textual criticism and the ma wang tui lao tzu

Harvard-Yenching Institute

Review: Textual Criticism and The Ma Wang tui Lao tzuAuthor(s): William G. BoltzSource: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Jun., 1984), pp. 185-224Published by: Harvard-Yenching InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2719098 .Accessed: 15/06/2011 06:07

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REVIEW ARTICLE

Textual Criticism and the Ma Wang tui Lao tzu

WILLIAM G. BOLTZ University of Washington

Chinese Classics: Tao Te Ching translated by D. C. Lau. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1982. Pp. lx+325. $23.00 (U.S.)

Of the Lao tzu, Tao te ching there are translations and there are translations. According to Bertrand Russell and the logicians, then, there must be at least four translations. In fact there are many more than four, of course, perhaps thirty times as many. This work by D. C. Lau is two of them.

Part One is an unchanged re-issue of Lau's 1963 translation, including the Introduction, Appendices, and other notes that accompanied its original publication. Part Two is a new translation based on the early Han silk manuscripts of the Lao tzu discovered by Chinese archeologists in 1973 in a tomb excavated at Ma wang tui ,%lT (Hunan province, near Changsha.) And it is this part that makes Lau's present work important, and sets it apart from the dozens of other translations of the Lao tzu.

The discovery of an extraordinarily valuable cache of manuscripts from around 200 B.C. in the tomb of a son of Li Ts'ang, the Marklord of Tai Riflj* (tomb no. 3 at Ma wang tui) in December, 1973, is a well known matter, and we do not need to go into it here.L

The original articles announcing the discovery and giving preliminary discussions and

185

186 WILLIAM G. BOLTZ

What is not so well known, in spite of all the attention that these manuscripts have attracted in the decade since their emergence, is exactly how the discovery of two early Han manuscripts of the Lao tzu bears on our understanding of the text. Certain first impressions and "automatic" assumptions seem intuitively obvious, and have been frequently noted. It would, for example, be natural to suppose that such early versions will be able to "correct" errors in the received text,2 because the antiquity of the manuscripts ought to make them a more accurate and faithful presentation of the "original" than the later transmitted versions. But being intuitively obvious does not guarantee that something is factually right. When the obvious is also right it is so not because it is obvious, but because the obvious happens to coincide with the demonstrable. In other words we must not take anything for granted when we can instead objectively evaluate the evidence and demonstrate the soundness of a conclusion. This kind of evaluation and demonstration is the task of textual criticism, and its ultimate goal is to "detect and eliminate errors in the text as it has come down to us, and so to restore, as nearly as possible, what was originally written by the author.... ." 3

Simply stated, textual criticism proceeds from a first stage, known as recensio, of comparing all known manuscripts and other significant editions of a work, thereby establishing a stemma codicum (see below, p. 194) to a second, examinatio, of sifting and choosing the "best"

descriptions of the finds are: Hunan Provincial Museum, "Ch'ang-sha Ma wang tui erh san hao Han mu fa chueh chien pao" -RtJ'Et,3 ku, W Wen wu 218 (1974.7): 39-48, 63; Hsiao Han , Ch'ang-sha Ma wang tui Han mu pu shu kai shu"

Atjp Wen wu 220 (1974.9): 40-44; T'ang Lan , et al., "Tso t'an Ch'ang-sha Ma wang tui Han mu po shu" , Wen wu 220 (1974.9): 45-57; and Kao Heng j# and Ch'ih Hsi-chao XON, "Shih t'an Ma wang tui chung ti po shu Lao tzu" f Wen wu 222 (1974.11): 1-7. More recently, a full account of the discovery and all of the artifacts and manuscripts found, replete with details and analysis, has been given by Ho Chieh-chun fj5j and Chang Wei-ming AkW Ma wang tui Han mu MX T fiO (Peking: Wen wu, 1982).

2 The term "received text" (Textus receptus, abbr. R) refers to the present form of any text that has been transmitted from the past through the hands of copyists, editors, and commentators, as opposed to being newly discovered. Although there are several different received versions of the Lao tzu (see note 8), they can, when convenient, be collectively referred to as the "received text."

3 Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Viking, 1955), p. 301.

THE MA WANG TUI LAO TZU 187

reading from among the variants presented. The "best" reading is best only in the sense that it is the reading with the strongest claim to being original. And that claim must be made, to the extent possible, on objective grounds, and in accordance with the evidence of the stemma codicum, as well as recognized rules of precedence. It cannot rest solely on an appeal to intuition, aesthetics, or an arbitrary assertion of what seems "obviously" right.

Textual criticism is not an exact science like physics or mathematics. It is important to realize that there is an element humain very near to the heart of the endeavor, that is, an allowable, indeed inevitable, element of subjective judgment involved. But the exercise of this subjective judgment must be governed by what A. E. Housman called simply "reason," or "common sense."4 It can be neither whimsical nor capricious, and must be consistent with the empirical data and acknowledged probabilities. There sometimes seems to be a kind of paradox in the descriptions and claims given for textual criticism. This arises from a failure to distinguish between the validity of a rule or principle in theory and its actual power in practice. Because textual criticism does not deal with rigidly quanti- fiable and constant matters like numbers and lines, but instead with "the frailties and aberrations of the human mind" (Housman, ibid.), the mechanical application of whatever sets of rules or principles can be codified and diagrammed cannot be counted on to yield successful results in every case. The mechanic must introduce his own thinking into the process, and this on a case by case basis. There are rules, to be sure, and we ignore them at our peril. But they are often better thought of as guidelines for the textual critic to follow as long as they do not lead into patently improbable conclusions. When they do, the critic's judgment and common sense must alert him to this, and show a better solution. In theory the rules may be incontrovertible; in practice the critic has the right, even the obligation, to modify or abandon them when the evidence of a given case in his judgment calls for it. In all events, textual criticism can only be imperfectly and very unsatisfactorily described in the abstract. Far better to illustrate the procedure with specific and

4 A. E. Housman, "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism," Proceedings of the Classical Association 18 (1921): 67-84.


concrete examples, to show what it is and what it is not, how it works and how it does not.

