Cobie

(From the preview) chapters deleted by Hoff: 5 36 45 58 80

What’s “important” can be rather personal. My only interest is the oldest available transcripts.

Hoff talks about pre ‘writing-brush’ characters. E.g. the characters the Guodian was written in. They were not written with a brush. In the preview Hoff mentions they were written with some other implement that could easily make circles.

yes, I am giving up on this. I stick to the transcripts DIO/Henricks.

If the brush was used alongside the Guodian method, then likely the meanings stayed the same, not?

The Guodian was not written in brush (see DIO picture).

The calligraphy brush … Legend has it that the brush was invented by Meng Tian (? - 210 BC), http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/culture/2011-02/17/content_12040373.htm … the oldest known version of the text, … Guodian (郭店) … dated prior to 300 BC. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Tao_Te_Ching

Yes. I am searching but can’t find anything.

I disliked his audio sufficiently to now feel prejudiced against the Hoff.

The pre-brush characters do look very different http://www.daoisopen.com/A9toA10Chapters232.html

Scrap the DIO comment.

“the characters used in the Guodian text created much controversy between the modern scholars who have tried to determine which modern characters they represent.” (DIO)

Exactly.

Neither have I. Nor did I see any mention of providing the ‘real’ characters in the preview (but I did not read all of the preview, as I found it a rather boring piece of self-aggrandisement with hardly any real info).

I would think that it is highly unlikely. Sinologists do research the changes in meaning of characters over time.

Shock horror. Does it say which chapters?

Does the Hoffman book provide the two sets of characters?

I read the sample chapters (Ch 1-4) in the preview. Imo they are in the same range as all the other translations.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.