The Texts of the Tao Te Ching and Chuang-Tzŭ Shu, as Regards Their Authenticity and Genuineness, and the Arrangement of Them

I will now state briefly, first, the grounds on which I accept the Tao Te Ching as a genuine production of the age to which it has been assigned, and the truth of its authorship by Laozi to whom it has been ascribed. It would not have been necessary a few years ago to write as if these points could be called in question, but in 1886 Mr. Herbert A. Giles, of Her Majesty’s Consular Service in China, and one of the ablest Chinese scholars living, vehemently called them in question in an article in the China Review for the months of March and April. His strictures have been replied to, and I am not going to revive here the controversy which they produced, but only to state a portion of the evidence which satisfies my own mind on the two points just mentioned.

It has been said above that the year BC 604 was, probably, that of Laozi’s birth. The year of his death is not recorded. Ssŭ-ma Chʽien, the first great Chinese historian, who died in about BC 85, commences his “Biographies” with a short account of Laozi. He tells us that the philosopher had been a curator of the Royal Library of Chou, and that, mourning over the decadence of the dynasty, he wished to withdraw from the world, and proceeded to the pass or defile of Hangu,7 leading from China to the west. There he was recognised by the warden of the pass, Yin Hsi (often called Kuan Yin), himself a well-known Taoist, who insisted on his leaving him a writing before he went into seclusion. Laozi then wrote his views on The Tao and its Characteristics, in two parts or sections, containing more than 5,000 characters, gave the manuscript to the warden, and went his way;8 “nor is it known where he died.” This account is strange enough, and we need not wonder that it was by and by embellished with many marvels. It contains, however, the definite statements that Laozi wrote the Tao Te Ching in two parts, and consisting of more than 5,000 characters. And that Chʽien was himself well acquainted with the treatise is apparent from his quotations from it, with, in almost every case, the specification of the author. He thus adduces part of the first chapter, and a large portion of the last chapter but one. His brief reference also to Laozi and his writings are numerous.

But between Laozi and Ssŭ-ma Chʽien there were many Taoist writers whose works remain. I may specify of them Lieh-tzŭ (assuming that his chapters, though not composed in their present form by him, may yet be accepted as fair specimens of his teaching); Chuang-tzŭ (of the fourth century BC. We find him refusing to accept high office from king Wei of Chʽu, BC 339⁠–⁠299); Han Fei, a voluminous author, who died by his own hand in BC 230; and Liu An, a scion of the Imperial House of Han, king of Huai-nan, and better known to us as Huan-nan Tzŭ, who also died by his own hand in BC 122. In the books of all these men we find quotations of many passages that are in our treatise. They are expressly said to be, many of them, quotations from Laozi; Han Fei several times all but shows the book beneath his eyes. To show how numerous the quotations by Han Fei and Liu An are, let it be borne in mind that the Tao Te Ching has come down to us as divided into eighty-one short chapters; and that the whole of it is shorter than the shortest of our Gospels. Of the eighty-one chapters, either the whole or portions of seventy-one are found in those two writers. There are other authors not so decidedly Taoistic, in whom we find quotations from the little book. These quotations are in general wonderfully correct. Various readings indeed there are; but if we were sure that the writers did trust to memory, their differences would only prove that copies of the text had been multiplied from the very first.

In passing on from quotations to the complete text, I will clinch the assertion that Chʽien was well acquainted with our treatise, by a passage from the History of the Former Han Dynasty (BC 206⁠–⁠AD 24), which was begun to be compiled by Pan Ku, who died however in 92, and left a portion to be completed by his sister, the famous Pan Chao. The thirty-second chapter of his “Biographies” is devoted to Ssŭ-ma Chʽien, and towards the end it is said that “on the subject of the Great Tao he preferred Huang and Lao to the six ching.” “Huang and Lao” must there be the writings of Huang Ti and Laozi. The association of the two names also illustrates the antiquity claimed for Taoism, and the subject of endnote 4.

We go on from quotations to complete texts, and turn, first, to the catalogue of the Imperial Library of Han, as compiled by Liu Hsin, not later than the commencement of our Christian era. There are entered in it Taoist works by thirty-seven different authors, containing in all 993 chapters or sections (pʽien). Yi Yin, the premier of Chʽêng Tʽang (BC 1766), heads the list with fifty-one sections. There are in it four editions of Laozi’s work with commentaries:⁠—by a Mr. Lin, in four sections; a Mr. Fu, in thirty-seven sections; a Mr. Hsü, in six sections; and by Liu Hsiang, Hsin’s own father, in four sections. All these four works have since perished, but there they were in the Imperial Library before our era began. Chuang-tzŭ is in the same list in fifty-two books or sections, the greater part of which have happily escaped the devouring tooth of time.

