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March 17 this year marks the 2593rd anniversary of the birth of Lao Tzu, the great thinker, educator and scholar of the mainland.
Lao Tzu is known as the first person in world philosophy and the father of Chinese philosophy, and Lao Tzu's five thousand words are also known as the king of all scriptures and encyclopedias.
The 5,000 words of Lao Tzu cover various disciplines such as astronomy, geography, humanities, society, nature, science and technology, military, ethics, etc., and are a great classic with subtle philosophy, far-reaching meaning, earth-shattering, and shocking the ancient and modern.
His philosophical ideas and ideas on self-cultivation and rule over the world have had a far-reaching impact on the inheritance and development of spiritual civilization on the mainland and even on the whole world for more than two thousand years.
Due to the relatively long history, there have been many versions of Lao Tzu's five thousand words, and the main ones with greater influence are three: one is the universal version, that is, the version commonly used in the mainstream cultural field of society, which is called the Tao Te Ching.
The other two are versions excavated by archaeologists more than 2,000 years ago: the Mawangdui Book (excavated in 1973) and the Guodian Chu Tomb Jane (excavated in 1993).
So, which of these three versions is the version that best conforms to the original intention of Lao Tzu?
First of all, look at the passage book, that is, the first 37 chapters are the "Dao Jing", and the last 44 chapters are the "Lao Tzu" version of the "De Jing", which is called the "Tao Te Ching" in the order of the passages.
There are also many versions of the popular version, of which the Kawakami public version is the earliest annotated version. In the history of more than two thousand years, this edition has been artificially revised and revised many times for various historical reasons, and many places have changed greatly from the original version of Lao Tzu.
Academics have been seeking the closest version to the original work of Lao Tzu, and there was no major breakthrough for many years, until 1973, when many precious cultural relics, including the book "Lao Tzu", were unearthed during the excavation of the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha, which caused a great sensation in the archaeological community.
More than two thousand years ago, "Lao Tzu" reappeared, and the problem of the "Lao Tzu" version made breakthrough progress. The relevant research team has worked hard and meticulously.
The publication of the edition of lao tzu, which had been sealed in the "time capsule" for more than two thousand years, completely broke people's inherent understanding of the Tao Te Ching.
The burial time of the book "Lao Tzu" is about 2170 years ago, which is about 50 years earlier than the oldest public version of the known version of Lao Tzu, and archaeology has also proved that the transcription time of Lao Tzu in the first and second editions of the Book of Lao Tzu is earlier than the burial time.
The transcription time is still different from the generation time of the mother book, and it is roughly estimated that the transcription time of the first edition of the Book of Lao Tzu is at least 100 years earlier than that of the oldest popular version of the Tao Te Ching, which is relatively close to the date when Lao Tzu was written.
The books and classics circulated in history will be edited to avoid the name of the emperor, and the popular version of Lao Tzu cannot avoid the fate of being edited.
Only in the Western Han Dynasty, because of avoidance, the "bang" in Lao Tzu was changed to "guo", "heng" was changed to "chang", "qi" was changed to "kai", "xun" was changed to "che", "Fu" was changed to "no", and so on, resulting in at least 100 major changes.
Not only was it a revision to avoid secrecy, but during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he also carried out the "deposing of hundreds of families and the exclusive respect of Confucianism" to maintain and consolidate the hegemony of imperial power.
The original work of Lao Tzu, which contains many "people-oriented ideas", has been deliberately tampered with many times, especially the original "De Chapter" in the front and the "Dao Chapter" in the back, and the "Dao Chapter" in the front and the "Moral Chapter" in the back.
This completely tampers with the original meaning of "entering the Tao with virtue" and "returning to the Tao with pure virtue" expressed in Lao Tzu's original self-cultivation thought.
The 1973 edition of Lao Tzu was written early and was sealed in an underground "time capsule" to avoid compilation, so it is closer to the original work than the popular version.
