The second translator, who has translated the whole text, is Burton Watson of the Columbia University translation program. His The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, published by Columbia University Press in 1968 and still in print, is a joy to read. Clear and informative, it provides the most readable translation I have come across. I owe a great debt to Burton Watson, even if at times I differ from some of his usage and interpretations.
Finally, that master of translation – not necessarily for the ease of his translation but for the depth of his work – James Legge. Produced in the 1880s, his The Writings of Kwang Tze is a rich resource for any translator. It is to be found in volumes 39 and 40 of Sacred Books of the East, edited by Max Muller, Oxford University Press, 1891.
Apart from these books, I owe an immense debt of gratitude to colleagues. The Taoist scholars at the White Cloud Temple in Beijing, home of the China Taoist Association, taught me a great deal about how to read Chuang Tzu. To my old friend and first mentor in Chinese, Chang Wai Ming, I owe more than I can say. Over twenty years ago she taught me to love and enjoy the Chinese language and culture and I have never looked back. Her intensity of love for her own culture and language is truly infectious.
Jay Ramsay cannot read a word of Chinese – thank goodness! He thus makes a perfect sparring partner. As a poet he has a sense for English which challenges and thrills me as a writer. As someone who has entered into the Chinese world through the translations we have done together, he has a sense of Chinese symbolism and literature which is quite extraordinary. I owe him a great deal for making the most of my turns of phrase.
Elizabeth Breuilly is really the main other translator. Like Jay she knows no Chinese but she has a rigorous and vigorous understanding of English. She took sheets of barely legible scrawl sent back from all round the world – I translate as I travel – and turned it into readable English. She has given untold hours to this, as has Jo Edwards, who put most of it on disk. I cannot say how grateful I am to both of them for their work and for enjoying the old rogue Chuang Tzu as much as I have.
Martin Palmer
August 1995
Introduction
When the School of Taoism first began to look for its roots, sometime around 100 BC, it identified three great founder teachers. These were, and still are, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu.
Taoism is the search for the Tao, the Way of Nature which, if you could become part of it, would take you to the edge of reality and beyond. One of the core teachings of Taoism is that:
The Tao that can be talked about is not the true Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.1
In the light of this, perhaps it should not cause too much surprise to discover that, of these three founder-figures, only one can be definitely rooted in a given time and place! For Lao Tzu may well never have existed, and even if he did, he certainly didn’t write the Tao Te Ching, the book usually ascribed to him as author. Lieh Tzu may also be a fictional figure. Again, even if he did exist, the book which bears his name contains few of his actual words and was probably composed some six hundred or more years after his supposed lifetime.
Which leaves us with Chuang Tzu. Of all the figures whom Taoism claims as its own from the extraordinary period of intellectual ferment of the sixth to third centuries BC, only Chuang Tzu emerges from the mists as a discernible figure. And the figure who does emerge is one of the most intriguing, humorous, enjoyable personalities in the whole of Chinese thought and philosophy.
The only ‘historical details’ we have of Chuang Tzu’s life come from the first great historian of China, Ssu Ma Chien (died c. 85 BC). In his Historical Records, he tried to trace the histories of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. He virtually gives up on Lao Tzu, lamenting that he found it almost impossible to discover any facts or details about him.
With Chuang Tzu he had more success. He says that Chuang Tzu was born in the town of Meng, which is thought to be somewhere in the present-day provinces of Anhui or Henan. His personal name was Chuang Chou, and it is as Chuang Chou that he is usually referred to in the book which we know as Chuang Tzu. The title ‘Tzu’ found in the names of the three founder-figures is an honorific title meaning ‘Master’. In the text as translated here I have changed ‘Chuang Chou’ to ‘Chuang Tzu’ to avoid confusion.
Ssu Ma Chien goes on to say that Chuang Tzu worked as a minor official at Chi Yuan, which can be translated as ‘The Lacquer Garden’. Quite what this means is unclear. Was this just a name of a place, in the same way that Salford means ‘The Ford by the Willows’, or was it actually an area of natural beauty? As with so much in the early histories of Taoism, we don’t know.
The historian says that Chuang Tzu lived at the same time as Prince Hui of Liang (370–319 BC) and Prince Hsuan
