Laozi editions: received and excavated

One book, three kinds of material

Readers of the Laozi usually assume the book in hand has eighty-one chapters and opens with the Way (道) before turning to Virtue (德). In fact at least three kinds of material are in play: the received text handed down through the centuries, the silk manuscripts found in 1973 at Mawangdui, and the bamboo slips that have surfaced since 1993. They differ in chapter order, in wording and in size.

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Sketch of chapter order. The chapter numbers on the silk follow the received text; the slips’ chapter count follows their editors’ division.

The figure starts with chapter order. In the received text the Way section comes first (chapters 1-37) and the Virtue section second (38-81). Mawangdui silk Text B reverses this, and so do the Peking University Han slips, which have only 77 chapters. The Guodian slips are left out of the figure because they copy only part of the book.

Chapter order: Virtue first or the Way first

The plainest difference is the order as a whole. The received text runs from chapter 1 to chapter 81. Silk Text B opens with chapter 38, “Highest virtue…”, and closes with chapter 37, “The Way is constantly nameless”.

Inside a chapter the wording can mostly be matched line for line; what changes is the order of chapters and which half comes first. The silk carries dots and similar marks that divide the text, but they do not add up to the eighty-one-chapter layout; the transcription numbers each stretch by the matching chapter of the received text so that the two can be compared.

The first subject differs too: the received text begins with the Way and naming, Text B with virtue and its loss. Why two orders existed, the materials do not say. Some researchers note that the essay explaining the Laozi (解老) in the Han Feizi (韩非子) also begins with the chapter on highest virtue; how that relates to the silk order is debated.

Chapter 38 side by side: a line short, a few more particles

Within one chapter the two texts differ in finer ways. Chapter 38 runs from highest virtue down to ritual; the received text lists five levels and silk Text B has four.

The transcription of Text B shows the word for rightness as a circle; the collated edition merging copies A and B reads it as rightness. Whether the received text added the lower-virtue line later or the silk copyist dropped it, scholars judge differently, and the materials cannot testify for either side.

Passages scholars keep returning to

Further on, several differences are often discussed. Most are single lines or single characters.

Chapter 39 is about “holding the One”. The received text lists heaven, earth, spirit, the valley, the myriad things and rulers; Text B has no myriad things, in either list. At the end of chapter 41 the received text says the Way “is good at bestowing and completing”, Text B “good at beginning and good at completing”; the two words differ in sense, and scholars choose differently.

In the same chapter the received text has the great vessel “completed late”; Text B writes mian (免) where it has “late”. Editors read it as “late”, which matches the received text, or as a word meaning “without”, which says something else. It is among the most discussed points, with no agreed conclusion.

In chapter 25 the received text says “the king is great” and later “the king occupies one of them”. Text B has “humans are great” for the first and keeps “the king occupies one” for the second; the same chapter also says “humans follow earth”. Scholars choose differently. Chapter 37 opens in the received text with “the Way is constantly without action and yet nothing is left undone”, in Text B with “the Way is constantly nameless”. The received text has that phrase again in chapter 48, where the matching place in Text B is a gap and cannot be compared.

Chapter 1 carries a punctuation question: “So constantly without desire, one observes its subtlety; constantly with desire, one observes its boundary.” Tradition cuts it either after “without desire” and “with desire”, or after “constantly without” and “constantly with”, taking desire with what follows. Text B has the particle ye after “without desire” and “with desire”, which many scholars take as support for the first cut; the tradition behind the received text has long had both.

1. 1

   Sort first

   A line present or absent, a different character, and a different punctuation or reading are three kinds of difference; do not talk about them as one.

2. 2

   Then check the loan characters

   Silk spellings are full of loan characters, such as the ones read as “thin” and “that”. Record the editor’s reading with the original spelling.

3. 3

   Finally name the source

   Give the text, the chapter and the edition. Mark gaps with a box and do not fill them in yourself.

Slips: earlier, and more fragmentary

Besides the silk there are two sets of bamboo slips: the Guodian slips, found in 1993, and the Western Han bamboo books acquired by Peking University in 2009. Copying and finding do not run in the same order. Text B is generally taken to have been copied in the early Han and Text A somewhat earlier; the Peking University slips are put near the middle of the Western Han.

The Guodian slips order their chapters differently from the received text, and even the opening of a single chapter is written differently in the three texts.

Some researchers use this to discuss how the Laozi relates to Confucian ethics; others remind us that the slips are an excerpt, and what they do not copy cannot be taken as absent from the original. The Peking University slips are a different case: their editors divide them into 77 chapters, 44 in the Virtue part and 33 in the Way part, which does not match the received eighty-one.

For the core ideas of the book, see the Way and Virtue. For where non-action sits across the texts, see wu wei, and for how the Laozi and the Zhuangzi read side by side, see Laozi and Zhuangzi compared.