The procedures of textual criticism, including the provision for ad hoc modification or rejection of the usual rules, guarantee, as much as anything can, that the conclusions reached will be sound. The version of the text that is established on the basis of the careful application of these procedures will be demonstrably the best text obtainable, again defining best as "closest possible approximation to the original." Textual criticism does not, and cannot, promise us the original; it guarantees only to give us something that is closer to the form of the original than anything else we might have access to, or be able to come up with, short of a new discovery. In practice there are many instances, of course, where the evidence is not clear- cut, and points equally persuasively in two or more directions, and where it seems a toss-up which of the variants constitutes the best reading. In some of these cases a sensitive textual critic with a keenly honed "feel" for the language of the text, for other texts of the same time and genre, and with broad experience in the vagaries and vicissitudes that characterize the transmission of texts in general, can see at once the preferred reading, and defend it convincingly. In other cases even the most experienced and sophisticated textual critic must acknowledge the indeterminate nature of the evidence, and allow for the various alternatives, rather than arbitrarily choosing one reading as preferable to others.

None of this concern with textual criticism, and with establishing the best text, would be pertinent if Lau were simply translating a given version of the Lao tzu, irrespective of which version that might be. Textual criticism becomes important when, in the best of all possible worlds, we expect a translation to be based on the best text recoverable. As Dr. Pangloss will have his due, Lau does not claim to have carried out a thorough text critical study of the Lao tzu, which in any case would be a formidable and demanding task, hardly confinable to a single volume,5 nor does he proffer his

5 The only pre-Han text that can be said to have been established in accordance with the strict principles of modern textual criticism is the Shen tzu =f in the meticulously detailed and exhaustively justified study by Paul M. Thompson, The Shen tzu Fragments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). The challenge, as Thompson sees it, is "that all ancient Chinese texts at least must be re-edited" if not critically rectified (p. xvii).


translation as being based on the best possible recovered text. But neither does he translate a single, given version of the Lao tzu, as the concluding remarks of his introduction (p. 184) imply. At the outset of that introduction Lau raises the problem of the choice of a version for translation, implying that a translator must just pick a text from among the extant and available editions, with all its flaws seen and unseen, and translate that. In 1963 he picked the Wang Pi version, and published his very successful translation of that, republished here, as we have said, as Part One. With the discovery of the Ma wang tui silk manuscripts dating from about 200 B.C.,

the choice is no longer open to much debate clearly this is the version that should be translated now. Lau explains his purpose this way:

It is hoped that this revised translation of the Lao tzu done from Ma wang tui manuscripts will enable the serious student of the work who is unable to cope with the Chinese to have access to this important early version of the text. (p. 184).

But there is a hitch in this otherwise agreeable endeavor. Two manuscripts were discovered, not one, and those two are about a generation apart in time and textually distinct at many points. Which one should constitute the basis of a new translation? Lau answers: "the text used for the translation is a conflation of the texts of the two Ma wang tui manuscripts..." (p. 185, emphasis added). Now the cat is out of the bag. The translation is not just based on one given version after all, but is based on a conflation of two. We must now ask what is a "conflation," and how is it arrived at? The

Regrettably, reviewers of Thompson's formidable work on the Shen tzu have apparently missed the main point and have lamented that "practically nothing is said about [Shen Tao's] thought," (W. Allyn Rickett, Review of Thompson, JAOS 103.2 [1983]: 460-61), and criticized "the book's refusal to discuss any of the ideas of Shen Tao (Derk Bodde, Review of Thompson, T'oung pao 66 [1980]: 309-14, emphasis original), as if no study of an early Chinese text from any perspective, or with any purpose, other than the "philosophical" is worthy. What should be clear is that Thompson's work is philological, not "philosophical," and that the philological study of an ancient text is an indispensable propaedeutic to the kind of interpretive, "idea-oriented" pursuits that the reviewers find missing. Thompson has given the only full example in recent sinological literature of how the text must be established before the interpretation can begin. What good would conclusions about Shen Tao's ideas be if it turns out that the text on which these conclusions were based is not an authentic version after all? The only way to guarantee that this does not happen is to do all of the required textual spade work first, even if that is a demanding and tedious task.


answer is that it is what Lau thinks the text ought to be when the actual texts of the A and B manuscripts, as the two Ma wang tui manuscripts are commonly called, differ. So Lau is in effect translating what he considers the "best" (or in this case "better") text of all possible versions (possibilities here being usually limited to two, either the A or the B manuscript.) In view of this we are not only justified in asking how Lau has chosen his preferred readings, we are obliged to ask it. Since the procedure for choosing a preferred reading is exactly what textual criticism is all about, what we are really asking is does Lau's "conflated" version of the A and B manuscripts follow from the proper and careful application of the processes of textual criticism to these two texts.

