Abstract
This chapter discusses older scholarship and issues around the earliest text of Daoism. It reexamines A.C. Graham and D.C. Lau’s arguments about the Laozi’s dating, demonstrating the fallacy of their speculation, hypotheses, and argumentation. Comparing verse features of the Laozi with the Shijing and Chuci, Liu Xiaogan presents new statistical linguistic evidence that pertains to the possible dating of the classic, such as intensiveness of rhyming, mixed rhyming patterns, rhyming sharing patterns, repetition within and between chapters, sentence patterns, and interchangeable rhyming, which shows that the general features of the Laozi belong to an earlier period than some scholars have hypothesized. The author argues that there is more evidence to support a dating prior to the Zhuangzi than the other way round. He also proposes ways to improve the academic sophistication of textual studies.
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Notes
- 1.
See Chap. 20: “Daoism from Philosophy to Religion.”
- 2.
There was no concept of God in the sense of monotheism in ancient China. In early Chinese culture, God or gods were related to ancestral worship.
- 3.
The term “transformational oppositions” was suggested by Prof. Douglas L. Berger in a personal communication.
- 4.
The hypothesis that the Laozi has no author or many unconnected authors confuses the roles of textual initiator and later transcribers, editors, and revisers. We will discuss this point at the end of this essay.
- 5.
For a translation of the Guodian bamboo slip version, see Henricks 2000; for translations of the two silk versions, see Henricks 1991. For a recently published Western Han bamboo slip version, see Beijing University Institute of Archeologist Literature 2012. An English translation of this last may not be available.
- 6.
Ku 苦 County originally belonged to the state of Chen 陳, which was taken over by Chu 楚 in 478 BCE. Therefore Laozi was not of Chu by birth.
- 7.
- 8.
In this article, all emphases in quotations are mine.
- 9.
According to Wang Quchang 王蘧常, the number 129 years should be 105 (Wang 1993: 48, n. 5); however, this is not an important issue and neither number can be convincing because the historical record is insufficient to support a judgment one way or the other.
- 10.
Chapter 57 of the Laozi reads: “I take non-action (wuwei) and the people of themselves are transformed. I love tranquility and the people of themselves become correct” (Chan 1973: 166).
- 11.
Some scholars think the Shiji is not a reliable history, but a literary work. This view obviously exaggerates the literary element of this work and is neither comprehensive nor objective. Archeological discoveries have repeatedly proved that Sima Qian’s records have historical worth. Certainly literary skill and imagination are helpful in understanding and writing to reveal historical truth. Even modern academics write history that relies on certain literary techniques. For example, the books Jonathan D. Spence and Ray Huang wrote on Chinese history became bestsellers partly thanks to their storytelling skills and literary talents, which in turn strengthened their historical interpretations rather than weakened their works’ trustworthiness.
- 12.
When Giles mentions Hanfeizi’s work, he writes “[Hanfeizi] devotes the best part of two whole sections to ‘Explanations of Laozi’ and ‘Illustrations of Laozi’; and, in two places, writes as though he were consulting a written document” (Giles 1886: 231–32). (In this Giles quote I replace his Wade-Giles romanization with pinyin, and the emphasis is mine.)
- 13.
Kongzi jiayu and Shuoyuan were traditionally considered apocryphal, “false books.” However, numerous bamboo slips from an early Han tomb unearthed in 1973 at Ding Xian 定縣, Hebei 河北, contain passages identical to those in both those works. This suggests that the contents of these books were collected from pre-Qin or early Han sources.
- 14.
The translation of Liji is adapted from Legge 1986 with minor amendments for readability and accuracy.
- 15.
- 16.
The Guodian bamboo texts were published in 1998, by which point Graham had passed away and Lau was seriously ill.
- 17.
Feng Shengli found that while a fixed dipodic prosody was used in Shijing, a caesura-based prosody was developed in Chuci. According to his findings, the Laozi’s prosody is close to Shijing instead of Chuci. See Feng 2011.
- 18.
- 19.
The emphasis is mine.
- 20.
Baxter seems to hint that the Laozi also shares generic aspects with parts of the Guanzi. This is not really helpful because (1) the dating and authorship of the Guanzi are more difficult to decide, and (2) the Guanzi’s style is obviously different from that of the Laozi.
- 21.
The work described in this paper was partially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China. (Project no. CUHK447909)
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Liu, X. (2015). Did Daoism Have a Founder? Textual Issues of the Laozi . In: Liu, X. (eds) Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2927-0_2
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