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大明太祖高皇帝御註道德真經

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Text ID
KR5c0058
Date
1374–1375
Dynasty
明

Dà Míng Tài zǔ Gāo huáng dì yù zhù Dàodé zhēn jīng 大明太祖高皇帝御註道德真經

Imperial Commentary of His August Majesty Tàizǔ, the Exalted Emperor of the Great Míng, on the True Scripture of the Way and Its Virtue

by 朱元璋 (Zhū Yuánzhāng; Míng Tàizǔ 明太祖, r. 1368–1398) — yù zhù 御註 (imperial commentary), composed Hóngwǔ 7.12 (January–February 1375 CE)

The personal commentary on the Dàodé jīng ([[KR5c0045|Dàodé zhēn jīng]]) by Zhū Yuánzhāng 朱元璋 (1328–1398), the founding emperor of the Míng dynasty. Composed in the winter of Hóngwǔ 洪武 7 (1374–1375), six years after the imperial accession, the commentary is preserved in two juàn in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (DZ 676 / CT 676, Dòngshén bù, Yù jué lèi 洞神部玉訣類). It is one of the most politically interesting Daoist commentaries in the received tradition: written by a ruler — of humble, peasant-monastic origins — at a moment when his newly-founded dynasty was struggling to pacify a lawless post-conquest population, and arguing throughout for a Daoist-pragmatic Realpolitik that tempers legal severity with non-action (wú wéi 無為).

About the work

The commentary glosses the 81 chapters of the Wáng Bì / Héshàng gōng received Dàodé jīng text in a sequential, paragraph-by-paragraph manner. Zhū Yuánzhāng’s interpretive method is strikingly practical and aphoristic: he reads the Lǎozǐ chiefly as a manual for governance (zhì guó 治國, píng tiān xià 平天下) rather than as a metaphysical or cosmological document, and his glosses consistently return to the Emperor’s dual perspective — the ruler’s (tiān zǐ 天子) and the minister’s-or-commoner’s (chén shù 臣庶). Key interpretive moves include:

  • Chapter 1, on dào kě dào, fēi cháng dào 道可道，非常道: Zhū Yuánzhāng reads this practically — “the Way here indicated is the Way that exceeds the way of ordinary people (guò chángrén suǒ xíng zhī dào 過常人所行之道)”; the Way of an exceptional ruler or minister, realised through disciplined self-control and the strict regulation of desires. The Way is explicitly identified with the mind (xīn 心): dào yóu lù yě; lù jí xīn yě 道猶路也；路即心也 (“the Way is like a road; the road is just the mind”).
  • Chapter 2, on měi zhī wéi měi, sī è yǐ 美之為美，斯惡已: the ruler is warned against the piling-up of showy virtues — “Don’t add Way upon Way, or goodness upon goodness” — and instead praised for the simplicity of rule illustrated by the old peasant’s proverb dì lì yú wǒ hé yǒu zāi 帝力於我何有哉 (“What has the emperor’s power to do with me?”).

Prefaces

The commentary is preceded by the emperor’s own first-person preface (xù 序), in which Zhū Yuánzhāng gives a remarkable autobiographical account of his coming to the Dàodé jīng:

“I was originally of poor and humble origins. I met with the fate of the Hú rule (i.e. the Yuán), and with the rise of the many rebel leaders, I could not rest peacefully in my home town. I took to the army to save my life, nearly losing my life many times but escaping. I was thus constrained for several years. Not a few years later, I escaped the constraint of others and came to lead the many rebels and to firmly hold the left bank of the Yangtze. Thirteen years later I ascended the imperial throne, and in accordance with Heaven I replaced the Yuan, nurturing the black-haired people (i.e. the common folk). Since my accession, I have not known the Way of the sage-rulers of earlier ages; day and night I have worried anxiously, fearing the scrutinising gaze of the Azure Heaven. I therefore asked the Way from various men, but each held his own view and none attained the understanding of the earlier worthies. One day I happened to browse through various books, and among them was a volume of the Dàodé jīng. I opened it casually and read a few chapters, and found each to illuminate principle clearly — its language shallow, its meaning profound — yet I could not understand it fully…”

He then narrates how, several days later, he acquired another edition with different commentaries, compared them, found that “each commentator has a different view”; how, after long reflection, he himself began to understand the text; and, most strikingly, how the specific passage mín bú wèi sǐ, nài hé yǐ sǐ ér jù zhī 民不畏死，奈何以死而懼之 (“If the people do not fear death, what use is there in threatening them with death?”, chapter 74) convinced him, in a specific post-conquest moment when the newly-founded Míng was struggling to suppress crime through executions (“in the morning ten are executed in the marketplace, but by evening a hundred repeat the offence”), to abolish the death penalty in favour of imprisonment and forced labour (bà jí xíng ér qiú yì zhī 罷極刑而囚役之). “Within a year,” the preface continues, “my heart’s fears had diminished.”

The commentary itself was then composed in Hóngwǔ 7.12.jiǎ wǔ 甲午 day (December 1374 – January 1375) and completed on the jiǎ chén 甲辰 day of the same month. The preface closes with the emperor’s own characterisation of the Dàodé jīng: sī jīng nǎi wàn wù zhī zhì gēn, wáng zhě zhī shàng shī, chén mín zhī jí bǎo; fēi jīn dān zhī shù yě 斯經乃萬物之至根，王者之上師，臣民之極寶；非金丹之術也 (“This scripture is the ultimate root of the ten-thousand things, the supreme teacher of kings, the extreme treasure of officials and commoners; it is not a technique of golden-elixir alchemy”).

