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唐玄宗御製道德真經疏

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Text ID
KR5c0060
Date
735–756
Dynasty
唐

Táng Xuán zōng yù zhì Dàodé zhēn jīng shū 唐玄宗御製道德真經疏

Imperial Subcommentary on the True Scripture of the Way and Its Virtue by Táng Xuánzōng

by 李隆基 (Lǐ Lóngjī; Táng Xuánzōng 唐玄宗, r. 712–756) — yù zhì 御製 subcommentary (shū 疏), composed between 735 and 756 CE

The emperor’s own subcommentary (疏 shū) expanding and elaborating his earlier imperial commentary (KR5c0059, DZ 677), composed some time after 735 and before his death in 756. Preserved in ten juàn in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng as DZ 678 / CT 678 (Dòngshén bù, Yù jué lèi 洞神部玉訣類); juàn 6, 7, and 8 are absent from the Míng Zhèngtǒng witness (as Kanseki notes). The text completes the canonical Táng imperial exegesis of the Dàodé jīng, which together with DZ 677 (commentary) and the later DZ 725 Dàodé zhēn jīng guǎng shèng yì 道德真經廣聖義 of Dù Guāngtíng 杜光庭 (850–933) forms the most influential Táng pre-Sòng Lǎozǐ commentary tradition.

About the work

The subcommentary — titled in the text’s own header Táng Xuánzōng yù zhì Dàodé zhēn jīng shū — shì tí 唐玄宗御製道德真經疏—釋題 — opens with a substantial interpretive preface (shì tí 釋題, “Interpretation of the Title”) that identifies Lǎozǐ with the Tài shàng Xuán yuán Huáng dì 太上玄元皇帝 (the Most High Primordial Mysterious Emperor) — the canonical Táng imperial deification of the dynastic ancestor. Key assertions of this preface include:

  • The dynastic-mythic genealogy. “Lǎozǐ is the inner title of the Tài shàng Xuán yuán Huáng dì. The Xuán xuán Dào zōng 玄玄道宗 (‘Mysterious-Mysterious Dao Ancestor’) descended and was born at Yībó 伊亳 [Henan, the site of the legendary Zhōu archive]; the August Ancestor, revered and solemn, granted the surname Lǐ, conferring upon our Táng [dynasty] fortunes without bound…” — the genealogical claim of the Táng imperial house as literal descendants of Lǎozǐ.
  • The purpose of the Dàodé jīng. “Its essentials lie in the governance of self, and in the governance of state. To govern the state, one eliminates arrogance and superficiality; one takes wú wéi 無為 and bù yán 不言 (‘silence’) as one’s teaching. To govern oneself, one reduces selfishness and lessens desires, taking emptiness of mind and fullness of abdomen as one’s task…” — the two-fold political-ethical programme of the commentary.
  • Metaphysical framing. Extensive quotation from the Zhuāngzǐ: “Zhuāngzǐ says: ‘In the Supreme Beginning there was Non-Being and there was Being’ — this refers to this marvelous Non-Being” ([cf. Zhuāngzǐ 庚桑楚 / Tiān dì 天地 chapter). The subcommentary thus explicitly identifies its exegetical framework as ZhuāngLǎo metaphysical.
  • The dào / dé relationship. “The Way is the body of the Virtue; the Virtue is the function of the Way. The scripture divides shàng 上 and xià 下 [i.e., upper and lower parts] because first we must clarify the Way, with the Virtue following. But body-and-function (tǐyòng 體用) as names can be distinguished; as realities, they cannot.”

The remainder of the subcommentary, ordered chapter by chapter, then proceeds to elaborate the positions of Xuánzōng’s 732–735 commentary, adding extensive classical citations (especially from the Yìjīng, Chūnqiū, Zhuāngzǐ, and occasionally the Lúnyǔ) and paraphrasing the earlier notes into fuller discursive prose. The 4-juan commentary of DZ 677 is here expanded into ten juàn of subcommentary, preserving the 81-chapter base text while reverting to a more conventional juàn division (not the 4-juàn arrangement of the original commentary).

Authorship and composition

The Jí xián zhù jì 集賢註記 (as cited in Yù hǎi 玉海 53.11b) records that the work was composed in collaboration with a team of literati and Taoist masters at court — not by the emperor alone. Isabelle Robinet’s notice in Schipper & Verellen (2004, 1:286) notes: “On the whole it simply expands and paraphrases the commentary that precedes it, indicating its many classical references.” The composition was thus a coordinated imperial-commentarial project, of which the emperor was the nominal and directing author.

