Mark Saltveit

Over in the topic for ch. 10 of the Daodejing, Takaaki starting delineating his concept of American Taoism, and got in trouble for being off topic. I'm pretty fascinated (as a Taoist, and an American, and possibly but I'm not sure an American Taoist.) So here's a place where it's unequivocally on topic.

The "received" version of the Daodejing that most of us see comes from Wang Bi's edition (approx. 250 C.E.) But at least four older texts have been found, which change our understanding of much of the chapters. 1. The Guodian Bamboo Strips (300 B.C.E.) 2. The Mawangdui Silk text (168 B.C.E.) 3. The Beida Text (150 B.C.E.) 4. The Fu Yi "ancient version" (574 C.E/202 B.C.E depending on who you believe) Maybe I missed it but I don't see any discussion of that here. I recently wrote an article on the subject at Taoish.org and would like to hear what people think. Does anyone know of any other ancient versions?

And now for something completely different! My other big avocation is writing palindromes (and I run this magazine, The Palindromist ). Check it out if you like that kind of thing. My big news is, on March 16th I'll be competing in the first ever World Palindrome Championship in New York City, organized by Will Shortz, the New York Times Crossword Puzzle editor. You're all going, right? :-) Tao banana boat! Mark Saltveit

Couldn't agree more on bluegrass. It's often a bit Christy for my tastes, but you can't deny the heart and spirit. Also along those lines: the Louvin Brothers, Satan Is Real. I don't agree, but some of those songs are pure gold ( , , (covered by the Byrds), and ).

And here I am, feeling superior because I'm not posting anything. Oh, wait.....

I don't think there's any harm in talking about these things as long you remember it's always an approximation, no the real thing itself. I like maps, too but I don't try to live in them.

Soaring Crane: Nice point, and a good example. I think that Dao is in every moment and situation, though. There's a danger in reserving it for spectacular sunsets and the like. Master Dung Guo: "Where does the Dao exist?" Zhuangzi: "There is no place that it doesn't exist." MDG: "You must be more specific." ZZ: "It is in the ant." MDG: "Why so low?" ZZ: "It is in the panic grass." MDG: "Even lower?" ZZ: "In the tiles and shards." MDG: "Is this the lowest?" ZZ: "It is in the shit and piss." 22/6

In the Warring States period of China, the heart was understood to be what humans thought with. Edward Slingerland, a professor of classical Chinese, uses the term "heart-mind" when translating Daoist texts for that reason.

When I was in college, there was a man of free if not easy wandering who lived in Cambridge Commons. Known as The Tree Man because he in fact spent his day being more like a tree. I saw him often but don't recall any conversations; he was disinclined to share what he knew.

But more practical.

I'm guessing a mushroom omelet. I know it's a palindrome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_books_and_burying_of_scholars It was part of the effort to consolidate the empire under the Qin by destroying dissenting voices, so they certainly would have gone to the center of the Jixia school and destroyed dissenting texts with some intensity. Nothing if not systematic, those Qin.

Buddhism was not introduced to China until about 80 C.E. There's dispute over when the Zhuangzi was pulled together, but the historical figure of Zhuang Zhou is pretty solidly pegged to the Warring States period. It's just not clear how much, if any, of the book he wrote, or if he produced a ton of rambling stuff that was later condensed into the current book.. But there are a number of references to the book in Pre-Han times -- in the Xunzi, Hanfeizi, and Lushi Chunqiu -- and two slightly later archaeological finds of fragments -- 157 - 179 B.C.E. -- so yeah, that seems pretty safe. Interestingly, almost none of those references are to the Inner Chapters, even though most people consider that the oldest, "most authentic" section of Zhuangzi. When the DDJ was in written form? Well, a lot of chapters 2-66 were written down no later than 300 BCE, and perhaps decades earlier, as we know from Guodian. That's precisely when Sima Qian says Zhuangzi lived -- during the reigns of of King Hui of Liang (r. 369-319 BCE) and King Xuan of Qi (r. 320-301 BCE), Of course it could have been much older but the only evidence of that is tradition.

Got it, sorry to be dense. Thanks.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand. Which version has 傾: ?

Interesting. The Guodian slips have the same character 盈 as the Mawangdui http://www.daoisopen.com/A6toA9Chapters64b37632.html

Right. It's so hard to know, between Emperor name taboos, the homonyms, the changes Liu Xiogan discusses (such as different words to match other sections, making lines more uniformly four characters, and removing a lot of the articles.) There were also some apparent ideological changes, too. The received version is more critical of Confucian thought, but the Guodian version had different characters that were less of a slap at that school. Then again, the Guodian bamboo strips were found buried with Confucian texts, so maybe they were modified that way and the received is actually true to the original? I'm wary of anyone with too strong of opinion about what these books must have been like back then. It was a long time ago.

