南華真經

Nánhuá zhēn jīng 南華真經

True Scripture of the Southern Florescence

attributed to 莊周 (Zhuāng Zhōu, second half of the fourth century BCE) and his followers, in the received 33-chapter redaction of 郭象 (Guō Xiàng, d. 312 CE)

The canonical Daozang title of the Zhuāngzǐ 莊子, bestowed in 742 CE by Táng Xuánzōng 唐玄宗 (r. 712–756) as part of the same programme that granted the scriptural titles Chōngxū zhēn jīng (KR5c0049, Lièzǐ), Tōngxuán zhēn jīng (KR5c0052, Wénzǐ), and Dòng líng zhēn jīng (KR5c0050, Kàngcāng zǐ) to the other three “Daoist true scriptures” (四真經). The KR5c0051 edition is a bare text (no commentary), in ten juàn divided after the standard Guō Xiàng tripartite arrangement — Nèi piān 內篇 (7 ch.), Wài piān 外篇 (15 ch.), Zá piān 雜篇 (11 ch.) — and preceded by Guō Xiàng’s preface (Nánhuá zhēn jīng xù 南華真經序, opening Fū Zhuāngzǐ zhě kě wèi zhī běn yǐ 夫莊子者可謂知本矣…). The base witness of the Kanripo edition is the Sìbù cóngkān 四部叢刊 (SBCK) Sòng-imprint recension.

The ten juàn and 33 piān are structured as follows:

• 卷一 Nèi piān: Xiāoyáo yóu 逍遥遊, Qí wù lùn 齊物論.
• 卷二 Nèi piān: Yǎng shēng zhǔ 養生主, Rén jiān shì 人閒世, Dé chōng fú 德充符.
• 卷三 Nèi piān: Dà zōng shī 大宗師, Yìng dì wáng 應帝王.
• 卷四 Wài piān: Pián mǔ 駢拇, Mǎ tí 馬蹄, Qū qiè 胠篋, Zài yòu 在宥.
• 卷五 Wài piān: Tiān dì 天地, Tiān dào 天道, Tiān yùn 天運.
• 卷六 Wài piān: Kè yì 刻意, Shàn xìng 繕性, Qiū shuǐ 秋水, Zhì lè 至樂.
• 卷七 Wài piān: Dá shēng 達生, Shān mù 山木, Tián zǐ fāng 田子方, Zhī běi yóu 知北遊.
• 卷八 Zá piān: Gēngsāng Chǔ 庚桑楚, Xú wú guǐ 徐無鬼, Zé yáng 則陽.
• 卷九 Zá piān: Wài wù 外物, Yù yán 寓言, Ràng wáng 讓王, Dào zhí 盗跖.
• 卷十 Zá piān: Shuō jiàn 說劍, Yú fù 漁父, Liè Yùkòu 列御寇, Tiān xià 天下.

About the work

The Zhuāngzǐ is, together with the Lǎozǐ (Dàodé jīng) and the Yìjīng, one of the three foundational works of the Chinese philosophical tradition, and is universally acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of world literature. The received text — the Guō Xiàng 33-chapter redaction transmitted here under its Táng canonical title Nánhuá zhēn jīng — represents only part of the original: the Hàn shū, Yìwén zhì 漢書藝文志 30.1730 lists the Zhuāngzǐ in 52 piān (7 inner, 28 outer, 14 miscellaneous, and 3 explanations jiěshuō 解說), amounting to more than 100,000 characters (Shǐjì 史記 63); Guō Xiàng’s 33-chapter edition of c. 290–312 CE (with c. 70,000 characters) discarded roughly one-third of the Hàn text as spurious or redundant, and virtually none of the excised material survives independently.