Part Two of the work, the new translation, includes an introductory essay called simply "The Ma wang tui Lao tzu" in which Lau presents the basic facts of the manuscript discovery, the nature of the manuscripts, and, most importantly for the present work, his approach to the procedures of textual criticism.6 This last he does almost entirely by example, without explicitly establishing or defining any of the general principles that may have governed his work. Lau does mention, however briefly, the "business of textual criticism," citing a line from the renowned German philologist Paul Maas' work Textual Criticism stating that "the business of textual criticism is to produce a text as close as possible to the original."' Then he goes on to modify this definition as follows:

This may be the case where an autograph manuscript is known to have existed. Where no such manuscript can be presumed, the aim of textual criticism can only be more modest. For most ancient Chinese works, authorship is merely a matter of tradition. As late as the early Western Han no standard text existed even for some of the Confucian classics.... This is also most likely to be the case with the Lao tzu. There probably existed at the same time a number of versions belonging to independent textual traditions. That being the case, we cannot hope that with the discovery of two early Han manuscripts we are nearer to the original,

if, indeed, we can talk about an original (pp. 183-84, emphasis added).

6 The substance of this 33 page essay is virtually identical with the content of his two Ming pao F articles in Chinese, "Ma wang tui Han mu po shu Lao tzu ch'u t'an" , ,5 Mingpao 17.8 (1982): 11-17 and 17.9 (1982): 35-40.

7Paul Maas, Textual Criticism, trans. Barbara Flower (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 183.


While it is, of course, true that Maas was concerned mainly with Greek and Latin texts, the principles of textual criticism that he adumbrated do not become any less valid when applied to non- Graeco-Latin materials. Lau's suggestion that somehow the dis- cipline of textual criticism takes on a new and more modest aim in the Chinese realm because, apparently, in China (autograph) manuscripts cannot be presumed to have existed is unwarranted. If manuscripts of ancient texts cannot be presumed to have existed, what did exist in their stead? Where did the texts come from, if not from an original ? Are we to suppose that several different manuscripts of a given text simultaneously emerged at the first moment of textual nascence? What Lau has confused here, and this is given away by his use of the word "autograph," is actual authorship and known authorship. As Appendix i of the 1963 translation, and included in Part One here, Lau has written a lucid and protrep- tic essay called "The Problem of Authorship." There he scrutinizes the whole problem of determining authorship of pre-Han texts, and concludes quite rightly that traditional attributions of authorship cannot be taken as fact without concrete, demonstrable evidence. With respect to the Lao tzu, Lau's view is that no part of the traditional account that takes a person called Lao tzu, a few years Confucius' senior, and who had ostensibly instructed Confucius in ritual matters, as the author of the Lao tzu can be considered factual. In Appendix ii to the same earlier translation, "The Nature of the Work," Lau concludes that the text of the Lao tzu is "no more than a collection of passages with only a common tendency in thought," and does not represent the work, or sayings, of a single person (p. 134). Moreover, he goes on to surmise that the text seems to have still been in a fluid state in the second half of the third century B.C., but by the middle of the next century it had "assumed a form very much like the present one."

These two essays remain sound and persuasive analyses of the thorny problems of authorship and the nature of the text, and we are in substantial agreement with the conclusions of both of them. Nevertheless, the impossibility of naming an author, or of pin- pointing the circumstances of a text's compilation does not mean that there was never an original manuscript. Even if the text is an amalgam of an unknown number of separate textual bits and pieces


of heterogeneous provenance, as Lau is inclined to think, there still must have been a specific time when some particular individual brought together this stray textual debris into a single work which then constituted the original of what we now know as the Lao tzu. What is more, this unknown individual presumably did so with some purpose in mind, and therefore the work takes on the role of a unified, integral text, and becomes a part of the literary and intellectual history of the time. It is, then, this text that is the original, and is deserving of study as a single entity, and that one could attempt to recover through the regular procedures of textual criticism.

Such would be, as we mentioned above, a formidable undertaking. It is not the one that Lau sets himself, nor should it be the one we expect of him in this book. What he does set out to do, to translate a "conflated" version of the two Ma wang tui manuscripts, is actually a two-part endeavor. Before the matter of translating can be approached Lau must establish his "conflated" text. The first step in doing that is to demonstrate that it in fact makes sense to conflate these two manuscripts. The simple fact that both manuscripts were discovered in the same tomb at the same time, and have come to be known by the same name, is entirely fortuitous, and has no real bearing on whether the two actually represent a single textual tradition, a condition that is essential if they are to be "conflated" and treated as one, or not, in which case their formal relation to each other and to other extant Lao tzu texts must be ascertained before any comparisons will have any meaning. This question can only be answered by a careful examination of the two manuscripts alongside the recognized received texts.8 As it happens, even a cursory comparison of these versions shows that the two Ma wang tui manuscripts are more similar t-o each other than either one is to any of the other extant Lao tzu texts, and so treating them as two

8 The two principal versions of the received text are (i) the Wang Pi IE3/Ho-shang kung NiiJJ edition, and (ii) the ku pen -N* edition, also known as the Fu I f edition after the T'ang scholar who first collated the various Lao tzu texts that he had available, and produced an "ancient edition." Other important versions of the Lao tzu include the stele texts dating from the reign of T'ang Hsuan tsung, and the Tun-huang manuscript copies, the most important of which is the Hsiang erh flX text, for which see Boltz, "The Religious and Philosophical Significance of the 'Hsiang erh' Lao tzu wt in the Light of the Ma wang tui Silk Manuscripts," BSOAS 45.1 (1982): 95-117.


