道德真經四子古道集解

Dàodé zhēn jīng sì zǐ gǔ dào jí jiě 道德真經四子古道集解

Collected Explications of the Ancient Teachings of the Four Masters on the True Scripture of the Way and Its Virtue

by 寇才質 (Kòu Cáizhì; of Gǔxiāng 古襄, Jīn 金 dynasty); preface dated Dàdìng 19 New Year (1 January 1179); postface dated 1180

A distinctive Jīn-dynasty commentary on the Dàodé jīng ([[KR5c0045|Dàodé zhēn jīng]]) in ten juàn, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng as DZ 684 / CT 684 (Dòngshén bù, Yù jué lèi 洞神部玉訣類); juàn 6, 7, and 8 are absent from the Míng Zhèngtǒng witness. Also transmitted in the Qīng Dàozàng jíyào 道藏輯要 as JY046 Tài shàng Dàodé zhēn jīng sì zǐ gǔ dào jí jiě. The original title — as given in Kòu Cáizhì’s preface and in the postface by Liú È 劉鍔 of Fán zhì 繁峙 (Shānxī) — was Sì zǐ gǔ dào yì 四子古道義 (“Interpretations according to the Ancient Teachings of the Four Masters”).

About the work

The commentary is distinctive for its methodological principle of drawing interpretive material solely from the four Daoist scriptures that Kòu Cáizhì considered to be the works of Lǎozǐ’s direct disciples:

1. Nánhuá jīng 南華經 (KR5c0051, the Zhuāngzǐ — the Dào piān as canonised by Xuánzōng in 742)
2. Chōngxū jīng 沖虛經 (KR5c0049, the Lièzǐ)
3. Tōngxuán jīng 通玄經 (the Wénzǐ, DZ 746 / CT 746)
4. Dòng líng jīng 洞靈經 (KR5c0050, the Kàngcāng zǐ)

Together these four form the canonical 四子 “Four Masters” of the Daoist scriptural tradition — the same four that Táng Xuánzōng had canonised in 742 alongside the Dàodé jīng itself. Kòu’s explicit interpretive move is to refuse the use of later Buddhist-influenced or Chóngxuán-school material (which he characterises as centred on kōng xìng 空性 / śūnyatā), and to insist on interpreting the Lǎozǐ solely through the hermeneutic circle of its own four most ancient scriptural descendants. This is a sharply polemical methodological stance — a return to the “ancient Way” (gǔ dào 古道) of the text.

Prefaces

The commentary is framed by two paratextual pieces:

• Kòu Cáizhì’s own preface (dated Dàdìng jǐ hài nián yuán rì 大定己亥歲元日 = Dàdìng 19 New Year’s Day = 1 January 1179; signed Gǔxiāng Kòu Cáizhì jǐn xù 古襄寇才質謹序):

“Your servant is a rustic without name, a man of the wilderness. By temperament I have never concerned myself with advancement; after reaching manhood I have immersed myself in the joys of quietude, studying the techniques of the dān jīng 丹經 [alchemical classics] and of divination. Only in my later years have I read the books of the ancients, reviewed the various masters, and explored the profundities of [Lǎo] Dān’s scripture. Every chapter has its purport; one may call it deep, one may call it far. Examining the various schools’ glosses, I find their words much given to extravagant claims, rising into heterodoxies — vermilion confused with purple, the ancient Way lost to its original truth. Truly lamentable. Only the four books of Zhuāng, Liè, Wén, Gēng, taken together — these alone, being the works of Lǎozǐ’s own disciples and direct transmissions of the Five Thousand Words, accord with one another. The rest of the commentaries argue and wrangle, spending all their pains on the brush and the tongue, taking emptiness for their use, grasping nothing in the end — how could they be named in the same breath as the Four Masters?

“When your servant was formerly in official service I was able to travel to the capital and to hear lectures from the high Daoist masters; I roughly knocked at the dark barrier and received entirely the doctrine of emptiness-nature (kōng xìng), but not a thing of the Way itself. Reflecting inwardly without fault, I went deeper into the making of the Way and attained it by myself. Desiring to save the world from the many obscurations of desire, and mourning that the sagely Way was not put into practice, and fearing too the rising of buzzing partisan disputations, I therefore gathered the Four Masters and drew upon their true scriptures to compile this single book in ten juàn — calling it the Sì zǐ gǔ dào yì, that it might break the mere-repetition of the commentators. I have also composed a ten-juàn Jīng shǐ shū 經史疏 to complement it. Now both are fortunately complete. These are not mere private opinions on my part; they renew what is heard at the moment, and may serve as a mirror of antiquity. Let the noble gentlemen not laugh at them. In the quiet of rest I have taken up the brush and written straight — at the first day of the year 1179, Kòu Cáizhì of Gǔ xiāng respectfully prefaces.”