The work opens with the famous cosmological parable of Xiāoyáo yóu 逍遥遊 — the giant fish Kūn 鯤 which transforms into the giant bird Péng 鵬 and ascends nine thousand lǐ to the southern sky — a parable which gave the text its canonical title Nánhuá 南華 (“Southern Florescence”), a name applied in Táng hagiography both to Zhuāng Zhōu’s supposed place of cultivation at the Nánhuá Shān 南華山 in Cáozhōu 曹州 (modern-day Hézé, Shāndōng) and to the text’s own southward-turning cosmological trajectory. The Qí wù lùn 齊物論 (“Discussion on the Equality of Things”) develops the foundational epistemological argument — articulated through the parable of the butterfly-dream (Zhuāng Zhōu mèng diē 莊周夢蝶) — that the apparent distinctions between things, including between self and other and between waking and dream, are themselves produced by the perspectival condition of knowing; and from this follows the Zhuāngzǐ’s distinctive commitment to the openness of truth (zhēn 真) as something inward, familiar, and unknowable. The Yǎng shēng zhǔ 養生主 (“Master of Nurturing Life”) introduces the parable of Cook Dīng 庖丁 cutting up the ox, paradigmatic of the attainment of dào 道 through embodied skill rather than reflective knowledge — and thereby sets out the Zhuāngzǐ’s influential formulation of the dào as ineffable, embodied, and disclosed only in the transparent doing of a task.

The remaining Nèi piān chapters — Rén jiān shì 人閒世 (the practice of wúwéi 無為 within the political world), Dé chōng fú 德充符 (the inward self-sufficiency of the virtuous, exemplified by the one-legged masters), Dà zōng shī 大宗師 (“The Great Ancestral Teacher” — on the attainment of the ultimate source through meditation, and the famous passage on the death of Zǐ lái 子來), and Yìng dì wáng 應帝王 (the paradox of rule through no-rule and the parable of the drilling of Húndùn 渾沌) — together constitute what most scholars (following Liú Xiàogǎn 劉笑敢 and A. C. Graham) agree is the earliest, most systematically unified stratum of the work, attributable to Zhuāng Zhōu himself (c. 369–286 BCE on Liú’s dating; fourth century BCE on the broader consensus). The Wài piān and Zá piān — with their more heterogeneous styles, vocabularies, and doctrinal emphases — incorporate material by Zhuāng Zhōu’s followers, later philosophical schools (Graham identifies a distinct “Yángzhūist” layer in chs. 28–31), and late Warring-States / early Hàn syncretic additions, with the last chapter Tiān xià 天下 generally dated to the early Hàn.

Prefaces

The scripture is prefaced by Guō Xiàng’s own preface, Nánhuá zhēn jīng xù 南華真經序, signed Hénán Guō Xiàng Zǐxuán zhuàn 河南郭象子玄撰 (i.e. Guō Xiàng of Hénán, zì Zǐxuán). The preface opens by declaring that “the Zhuāngzǐ — one may say — knows the root of things; therefore he never concealed his extravagant talk” (Fū Zhuāngzǐ zhě, kě wèi zhī běn yǐ; gù wèi shǐ cáng qí kuáng yán 夫莊子者，可謂知本矣，故未始藏其狂言) and continues by articulating Guō Xiàng’s own dú huà 獨化 (“lone self-transformation”) interpretation: the sage “becomes one body with transformation” (yǔ huà wéi tǐ 與化為體) and the Divine Vessel (shén qì 神器) “transforms alone in the realm of dark mystery” (dú huà yú xuánmíng zhī jìng 獨化於玄冥之境). It is the foundational document of the xuánxué 玄學 reading of the Zhuāngzǐ — the reading that decisively shaped the received understanding of the text. The preface’s own text-critical judgment that Guō Xiàng “considered sizeable parts of the work spurious or superfluous and therefore discarded them” (per Guō Qìngfán 郭慶藩, Zhuāngzǐ jí shì 莊子集釋) is the key historical note on the 52→33 piān reduction.

The Kanripo (SBCK) edition also preserves the chapter-list table (Nánhuá zhēn jīng piān mù 南華真經篇目) on folios 3a–4b after the preface, confirming the ten-juàn arrangement given above.

Abstract

Kristofer Schipper’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 1:60–61, DZ 670) provides the definitive modern Daoist-canon framing. Schipper classifies the text in section 1.A.1 Philosophy, and notes that the DZ 670 edition is an unannotated version of the Zhuāngzǐ under the title bestowed by Xuánzōng in 742. The edition belongs to a series that also comprises DZ 667 Wúshàng miàodào Wénshǐ zhēn jīng 無上妙道文始真經 (Guānyǐn zǐ 關尹子, under the 742 title Wúshàng miàodào, later confused with Wénshǐ zhēn jīng), DZ 668 Chōngxū zhìdé zhēn jīng (Lièzǐ), and DZ 669 Dòng líng zhēn jīng (Kàngcāng zǐ KR5c0050) — each with a preface and a portrait of the attributed sage.

