses do not show chapter divisions at all, and the Guōdiàn bamboo-slip Lǎozǐ (which post-dates the received text but is much earlier than Fù Yì’s source) likewise shows only partial chapter-level organisation.

Prefaces

No preface. The text opens with the scripture-identification headline Dào jīng gǔ běn piān shàng mù èr 道經古本篇上慕二 followed by the editor-attribution line Táng Tàishǐlìng Fù Yì xiàodìng 唐太史令傅奕校定 (“Fù Yì, Grand Astrologer of the Táng, collated and established [this edition]”), and proceeds directly to chapter 1. No authorial introduction survives in the received edition; Fù Yì’s own editorial apparatus — where extant — is preserved in the chapter-by-chapter character-count colophons.

Abstract

Schipper’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 1:58–59, DZ 665) classifies the text in section 1.A.1 “Philosophy” and reads:

“Ancient Recension of the Book of the Way and Its Virtue. This is the plain text of the Lǎozǐ, without commentary, based on a manuscript discovered in 574 CE at Péngchéng 彭城 (Xúzhōu, Jiāngsū), in the tomb of a concubine of Xiàng Yǔ 項羽 (233–202 BCE). See DZ 770 Hùnyuán shèng jì 3.20a. The date as well as the stylistic characteristics of the present text establish a relationship with the manuscripts of the Lǎozǐ found in 1973 in Hàn tomb no. 3 at Mǎwángduī near Chángshā (Húnán). The division into a Dào piān 道篇 and a Dé piān 德篇 may therefore well correspond to the original arrangement of the text, while the arrangement into eighty-one chapters, according to the so-called Héshàng gōng zhāng jù, as well as the indications on the number of characters in each chapter are probably of Fù Yì’s own devising. The present text contains 5,556 characters, almost 300 more than the Héshàng gōng commentary version of DZ 682 Dàodé zhēn jīng zhù, which has 5,274. None of these numbers correspond to the indications supposedly given by Fù Yì on the versions he examined in his time: 5,722 characters for the manuscript found at Péngchéng, 5,683 or 5,610 for the Wáng Bì commentary version, and 5,555 or 5,590 for the Héshàng gōng commentary version (DZ 770 Hùnyuán shèng jì 3.20a). The present text, however, shows greater affinities to the extant Wáng Bì edition than to that attributed to Héshàng gōng.”

The terminus post quem is 574 CE, the date of the Péngchéng manuscript discovery that served as Fù Yì’s base text. The terminus ante quem is 639 CE, the year of Fù Yì’s death. The frontmatter accordingly uses 574–639, with dynasty “初唐” (Early Táng). The catalog meta provides the author Fù Yì (555–639) with function 編 (editor/compiler).

The edition’s significance for the textual history of the Dàodé jīng is out of proportion to its apparent modesty. It is:

1. The earliest surviving Táng recension that presents the Dàodé jīng with a documented, non-commentarial textual base, made explicit through Fù Yì’s collation method.
2. The principal bridge between the Western-Hàn Mǎwángduī witnesses (1973 discovery, then unknown) and the received Héshànggōng / WángBì tradition — it preserves lexical choices and phraseology that modern philology has vindicated against the Héshànggōng standard.
3. The supplementary source for the Dàodé zhēn jīng (DZ 664, KR5c0045) itself, where the missing passages at 1.8b–10b have been replaced with corresponding passages from Fù Yì’s edition.

The edition has remained a central reference for scholarly reconstruction of the early Dàodé jīng from the late imperial period onward — from Jiāo Hóng’s 焦竑 Lǎozǐ yì 老子翼 (1587) through modern critical editions.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:58–59 (DZ 665, K. Schipper). Primary reference.
• Xǔ Fùguàn 徐復觀. “Bóshū Lǎozǐ” 帛書老子. In Xǔ Fùguàn zá wén jí 徐復觀雜文集. Tǎiběi: Xuéshēng shūjú, 1980. The principal study comparing Fù Yì’s Ancient Recension with the Mǎwángduī witnesses.
• Chén Gǔyìng 陳鼓應. Lǎo Zhuāng xīn lùn 老莊新論. Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi Gǔjí, 1992. Chapter on the textual history of the Dàodé jīng.
• Henricks, Robert G. Lao-tzu Te-Tao ching: A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts. New York: Ballantine, 1989. Includes discussion of Fù Yì’s edition as an intermediate witness.
• Wagner, Rudolf G. The Craft of a Chinese Commentator: Wang Bi on the Laozi. Albany: SUNY, 2000. For the Wáng Bì tradition against which Fù Yì collated.
• Boltz, William G. “Lao tzu Tao te ching.” In Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, edited by Michael Loewe, 269–92. Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China, 1993.
• Schipper, Kristofer, and Yuan Bingling. “Le Tchao-tchen tsi tching [Zhàozhēn jí jīng].” Journal Asiatique 279, no. 1–2 (1991): 241–59. For Táng-era Daoist textual practice.

Other points of interest

The 574-Péngchéng tomb discovery is one of the key episodes in pre-modern Chinese archaeological scholarship. The reported recovery of a Dàodé jīng manuscript from the tomb of Xiàng Yǔ’s concubine preserved in DZ 770 Hùnyuán shèng jì 3.20a is the earliest on record of a text recovered from a Hàn tomb influencing canonical scholarship. The tomb’s identification with Xiàng Yǔ’s consort places the manuscript’s interment in the early Western Hàn (202–195 BCE), making it a potential near-contemporary of the Mǎwángduī witnesses (168 BCE). The manuscript itself is lost; what survives is Fù Yì’s edition derived from it.

Fù Yì’s anti-Buddhist polemical identity is an important contextual point for reading his Dàodé jīng edition. Fù Yì was the principal Táng advocate for the suppression of Buddhism (memorialised in 624 against Gāozǔ) and one of the vocal defenders of Daoist textual priority. His Ancient-Recension edition of the Dàodé jīng should be read in this context as a philologically-grounded recovery-project that both documented the classical Daoist scripture in pre-commentarial form and established Fù Yì’s credentials as the early-Táng Daoist textual authority.

The chapter-by-chapter character-count colophons — yòu dì X zhāng X yán 右第X章X言 — are a distinctive feature of this edition. They furnish a critical apparatus for textual collation that was unusual in pre-modern Chinese scholarship and presage later Qīng-era kǎozhèng 考證 philological practice by about a millennium. The character-count data allow modern scholars to detect interpolations and lacunae in subsequent editions by comparison against Fù Yì’s totals.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0046
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 1:58–59 — DZ 665 entry (K. Schipper).
• Wikipedia: Fu Yi — biographical entry for the editor.
• DZ 770 Hùnyuán shèng jì 3.20a — the principal source on the 574 Péngchéng manuscript discovery.