Yù dìng Dào dé jīng zhù 御定道德經註
Imperially-Commissioned Commentary on the Dào dé jīng
by 世祖 (Qīng Shì zǔ, the Shùn zhì emperor, 1638–1661), compiled by 成克鞏 (Chéng Kègǒng, 1608–1691)
The Shùn zhì emperor’s imperial commentary on the Dào dé jīng, composed through the agency of Grand Secretary Chéng Kègǒng and issued under the emperor’s name in 1656 (Shùn zhì 13).
Tiyao
The Sìkù editors remark: “Dào dé jīng zhù, two juàn. Compiled with care by Grand Secretary Chéng Kègǒng in Shùn zhì 13 (1656) in response to imperial command, and imperially-approved (qīn dìng 欽定). The imperial preface clarifies that the scripture is not a text of the empty-void quiescent-extinction (xū wú jì miè 虛無寂滅) school nor of strategic-manipulation (quán móu shù shù 權謀術數); the commentary fully discusses the quotidian principles of the scripture and the ways of governing the mind and the state.
“From Hé shàng gōng 河上丈人 onwards, commentaries on this scripture are reckoned at over eighty — totalling more than three hundred juàn — whether jiě (explanations), shū (sub-commentaries), yīn (pronunciation), zhāng jù (textual-division commentary), pǔ (charts), or zhuàn (biographical). Famous ministers like Yáng Hù 羊祜 and 蘇轍 Sū Zhé, famous Confucians like 王弼 Wáng Bì and Wáng Sù 王肅, recluses like Yán Zūn 嚴遵, Sūn Dēng 孫登, 陶弘景 Táo Hóngjǐng, and Dài Kuí 戴逵, and Daoist-lineage figures like 葛洪 Gě Hóng and 杜光庭 Dù Guāngtíng — all contributed expositions. Emperor Wǔ of Liáng, Táng Xuán zōng 唐玄宗, Sòng Huī zōng, and Míng Tài zǔ 朱元璋 also all composed commentaries, of varying depth and perspicacity, and ranging in their fidelity to Lǎo dān’s original purport. The present commentary selectively synthesizes these many schools, producing a text simple and clear, compact and penetrating — genuinely of benefit for mind-cultivation and for administrative governance, not merely concerned with ‘clarity and non-action.’
“Respectfully collated Qián lóng 46 (1781), 8th month.”
Abstract
The Shùn zhì emperor’s commentary is noteworthy as the only full commentarial Dào dé jīng project from the high-Qīng court. The emperor’s preface (1656) casts the enterprise as a corrective intervention in the reception history of the text: earlier commentators had, he says, read the work as either esoteric-alchemical or as Machiavellian strategy, both reductive; the imperial commentary’s purpose is to recover its practical-governmental and ethical sense. The actual compilation was done by Grand Secretary Chéng Kègǒng under imperial supervision — as was standard for imperially-authored works of this scale. The Shí sān jīng zhù shū 十三經注疏-style transmission gives all published works entirely to the emperor, but the Sìkù tíyào frankly acknowledges Chéng’s role.
Dating. 1656 (preface). Dynasty: 清.
Translations and research
- No substantial secondary Western-language scholarship on the Shùn zhì emperor’s commentary specifically has been located. The text is treated briefly in the general bibliographies of Dào dé jīng commentaries (e.g., Alan Chan, Two Visions of the Way, SUNY 1991).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5c0384
- Author: 世祖.
- Compiler: 成克鞏.
- ctext.org: 御定道德經註