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Taoist and Buddhist mysteries in the interpretation of the Tao-te ching1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

T. H. Barrett
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Extract

After over a century and a half of increasingly superfluous translations of the Tao-te ching one might be pardoned for thinking that there was no further need for sinologists to devote attention to this text. Nothing could be further from the truth. The publication in 1974 of two manuscripts from the tomb at Ma-wang-tui dating to the early years of the 2nd century B.C., together with some previously unknown works of the same period, constituted as sensational an advance in our knowledge as could possibly be imagined, short of an autograph copy revealing the identity of Lao-tzu himself. Quite apart from answering (and raising) a host of textual questions, these finds have afforded us a startling glimpse of the significance assigned to the Tao-te ching during the early Han. This in turn has served to remind us that the continuous transmission of the text has involved marked discontinuities in the construction placed upon it, discontinuities which Western sinology has in the past been all too remiss in tracing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 114 , Issue 1 , January 1982 , pp. 35 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1982

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References

NOTES

2 Thus the seventh item under Ōfuchi on p. 278 should be under Fujiwara; the third item is in a Festschrift for which no publication details or characters are provided, the title of which is wrongly written; the text cited at n. 8, p. 130, is misattributed (Robinet has been led astray by the Harvard-Yenching Index); p. 99, n. 5, is apparently contradicted by p. 152, n. 2.

3 Rōshi densetsu no kenkyū , Tokyo, 1979.Google Scholar

4 For this work see the introduction to the Chi Yen Tsun Lao Tzu chu in the Lao-tzu chi-ch'eng series of Yeng Ling-feng Taipei, 1965. Yen collects together what he believes to be fragments of this commentary, though he notes that many of them may actually be from the Chih-kuei.Google Scholar

5 Tao-te chen-ching chin-kuei chu-chiao reprinted e.g. in the second series of the Lao-tzu chi-ch'eng, Taipei, 1970. T'ang's comments are in a final postface: the Tunhuang fragment (P. 2526) is printed on p. 2a of the first section of supplementary material: it corresponds to a section of the lost first half of the Chih-kuei to be found on p. 16b of Yen Ling-feng, “Pien Yen Tsun Tao-te chih-kuei lun fei wei-shu” preceding his reprintings of the text in the Lao-tzu chi-ch'eng, series one. Early attempts to identify the encyclopedia have been rejected by recent scholars.Google Scholar

6 Po-chün, Yang (ed.), Lieh-tzu chi-shih Shanghai, 1958, 179.Google Scholar

7 Tao-tsang vol. 572, no. 836, p. 1.4a.Google Scholar This is among the passages in this work which are also incorporated in the Chih-yen tsung, the significance of which is outlined in my earlier study. Tao-tsang references by volume number in the Shanghai, 1924–6 reprint and Harvard-Yenching Index number.

8 On pp. 185–6 of his “The Date and Composition of Liehtzyy”, Asia Major, VIII, 1960–1961, 139–98.Google Scholar

9 Chi Yen Tsun Lao Tzu chu, p. 3b (noted by Yen Ling-feng as probably from the Chih-kuei) and Yang, , Lieh-tzu chi-shih, 1.Google Scholar

10 Graham, , 198.Google Scholar

11 Though probably somewhat older. See Chia-hsi, YüSsu-k'u t'i-yao pien-cheng Peking, 1958, 1141–3.Google Scholar

12 Kusuyama's full evidence against the A.D. 243 reference was published earlier as an article: this is summarized on p. 127. On the following page he notes (n. 3) the most recent Japanese research to assign a date to the work. For the unsettled state of the text up to the T'ang, see pp. 128–33.

13 Kusuyama, , 111.Google Scholar

14 op. cit., pp. 1.1b–2a. It should be noted however that in this case there is no external evidence to show that this quotation was present in the earlier Yang-sheng yao-chi.