representatives of a single line of transmission, distinct from the received versions, is fully justified. This can be readily illustrated if we look at ch. 1 as an example (using "A" and "B" to designate the two Ma wang tui texts and "R" to designate the received text) 9

A: < (1) B: A:Th- 00iI00 FDDDDIFIF'

R: igi1E --lil J M$01

A: II Itilp"<it AWI (2) B: I_,?AftL0 tRV XW

R: 40X I& _' l tRAMt;Lf

A: D'? 'l iiX (3) B: tA'fC D DF E1 1

R: & 41oi 41NAO/Y ' It 'N

A: itFTh WAl?lw 1;t 3 E * (4) B: wtlE PAItlw A;LI'V3 ;

R: tP l A$PMl Il ttA;: S; -V%*

In line 1, in spite of the defective state of the B manuscript, we can see that both manuscripts end with the phrase heng ming yeh iTh-Z41U where the R text has just ch'ang ming 91. We shall formulate this kind of correspondence between textual variants as

A,B : heng mingyeh ' 1t :: R : ch'ang ming t.

Likewise, we can list the other variants in ch. 1 as follows:

line 2. A,B : wan wu t :: R : t'ien ti )Uft A,B : shihyeh ki :: R : shih 4p A,B: muyeh 1 tR :: R:mu a

line 3. A,B :yiyeh rk :: R :yu * (twice) A,B : so chiaor :: R : chiao .k

9 Characters missing because of a defective or damaged manuscript are indicated by a box, D. The graph 5 is the regular form for - found in both manuscripts, the full form t in line 3 of A here being exceptional. The caret-shaped mark < seems to function as a kind of commatic sign that occurs sporadically, often in A, rarely in B, and inconsistently at major syntactic breaks in the text. See Robert G. Henricks, "A Note on the Question of Chapter Divisions in the Ma-wang-tui Manuscripts of the Lao tzu," Early China 4 (1978- 79): 49-57.


line 4. A,B: liang che Mt R: tz'u liang che kPit A,B:O : : R : erh ffi A,B: t'ung wei PJMW R: t'ung wei chih hsuan IR?I

Certain generalizations and observations can be made from these data, the most apparent perhaps being that the manuscripts tend to have a number of appositional sentence finalyeh's -, that are not present in the R text. This holds for the entire Lao tzu text, and in fact the impression that we get here in ch. 1, that the A and B manuscripts have much in common with each other as against the R text, is sustained when we make a comprehensive comparison of all eighty-one chapters. Technically what we are doing in this kind of comparative examination is constructing a stemma codicum, that is, a tree-branching diagram of the various known versions of the text, and determining that the two Ma wang tui manuscripts devolve from a single node on that tree. Because the precise relation of the various R versions of the Lao tzu to one another is still far from certain, we can only treat all of them as on a par, representatives of a single line of transmission from c, the original. This is an ad- mitted over-simplification, but the history of the R versions is neither Lau's concern in the present work, nor ours here. So our "working draft" stemma codicum looks like this:

co

A B R {R1, R2, R3, . . . Rn}

The left branch of the "tree" is the Ma wang tui branch, called

I,u with two extant witnesses, the A and B manuscripts. Lau's "conflated" text is what we have labelled ,u, and is technically known as the Ma wang tui exemplar, that is, the source of A and B, and is theoretically recoverable from the evidence of A and B, sometimes with reference to outside witnesses. Places in the text where the Ma wang tui manuscripts agree with each other, but differ from all other known witnesses (e.g., the kinds of variants we listed above for ch. 1) clearly set these two manuscripts apart as more closely related to each other than either is to any third text. Such textual variations are known as conjunctive variants because


they serve to "conjoin" the two manuscripts together into a single branch of the stemma. To the extent that they also set the Ma wang tui manuscripts off from other lines of transmission they are what may be called separative variants.10 Those places where the two manuscripts differ from each other also constitute separative variants since they serve to show that A and B are not identical. While Lau is correct in regarding A and B as from the same textual tradition, their comparison and conflation, that is, the establishment of the exemplar ,u, is not an automatic, self-evident, or trivial matter. It is in fact nothing less than one part of the overall textual criticism of the Lao tzu, the recovery of one node on the stemmatic diagram.

The construction of a stemma codicum is based on a comparison of all known manuscripts and other significant versions of a text, where by "significant" we mean non-identical. This is the first step of the textual criticism, called recensio. The second step is the examinatio, the stage at which the critic scrutinizes the different versions, and the variants between them, in the light of their stemmatic relation, and decides what is "original" (authentic) and what is "innovation" (error). This process is carried out working backwards from the evidence of the extant texts (represented by Roman majuscules at the end points of the branches of the stemma) to the intermediate exemplars, that is, the sources of the extant witnesses, (represented by Greek letters at the nodes of the branchings), ideally ending up with a reconstructed original, o. In practice, of course, it rarely if ever works out so neatly that even the intermediate nodes, much less the original, can be unambiguously recovered. This is principally because of one thing: contamination. The opera- tion just described of working one's way "up" the tree by successive comparisons and reconstructions presupposes only the vertical transmission of the texts. In reality there is also an inevitable horizontal influence from text to text across branch divisions, and this renders the theoretical precision of the examinatio imperfect.