In particular, there are a large number of special characters defined as variant characters by conventional script research in the first book of Lao Tzu, which are actually unique to the Chinese culture of self-cultivation and truth-seeking.
It is a valuable cultural gene carrier, and the transcription of the first book is earlier, and it is also closer to the original meaning of Lao Tzu.
The book "Lao Tzu" and the popular version of the "Dao" are in the front and the "De" in the back, and the two versions are both "De" in the front and "Dao" in the back.
In particular, after the two articles, B Ben also has the words "de" and "Tao", which are clearly divided into titles.
The popular version of Lao Tzu is generally called the Tao Te Ching because the Tao Te Ching is in the front and the De Shu is in the back, while the Edition of Lao Tzu, which is more than two thousand years earlier, is in the front of the De Chapter and the Dao In the back.
Regarding the prefaces of the De And Dao chapters in Lao Tzu, other excavated cultural relics can be further corroborated: the written version of Lao Tzu found in the Dunhuang Tibetan Scripture Cave.
It is also mostly based on the "De Jing" as the upper volume and the "Dao Jing" as the lower volume, regardless of the chapters, which is obviously different from the order of the upper and lower volumes of the "Tao Te Ching" circulating today (the "Dao Jing" is in the front and the "De Jing" is in the back).
There are also the pre-Qin Han Feizi", "Xie Lao" and "Yu Lao" also said that virtue is in the front and the Tao is in the back.
The value status of Lao Tzu has been unanimously recognized by authoritative experts, and it is recognized as the closest version to the original work of Lao Tzu, and from the original source of the chapter order, Lao Tzu is called the "De Dao Jing" to be more in line with the original meaning of Lao Tzu.
However, in 1993, The excavation of Chujian 'Lao Tzu' in Guodian, Hubei Province, which preceded the version of Lao Tzu, found that there were many differences with the version of the Book of Books, which made the issue of the original version closest to Lao Tzu controversial again.
Which of the Chu Jian or The Shushu edition is closer to the original book of Lao Tzu? Is it true that the Chujian version, which copied earlier, must be more authoritative than the Shushu version?
Let's compare the two versions from multiple sides:
1. The specifications and honorability of the tomb are different
Chu Jian "Lao Tzu" is found from a small Chu state tomb in Jingmen, Hubei Province, through the study and analysis of excavated cultural relics, the owner of the tomb is the "Master of the Eastern Palace", from the specifications of the tomb, the owner of the tomb has been relatively depressed, the status is not very noble.
The Chu Jian found is also scattered, not deliberately protected, and the Chu Jian version of Lao Tzu is not particularly precious.
The Mawangdui Han Tomb excavated from the book "Lao Tzu" is the tomb of Li Cang and his family in changsha in the early Western Han Dynasty, with a magnificent and complex structure, and the overall protection of the tomb chamber is very strict.
Among them, in addition to the discovery of the book version of "Lao Tzu", a large number of other precious and exquisite cultural relics have also been found, and due to strict protection measures, no tombs have been stolen for more than 2,000 years.
The book "Lao Tzu" is also placed together with many other cultural relics that can be called fine works, and it has done a very good protection, and its value is naturally self-evident.
2. The writing materials are different
Guodian Chujian 'Lao Tzu' is recorded in bamboo jane. Ma Wangdui's Lao Tzu is recorded in the Book of Books.
Before the Western Han Dynasty, the writing was generally based on bamboo records, and the book was obviously much more precious and rare than the bamboo jane, and only the particularly precious written materials were recorded by the princes using the book of the book, so, according to the usual, the written information recorded in the book of the book was often more true and more precious.
3. The font is different
The text of Guodian Chujian 'Lao Tzu' is a typical Chu script, and the First Book of Lao Tzu unearthed from the Mawangdui No. 3 Han Tomb was copied with a seal book, and the B copy of Lao Tzu was written in Lishu Zhu.
Judging from the text, it also shows that the Chujian version is earlier than the Shushu edition.
