Tao Te Ching

3) downwards, closing in many chapters with the notes made by the compiler himself in the course of his studies. Altogether the book sets before us the substance of the views of sixty-four writers on our short Ching. Julien took the trouble to analyse the list of them, and found it composed of three emperors, twenty professed Taoists, seven Buddhists, and thirty-four Confucianists or members of the literati. He says, “These last constantly explain Laozi according to the ideas peculiar to the school of Confucius, at the risk of misrepresenting him, and with the express intention of throttling his system;” then adding, “The commentaries written in such a spirit have no interest for persons who wish to enter fully into the thought of Laozi, and obtain a just idea of his doctrine. I have thought it useless, therefore, to specify the names of such commentaries and their authors.”

I have quoted these sentences of Julien, because of a charge brought by Mr. Balfour, in a prefatory note to his own version of the Tao Te Ching, against him and other translators. “One prime defect,” he says, though with some hesitation, “lies at the root of every translation that has been published hitherto; and this is, that not one seems to have been based solely and entirely on commentaries furnished by members of the Taoist school. The Confucian element enters largely into all; and here, I think, an injustice has been done to Laozi. To a Confucianist the Taoist system is in every sense of the word a heresy, and a commentator holding his opinion is surely not the best expositor. It is as a grammarian rather than as a philosopher that a member of the Ju Chia deals with the Tao Te Ching; he gives the sense of a passage according to the syntactical construction rather than according to the genius of the philosophy itself; and in attempting to explain the text by his own canons, instead of by the canons of Taoism, he mistakes the superficial and apparently obvious meaning for the hidden and esoteric interpretation.”

Mr. Balfour will hardly repeat his charge of imperfect or erroneous interpretation against Julien; and I believe that is equally undeserved by most, if not all, of the other translators against whom it is directed. He himself adopted as his guide the Explanations of the Tao Te Ching, current as the work of Lü Yen (called also Lü Tsu, Lü Tung-pin, and Lü Chʽung-yang), a Taoist of the eighth century. Through Mr. Balfour’s kindness I have had an opportunity of examining this edition of Lao’s Treatise; and I am compelled to agree with the very unfavourable judgement on it pronounced by Mr. Giles as both “spurious” and “ridiculous.” All that we are told of Lü Yen is very suspicious; much of it evidently false. The editions of our little book ascribed to him are many. I have for more than twenty years possessed one with the title of The Meaning of the Tao Te Ching Explained by the True Man of Chʽung-yang, being a reprint of 1690, and as different as possible from the work patronised by Mr. Balfour.

Fourth, the Tʽai Shang Hsüan Yüan Tao Te Ching⁠—a work of the present dynasty, published at Shanghai, but when produced I do not know. It is certainly of the Lü Tsu type, and is worth purchasing as one of the finest specimens of block-printing. It professes to be the production of “The Immortals of the Eight Grottoes,” each of whom is styled “a Divine Ruler (Ti Chün).” The eighty-one chapters are equally divided for commentary among them, excepting that “the Divine Ruler, the Universal Refiner,” has the last eleven assigned to him. The text is everywhere broken up into short clauses, which are explained in a very few characters by “God, the True Helper,” the same, I suppose, who is also styled, “The Divine Ruler, the True Helper,” and comments at length on chapters 31 to 40. I mention these particulars as an illustration of how the ancient Taoism has become polytheistic and absurd. The name “God, the True Helper,” is a title, I imagine, given to Lü Tsu. With all this nonsense, the composite commentary is a good one, the work, evidently, of one hand. One of the several recommendatory preface is ascribed to Wên Chʽang, the god of literature; and he specially praises the work, as “explaining the meaning by examination of the text.”

Fifth, a Collection of the Most Important Treatises of the Taoist Fathers (Tao Tsu Chên Chʽuan Chi Yao). This was reprinted in 1877 at Changzhou in Jiangsu; beginning with the Tao Te Ching, and ending with the Kan Ying Pʽien. Between these there are fourteen other treatises, mostly short, five of them being among Mr. Balfour’s Taoist Texts. The collection was edited by a Lu Yü; and the commentary selected by him, in all but the last treatise, was by a Li Hsi-yüeh, who appears to have been a recluse in a monastery on a mountain in the department of Pao-ning, Sichuan, if, indeed, what is said of him be not entirely fabulous.

Sixth, the Commentary on the Tao Te Ching, by Wu Chʽêng (AD 1249⁠–⁠1333) of Lin Chʽuan. This has been of the highest service to me. Wu Chʽêng was the greatest of the Yüan scholars. He is one of the literati quoted from occasionally by Chiao Hung in his Wings; but by no means so extensively as Julien supposes (“Observations Détachées” p.