Ah, I think we're using the word "script differently. MANUscripts are extremely important, of course. I thought you meant the type of writing (such as Seal Script). In both cases though they are not absolute proof of anything, and don't show that oral transmission stopped. (People recite the DDJ today still). For example, we have the Mawangdui silk texts, and the Beida DDJ also has the De and Dao sections in reverse order of the Wang Bi and Heshan Gong versions. But that doesn't prove there was one original like that -- these could be variations like Neanderthal Man, related to humans but died out. Obviously whoever did Heshan Gong thought the order was Dao, then De -- maybe from a different lineage of texts? Guodian for example -- it could be raw chunks that changed into the Mawandui version, or it could be a teacher's favorite selections from a bigger work. Or selections from a bunch of raw fragments. It's very hard to say. Guodian didn't have De and Dao sections at all. Were the three bundles found there three "sections" (pian) or is it just too hard to tie that many strips together, so he did smaller bundles?

I think it is not so simple as the script used. Either or both of the books may have been passed down as oral traditions for decades or centuries before someone wrote them down. Or there may have been loose varying collections of sayings and parables that they were pulled from. The DDJ has to our eyes a very consistent tone and style, but Liu Xiogan demonstrates (using the Guodian and Mawandui versions) that this consistent was created by later editors who repeatedly modified the text specifically to sound that way. BTW, there were not 81 chapters in the Mawangdui -- a couple groups of today's 81 chapters were combined into one chapter there. And Edward L. Shaughnessy makes a very compelling argument that today's chapters 30 and 31 were really 3 chapters originally, with a short one in the middle of those that was accidentally merged, probably because a scribe dropped a single bamboo strip and put it back in the wrong place. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Dec., 2005), pp. 417-457

Or we could simply pick up this thread in the existing Chuang Tzu topic.

The consensus among most Western scholars is that the Laozi was compiled from various collections of sayings over a long period of time. Perhaps the first chunk was actually written by Lao Dan, who is a historical person who did in fact teach Confucius, or perhaps a later Daoist put the words in Lao Dan's mouth, since as Confucius' teacher he "trumps" him in the battles between Daoists and Confucians. Parts of the Zhuangzi actual put anti-Confucian words in the mouth of Confucius himself, so it wouldn't be that surprising. Interestingly, Chinese scholars seem more inclined to trust the historical theories (ie that Lao Dan rode off to Tibet and a border guard talked him into writing down the DDJ on his way out the gate, etc.) There is pretty strong evidence that at least part of the DDJ was added later. Most notably, none of the DDJ chapters 67-81 are found in the Guodian bamboo strips. The commentary on the DDJ in the Huainanzi ("recently completed" in 139 B.C.E.) also does not mention any of those chapters. This suggests that that author was working from a version that still did not include them, at least 160 years after the Guodian DDJ was sealed in a tomb.

it is perhaps analogous to the Gospel of Thomas and other "apocryphal" Christian texts that were ruled out of the Bible when it was assembled, even though many scholars identify that one book anyway as having been written closer in time to the lifetime of Christ and more authentic based on archaeological and historical analysis. The only reason we even know about that text is that it was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. (edit: I wrote "Gospel of Peter" the first time by mistake. There is such a book but it's considered much less authentic.)

That's funny. Clearly an error, and it ruins the meaning of the passage. It's a really beautiful metaphor. Liu Xiogan's article makes an interesting point about some of the smaller changes that accumulated over the centuries, things like Emperor name taboos but also fairly benign ones, like making the tone more consistent, making lines 4 characters long whenever possible, and removing articles. There's a distinct rhythm to the received DDJ which is the result of this, and appears not to have been nearly so evident in the Mawangdui and Guodian texts. (The lost section is noticeably that way.) The problem is that all of these changes risk changing the meaning of the text, or at least removing clues that help identify other scribe's mistakes. A very interesting source of trouble is the phonetic errors, where a character is replaced by one of its homonyms. (Chinese has a lot of characters that sound the same when spoken.) These are a strong clue that the DDJ was originally transmitted orally and was written down later, perhaps by scribes who weren't that familiar with the original and just wrote down what they heard.

One of the problems is that in the original, there were no chapter numbers, no book or chapter titles, etc. But these 14 other slips were literally tied to the other sections of the Guodian Laozi (with string), and there were no other works mixed in. They actually lined up the notches that string made on the edges of the strip as part of the verification. The only indication of where chapters may have begun and end was a mark, like a dot or little square, between them. Both Guodian and Mawangdui had some chapters that combined more than one of what we now consider the final 81 chapters, but were mostly the same.

True. Prof. Allan's interpretation is that the first 8 of those 14 slips, that cosmology, was a sort of appendix to the Daodejing, but that the last 6 were actually part of it. The type of wording seems to support that. The team that produced that first Chinese book seems to have followed basically circular reasoning like that -- "well, we haven't seen this in any other Daodejings so it must not be part of it." And most Western researchers have followed them. Of course, if that's your logic, it's impossible to find any lost portions. So that's why this research by Prof. Allan (and other researchers) has gotten so little attention.