Abstract

The commentary is historically significant on several fronts. First, it is a major document of early-Míng imperial patronage of Daoism — alongside the promulgation of the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (begun 1406, completed 1445, one generation after Tàizǔ) and the wider early-Míng institutional support for orthodox Daoist lineages (especially the Zhèngyī 正一 tradition). Second, it is a remarkable specimen of direct imperial-authored commentarial writing: few Chinese rulers composed their own scriptural commentaries, and fewer still of the philosophical-practical depth of Zhū Yuánzhāng’s text. Third, the preface’s autobiographical self-portrait — the peasant-monk-warrior turned emperor, anxious before the “scrutinising gaze of the Azure Heaven”, seeking guidance in classical texts, and adjusting legal policy on the basis of an interpreted Lǎozǐ passage — is one of the most intimate self-documents we possess from any Chinese ruler.

The commentary’s political reading of the Lǎozǐ — as a manual of Realpolitik rather than a speculative cosmology, and specifically as a warning against legal over-severity — has been influential on modern Chinese re-interpretations of the text. Modern scholarship (Ren Jiyu 任繼愈, Liu Cunyan 劉存仁, and others) has treated Zhū Yuánzhāng’s commentary as a key document of the “Legalist-Daoist synthesis” (HuángLǎo zhī xué 黃老之學) in its Míng imperial refraction.

The composition dates — Hóngwǔ 7.12 (December 1374 – February 1375) — are precisely attested by the preface. Per the project’s dating rule, the frontmatter gives 1374–1375 as the precise composition window. Dynasty 明. The catalog’s “date: 1374” is preserved.

A note on the correction of the catalog’s author-name: the catalog lists the author as 太祖 (Tàizǔ, the posthumous temple-name), which is the standard historiographical convention. In the work-note and person-note system, however, the personal name 朱元璋 (Zhū Yuánzhāng) is used to provide a fixed referent independent of posthumous titles.

Translations and research

  • Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Entry on DZ 676 (forthcoming section).
  • Ren Jiyu 任繼愈, ed. Zhōngguó dàojiào shǐ 中國道教史. Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi rénmín, 1990. Vol. 3, on Míng imperial Daoism including Zhū Yuánzhāng’s commentary.
  • Liu Ts’un-yan [Liú Cúnrén 劉存仁]. “Taoist Self-Cultivation in Ming Thought.” In Self and Society in Ming Thought, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary, 291–330. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. For the broader Míng imperial Daoist context.
  • Zhū Yuánzhāng 朱元璋. Míng Tàizǔ jí 明太祖集. Hefei: Huángshān shūshè, 1991. Collected works including the imperial commentaries.
  • Yáng Nàiqiáo 楊乃喬. “Míng Tàizǔ Yù zhù Dàodé zhēn jīng yán jiū” 明太祖御註道德真經研究. Zhōngguó zhéxué shǐ 中國哲學史 2005.3. Modern Chinese study.
  • Dardess, John W. Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. For the broader Hóngwǔ political-ideological context.
  • Chan, Hok-lam, and Wm. Theodore de Bary, eds. Yüan Thought: Chinese Thought and Religion under the Mongols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. For the late-Yuán intellectual background that shaped Zhū Yuánzhāng’s reading.

Other points of interest

Zhū Yuánzhāng’s commentary is one of four imperial Dàodé jīng commentaries preserved in the Daozang: alongside DZ 679 of Táng Xuánzōng 唐玄宗 (r. 712–756), DZ 678 of Sòng Huīzōng 宋徽宗 (r. 1100–1125), and DZ 680 of a Sòng emperor (either Zhēnzōng 真宗 or Gāozōng 高宗), DZ 676 of Zhū Yuánzhāng completes the canonical quartet of imperial commentaries. Each reflects a distinctive imperial reading: Xuánzōng’s metaphysical-canonical (he presided over the 742 canonisation of the Lǎozǐ); Huīzōng’s aestheticising-xuánxué; and Zhū Yuánzhāng’s political-pragmatic.

The philosophical-ethical argument of the commentary is distinctive. In Zhū Yuánzhāng’s reading, wú wéi 無為 is not the quietistic non-interference of a contemplative sage, but rather the strategically-restrained rule of a competent ruler who trusts the underlying spontaneity of the people and avoids over-regulation. Correspondingly, the Lǎozǐ’s famous warnings against knowledge, cleverness, and desire are interpreted as warnings against the over-elaboration of law and ritual — a pointed claim for a founder of a state that would become famous for its bureaucratic proliferation.

The commentary’s abolition of the death penalty for a period (as narrated in the preface) was in fact historically real — Zhū Yuánzhāng’s Hóngwǔ 7 penal reform is documented in the Míng Tàizǔ shí lù 明太祖實錄 and in Edward Farmer’s Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation (Brill, 1995). It was subsequently partly reversed as the dynasty stabilised, but in Zhū’s own self-presentation it marks a key moment of the Hóngwǔ-era Lǎozǐ-inspired governance reform.

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