4. The integrity of the content is different
Guodian Chujian's Lao Tzu is mainly Group A, Group B and Group C. The three groups cover a total of 31 chapters of the popular version of Lao Tzu, of which 23 chapters are recorded in the whole chapter and 8 chapters are excerpted.
A total of 2,046 words, the total word count is only equivalent to two-fifths of the word count of the Shushu edition or the popular version of Lao Tzu.
After the examination of authoritative experts, the bamboo simplified version of "Lao Tzu" is not a complete version. It is neither a complete manuscript nor a complete work of thought.
Compared with the shushu edition of Lao Tzu, the completeness alone cannot be denied to be greatly flawed, and although it was written earlier than the Shushu edition, it was completely insufficient to be the original Lao Tzu.
The Book edition of Lao Tzu is divided into A and B. However, both the A and B books are the full version of Lao Tzu, and the word count and the popular version are not much different.
In particular, at the end of the chapter, the second book also clearly records the word count of "Virtue Three Thousand Thirty-One" and "Dao Two Thousand Four Hundred twenty-six", which is also completely consistent with the "Records of History" on "Lao tzu" "more than five thousand words".
5. The structure of the chapters is different
Guodian Chujian edition of Lao Tzu from the A, B, C three groups of simplified texts, it is only three kinds of excerpts of the five thousand words of Lao Tzu.
It is excerpted separately from the five thousand words of Lao Tzu for a certain purpose, each with its own central idea, the content is relatively single, and there is no strict chapter structure.
Among them: the content of the chapters collected by Chu Jian's "Lao Tzu" Group A, mainly discussing "no action", "no desire", "lower" and "no dispute";
Group B of Chu Jian's "Lao Tzu" mainly highlights the "Lao Tzu" about the way of less selfishness and widowhood and long-term vision; chu Jian 'Lao Tzu' group C, the central idea is to expound the self-cultivation theory of "Dao Fa Nature" in "Lao Tzu".
Experts and scholars further studied and analyzed that the three groups A, B, and C of the simplified version of Lao Tzu are very likely to be some of the contents excerpted by the tomb owner "Master of the Eastern Palace" according to the needs of teaching, each with its own central content, each highlighting an ideological aspect of the five thousand words of Lao Tzu.
However, compared with the complete ideological system of the five thousand words of Lao Tzu, the three verses are imperfect, and there are still many important contents in the five thousand words of Lao Tzu that are not fully reflected in the three versions of A, B, and C.
Compared with Chu Jian's Lao Tzu, the Shushu edition is a complete five-thousand-word content in both the A and B editions, the entire volume is the "De Jing" in the front, the "Dao Jing" in the back, the A and B books are not divided into chapters, and the order of the content chapters is also completely consistent.
Through the comparative analysis of the three version systems, we find that the popular version of "Lao Tzu" has been circulating in society for a long time and has been artificially edited and revised by many people, which is quite different from the original work;
Although the chujian "Lao Tzu" is indeed the earliest "Lao Tzu" manuscript found so far, it is only equivalent to an excerpt of part of the content of "Lao Tzu", and cannot be called the original "Lao Tzu".
After research, relevant experts have further found that the content of the words and sentences of the Bamboo Jane "Lao Tzu" is also very close to the content of the A and B books of the Book of Lao Tzu excavated from the Tomb of Mawangdui Han in Changsha, which also corroborates the authenticity and value of the Book of Lao Tzu.
Although the history of the book "Lao Tzu" A and B is one or two hundred years later than the ChuJian version, the time is still very close to the era in which Lao Tzu lived, and there are very few contents that have been edited and tampered with.
Moreover, the content is complete, and there is no doubt that the book "Lao Tzu" is the closest version to Lao Tzu's original work so far, especially the Jia Ben is the most authoritative version of "Lao Tzu" found so far.
Reference book: Mr. Xiong Chunjin proofreads the Lao Tzu De Dao Sutra
Some of the information comes from the Internet
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Author: Guo Ruicheng with photo / Editor: Drinking water siyuan