Dàodé jīng zhù 道德經註
Commentary on the Dàodé jīng
by 徐大椿 (Xú Dàchūn; zì Líng tāi 靈胎, hào Huí xī lǎo rén 迴溪老人; 1693–1771) — Qīng-dynasty polymath: classical philologist, medical scholar, musicologist, and Daoist commentator. Preface dated Qiánlóng 25 (1760)
A two-juàn Qīng-dynasty commentary on the Dàodé jīng ([[KR5c0045|Dàodé zhēn jīng]]) by Xú Dàchūn 徐大椿 (1693–1771), with an attached one-juàn commentary on the Yīn fú jīng 陰符經. Preserved uniquely in the Wén yuān gé Sìkù quánshū 文淵閣四庫全書 (V1055.13, p. 519) in the zǐ bù 子部 Dào jiā lèi 道家類. Dated by its authorial preface to Qiánlóng 25 (1760). Xú was a major Qīng polymath best known for his medical-pharmacological works (notably the Shén nóng běn cǎo jīng bǎi zhǒng lù 神農本草經百種錄), and the Dàodé jīng zhù represents his engagement with the classical Daoist tradition in the broader context of his Qīng philological and cultural scholarship.
About the work
The commentary is distinguished by Xú Dàchūn’s characteristic Qīng philological rigour and by his polemical-iconoclastic stance towards the received commentary tradition. Key features are articulated in his own Fán lì 凡例 (Editorial Principles) and Xù 序 (Preface).
Editorial principles
Xú’s Fán lì lays out an aggressive editorial programme:
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Dismissal of prior commentaries. “I have seen no fewer than several hundred ancient commentaries; each establishes a single doctrine, some diffuse and unhinged, some shallow and vulgar, some even rustic-incoherent with miserable grammar. The reason is that the authors were not themselves capable of knowing the Way, and their forced glosses are what one would expect. Wáng Bì’s 王弼 [commentary, KR5c0073] is the most celebrated, but its diction is superficial and the text has no illumination to offer; as for the so-called Héshàng gōng 河上公 [commentary, KR5c0065] — it is truly an instance of ‘grammar that does not hold together’ [wén lǐ bù tōng 文理不通]; that it is a false attribution is beyond doubt, and yet it has been transmitted to this day — truly inexplicable. The rest I have seen, no fewer than several dozen, are not without occasional insights, but none are pure in essence. I have merely thoroughly read the scriptural text, entered deeply into the ultimate Way, not followed the herd, and directly explicated the scripture’s meaning. Where my explanation is the same as a predecessor’s, that is because our hearts silently agree — not plagiarism.”
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Rejection of the dàodé upper/lower division and chapter titles. “The Shǐ jì 史記 says only that Lǎozǐ composed a book in upper and lower piān, speaking of the meaning of the Way and Virtue, in more than five thousand characters. At that time there were only upper and lower piān, with no chapter-division. Later generations variously divided into 55, 64, 68, 72, or 81 sections, and even assigned names to each chapter (chapter 1 = Tǐ dào 體道; chapter 2 = Yǎng shēn 養身; and so on) — all of these are later impositions, none worth adopting. Táng Xuánzōng (KR5c0059) further divided the upper piān into Dào jīng and the lower into Dé jīng, which is also not definitive. I now preserve only the division into upper and lower piān with 81 chapters, to maintain the sectional structure and thematic partitions.”
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Text-critical method. “The chapters differ in their text-lengths across the various recensions; to record them all in full would be confusing and unhelpful. I have collated the various editions, adopting the wording that is clear and apposite, and omitting the rest.”
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Etymological-philological method. “A single character’s gloss has many traditional meanings; only by examining the textual context (shàng xià wén 上下文) can one determine which gloss applies in each case. Otherwise the whole text becomes obscure. For example, at chapter 59’s zhì rén shì tiān, mò rú sè 治人事天，莫如嗇, ‘sè’ should be glossed as ‘sparingness’ (jiǎn sè 儉嗇), but Wáng Bì glossed it as ‘grain-harvest’ (jià sè 稼穡), which makes the subsequent text incomprehensible. In this edition I have consulted ancient dictionaries and the various commentaries, choosing the gloss most apposite to the scriptural sense.”
Philosophical position
- Lǎozǐ’s learning differs from the Six Classics — but this is a difference in age and content, not a difference in authority. The Six Classics are “books of the fully-developed civilisation of middle antiquity”; Lǎozǐ’s doctrine of yǎng shēng, xiū dé, zhì guó, yòng bīng 養生、修德、治國、用兵 is “rooted in the essential meanings transmitted by the high-antiquity sages”. Hence Lǎozǐ’s teaching is paired with that of the Yellow Emperor (HuángLǎo 黃老): “its application is highly simple, its effect is very quick. Hàn officials who followed even one or two of its maxims were already called exemplary. Later critics have dismissed this as ‘the low-level person hearing the Way and greatly laughing’ [Lǎozǐ ch. 41].” This is a strong defence of Daoist philosophical-political teaching, clearly positioning Lǎozǐ above — or at least parallel to — the Confucian classics.
