Mǎwángduī Hànmù Bóshū Lǎozǐ Jiǎběn Juǎn Hòu Gǔ Yìshū Wǔxíng 馬王堆漢墓帛書老子甲本卷後古佚書五行
Mawangdui Silk Manuscript — Ancient Lost Text after Laozi Text A: Five Activities (Wǔxíng)
About the work
The Wǔxíng 五行 (“Five Activities” or “Five Virtuous Practices”) is a philosophical text discovered at Mǎwángduī 馬王堆 Han Tomb No. 3 (sealed 168 BCE), written on the same silk cloth as the Lǎozǐ Text A (KR5c0387) and following it directly on the scroll. It was therefore identified as one of the “ancient lost texts found after the Text A scroll” (老子甲本卷後古佚書). The Wǔxíng belongs to the early Confucian tradition — specifically the lineage associated with Zǐsī 子思 and Mèngzǐ 孟子 — and discusses the five moral and spiritual “activities” (行 xíng): benevolence (仁 rén), righteousness (義 yì), ritual propriety (禮 lǐ), wisdom (智 zhì), and sagely insight (聖 shèng). The Mǎwángduī version includes both a main text (with section markers ●) and an extended commentary (Wǔxíng shuō 五行說); a companion version of the main text only, without the commentary, was later found among the Guōdiàn 郭店 bamboo slips (excavated 1993). The combination of “Confucian” content with “Daoist” context (buried alongside the Lǎozǐ) illustrates the fluid boundaries between intellectual traditions in the early Warring States and Han periods.
Prefaces
No prefaces survive on this silk scroll. The text follows the Lǎozǐ Text A (KR5c0387) on the same silk cloth without a separate header or introduction.
Abstract
Discovery and physical context. The Wǔxíng was written on the continuation of the same half-breadth of silk as Mǎwángduī Lǎozǐ Text A (KR5c0387). Both the Lǎozǐ and the Wǔxíng were thus on one silk cloth; the other cloth bore the Huángdì sìjīng texts (KR5c0389) followed by Lǎozǐ Text B (KR5c0390). After excavation, the text was identified as an “ancient lost text” (古佚書 gǔ yìshū) whose identity was unknown until the find. Tang Lán 唐蘭 and others subsequently identified it with the “lost” Wǔxíng text attributed to Zǐsī 子思 in early bibliographic catalogs.
Content and structure. The main text (正文 zhèngwén) opens with the famous distinction between moral activities that arise from the inner mind (刑於內謂之德之行 xíng yú nèi wèi zhī dé zhī xíng, “activities that take shape within are called activities of virtue”) and those that do not (不刑於內謂之行 bù xíng yú nèi wèi zhī xíng, “activities that do not take shape within are called activities”). The five virtues are parsed: the first four (仁義禮智) constitute shàn 善 (goodness) as a human-level achievement; the fifth, shèng 聖 (sagely insight), elevates the practitioner to the level of the Heavenly Way (天道 tiāndào). The main text also treats music and harmonious sound as expressions of moral self-cultivation — a theme connecting it to the concurrent Lǐjì 禮記 tradition.
The commentary (Wǔxíng shuō 五行說), which follows the main text in the Mǎwángduī version but is absent from the Guōdiàn version, expounds on the main text passage by passage, quoting extensively from the Shī 詩 (Odes) and other early texts to explain the virtues. This commentary is substantially longer than the main text and constitutes a significant early specimen of philosophical exegesis.
Relationship to Guōdiàn version. A version of the Wǔxíng main text (without the shuō commentary) was found among the Guōdiàn bamboo slips (tomb sealed ca. 300 BCE), providing a witness roughly 130 years older than the Mǎwángduī copy. The Guōdiàn version shows some verbal differences from the Mǎwángduī main text; comparison of the two has been central to scholarship on the early Confucian tradition and on the process of text-formation in the Warring States.
Attribution and intellectual setting. Early Han bibliographies do not list the Wǔxíng by that title. Tang Lán and subsequent scholars have argued for attribution to Zǐsī 子思 (ca. 492–431 BCE), grandson of Confucius and teacher of Mèngzǐ, on the basis of doctrinal parallels with the Zhōngyōng 中庸 and the Mèngzǐ tradition. The five virtues discussed (仁義禮智聖) correspond to a pre-Mencian stage of Confucian ethics in which the virtue of sagely insight (聖) was still treated as achievable by human cultivation, before the Mencian reorientation around the four virtues (仁義禮智) that humans naturally possess. This attribution, while widely accepted, cannot be confirmed; the text may represent a school text from Zǐsī’s circle rather than a work by Zǐsī himself.
Notion of shendu 慎獨. The Wǔxíng contains an early instance of the concept of shèndú 慎獨 (“watchfulness over oneself when alone”), important in later Neo-Confucian practice theory and debated in relation to the Zhōngyōng and the Dàxué 大學.
Dating. The Mǎwángduī copy was made before the tomb’s sealing in 168 BCE. The text’s composition is generally placed in the late Warring States, 4th–3rd century BCE, consistent with the evidence from Guōdiàn (ca. 300 BCE). The dating bracket notBefore: -350, notAfter: -168 covers the range from likely composition to the latest possible copying.
Translations and research
- Cook, Scott. 2012. The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation. 2 vols. Cornell East Asia Series. University of Hawai’i Press. (Vol. 1 includes the Guōdiàn Wǔxíng with commentary; the Mǎwángduī version is discussed comparatively throughout.)
- Holloway, Kenneth W. 2009. Guodian: The Newly Discovered Seeds of Chinese Religious and Political Philosophy. OUP. (Chapter on the Wǔxíng.)
- Csikszentmihalyi, Mark. 2004. Material Virtue: Ethics and the Body in Early China. Brill. (Extensive analysis of the Mǎwángduī Wǔxíng.)
- Pang Pu 龐朴. 1980. “Mǎwángduī Bóshū jiě kāi le Sī Mèng wǔxíng shuō zhi mí” 馬王堆帛書解開了思孟五行說之謎. Wénwù 文物 1980.10. (Foundational article identifying the text as the Zǐsī–Mèng school Wǔxíng.)
- Rosemont, Henry, Jr., ed. 1991. Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts: Essays Dedicated to Angus C. Graham. Open Court. (Includes discussion of the Mǎwángduī Wǔxíng in the broader context of Warring States Confucianism.)