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The Wang Bi Recension of the Laozi 27 the two sections already in the Mawangdui B manuscript indicate; that is, one of the pian deals with dao ⳬ, the other with de ോ. Wang Bi does use the term pian with regard to the macrostructure of the Laozi. In his commentary to Laozi 20, he quotes a passage from Laozi 48, with the indication that this could be found “in a, or in the, xia pian ʁῇ. In his LZWZLL he introduces two quotations from the Laozi by saying, “in the pian he says”61 (there is a variant writing for pian, namely, jing ⃻, but this would be the only time that Wang Bi referred to the Laozi as a jing); evidently pian here is a plural and refers neither to a first nor second pian but rather is used interchangeably with zhang. This is confirmed by the fact already mentioned, that one quotation from “a later zhang” crosses the traditional pian division, the quotation being in zhang 28 and the reference to zhang 40. In his Fushi ji ⵾ᯅ⥆ , a work written in 1111, Chao Yuezhi ᆸ⦦ʠ says: “If we can rely on Fu Yi, Wang Bi wrote at the top of his book [the Laozi]: ‘The Daodejing is not divided into Dao and De chapters.’”62 It was on the basis of this note that Dong Sijing ┷ඎヿ (1059–1129) wrote that Wang Bi did not divide the text in this manner,63 and in the LZWZLL, Wang Bi refers to his text simply as Laozi, never as “Daodejing,” or some similar title. This accords well with his polemical rejection of other Laozi interpretations current during his life. CONCLUSION The above evidence suggests the following: 1. The Laozi text transmitted over Wang Bi’s commentary is not Wang Bi’s text but rather a text gradually superseded by elements of the Heshang gong text. 2. The Wang Bi Laozi Receptus has to be abandoned as a base text for a critical edition of the Wang Bi Laozi. 3. Internal textual evidence suggests that the two “Old Manuscripts” of Fu Yi and Fan Yingyuan should be considered most closely affiliated with Wang Bi’s original text, the Mawangdui manuscripts being more distant members of the same textual family and the Guodian manuscripts even more distantly related. 4. A conflated version of the two “Old Manuscripts,” supplemented by the two Mawangdui manuscripts, forms the basic core for a reconstruction of Wang Bi’s recension of the Laozi, the Wang Bi Laozi. ...

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