So far, there are three versions of the Tao Te Ching, namely the DaoDe Jing of the Dao Jing, the Shu Shu Edition of the Tao Te Ching, and the Chu Jian Edition of the Tao Te Ching.
In the 1970s, the "Lao Tzu" ("Tao Te Ching") book was excavated from the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha, Hunan Province, divided into A and B, the content is more primitive, because the Book was excavated in the Mawangdui No. 3 Tomb, and Li Feng, the son of the owner of the No. 3 Tomb Li Cang, died in 168 BC, belonging to the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, more than 300 years away from Laozi, so people believe that the Book of Tao Te Ching is closest to the original version of lao tzu's Tao Te Ching, and the mystery of the Tao Te Ching is basically solved.
If you live in the week for a long time, see the decline of the week, you will go away. To Guan, Guan Ling Yin Xi said: "The son will write a book for me." So Lao Tzu wrote the first and second chapters of the book, saying more than 5,000 words of morality and morality, and he did not know the end. Or: Lao Lai zi is also a Chu ren, who wrote fifteen books, and used it for Taoists, at the same time as Confucius. One hundred and twenty-nine years after The death of Confucius, the history of Zhou Taishi saw Qin Xiangong: "The first Qin and Zhou he, together with five hundred years old, left, and left the seventy years old and the overlord came out." "Or It is Lao Tzu, or it is not, the world does not know whether it is or not."
This account of Sima Qian reveals four key pieces of information.
1, Lao Tzu saw the decline of the Zhou royal family, so he rode an ox to the west. Lao Tzu was a man of the late Spring and Autumn Period, and only after a hundred years did the Qin State have the Shang Martingale Transformation Law, when the Qin State did not have the strength to dominate the world, from the perspective of refuge, going to the Qin State was not a good choice; from the perspective of preaching, Lao Tzu did not need to go to the more barbaric Qin State. If this is the case, why did Lao Tzu go west in the case of the "decline of the Zhou"?
2, The original name of the Tao Te Ching is not the Tao Te Ching, but only "more than five thousand words of moral meaning".
02: The examination of modern scholars
In the 1920s, with the rise of skeptical antiquity, the discussion of the time when the Tao Te Ching was written became the focus, mainly divided into two camps, namely: "early out of the saying" and "late out of the story".
In the Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy, Hu Shi lists Lao Tzu in the first place, believing that the Tao Te Ching was written by Lao Tzu, but the Tao Te Ching was arbitrarily deleted and changed by later generations.
The representative of the "late theory" is Liang Qichao, who in the article "On the Book Written at the End of the Warring States", believes that the Tao Te Ching is a work of the end of the Warring States and the early Western Han Dynasty. There are many arguments for this statement, but there are four main ones.
1, Lao Tzu lived in the late Spring and Autumn Period, when the Qin State was not yet the strongest country, and it was illogical for Lao Tzu to go west to the "decline of The Zhou". If it is changed to the Zhou Taishi Dan era, when it was "Zhou will die, Qin will rise", It is more in line with the common sense that Taishi Dan left Zhou to go to Qin, and then was invited by Yin Xi to write the book "Tao Te Ching".
2, the Book of Rites mentions many times that Confucius asked the old man to ask the old man, "the old man who asked the news", pointing out that Lao Tzu strictly observed the Zhou rites, but the "Tao Te Ching" article doubted the etiquette and was dissatisfied with the ceremony, which was seriously inconsistent with the image of Lao Tzu in Confucius's eyes.
3, in the Tao Te Ching, there are many excessive and too free speeches such as "absolute benevolence and abandonment of righteousness" and "absolute holiness and wisdom", which are not quite like the speeches that attach importance to etiquette in the Spring and Autumn Period, but are more similar to the Warring States Era in the bloody background.
03: Guodian Chujian version of the Tao Te Ching unearthed
In 1993, in Guodian Village, Jingmen City, Hubei Province, Guodian No. 1 Chu Tomb M1 excavated 804 bamboo janes, of which 730 were zijian, a total of more than 13,000 Chu chinese characters, Chujian contained a variety of ancient books, three of which were Works of the Taoist School, the rest were mostly works of the Confucian School, and most of the documents recorded were discovered for the first time and were identified as national first-class cultural relics.
Guodian Chujian's version of the Tao Te Ching, the earliest version found in the mainland so far, provides first-hand information for uncovering the mystery of the Tao Te Ching.
First, the age of the Chujian edition of the Tao Te Ching
If the Chujian version is before the Zhou Tai Shi Dan, then the Zhou Tai Shi Dan can be denied. Because the Tomb M1 of Guodian No. 1 Chu Tomb was stolen and the burial items were incomplete, although a large number of bamboo janes were excavated, there was a lack of exact clues for dating, and experts could only infer from the tomb system and excavated artifacts.
The archaeological report of "Jingmen Guodian No. 1 Chu Tomb" records that Guodian M1 has the characteristics of the late middle of the Warring States period, and the burial age is from the 4th century BC to the beginning of the 3rd century BC. That is to say, it appeared around 350-290 BC, after the Zhou Taishi Dan.