The biographical facts about Zhuāng Zhōu are few and sparse. The Shǐjì 史記 63.2143–45 records that he was a man of Měng 蒙 (near modern Shāngqiū 商丘 in Hénán), held a minor office as a functionary at the Lacquer Garden (Qī yuán lì 漆園吏), and lived during the reigns of King Huì of Wèi 魏惠王 (r. c. 369–325 BCE) and King Wēi of Chǔ 楚威王 (r. c. 339–328 BCE). On the strength of this, modern scholars place Zhuāng Zhōu in the second half of the fourth century BCE — making him roughly contemporary with Mèngzǐ 孟子 (c. 372–289 BCE). Liú Xiàogǎn’s detailed dating proposal of c. 369–286 BCE is widely cited. After the fall of Sòng 宋 in 286 BCE, the Měng region fell to Chǔ, and Zhuāng Zhōu is therefore sometimes described as a native of Chǔ in later sources.

The text’s compositional history from late Warring States through the Hàn is a matter of substantial modern scholarship. The work is quoted extensively in the Lǚshì chūnqiū 呂氏春秋 (c. 239 BCE), from which we can infer that the Zhuāngzǐ had essentially reached its classical 52-piān form by the late third century BCE. Guō Xiàng’s 33-chapter redaction — completed c. 290–312 CE, in the Western Jìn 西晉 — became the unique received version, and no pre-Guō redaction survives independently.

Following the project’s convention for layered works, the frontmatter gives the composition window as –340 to 312 CE, covering the span from Zhuāng Zhōu’s likely authorial activity (Nèi piān) through Guō Xiàng’s final redaction (qua received recension). Dynasty 周 in frontmatter reflects the core authorial period; the Hàn and WèiJìn accretions and the Guō Xiàng redaction are discussed in prose.

The text was a favourite of WèiJìn xuánxué scholars — Xiàng Xiù 向秀 (c. 227–272), Wáng Bì 王弼 (226–249), Guō Xiàng 郭象 (d. 312), Zhāng Zhàn 張湛 (fl. 370), among others — and its influence on Chinese thought has been profound: on philosophical Daoism most obviously, but also on Chán 禪 Buddhism (for which Zhuāng Zhōu’s paradoxes, the butterfly-dream, the useless tree, the cook’s blade, all became staples of gōng àn 公案 literature), on literati culture (the Xiāoyáo yóu as the paradigm of artistic freedom; the Qí wù lùn as the paradigm of aesthetic equanimity), and on the sān jiào 三教 synthesis of the late Imperial period.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:59–62 (DZ 670, K. Schipper). Primary reference for the Daozang edition.
• Graham, A. C. Chuang-Tzu: The Inner Chapters. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981. Reissue Hackett 2001. Standard English translation of the inner chapters with critical analysis of the outer and miscellaneous layers; introduces the “Yangist” and “Syncretist” layer hypotheses.
• Watson, Burton. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968. Revised The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013. Standard English translation of the complete 33-chapter text.
• Ziporyn, Brook. Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009. Expanded ed. Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings, 2020. Philosophically precise modern translation with extensive commentary.
• Mair, Victor H. Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu. New York: Bantam, 1994. Alternative complete translation.
• Liú Xiàogǎn 劉笑敢. Zhuāngzǐ zhéxué jí qí yǎnbiàn 莊子哲學及其演變. Běijīng: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué, 1988; English ed. Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters, Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies 65, 1994. The foundational modern philological analysis of the stratification of the text.
• Guō Qìngfán 郭慶藩. Zhuāngzǐ jí shì 莊子集釋. Běijīng: Zhōnghuá, 1961 (rpt. 2013). The standard critical edition with collected traditional commentaries.
• Chén Gǔyìng 陳鼓應. Zhuāngzǐ jīn zhù jīn yì 莊子今註今譯. Taipei: Shāngwù, 1975 (rev. 2007). The standard modern Chinese critical edition with annotation.
• Billeter, Jean-François. Leçons sur Tchouang-tseu. Paris: Allia, 2002. Influential French reading of the inner chapters.
• Schipper, Kristofer. Zhuang Zi: De volledige geschriften. Het grote klassieke boek van het taoïsme. Amsterdam: Augustus, 2007. Complete Dutch translation by the editor of S&V.
• Puett, Michael J. “Violence in a Nonviolent World: Political and Cultural Values of a Text of Personal Cultivation.” In Paul Goldin, ed., Dao Companion to the Philosophy of the Han Feizi. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. On the Zhuangzi’s political thought.
• Kim, Tae Hyun. “Other Laozi Parallels in the Hanfeizi: An Alternative Approach to the Textual History of the Laozi and Early Chinese Thought.” Sino-Platonic Papers 199 (2010). For the Zhuangzi-Laozi intertext.
• Tán Shìbǎo 譚世保. “Dūnhuáng wénshū Nánhuá zhēn jīng” 敦煌文書南華真經. Dūnhuáng xué jí kān 1990. Dunhuang textual witnesses.