Heretofore all translations of the Lao tzu have been of a version from the right branch of the stemma codicum, that is, one of the R texts. Lau's present translation is the first to ever be made of a non-

10 These are sometimes called conjunctive errors and separative errors, but to use the term "error" here would imply that we know the Ma wang tui variants are not original, and the R version is; but we know no such thing.


R text, of the left branch of the stemma, and for this reason alone is a major contribution to the history and exegesis of the text. For his purposes Lau in effect must reconstruct the node we have labelled ,, the Ma wang tui exemplar, based on his study of the two witnesses, A and B. This is what he has called the "conflation" of the two manuscripts. The rules for establishing ,I are, in general, what one would expect as a matter of logic and common sense. ,u is known where:

1. if A= B, then ,u also =A and B; 2a. if A#B, and A=R, then u=A; 2b. if A #B, and B=R, then ,t=B; 3. if A # B, and neither A nor B=R, then ,u must be

determined on a case by case basis, or may not be determinable at all.

There are two important points about these rules: 1. As we have said, the rules are only guidelines. If they lead to improbabilities, or conclusions that are in some other respect inconsistent with the reason and common sense of the critic in a given instance, they should be disregarded in that instance, and alternate explanations sought. 2. Rule 3 is essentially the codified allowance for the exercise of this same reason and common sense on the part of the critic. Under the conditions of rule 3 the critic must decide each item on the evidence and merits of the individual case without the benefit of codifiable analogy or generalization. It is the talent for deftly invoking his reason and common sense in these ad hoc circumstances that makes a successful textual critic, and that reflects the element of subjective judgment that we stressed above.

It should be clear that when there is so much latitude for subjective judgment no two critics will agree one hundred percent of the time. A large part of the scholarship surrounding textual criticism consists of debate over different solutions to problems of recovering authentic readings in texts, precisely because one man's common sense may be another man's nonsense. Nevertheless, the endeavor is a serious one. If Lau's translation is to represent the Ma wang tui text, where that is defined as the best recoverable text of the Ma wang tui line of transmission, i.e., ,I, then the choices he makes in conflating these two manuscripts must be defensible either according


to the rules of textual criticism, or through a clear demonstration of why the rules do not apply in a given case. They cannot just be based on an intuitive or aesthetic feeling. Many times his choices are defensible, though he rarely defends them directly; but not in- frequently his choices seem arbitrary, and do not follow from the recognized guidelines. Since in most cases we are not given any reasons behind these choices, we can only conclude that they have not been made on text critical grounds. This substantially weakens the claim that the "conflated" text, and its English translation, represent the Ma wang tui Lao tzu.

We can best see the kinds of problems involved by examining some specific examples, showing Lau's solutions, and giving when necessary alternative suggestions. Two things should be kept in mind: first, because Lau was preparing a translation, not a scholarly treatise on the textual history of the Lao tzu, he normally does not give his reasons for preferring a particular reading. So in those cases where we may disagree with him we do not have the advantage of knowing why he chose as he did, and he does not have the advantage of having a defense of his choice on record. Secondly, all proposed solutions to difficult textual problems are statements of opinion, judgments on the part of the individual critic, and should not be taken to be representations of fact. Thus, when we suggest a reading or interpretation different from what Lau has proposed we are only allowing for another possibility, suggesting an alternative for consideration. We do not mean to insist that Lau is wrong, only that there is another solution worthy of attention. The examples we cite also illustrate the variety of textual problems that confronts anyone working on these manuscripts.

The rules we listed above that govern the establishment of , can be divided into two types: (a) rule 1, applicable when the two Ma wang tui manuscripts agree with each other, or differ in what can be shown to be only a graphic, not a lexical, variation; and (b) rules 2a, 2b, and 3, applicable when the two manuscripts do not agree with each other. In the former case the reconstruction of u is automatic, it matches A and B. (If all eggs laid by a given bird hatch into partridges, the mother is not likely to be other than a partridge.) For the latter, on the other hand, the choice for ,u depends on more than just A and B; it may depend on reference to


an outside witness (rules 2a, 2b), or on any of a multitude of other factors specific to the individual case. We will examine and exemplify the second type first, starting with rule 3, which is, as we have said, tantamount to the absence of any real rule, and move backwards to rules 2b, 2a and then 1.

Rule 3. If A # B, and neither A nor B=R, then It must be determined on a case by case basis, or may not be determinable at all.

Ch. 66, line 6 occurs as follows:

A: J B: /DTfIE,F] R: lAl

It is clear that this is a rhetorical question (compare R), and that yii 9f is the final interrogrative particle. A. C. Graham has shown that this word 9 yii < * (g) rag is the interrogrative final particle that comes at the end of appositional questions, that is, the question form of appositional sentences of the form X Y 4Ai, where both X and Y are nouns or noun phrases. Since X Y 4U, means basically "X=Y," the question transformation X Y 9f means "does X=Y?" Graham speculated that the word 9yui < * (g)rjag is in origin no more (and no less) than a phonetic fusion of t+*, that is, (g)rjarx+gag, consisting of the initial (g)rj- of the first syllable and the final -ag of the second, and he is undoubtedly right.LL

"A. C. Graham, "The Relation Between the Final Particlesyu A andyee 4,," BSOAS 19 (1957): 105-23. The OC *(g)rjarx for 4j, is especially problematic. Tung T'ung-ho has argued with good reason thatyeh 4-, ought to be considered in the Shih ching , chia {? rhyme group, rather than the ko T group, where it is usually placed (see his Shang kuyinyiun piao kao ? , Institute of History and Philology Monograph Series i, no. 21 [Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1967], p. 93). But this alternative affects only its final, and does not bear on the phonetic basis for Graham's hypothesis, since that has only to do with the OC initial ofyeh.