Prefaces

The subcommentary opens with the emperor’s own Shì tí 釋題 (“Interpretation of the Title”) section — a substantial theoretical-interpretive preface that functions as the philosophical introduction to the work. There is no separate authorial preface.

Abstract

The subcommentary is the second of three related imperial-Daoist exegetical documents of the mature Táng: DZ 677 (commentary, 732–735), DZ 678 (subcommentary, 735–756, the present text), and DZ 679 Táng Xuánzōng yù zhì Dàodé zhēn jīng shū 唐玄宗御製道德真經疏 (in 4 juàn, attributed to Xuánzōng but in fact an extract from Dù Guāngtíng’s DZ 725 — see Schipper & Verellen 2004, 1:286–87, Robinet). Of the three, only DZ 677 and DZ 678 are genuinely Xuánzōng’s work; DZ 679 is a post-Táng editorial derivative. The later monumental DZ 725 Guǎng shèng yì of Dù Guāngtíng (850–933) is a super-subcommentary on DZ 677 + DZ 678, extending the imperial tradition into the late Táng.

The composition date of DZ 678 is after the completion of DZ 677 (735) and before Xuánzōng’s death (756). Isabelle Robinet notes the work’s composition “presumably in the years following” the commentary; the KāiyuánTiānbǎo 開元天寶 transition (742 era-change, 742 canonisation of the four Daoist classics) is likely the context of composition, placing the work firmly in the late Kāiyuán / early Tiānbǎo — i.e. c. 735–745. The frontmatter gives the conservative bracket 735–756.

Philosophically the subcommentary preserves and amplifies the main interpretive themes of the commentary, as set out in the KR5c0059 entry above: the Chóngxuán 重玄 school influence (total forgetfulness, jiān wàng 兼忘; the renunciation of desire and learning; the mysticism of “loss upon loss, mystery upon mystery”); the Guō Xiàng / Chéng Xuányīng doctrine of fēn 分 (allotted function) coupled with yòng 用 (proper use); the positive defence of Confucian rén 仁 as “undifferentiated love”; the cū yǒu / miào wú metaphysical distinction; and the systematic integration of classical-Confucian intertext (especially Yì, Chūnqiū, and Zhuāngzǐ). The subcommentary’s expanded scope allows a fuller working-out of these themes than the condensed commentary permitted.

Missing juàn

The Míng Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng witness preserved in KR5c0060 lacks juàn 6, 7, and 8. These chapters — covering approximately Dàodé jīng chapters 40–65 in the typical 10-juàn division — can be partially reconstructed from (a) quotations in Dù Guāngtíng’s DZ 725 Guǎng shèng yì, and (b) parallels in DZ 706 Dàodé zhēn jīng jí zhù and DZ 724 Dàodé zhēn jīng jí yì. No complete text of DZ 678 survives.

Translations and research

  • Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:286 (DZ 678, I. Robinet). Primary reference.
  • See the bibliography under KR5c0059 for the full modern literature on Xuánzōng’s Dàodé jīng exegesis — Robinet 1977, Fujiwara 1969, Imaeda 1971, Mugitani 1988, Hung 1957, Wáng Zhòngmín 1927, Barrett 1996 — all of which treat DZ 677 and DZ 678 together.

Other points of interest

The subcommentary’s co-authorship with a literati-Daoist team is a distinctive feature: while DZ 677 appears to be predominantly Xuánzōng’s personal composition, DZ 678 was produced in the collaborative tradition of Táng imperial scholarship that also produced DZ 725 of Dù Guāngtíng (itself a kind of late-Táng corporate literary product of the Shǔ court). The three texts together represent the canonical imperial-Daoist interpretive tradition of the Táng as a cumulative corporate intellectual project rather than as a solo achievement.

The preface’s elaborate articulation of the Táng imperial-Daoist genealogy — Lǎozǐ as Xuán yuán Huáng dì, the Táng house as direct descendants through the Xuán xuán Dào zōng via the Lǐ surname, the birth of Lǎozǐ at Yībó, the encounter with Confucius on ritual, the departure through the Hángǔ Pass, and the commissioning of the text by Yǐn Xǐ — constitutes one of the most sustained imperial articulations of this founding myth. The same myth underwrites the 742 canonisation of the Lǎozǐ as Dàodé zhēn jīng.

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