We turn now to the twentieth chapter of Chʽien’s “Biographies”, in which he gives an account of Yüeh Yi, the scion of a distinguished family, and who himself played a famous part, both as a politician and military leader, and became prince of Wang-chu under the kingdom of Chao in BC 279. Among his descendants was a Yüeh Chʽên, who learned in Chʽi “the words,” that is, the Taoistic writings “of Huang Ti and Laozi from an old man who lived on the ho-side.” The origin of this old man was not known, but Yüeh Chʽên taught what he learned from him to a Mr. Ko, who again became preceptor to Tsʽao Tsʽan, the chief minister of Chʽi, and afterwards of the new dynasty of Han, dying in BC 190.

Referring now to the catalogue of the Imperial Library of the dynasty of Sui (AD 502⁠–⁠556), we find that it containd many editions of Lao’s treatise with commentaries. The first mentioned is The Tao Te Ching, with the commentary of the old man of the ho-side, in the time of the emperor Wên of Han (BC 179⁠–⁠142). It is added in a note that the dynasty of Liang (AD 502⁠–⁠556) had possessed the edition of “the old man of the ho-side, of the time of the Warring States; but that with some other texts and commentaries it had disappeared.” I find it difficult to believe that there had been two old men of the ho-side,9 both teachers of Taoism and commentators on our Ching, but I am willing to content myself with the more recent work, and accept the copy that has been current⁠—say from BC 150, when Ssŭ-ma Chʽien could have been little more than a boy. Taoism was a favourite study with many of the Han emperors and their ladies. Huai-nan Tzŭ, of whose many quotations from the text of Lao I have spoken, was an uncle of the emperor Wên. To emperor Ching (BC 156⁠–⁠143), the son of Wên, there is attributed the designation of Lao’s treatise as a ching, a work of standard authority. At the beginning of his reign, we are told, some one was commending to him four works, among which were those of Laozi and Chuang-tzŭ. Deeming that the work of Huang-tzŭ and Laozi was of a deeper character than the others, he ordered that it should be called a ching, established a board for the study of Taoism, and issued an edict that the book should be learned and recited at court, and throughout the country.10 Thenceforth it was so styled. We find Huang-fu Mi (AD 215⁠–⁠282) referring to it as the Tao Te Ching.

The second place in the Sui catalogue is given to the text and commentary of Wang Pi or Wang Fu-ssŭ, an extraordinary scholar who died in AD 249, at the early age of twenty-four. This work has always been much prized. It was its text which Lu Tê-ming used in his Explanation of the Terms and Phrases of the Classics, in the seventh century. Among the editions of it which I possess is that printed in 1794 with the imperial moveable metal types.

I need not speak of editions or commentaries subsequent to Wang Pi’s. They soon begin to be many, and are only not so numerous as those of the Confucian Classics.

All the editions of the book are divided into two parts, the former called “Tao”, and the latter “Tê”, meaning the Qualities or Characteristics of the Tao, but this distinction of subjects is by no means uniformly adhered to.

I referred already to the division of the whole into eighty-one short chapters (37 + 44), which is by common tradition attributed to Ho-shang Kung, or “The old man of the ho-side.” Another very early commentator, called Yen Tsun or Yen Chün-ping, made a division into seventy-two chapters (40 + 32), under the influence, no doubt, of some mystical considerations. His predecessor, perhaps, had no better reason for his eighty-one; but the names of his chapters were, for the most part, happily chosen, and have been preserved. Wu Chʽêng arranged the two parts in sixty-seven chapters (31 + 36). It is a mistake, however, to suppose, as even Mr. Wylie with all his general accuracy did,11 that Wu “curtails the ordinary text to some extent.” He does not curtail, but only rearranges according to his fashion, uniting some of Ho-shang Kung’s chapters in one, and sometimes altering the order their clauses.

Ssŭ-ma Chʽien tells us that, as the treatise came from Laozi, it contained more than 5,000 characters; that is, as one critic says, “more than 5,000 and fewer than 6,000.” Ho-shang Kung’s text has 5,350, and one copy 5,590; Wang Pi’s, 5,683, and one copy 5,610. Two other early texts have been counted, giving 5,720 and 5,635 characters respectively. The brevity arises from the terse conciseness of the style, owing mainly to the absence of the embellishment of particles, which forms so striking a peculiarity in the composition of Mencius and Chuang-tzŭ.

In passing on to speak, secondly and more briefly, of the far more voluminous writings of Chuang-tzŭ, I may say that I do not know of any other book so ancient a date as the Tao Te Ching, of which the authenticity of the origin and genuineness of the text can claim to be so well substantiated.12