N.B., Old Chinese (OC) reconstructions are marked with an asterisk (*) and are given according to the system outlined by Li Fang-kuei 4 in his two works: "Shang ku yin yen chiu" L? i:f, CHHP, n.s. 9.1-2 (1971): 1-61 (English trans. by G. L. Mattos, "Fang-kuei Li: Studies on Archaic Chinese," MS 31 [1974-75]: 219-87), and "Chi ko shang ku sheng mu wen t'i" f fp

- C/hiang kung shih shih chou nien chi nien lun wen chi * *f[t ,9fN (Taipei, 1976), pp. 1143-50. However, in most cases the reconstructions are my own interpretation of that system, particularly with


Since we have the sentence final interrogative X, allowable only at the end of an appositional question, the grammatically correct negative is Jr fei, not T- pu. The choice between the alternatives presented by the two manuscripts is clear, and Lau selects the version with Jrfei for his conflated text. The R text does not have a rhetorical question at all, but a contextually equivalent direct statement. Hence the contrast is ,u: "Is it not because he is without contention . . . vs. R: "It is because he does not contend ..

(Lau, pp. 239, 99 respectively). The correspondence A: :: B: t is a trivial graphic distinction,

the graph with DC (diasemantic classifier) 149, "J, is a well attested allograph of,* standing for the word cheng "contention, contend."

Ch. 8, line 1 allows for the possibility that cheng "contention" appears in still a third graphic guise, and at the same time gives a good example of how the judgment of the individual critic deter- mines the choice of reading:

A: f'JJtig$ . B: frJIj4qJijt$ . R:

Lau in a very interesting and thought-provoking interpretation of this line takes the clause 0)9* T as "vie to dwell in the place detested by the multitude," the subject being the "water" of the first clause. Thus he regards the graph e% in A as a variant of i, standing for the word cheng "contend, vie," and takes B as the preferred version.

One alternative, which I have proposed elsewhere,12 would be to punctuate after / as is traditionally done, and translate "water, good at benefitting the myriad things, manifests quiescence," taking 7# as ching "quiescent," and regarding the B manuscript's W as a graphic alternate for the same word ching. All extant received versions of the text have >F4 instead of 40/4. I explained this as arising at some point when the graph e was no longer recognized as standing for ching "quiescent," but only for cheng "contentious,"

respect to the initials. Middle Chinese (MC) forms follow Li's system (1971), which does not vary a great deal from that in Bernhard Karlgren's Grammata Serica Recensa (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1957; rpt. from BMFEA 29 [1957]).

12 Boltz, "The Religious and Philosophical Significance," p. 100.


thus making it necessary to "correct" the apparent meaning of the line from saying that water was contentious (g) to water is not contentious (>15I). Such an explanation would hold for Lau's interpretation as well. I do not see any decisive reason to choose one solution over the other. Both rely on the assumption that the two words ching <*dzjingx "quiescent" and cheng <*tsring "contend" are phonetically similar enough to be written with the same graph, regardless of which word is taken as the one intended in the original text, and neither solution seems inherently "simpler" than the other. I will confess, in the end, to finding Lau's suggestion quite appealing. Ch. 14, line 3:

A: 1 B: >Ul F>5I4. R: Af /T-.

A: {4 [hap. gr., & *hrjagw(h)] :: B: X *mljiagwh "wrong" :: R: m

*kiagwx "dazzling". The graph {R in A is a hapax graphomenon, that is, a graph that is

unknown except for its sole occurrence here. To ascertain something about what word is stands for we must see what can be determined about its pronunciation. Graphically it is unambiguously constituted of & shou < *hrjagw(h) modified by the addition of DC 9 h. Given the frequency with which DC 9 combines with a phonophoric element ("phonetic" in more common, but less accurate termi- nology, abbr. ph.), it is most likely that this is such a compound graph, and that V *hrjagw(h) is the ph., a graph that is itself com- posed of a classifier and a ph. The ph. of a *hrjagw(h) is q *kljagw, unattested in pre-Han texts, but glossed in the Shuo wen chieh tzu as

tUn,w1 4 "to wrap around each other, twist together with each other",l3 clearly the same word as MIj *kljiagwx. The Shuo wen definition incorporates the near-riming binome #jAV *k(l)jiagwx-ljagwx, probably intended as a paronomastic representation of the bisyl- labified, or dimidiated, original word with initial *kl-. 14 The meaning

13 Shuo wen chieh tzu ku lin Nf* (abbr. SWKL), Ting Fu-pao T4{ ed. (1927; rpt. Taipei: Commercial Press, 1970), p. 945.

14 For dimidiation, see P. A. Boodberg, "Some Proleptical Remarks on the Evolution of Archaic Chinese," HJAS 2.3-4 (1937): 329-72.


