Dào dé jīng shì cí 道德經釋辭
Glossing the Wording of the Way-and-Power Scripture
by 王一清 (Wáng Yīqīng, hào Tǐwùzǐ 體物子, fl. c. 1580–1600), prefaced by 姚孟昱 (Yáo Mèngyù, hào Jìnyězǐ 近野子)
A two-juàn 81-chapter Wàn-lì-era commentary on the Dào dé jīng 道德經 (= KR5c0045) written by Wáng Yīqīng (hào Tǐwùzǐ) in retreat at Tàihé Mountain (= Wǔdāng) and prefaced in 1597 by his fellow-townsman Yáo Mèngyù. Wáng’s stated polemical aim is to recover the political-moral range of the Lǎo zǐ against contemporaneous “narrow alchemical” readings: the work, he argues, has five Ways — qīngjìng 淸靜, wúwéi 無爲, zìrán 自然, chángshēng 長生, and zhìshì 治世 (governance) — which interpreters who follow only the liànyǎng 鍊養 (alchemical-physiological) line miss entirely. The commentary structure consists, for each chapter, of (i) the Lǎo zǐ text in larger script, (ii) Wáng’s running gloss in commentary script (signed only by topical position, no signature), and (iii) frequent citations from earlier commentators (Wáng Bì, Héshànggōng, Lǐ Dàochún, Sòng Zhēnzōng, Sū Zhé, etc.).
Prefaces
Preface (Yáo Mèngyù). “Great indeed is Lǎo zǐ’s Five Thousand Words! It takes stillness as its lineage and emptiness as its function. Expounders speak only of liànyǎng and do not realise that the Way of xiūqízhìpíng [self-family-state-empire] is comprehensively prepared in it. Of old Wú Yún 吳筠 said: ‘Of those deep in the Way none equals the Five Thousand Words.’ These words are knowing! But its meaning is mostly hidden and hard to penetrate; its phrasing seems contrarian and hard to integrate. Students often, suffering through three or four readings without understanding, give up. Some have made commentaries, but always end up with the perspective of seeing through a tube, stuck on the glued-tuning-peg view — how could they bring out the principle? Now Tǐwùzǐ from my native town, while still young pursued the bóshì curriculum but failed of office; thereafter he came to penetrate to the Pure-and-Empty, did not wish the affairs of men to muddy his heart, and so withdrew to the cliffs of Tàihé. There he ground at this scripture day after day, and after a long time one day was suddenly opened up to its meaning. Then he set out what he had seen, divided the chapters and glossed them, and with the volume completed brought it for me to view, asking me to preface it. I received it and read it through, and saw that line by line and word by word it strikes the target — what is meant by ‘taking the meaning to meet the meaning, not letting words harm sense’; even were Lǎo zǐ to come back and instruct ear-by-ear and face-by-face, he could not do better. Tǐwùzǐ — is he Lǎo zǐ’s reincarnation? Readers who study this commentary thoroughly will not only succeed in liànyǎng but in family-and-state ordering as well, easily. Pray do not lump this commentary in with the same-day chatter on yǎngshēng. Wànlì dīngyǒu year, spring, shàngyuán day [4 February 1597]. Cì jìnshìdì xíngrénsī xíngrén Jìnyězǐ Yáo Mèngyù compiled.”
A long programmatic Xù dào dé jīng zhǐ zǒng lùn 敘道德經旨總論 (“Preface-introduction discoursing the meaning of the Dào dé jīng”) follows, presumably also by Wáng Yīqīng, laying out the five Ways doctrine, surveying the textual history of the Lǎo zǐ (cites the differing word-counts of Wáng Bì 5683, Héshànggōng 5355, Lǐ Dàochún 5335; the 72-chapter vs. 81-chapter divisions; Sīmǎ Guāng 司馬光 on the conventional “5000-word” round number), and assembles a chorus of testimonia from Liú Xiàng 劉向, Sīmǎ Tán 司馬談, Cháo Wényuán 鼂文元, Xuē Dàohéng 薛道衡, Bái Jūyì 白居易, etc. on the Lǎo zǐ’s breadth.
Abstract
A late-Míng Wàn-lì-era Lǎo zǐ commentary written from inside the Wǔdāngshān Daoist milieu, distinguished by its insistence on the political and ethical bandwidth of the Lǎo zǐ against the more narrowly alchemical readings dominant in the southern tradition. The work was incorporated into the Dào zàng jí yào in 1809 — its only canonical home — and from there into the present Kanripo recension. Wáng Yīqīng’s identification with Tǐwùzǐ is unambiguous: the same hào is used in his preface to a parallel commentary on the Huà shū 化書 (cf. KR5i0042), about which Schipper-Verellen note “preface by Wáng Yīqīng (fl. 1592), who wrote a commentary to the book” (Boltz in The Taoist Canon I, on DZ 1044). The commentary’s terminus a quo is fixed by Wáng’s pre-1597 retreat to Tàihé; terminus ad quem by Yáo’s preface dated 4 Feb 1597.
The commentary’s reception has been thin: it survives only in DZJY and is sometimes cited (e.g., in Liú Xiàogǎn’s Lǎo zǐ gǔ jīn) as an example of late-Míng broad-spectrum Lǎo zǐ exegesis, but no critical edition or translation exists.
Translations and research
- No substantial secondary literature located on the Shì cí itself.
- For Wáng Yī-qīng’s parallel Huà shū commentary and his late-Míng milieu, see Schipper-Verellen, The Taoist Canon I, on DZ 1044 Huà shū.
- For the broader Wǔ-dāng-shān late-Míng exegetical context, see Vincent Goossaert, “Wǔdāng Daoism in the Late Imperial Period,” various survey articles.
Other points of interest
The textual-historical preface (五千文 word-count survey, 81- vs. 72-chapter division) is among the cleaner Wànlì compendia of Lǎo zǐ recension data, drawing on Sīmǎ Guāng’s then-recent scholarly reckoning.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5i0007
- Author: 王一清; preface by 姚孟昱.