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A Note on the Question of Chapter Divisions in the Ma-wang-tui Manuscripts of the Lao-tzu

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2015

Robert G. Henricks
Robert G. Henricks*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
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Type
Research Notes
Information
Early China , Volume 4 , 1978 , pp. 49 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 1978

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References

FOOTNOTES

1. See their “Shih t'an Ma-wang-tui Han mu chung ti po-shu Lao-tzu” , Wen wu, 1974:11, pp. 1–7Google Scholar. They discuss the absence of chapter divisions on pp. 3-4.

2. Ibid., p. 4.

3. I present these ideas in an article entitled “Examining the Ma-wang-tui Silk Texts of the Lao-tzu: With Special Note of Their Differences from the Wang Pi Text.” This will be published in 1979 in T'oung Pao.

4. Ibid. For the text references in the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts see Lao-tzu: Ma-wang-tui Han mu Po-shu (Peking: Wen wu, 1976)Google Scholar. Chapters 64 and 65 are on p. 75; 67 and 68 are on p. 77.

5. The photoreprints are in ts'e 1 of the 8 ts'e Ma-wang-tui Han mu po-shu:1 (Peking: Wen wu, 1974).

6. In addition to the text cited in note 4 see 1) Wen wu, 1974:11 (chia text, pp. 8–14; i. pp. 15-20)Google Scholar; and 2) I-p'ing, YenPo-shu chu-chien (Taipei: I-wen, 1976) (chia - pp. 51–67; i. pp. 71-87)Google Scholar.

7. That these dots appear at the head of certain sections and not at the end of the preceding seems to follow from the fact that there 1s a long space in the chia text after chapter 79 (the last chapter in the Ma-wang-tui version of Part II. of the Lao-tzu), and the text of chapter 1 (parts I. and II. of the Lao-tzu are reversed in the Ma-wang-tui texts) begins at the top of the next line with a dot followed by tao, i.e. . See Ma-wanq-tui Han mu po-shu: 1, ts'e 1, chia photorepnnt, lines 92 and 93.

8. Apparently. But I do note some such marks between chapters 30 and 31, and 11 and 12.

9. There is another possible exception. There appears to be a small dot between chapters 12 and 13 although this may be an ink spot. See Ma-wang-tui Han mu po-shu:1, chia photorepnnt, line 113.

10. The text is in disrepair at many places where such dots might be found, e.g. between chapters 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 7 and 8, 9 and 10, 10 and 11, 14 and 15, 19 and 20, and 25 and 26.

11. For example shena is written with the homophone throughout the “Tao” section but always with in “Te”. And ch'i is written throughout the “Tao” section but always as in “Te”.

12. See Chan, Wing-tsit, The Way of Lao Tzu (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), p. 181Google Scholar.

13. Tr. by Chan, The Way, p. 183.

14. Note that the “therefore” () at the start of this line in the Wang Pi text is missing in the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts. One might conclude that a later commentator added it to better tie together these two sections of chapter 51.

15. Chan, , The Way, p. 192Google Scholar. It is interesting to see how Chan has al ready separated the text at the right places.

16. This is reconstructed from the i text. See Lao-tzu: Ma-wanq-tui Han mu po-shu, p. 77.

17. Note the parallelism: the sage recognizes disease as disease (): the people do not fear what is dreadful (), and therefore …