15 Kusuyama, , 260–8: earlier studies are reviewed on 239–41. The earliest text Kusuyama accepts as referring to the Hsiang Erh is the same work which he takes as the earliest evidence for Ho-shang Kung's commentary.Google Scholar

16 Chen-chung chi (Tao-tsang vol. 572, no. 836), p. 21a.Google Scholar

17 Kusuyama, , 200, and for date of composition, 222–3.Google Scholar

18 op. cit., pp. 1.6b, 2.5a, cf. Robinet, 50, and Kusuyama, 233–6. Both passages are attested by quotations in Japanese sources as having been in the Yang-sheng yao-chi.

19 Chūgoku Kegon shisōshi no kenkyū Tokyo, 1965, 276–8.Google Scholar

20 op. cit., 1 (Taishō Canon vol. 24), p. 1015b.Google Scholar For the date of the work see e.g. Hōdō, ŌnoDaijō kaikyō no kenkyū , Tokyo, 1954, 165.Google Scholar

21 Chu-fa wu-cheng san-mei fa-men 1 (Taishō Canon vol. 46), p. 632a.Google Scholar

22 See Morito, NinomiyaTendai no kyōgi to shinkō Tokyo, 1922, 101–2.Google Scholar

23 See the portion of his commentary preserved in Dainihon Zokuzōkyō 61/3, p. 249a.Google Scholar

24 For a standard Chinese definition of the “emptiness of emptiness” see Lamotte, E., Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse, IV, Louvain, 1976, 2064–7. K'ung-k'ung is sometimes expressed as ch'ung-k'ung “double emptiness”.Google Scholar

25 Robinson, Richard, Early Mādhyamika in India and China, London, 1967, 301, n. 16.Google Scholar

26 Ch'u San-tsang chi-chi 10 (Taishō Canon vol. 55), p. 1002b.Google Scholar

27 The Indian equivalences described by Lamotte, , 2042, would probably have been unknown to Wŏnhyo, but see Pao-liang (444–509)Google Scholar, Ta-p'o nieh-p'an ching chichieh 38 (Taishō Canon vol. 37), p. 501b.Google Scholar

28 This is evident throughout the latter portion of Robinet's study, but note in particular p. 110ff.

29 Thus the identification on pp. 93–4 of the monk whose sermons were attended by the influential expositor Chou Hung-cheng is plainly erroneous: to judge by the monastery named in Robinet's source the preacher was Chih-tsang : cf. Hsü Kaoseng chuan 5 (Taishō Canon vol. 50), p. 466a.Google Scholar

30 op. cit., p. 1.9b.

31 ibid., p. 1.3b.

32 cf. Yang, , Lieh-tzu chi-shih, 63, and 14–15.Google Scholar

33 op. cit., p. 1.9a.

34 ibid., p. 1.3a.

35 It is perhaps worth noting that an apparent paraphrase of this quotation may be found in Chang's Lieh Tzu commentary: see Yang, , Lieh-tzu chi-shih, p. 64, col. 6.Google Scholar

36 op. cit., pp. 1.3b (bis), 2.1a.

37 The passage is listed twice under the full title Huang-lao hsüan-shih ching in Yoshitoyo's, Yoshioka index of quotations in this anthology,Google ScholarDōkyō keiten shiron Tokyo, 1955, 445,Google Scholar but both times it occurs in the midst of an anthology absorbed into the Yün-chi ch'i-ch'ien, once on its own and once as part of a yet larger anthology: it would be necessary to unravel this complex situation in order to begin to hazard a guess as to when the quotation was drawn from its source. Note however an apparent reference to the same text in the Pao-p'u-tzu, as listed by Yoshioka, , 55.Google Scholar

38 For Yin's dates see the materials collected in Yang, , Lieh-tzu chi-shih, 182:Google Scholar Yin evidently quotes a text compiled in 819, yet his work survived into the Sung in a manuscript written by “Mo-hsi Tzu” himself a figure of the first half of the 9th century (as is made clear by Yü, , Ssu-k'u t'i-yao pien-cheng, 1194–5).Google Scholar Yin's commentary is included by Yang, in his reprinting of Chang's preface, 179.Google Scholar

39 Kuang Hung-ming chi 30 (Taishō Canon, vol. 52), p. 350a,Google Scholar b, and Yoshioka, , Dōkyō keiten shiron, 199, 200.Google Scholar