Other points of interest

The DZ 670 / KR5c0051 edition is the canonical unannotated text of the Zhuāngzǐ — distinct from the many commentary editions also preserved in the Daozang (S&V notes “more than ten editions”). The commentary tradition is immense: beyond Guō Xiàng’s foundational redaction, the major pre-modern commentaries include Xiàng Xiù 向秀 (c. 227–272), whose now-lost commentary Guō Xiàng is traditionally accused of plagiarising — a charge first levelled in Shìshuō xīnyǔ 世說新語 Wén xué 17 and decisively debated in the modern scholarship of Wáng Shūmín 王叔岷, Tāng Yòngtóng 湯用彤, and others; Chéng Xuányīng 成玄英 (Táng early 7th cent.), whose Zhuāngzǐ shū 莊子疏 is preserved in DZ; Lín Xīyì 林希逸 (Southern Sòng), whose Zhuāngzǐ kǒuyì 莊子口義 was especially influential in Japan; and Guō Qìngfán 郭慶藩 (late Qīng), whose Zhuāngzǐ jí shì is the standard modern critical edition with collected commentaries.

The Guō Xiàng 33-chapter redaction question — including the piān-reduction, the alleged Xiàng Xiù plagiarism, and the unrecoverable pre-Guō material — has been comprehensively treated in Brook Ziporyn’s The Penumbra Unbound: The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang (SUNY Press, 2003). For the xuánxué intellectual context in which the Guō Xiàng redaction was produced, see Tāng Yòngtóng’s classic Wèi Jìn xuánxué lùn gǎo 魏晉玄學論稿 (rpt. Shànghǎi Gǔjí, 2001).

The manuscript tradition of the Zhuāngzǐ has been illuminated by the Dūnhuáng 敦煌 fragments — including P.2495, P.3745, S.77, and others — which preserve sections of Guō Xiàng’s commentary and confirm the text’s stability in the Táng period (see Tán Shìbǎo 1990; Schipper 2004, 1:61). No pre-Guō Xiàng manuscript of the 52-piān Zhuāngzǐ has been recovered.

The parable of Cook Dīng 庖丁 (Yǎng shēng zhǔ, ch. 3), the image of the useless tree (Xiāoyáo yóu; Rén jiān shì), the butterfly-dream (Qí wù lùn), the story of the drilling of Húndùn 渾沌 (Yìng dì wáng), the account of Zhuāng Zǐ beating the basin at his wife’s death (Zhì lè), the skull of the Dàozhí robber (Dào zhí), and the story of the three skins of the river (Qiū shuǐ) have all entered East Asian cultural-literary vocabulary on a scale matched in Chinese literature only by the Lúnyǔ 論語 and the Dàodé jīng. The Nánhuá zhēn jīng has therefore, since its 742 canonisation, served not only as a founding Daoist scripture but also as the literary-aesthetic common ground of the sān jiào 三教 tradition as a whole.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0051
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 1:59–62 — DZ 670 entry (K. Schipper).
• Wikipedia: Zhuangzi (book)
• ctext.org: Zhuangzi — primary-text reference edition with side-by-side English translation (Legge).
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Zhuangzi