Second, the word count of the Chujian edition and the Shushu edition is compared
The Chujian version of the Tao Te Ching has only more than 2,000 words, while the Shushu edition is divided into A and B, with 5344 words in the first and 5342 characters in the B version (124 words in the outer accent), and the former is only 40% of the latter.
In addition, the structure of the two chapters is not the same, and in some of the same chapters, the amount of text in the book version has increased.
04: The Chujian version should be the original version of Lao Tzu
Compared with the Shushu edition (similar to the Chuanshi edition), the Chujian edition has a strong color of the late Spring and Autumn period, and should be the original version of laozi's Tao Te Ching, the author gives four examples.
First, the anti-war ideology is not as strong as the book version
So far, there are three editions of the Tao Te Ching, namely the Chuan shi version, the Shu Shu edition, and the Chu Jian edition.
Equivalent to the thirty-one chapters of the heirloom edition, the Chujian version only says that "the soldier is not a gentleman's weapon", and the book version becomes "the ominous weapon of the soldier, the object or the evil", from "the instrument of the non-gentleman" to the "ominous weapon", the anti-war ideology is getting stronger and stronger.
Equivalent to the thirty-six chapters of the Chuanshi edition, the Chujian edition and the Shushu edition both say that "I do not want to be stronger than the world with soldiers", but the Shushu edition has more "where the master arrives, and the thorns are born", and the Chuanshu edition has more "after the army, there will be a fierce year".
The reason for this change in thinking is closely related to the background of the times, Lao Tzu lived in the late Spring and Autumn Period, and the intensity of the war could not be compared with the Warring States Era, and the Warring States Era could not be compared with the later Qin and Han Wars. Therefore, although Lao Tzu was anti-war, he was still relatively gentle.
Second, the Chujian version does not negate benevolence and righteousness
In the ChuJian version, it is said that "absolute wisdom abandons defense" and "absolute deception abandons falsehood", which is related to the late Spring and Autumn Period when the ceremonies collapsed and the rise of Eryu and self-deception. However, in both the heirloom and the shushu version, they both denied the benevolence and righteousness, and proposed "absolute holiness abandoning wisdom" and "absolute righteousness abandoning benevolence".
In the Chu Jian version, it is said that "the heavens and the earth are like a bridge? Void and unyielding, moving and healing. "The gist is that between heaven and earth is like a musical instrument, you don't blow it and don't move, you blow it when you blow it, and the person who moves it is the prince." However, the Shushu edition and the heirloom edition also have a cruel saying before it, that is, "The heavens and the earth are not kind, and all things are dogs, the saints are not kind, and the people are dogs." ”
There is a sentence in the Edition of the Book of Books that reads, "If you are not virtuous, let the people not argue", there is no sentence in the Chu Jian edition that is not virtuous. We all know that Mozi proposed Shangxian, and Lao Tzu was still before Mozi, so it can be seen that it is not accidental that there is no shangxian statement in the Chujian version.
Obviously, the Chujian version did not deny the saints, did not deny the benevolence and righteousness, while the Shushu version and the heirloom version completely negated the benevolence and righteousness and denied the saints. Comparing the background of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, it is not difficult to see that the Chujian version corresponds to the Spring and Autumn Period.
Third, the Chujian version has only one "take the world" remarks
In the Chu Jian version of the Tao Te Ching, there is only one mention of "taking the world", that is, "ruling the country with integrity, using troops with strangeness, and taking the world with nothing", and the "nothing" here refers to the Zhou royal family, and then restoring the status of co-lord of the world. This sentence is found in both the Biography and the Book of Books.
In the Shushu edition and the heirloom edition, it is mentioned many times to "take the world", such as: "I will want to take the world, and there will be no trouble." And there are things that are not enough to take the world", and "I will want to take the world and do it, I see that I have no choice." The world's artifacts, can not be done. Those who do will lose, those who persist will lose" and so on, which are very different from the Chu Jian version of "taking the world without anything", here is "will want to take the world", indicating that the unification of the world is the trend of the times.
Fourth, the unique Warring States mark in the Shushu edition
There are two ironclad evidences of the Warring States era in the Shushu edition, namely "the Lord of Ten Thousand Multiplications" and "Thirty Spokes in One Hub", which are not mentioned in the ChuJian edition.
The so-called "Lord of Ten Thousand Multipliers" means that there are ten thousand chariots, but in the entire Spring and Autumn Period, the strongest hegemons, the Jin State, the Qin State, the State of Qi, the State of Chu, etc., have no more than 5,000 military vehicles.
The so-called "thirty spokes in one hub", that is, "thirty spokes constitute a wheel", according to the scholar Guo Baojun's research, there was no such car in the Spring and Autumn Period, and it did not appear until the middle and late Warring States period.
It can be seen that the Chujian edition and the Shushu edition belong to two eras, one is the late Spring and Autumn Period, and the other is the middle and late Warring States period.
Perhaps, due to the loss of information in the inheritance process of the original version of Lao Tzu, and due to the continuous revision of it by the Zhou TaiShi Dan and the Han Dynasty, the "Tao Te Ching" has become more and more twisted, and there are many contradictions in sentences, so the Tao Te Ching has become more and more mysterious and difficult to understand.