"twist, tangle" for q *kljagw and -M] *kljiagwx is, when we notice the B manuscript form X *mljiagwh, suggestive of several members of that hsieh-sheng series: J *gljagw "wrap, tie around, tangle," M *kliagw "twisted (sc. branches)," and W *mliagw((h) "bind, twist around." The B manuscript form itself, X *mljiagwh means, of course, "error" or "wrong," but the way it comes to have this meaning may be traceable to a sense of "confused, tangled," hence "in error, wrong," thus linking it semantically with the /TWIST set. (Cf. English "wrong" akin to "wring," "wrench," "wrap,55 "wrist," etc., the common element being the identity of the initial wr-.)

The meaning "error, wrong" for , *mljiagwh in B does not really fit very well, and we should not be afraid to interpret the graph as standing for one of the /TWIST words, in the sense of "confused, tangled," e.g., now written as J or W. Before the regularization of the script in the Ch'in-Han period the use of classifiers as adjuncts to individual graphs was very much a non-standard thing. It is perfectly possible that the word *gljagw "tangle(d)," or *mliagw(h) "twist(ed)" could have been written with the graph X, especially if there was a latent sense of "vocal confusion" in the mind of the scribe as he wrote.

The choice between A's J4k and B's , for the exemplar follows from a well established rule in textual criticism, that given two possibilities like this, the one more difficult to understand is likely to be the original, and the easier one the innovation. This assumption, which is elevated to the status of a principle, especially in New Testament studies, starts by asking the question utrum in alterum arbiturum erat ("which is more likely to have changed into the other?"), and answers with difficilior lectio potior ("the more difficult reading is preferred"). The reasoning is that a readily understand- able passage is less likely to change into an obscure one than a difficult one is to change into a clearer one. The two alternative readings are called the lectio difficilior and the lectio facilior, the claim to precedence, all other things being equal, resting with the former. 15

Here we have a graph {P, unattested save for this one occurrence, but likely standing for a word pronounced similar to a *hrjagw(h),

15 It is important to note that no one can insist that the lectio difficilior must be original. The principle is simply a statement of odds. It is more likely that the lectio difficilior is original, and the lectiofacilior is the later reading than vice versa.


and perhaps semantically akin to its hsieh-sheng relatives q *kljagw and #jMJ *kljiagwx both meaning "twist, bind, tangle." Since this is clearly a more difficult expression than the B manuscript's P, we would select the A form as the one to be reconstructed in ,I, and explain the appearance of 1 in B as the result of a change from a rare and difficult graph R4 to a more familiar one, 3. The meaning of the line in both cases is the same, "at its tip it is not entangled," which is a perfect semantic match to the second half of the passage, "at its base it is not murky" (ft of A and B=-4' *xwat.) Both "entangled" and "murky" are ways of characterizing confusion.

Lau in his conflated version has written fR, but takes it as a graphic variant of the R text's OR *kiagwx "dazzling," and translates "Its upper part is not dazzling;/Its lower part is not indistinct" (pp. 284-85). The sense is different from taking {f4 as "entangled, confused" as we suggested above, in that where both phrases in our translation characterize the "tip" and the "base" in the same way (". ... not entangled, . . . not murky"), Lau's translation treats the descriptions as opposites (". .. not dazzling, . . . not indistinct.") I suspect the explanation for the R text's a *kiagwx "dazzle" is that it is another reduction of either {4t or X to a still easier reading, probably suggested by tO *kiagwx "to wind around" and g *kiagwh "cloth wrapped around a leg" < "wrapped, twisted," as inter- mediaries, linking the conceptual set /TWIST-WRAP to the graphic series 9. The variant M *kiqgwx "dazzling" then arose as a semantic counterpart to the R text's mei !R "indistinct" in the second half of the line.

The objection to Lau's choice, in any case, is that if the exemplar had X *kiagwx "dazzle," a well known word yielding a straightforward meaning, (even if it was written f4k) how can we explain the occurrence of the more difficult word X in B? Moreover, we have no evidence that R could have stood for *kiagwx "dazzle," whereas we have been able to adduce some at least indirect evidence that it could have stood for *gljagw or *mljiagw(h) "entangled, twisted," a hypothesis that preserves the semantic unity of the two Ma wang tui manuscripts.

As we have said, even when Lau's choices are consistent with the established principles of textual criticism he usually does not give any notes or discussion of the text variants. One of the exceptions to


this pattern comes in ch. 27, line 5:

A: q . 16

B: RA- R: Aa f.

The graph ,[* is another hapax graphomenon. (There is a late graph P read shen, attested only lexicographically, and glossed as "dis- traught," but it is not related to this.) Lau suspects that both tt* in A and -, in B are variants of , i <Middle Chinese (MC) jiai or (hjdi (Kuangyiin D13, 9fi) which the Shuo wen glosses as w4t *rjdp "to follow a practice" (SWKL 4702). He further observes that the received texts have N hsi <*rjap "to repeat, inherit (<follow an established line)" at this spot, and that ' and 0 are "interchange- able" (WARA). The reasoning, as far as it goes, is sound, and serves to explain the relation between the Ma wang tui manuscripts and the received texts satisfactorily. In fact the case can be made stronger, showing not just that , is glossed in the Shuo wen as X, but that it too is a likely cognate of the received text's #. To illustrate this likelihood we can draw the following chart:

(1) i MC jidi = a id. "drip, ooze." (2) &# MC sjat=MC/O id. "bridle, rein." (3) M MC jidi MC tshjap "babble." (4) tff MC jidi -/0 MC tsjap "oar."