• Liú È’s 劉鍔 (of Fán zhì 繁峙, Shānxī) postface dated 1180 — a brief endorsement of the work by a friend or scholarly associate.

Abstract

Jan A. M. De Meyer’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 2:1131, DZ 684) provides the authoritative modern framing. The key points:

1. Author. Kòu Cáizhì’s preface and the postface give little biographical detail. He describes himself as “an obscure rustic” (cǎo zé wú míng zhī yě rén 草澤無名之野人), having spent his early manhood in nèi dān 內丹 alchemical and divinatory study; the preface mentions that he had been formerly in official service (xí shì 昔隨仕) and had been able to travel to the capital. Apart from the commentary, Kòu is said to have authored a Jīng shǐ shū 經史疏 (“Subcommentary on the Classics and Histories”) in ten juàn, now lost (it was no longer extant by the time the Sìkù quánshū was compiled).
2. Date. Dàdìng 19 (1179) for the preface; 1180 for the postface. This places the commentary in the middle Jīn dynasty, during the reign of Shìzōng 世宗 (r. 1161–1189). “Gǔ xiāng” 古襄 in the preface-signature is a reference to an ancient Xiāng 襄 region — possibly Xiāng zhōu 襄州 (modern Xiāng yáng 襄陽 in Húběi, territory temporarily under Jīn rule).
3. Philosophical orientation. Kòu’s explicit rejection of kōng xìng / śūnyatā — along with his insistence on the “Four Masters” as the sole legitimate interpretive resources — places him in a distinctive Jīn-dynasty anti-Buddhist Daoist polemical tradition, paralleling in some respects the early Quán-zhēn 全真 tradition that was developing in the same decades (Wáng Chóngyáng 王重陽, 1113–1170; Mǎ Yù 馬鈺, 1123–1183; Tán Chǔduān 譚處端, 1123–1185).
4. Transmission. The text “has been preserved only in the Daozang” (De Meyer). The Qīng Dàozàng jíyào reprint (JY046) is the only other witness.

Per the project’s dating rule, the frontmatter gives 1179–1180 as the precise composition window. Dynasty 金 — this is notable because the catalog does not specify a dynasty. The Dàdìng era is the Jīn-dynasty era-name, conclusively placing the work in the Jīn.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:1131 (DZ 684, J. De Meyer). Primary reference.
• De Meyer, Jan A. M. “Linked Verse and Daoist Self-Cultivation: Meditations on an ‘Ancient Style’ Poem.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 220, no. 1 (2003): 101–36. (For De Meyer’s general approach to late-medieval Daoist textual culture, which informs his DZ 684 treatment.)
• Boltz, Judith Magee. A Survey of Taoist Literature, Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987. For the Jīn-Yuán Daoist commentary context.
• See also: the parallel works of the canonical “Four Masters” at KR5c0049 Lièzǐ, KR5c0050 Kàngcāng zǐ, KR5c0051 Zhuāngzǐ, and the Wénzǐ / Tōngxuán zhēn jīng (DZ 746).

Other points of interest

Kòu Cáizhì’s methodological principle — reading the Dàodé jīng through the hermeneutic circle of its direct scriptural descendants rather than through later Buddhist-influenced commentaries — is a distinctive “fundamentalist” move in the Jīn-era Daoist tradition, predating and in some respects anticipating the Quán-zhēn emphasis on direct experiential Daoist practice. The explicit rejection of kōng xìng (emptiness-nature, a Buddhist śūnyatā-derived term that had entered the Daoist Chóngxuán tradition by the Táng) distinguishes Kòu from the dominant Chóngxuán readings of Chéng Xuányīng, Sīmǎ Chéngzhēn, and the imperial tradition (KR5c0059, KR5c0063).

The Jīn-dynasty Daoist commentarial tradition is often overshadowed in modern scholarship by the contemporaneous Quánzhēn movement and by the imperial-Sòng texts to the south. DZ 684 is therefore a valuable single-witness survival of an independent Jīn scholarly Daoist tradition, alongside such texts as the Dàozàng quē jīng mù lù 道藏闕經目錄 (1161) and the various scriptures of the mid-Jīn Daozang project.

Kòu’s appeal to the “Four Masters” as the direct disciples of Lǎozǐ ratifies the late-Táng canonisation programme of Xuánzōng (742) — but with a distinctive Jīn twist: rather than treating the four works as separately authoritative Daoist classics, Kòu treats them as mutually-interpretive, mutually-ratifying authoritative glosses on the Dàodé jīng itself. This is a strong form of the “Four Masters as single school” idea that would become standard in the subsequent Quánzhēn and Zhèngyī traditions.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0067
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 2:1131 — DZ 684 entry (J. De Meyer).
• ctext.org: 道德真經四子古道集解