A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing: Wang Bi's Commentary on the Laozi with Critical Text and Translation

A HISTORY OF WANG BI'S COMMENTARY ON THE LAOZI: THE EVIDENCE

Patronage and the Transmission of the Wang Bi Commentary 35 Kuniô has again pioneered such an approach in his Rôshi kôsei. Instead of following the Ming editions as everyone else had done, he looked for the earliest available texts of the Commentary and found them in the various editions of “collected commentaries” to the Laozi that had been put together between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. His focus though was on the different lineages of the text of the Laozi, not on the commentaries. So while quoting what he thought were the best commentary texts, he did not establish a critical text for the commentaries included in his work, including the Wang Bi Commentary. The Wang Bi Commentary quotations in these collections in turn might have been, and were, attached to Laozi texts from lineages other than that to which the Wang Bi Laozi belonged. A HISTORY OF WANG BI’S COMMENTARY ON THE LAOZI: THE EVIDENCE He Shao ̬Մ (236–ca. 300), whose dates overlap Wang Bi’s, writes in his “Biography of Wang Bi” that Wang “commented on the Laozi.”7 Anecdotes collected by Liu Yiqing ԰∑๸ (403–444) in his Shishuo xinyu (SSXY) ʊ⦦ᅘ⦝, as well as by Liu Xiaobiao ԰ઓᐻ (462–521) in his Commentary on that text, also refer to Wang Bi’s Commentary.8 Most of these anecdotes are from earlier collections. According to one, Wang Bi’s mentor, He Yan ̬ᇀ (ca. 190–249), rewrote his own commentary on the Laozi into two philosophical essays after hearing Wang Bi’s interpretation and acknowledging its superiority over his own analysis.9 This first report on Wang Bi’s Commentary best defines the reason for its survival. It could not claim a lobby of Confucian scholars, the court, Buddhists, or Daoists. It could rely only on Wang Bi’s analytical skill in handling the Laozi and on his philosophic depth. Time and again those who took it upon themselves to track down a copy and to spread it to the world were attracted by these qualities. Wang Bi’s fame and notoriety among his contemporaries and later generations rested on his two commentaries on the Laozi and the Zhouyi, and on his two treatises outlining their basic structure. Thus we have direct and indirect contemporary evidence that Wang Bi wrote a Commentary on the Laozi, and that it reached instant fame. The first three explicit verbatim quotations from this Commentary are in Zhang Zhan’s ೺᜜ (fl. 320) Commentary on the Liezi Ӭઈᘜ. (We leave aside implicit quotations.) Zhang Zhan was related to Wang Bi, and (parts of?) the Liezi that he put together came from the library of Cai Rong ▼ⴞ (133–192) that had come to the Wang family.10 Like the Zhuangzi 36 A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing Example 1 from Wang Bi on Laozi 6: 1. Zhang Zhan11 [⩟Ṙʃᔘᆯ⧨᪐ᧆ] ᤀഐᤀഛᤀⲻᤀⳮ⚠֝ʃՒ 2. Jizhu12 ⩟Ṙ⩟ʑतᤀ⩟ʬ " " " " " " " " " " " " 3. Jiyi13 " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 4. Daozang14 " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 5. Siku15 " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 1. ભ㄃ʃ⠭⩟˫ʠໞ≟ʃ⣲Ңഐᔍ⎏᧎ʬ⚠֝≟ʃ‫ר‬വ‫׻‬ᄑ⧨ʠ᪐ᧆ 2. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " ट߸ʠዾℛℛ 3. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 4. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 5. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " "䋙䋙 1. [᪐ᧆʠ⿧ᆯ⧨ट߸ʠዾℛℛ␵એᮢʠʃ՝]⿧᪐ᧆʠ໽᮫ʬ቏Ң໽ 2. ␵એᮢʠʃ՝ " " " " " " " " " " 3. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 4. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 5. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 1. ᮫⎞ठᏎ‫׺‬㋤ᄑ⧨ ट߸ʠዾʬᓥ⤵એ⴬ ʃ⣲Ңഐᓥ⤵˃⴬┋᧎˫ ᮝᄑሦℛ 2. " " " " " " " "ʠ " " " " " " " " "ԅ " " " " " " " " " " "ʠ " " " " 3. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 4. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 5. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " "䋙 1. ℛ␵એ ᤀ᧎ʃໞ ≟ʃՙʬᄑሦ ʃ՝ 2. " " "ʬ " " " "ᮢ " " " " " "ᮢ≟ " " 3. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 4. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 5. 䋙 " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " Patronage and the Transmission of the Wang Bi Commentary 37 commentaries by Xiang Xiu and Guo Xiang, Zhang’s Commentary is in the tradition of Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Laozi. It is thus probable for both domestic and scholarly reasons that Zhang Zhan was in possession of a good copy of Wang Bi’s Commentary. Where the Liezi and the Laozi overlap, Zhang Zhan sometimes quotes Wang Bi’s Commentary. Such quotations enclosed in another text often preserve parts of texts otherwise lost or an older reading of available texts. If the separate editions of the text were changed, these quotations very often were not adjusted. The first two quotations in Zhang Zhan’s Commentary are from Wang Bi’s commentary on Laozi 6. The editions used for comparison are the oldest available Song and Ming texts. The text in square brackets is the Liezi/Laozi text in Zhang Zhan’s edition that quotes it, however, as being from the Book of the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi shu. Example 1 (facing page) is from Wang Bi on Laozi 6. Example 2 is a quotation from Wang Bi on Laozi 73 not transmitted in any of the Song dynasty commentary collections: 1. Zhang Zhan16 ઝ⦨ʬ⤵⦨⋱ᵧट า ≻Ң‫⊊ڱ‬ːʬ 2. Daozang17 " " " " " " " "ʁʠ໽ณ "ᄑ⴬ " " " " 3. Siku18 " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " In both cases Zhang Zhan’s reading in the two major deviations—ᄑ⧨ ʠ᪐ᧆ versus ᄑ⧨[ʠ]ट߸ʠዾℛℛ␵એᮢʠʃ՝ and ⦨⋱ᵧटา ≻ versus ⦨⋱ᵧटʁʠ໽ณาᄑ⴬—is superior to all surviving texts, a unanimous opinion among modern editors. The surviving...