Prefaces
The work opens with Xú Dàchūn’s own preface (xù 序, signed Qiánlóng 25 [1760], Huí xī Xú Dàchūn) — a sophisticated philosophical-hermeneutical manifesto articulating the paradox of commenting on a text whose own opening thesis is that the Way cannot be spoken:
“The Dàodé jīng is not a book that talks about the Way and Virtue. In the old days, Lǎozǐ left Zhōu and departed through the Pass; Yǐn Xǐ 尹喜, the pass-warden, met him and said: ‘Sir, you are about to withdraw; please compose a book for me.’ Now the phrase ‘to compose a book’ is said to be ‘forced’ — could one who forces composition really understand the meaning of the Way and Virtue? The Way itself cannot be made plain through books, yet without books there is no way to preserve the Way. The ‘forced’ in ‘please force me’ makes plain that the book is insufficient to speak the Way. Then Lǎozǐ sighed: ‘Dào kě dào, fēi cháng dào’ and elaborated this repeatedly into five thousand words. To use five thousand words to speak the Way is still to make the Way sayable; yet immediately declaring ‘what can be spoken is not the constant Way’, the five thousand words themselves are not the constant Way. Yet the five thousand words still exist — this is the situation of ‘reluctantly speaking’; one must not take the five thousand words to be the Way itself. Hence the word ‘forced’. But does this mean that the whole book says nothing of the Way? Not at all: if it said nothing of the Way there would be no need to compose the book…
“Dào kě dào fēi cháng dào is the master-thesis of the five thousand words; it is also the running subcommentary of the five thousand words. Of the ancient and present commentaries on the Dàodé jīng, surviving ones number more than several dozen — they all speak the Way (dào dào 道道). But speaking the Way is insufficient to knowing the Way. Why? Because Lǎozǐ says ‘a forced name is given it — “Way”‘. ‘Way’ is not the true name of the Way. How, then, shall we ‘speak the Way’?
“Qiánlóng 25 [1760], in the middle of the month of like, Xú Dàchūn of Huí xī, preface.”
Tiyao
The Wén yuān gé Sìkù quánshū editorial tiyao — signed by Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅 (Zǒng zuǎn guān) and Lù Fèichí 陸費墀 (Zǒng xiào guān), submitted in Qiánlóng 46.12 (January 1782):
“Your servants having examined: Dàodé jīng zhù, two juàn, with attached Yīn fú jīng zhù in one juàn, composed by Xú Dàchūn of our dynasty. Xú Dàchūn is the author of the Shén nóng běn cǎo jīng bǎi zhǒng lù 神農本草經百種錄, previously listed [in the imperial bibliography]. This edition is based on the view that prior commentaries on the Lǎozǐ have each offered differing opinions, with the result that the original purport has become obscured. Xú therefore traced the scriptural text and explicated its meaning — preserving the division into upper and lower piān but eliminating the Dào jīng / Dé jīng labels; preserving the 81-chapter division but eliminating the chapter names; using only the first phrase of each chapter as a heading. He consulted variant texts and chose the most intelligible wording, and pursued etymological-philological investigation in search of ancient meaning, choosing the readings most coherent with context.
“The commentary’s overall orientation is broadly similar to Zhāng Ěrqí’s 張爾岐 Lǎozǐ shuō lüè 老子說略, but Xú’s investigation is deeper and his elaboration is clearer. Among the commentaries on the Lǎozǐ, this is a good text. The attached Yīn fú jīng in one juàn glosses by reference to Yì principles, and its reading is also coherent.
“Only in his Fán lì does Xú disparage the ancients — calling Wáng Bì’s commentary ‘superficial’ (fū jìn 膚近), and the Héshàng gōng commentary ‘having incoherent grammar’ (wén lǐ bù tōng 文理不通) — which is somewhat excessive. He also argues that the learning of Lǎozǐ differs from that of the Six Classics — positioning Lǎozǐ’s teaching as derived from high-antiquity sages and paired with the Yellow Emperor (HuángLǎo), with very simple application and rapid effect, such that Hàn officials following even one or two of its maxims were already called exemplary. This too is somewhat elevated rhetoric.
