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The Lao tzu text that Wang Pi and Ho-shang Kung never saw

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

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In ch.127 of the Shih chi, the chapter on the ‘Diviners’, we find a line cited from ch. 01 of the Lao tzu, Tao te ching as follows: ‘the nameless is the beginning of the myriad creatures’. As nearly everyone who has any familiarity with the text will recognize, this is a variation from the line as it is now konwn from the Lao tzu text itself, where we have ‘the nameless, the beginning of Heaven and Earth ’, and the Shih chi has been looked upon as the purveyor of sloppy and careless scholarship for nearly tow millennia. With the discovery about ten years ago of the Ma wang tui (abbreviated MWT) silk manuscripts of the Lao tzu dating from around 200 B.C. we are able to see that thisShih chi rendering of the line was neither sloppy nor careless, because in fact it matches in its essential features the MWT version, both the A and B manuscripts of which have Given the evidence of the MWT MSS coupled with the Shih chi form of the line we are inclined to suppose that this was the prevalent Han version of the text, and that the form with the instead of is a later innovation. I will not go into the philosophical significance of the substitution of the former for the latter here, save to say that it is clear that the scope of ch. 01 with ‘myriad creatures’ in this line is restricted to considerations of the terrestrial domain alone, whereas the introduction of the expression ‘Heaven and Earth’ expande the scope to matters terrestrial and celestial both, and the relation between the two. This is a shift of no small consequence and deserves the attention of scholars well versed in the details of Han and Weichin speculative thought.

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Articles
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , October 1985 , pp. 493 - 501
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1985

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References

1 We cannot accuse Ssi-ma Ch'ien himself of any ostensible carelessness because the chapter on the Diviners was apparently lost from Ssu-ma Ch‘ien‘s Shih chi, and replaced by a later composition. According to the textimony of Ssiu-ma ch‘ien’s biography in the Han shu (lieh chuan 32), and the notes to that biography by chang Yen of the San Kuo, Wei period this chapter was one of those known in the originalShih chionly by title, but missing in content shortly after Ssu-ma Ch‘ien’s death in about 90 B.C. It is traditionally supposed that a certain Chu Shao-sun supplied the missing chapters during the reign of Yü Ti or Ch'eng Ti (corresponding approximately to the last half of the first century B.C.) It is not known for certain, of course, that the missing chapter on the Diviners was supplied by this particular person, but it is acknowledged that the version of that chapter in the received text of the Shih chi is not Ssu-ma Ch‘ien's original work, but a later replacement. Nevertheless, the replacement still reflects a mid-Han date, and thus its citation from the Lao tzu can be taken as representative of some early or mid-Han version of the text. See Wang Hsien-ch'ien , Han shu pu chu (Taipei: Commercial Press, 1968 reprint ed.), p. 4258 ; and Ts'ui Shih , Shih chi t'an yüan (Taipei: Kuang wen shu chu, 1967 reprint of the 1934 Peking University ed.; preface dated 1910).

2 Two manuscripts of the Lao tzu were discovered, differing in time by about a generation, These are called the chia and i in chinese works, A and B in western. For background and details of the discovery of the MA wang tui manuscripts see Hsiao Han . Ch'ang-sha Ma wang tui Han mu po shu kai shu Wen wu , 1974.9, pp. 40–44Google Scholar; Janyün-hua, , ‘The silk manuscripts on Taoism ’, T'oung pao, LXIII. 1, 1978, 65–84Google Scholar; Loewe, Michael A. N., ‘Manuscripts found recently in China’, T'oung pao, LXIII. 2–3, 1978, 99–136Google Scholar; and Henricks, Robert G., ‘Exammining the Ma-wang-tui silk texts of the Lao-tuz’, T'oung pao, LXV, 4–5, 1980, 166–199.Google Scholar

3 Boltz, William G.,‘Textual criticism and the Ma wang tui Lao tzu’,Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 44, 1 (June,1984), 185–224, esp.pp.221–3Google Scholar

4 In the two or three places where the Wang Pi text differs from the Ho-shang Kung Ihave followed the latter, since it is with the matching of Ho-shang Kung's text and commentary that we are concerned

5 See E.Zürcher, The Buddhist conquest of China (Leiden:E.J.Brill, 1959), 293.

6 ‘Distillant’ (‘desending in drops’)for ling is based on the Shuo wen identiflcation of (Written) with the homophonous ling, both OC *lán from an earlier ; see Pulleyblank,‘⃛the zhen rhyme category⃛, (p.250), and with lo *glák ‘rain-drop’. See Shuo wen chieh tzu ku lin 5185 and 5187

7 See Shima Kunio , Roshi kosei (Tokyo: Kyūko shoin 1973), 136–9

8 Old Chinese reconstructions are given according to the system proposed by E. G.Pulley-blank. See his Middle Chinese: a study in historical phonology (Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press, 1984)Google Scholar; ‘Some evidence on the reconstruction of the zhen rhyme category in Old Chinese’, Tsing-Hua Journal of Chinese Studies 47. 1–2, 1982, 249–55Google Scholar; ‘The final consonants of Old Chinese’, Monumenta Serica, XXXIII, 1977–1978, 180–206Google Scholar. ‘Some new hypotheses concerning word families in Chinese’, Journal ofChinese Linguistice, 1, 1973, 111–25Google Scholar; and ‘The twenty-two phonograms: a key to the Old Chinese sound system’, MS 71 pp. (this is a substantial revision of the author's article ‘The Chinese cyclical signs as phonograms’, JAOS, 99. 1, 1979, 24–38Google Scholar).

9 See Cheng Ch'eng-hai , Lao tzu Ho-Shang Kung chu chiao li (Taipei: Chung hua shu chü, 1971), 253

10 The various versions of the received texts fall into two types; one, represented by the Ho-shang Kung version, with either che/chü*khrág or yü *glág, both meaning ‘cart, chariot(ship)’ the other, represented by the Wang Pitext, with yü*glàg(s) ‘praise renown’ instead of ‘chariot’. This second version of the line would mean ‘…brought to a reckoning of renown, then there is no renown’. There are two reasons for choosing type one as the preferred reading (‘preferred’ = better approximation to the original’.) First, it is represented in both main branches of the stemma codicum, that is, in the MWT branch, by B, and in the textus receptus branch by the Ho-shang Kung text, as well as others. The type two reading, ‘renown’, is not uambiguously attested in the MWT branch. (The A MS with yü*glág(?) could be interpreted to stand for yü *glág(s), but need not be.) Second, the reading with ‘chariot(ship)’ seems to me to be the lectio difficilior, and that with ‘renown’the lectio facilior, which then would suggest that ‘chariot-(ship)’ ought to have a stronger claim to authenticity than ‘renown’. For a complete discussion of these principles of textual criticism in connexion with the MWT MSS see my article cited in n.3

11 See Boodberg, P. A, Notes on Chinese morphology and syntax, III: ‘The morphology of finaln and -t’, (October, 1934)Google Scholar, rpt.in Cohen, A., ed., Selected works of Peter A. Boodberg (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), 432–34Google Scholar