“Lǎozǐ was born in an age of chaos and established the doctrine of purity and stillness as a remedy — a makeshift method for rescuing from decline. One might say: ‘he prescribed medicine to a half-doctor’. Master Gài [Gài gōng 蓋公] taught this method to Cáo Cān 曹參, and when applied during the period after Qín’s tyranny, when the people thirsted for rest, it was indeed apposite — like a disease that responds well to stillness. But to insist that Lǎozǐ intended his method for the government of ten-thousand generations is not Lǎozǐ’s original intent. And as for the Yellow Emperor: he unified the realm through seventy battles, and all ritual, music, punishments, and government were of his own making — the ancient texts are clearly extant, all verifiable. To insist that the Yellow Emperor governed through non-action is still more contrary to historical fact.
“Xú’s book is not without insight into Lǎozǐ’s learning, but to elevate Lǎozǐ above the Six Classics is not tenable as instruction. We therefore preserve the book while appending this critique. Respectfully submitted, Qiánlóng 46.12 [January 1782]…”
The Sìkù editors’ balancing of appreciation and critique is a model of the Qīng editorial tradition’s treatment of Daoist commentary.
Abstract
Xú Dàchūn’s commentary is one of the most philologically sophisticated Qīng-dynasty readings of the Dàodé jīng, combining serious classical scholarship with a polemical defence of Daoist thought against Confucian-orthodox prejudice. The commentary reflects the mature Qīng kǎo jù 考據 (evidential research) tradition, applied here to a Daoist classic — bringing rigorous text-critical and etymological method to bear on a body of material more usually treated in philosophical or devotional registers.
Dating. Preface dated Qiánlóng 25 (1760). Per the project’s dating rule, the frontmatter gives 1760 as the composition date. Dynasty 清.
The attached Yīn fú jīng zhù — a one-juàn commentary on the Yīn fú jīng 陰符經 — extends Xú’s engagement with the broader classical-Daoist corpus. The Yīn fú jīng was a short, enigmatic Daoist cosmological-alchemical scripture of the mid-Táng period (DZ 31; see separate entries in KR5b for the Yīn fú jīng itself). Xú’s gloss reads it through the framework of Yì jīng cosmology — a characteristically Qīng-era hermeneutical move.
Translations and research
- Wáng Yīng ē 王英峨. Xú Dàchūn yī xué quán shū 徐大椿醫學全書. Beijing: Zhōngguó zhōng yī yào, 1999. Comprehensive edition of Xú’s medical works (his primary renown).
- Hanson, Marta. “The Golden Mirror in the Imperial Court of the Qianlong Emperor, 1739–1742.” Early Science and Medicine 8, no. 2 (2003): 111–47. For Xú Dàchūn’s medical context.
- Unschuld, Paul U. Forgotten Traditions of Ancient Chinese Medicine: A Chinese View from the Eighteenth Century. Brookline, MA: Paradigm, 1990. On Xú Dàchūn’s medical-philosophical polemics.
- Boltz, Judith Magee. A Survey of Taoist Literature, Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987. (For the pre-Qīng commentarial tradition Xú critiques.)
- Qīng shǐ gǎo 清史稿 502. Biographical notice on Xú Dàchūn.
Other points of interest
Xú Dàchūn’s Daoist commentary must be understood in the context of his broader scholarly career. Xú was primarily famous as a physician and medical-philological scholar — author of the Shén nóng běn cǎo jīng bǎi zhǒng lù 神農本草經百種錄 (a critical commentary on the foundational Běn cǎo pharmacopoeia), the Lán tái guǐ fàn 蘭台軌範 (a collection of case studies), the Huī xī yī shū 迴溪醫書 (collected medical writings), and the Lè fǔ chuán shēng 樂府傳聲 (a major musicological treatise on Chinese operatic singing). His Dàodé jīng zhù thus reflects his interest in the classical-philosophical roots of Chinese medical and cultivation traditions — the yǎng shēng 養生 dimension of the Dàodé jīng was of particular relevance to his medical concerns.
The commentary’s similarity to Zhāng Ěrqí’s 張爾岐 (1612–1677) Lǎozǐ shuō lüè 老子說略 — noted by the Sìkù editors — positions Xú within a Qīng-era line of philologically-rigorous Daoist commentary that treats the Lǎozǐ as a text for scholarly investigation rather than as an object of religious devotion. Zhāng Ěrqí’s earlier work (Shùn zhì 順治 era, mid-17th century) pioneered this philological-scholarly approach; Xú extends and deepens it.
The disparagement of Wáng Bì and Héshàng gōng in Xú’s Fán lì — though, as the Sìkù editors note, “somewhat excessive” — reflects the Qīng kǎo jù tradition’s characteristic willingness to challenge received interpretive authority through philological evidence. Xú’s position would not be accepted by most later scholars (Wáng Bì remains the paradigmatic philosophical commentator, and Héshàng gōng — whatever his historicity — remains the paradigmatic religious-practical commentator), but it is a valuable corrective in emphasising the contextually-determined character of every gloss.