The implication of the approximate equations (3) and (4) is that the -W phonophoric interchanges with X5, at least in two words, and therefore the MC jidi must devolve from an Old Chinese (OC) form sufficiently close to the MC tshjgp and tsjap of * and tf respectively to account for this interchange. We would suggest a value like *grjabh for l*/t. The same reasoning applied mutatis mutandis to equations (1) and (2) would suggest that the & phonophoric interchanges with -t:, and is therefore also to be reconstructed as *grjabh.l7

16 W in both A and B is the regular graph for wei "refer to" (modern 07). 17 The MC forms g and E in -t would imply an OC *-d for the phonophorics -, and

jf; and indeed a form in -d is usually regarded as an intermediate stage between an original -b and the MC -i. The :4; hsieh-sheng series includes examples of both the MC ts- initials (the 3el set) and the MC ts- initials (the .l], division II set). The recon- ciliation of these initials with the hypothesized *grja- of "Jj and jft is somewhat uncertain, but I would suggest that the MC ts- initials may have devolved from OC *ks-, and the


If we can establish an OC value *grjabh for -! in this way, and by extension also for 1A, we have a very close match to the 7 *rjap gloss of the Shuo wen entry, which then looks paronomastic, as well as to the X *rjap of the received texts. Demonstrating a phonetic affinity of this kind makes the argument that Lau proposes all the stronger, for now we are dealing with graphic variants of the same word, or of very closely related words, in both the Ma wang tui manuscripts and the received version of the text.18 This is then no longer a rule 3 type correspondence where A#B#R, but exactly the opposite, A=B=R lexically, the differences being limited to only graphic variation.

Rule 2b. If A # B, and B= R, then u=B. The rationale for this rule should be apparent. Given the need to

select either A or B, where A # B and A # R, but B = R, the logical choice is B, since to choose A for ,u would mean either that the same new reading arose independently in both B and R, or that it was original in co, was preserved in R, but was changed to something else in ,u, then changed back to the original in B, while the new reading in u was passed on in A. Neither of these two possibilities seems remotely likely, whereas to choose B for ,u means only that the A reading has been changed from the Ma wang tui exemplar, p. Ch. 2, line 4:

A: , JflThi,. B: R h41t.

pi n

Clearly the correct reading for Iu isyin sheng -, and the A variant

ts- from OC *kr-. Thus we would have a matching between grj- '.kr(j)- - ks(j)-. This is a bit different from Li's proposals.

18 Derk Bodde has suggested that both the ,*ii of the A manuscript and the -, of the B are "distortions" (his word) of 4 shen, and that the meaning might be "divine spirit- uality," or "divine understanding." (See his Essays on Chinese Civilization, Charles LeBlanc and Dorothy Borei, eds. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981], p. 30.) Apart from the difficulty of remaining free of the strong Judeo-Christian connotations that the term "divine understanding" carries, the problem with this suggestion is just that if the original text did have shen ming *sP, which, as Bodde recognizes is easier to understand than either {*j) or AW, it is not likely to have become corrupted into something as obscure and difficult as y in the R text, much less what we find in the extant Ma wang tui manuscripts.


i sheng - is the result of a graphic corruption of R into T. Lau recognizes this, and notes that A N{1 F W J "' has been written in A by mistake" (p. 268). Clh. 12, line 1:

A: {XkHS)1. B: {;XH . R: ?ff9AtkHi.

Here again the choice between A and B is straightforward. Because B = R we choose that for the exemplar. And Lau has also recognized the same point, and selects meng E for his conflation. Ch. 52, line 6:

A: j A. B: 0 R: i

Exactly as with the preceding two examples, we choose B here as representative of ,u because of its agreement with R, and Lau does the same. There is a further consideration in this case, and that is that the expression with flim' wu i (the a wu missing in B) is the lectio difficilior when compared to ejf1 wu tao. Lau translates "Bring not misfortune upon yourself" (p. 213). This is far less clear than the A version's "without the Tao one's person is imperiled." The wording in A must have arisen in response to the somewhat obscure sense of the original line. Ch. 69, line 3:

A: ifA1;MRGidRt?PC:l B: bjAtMM t ]

There are two lexical and two graphic variants in this line that must be resolved in reconstructing ,u:

1) A: M ch'eng :: B: iA k'ang, (lexical) 2) A: HIJ tse :: B: ffi erh, (lexical) 3) A: ai B: { [i], (graphic) 4) A: F sheng :: B: )it [chen]. (graphic)

The occurrence of )1V chia in R matching the manuscripts' 5 jo is not


relevant to the establishing of ,u, since clearly the exemplar must have had V if all of its descendants have W (rule 1).

1) A: E ch'eng "weigh, balance, evaluate; raise" :: B: 4t k'ang "raise against, resist." Because the R versions all have 4yL, rule 2b requires that we take eL as the original, and E as the innovation. Traditional commentaries on the R text take k'ang ping ItA- as "to raise troops," but the sense is more like "troops that are raised and standing in resistance to..." which fits well with hsiang jo tflg "to be comparable to, on a par with." So the whole phrase means "when troops standing against one another are comparably matched...," suggesting a stand-off of evenly balanced forces. The expression IRA- is not to my knowledge attested in any other pre-Han texts, but MA in the sense of 'raise troops' occurs at least twice; once in the Tso chuan (Hsiang 8) where Tu Yu t?ffi (222-84) glosses it as $-Hi "to raise," and once in the Yueh ling section of the Li chi, under the first month of Spring. Thus, it must have had a certain currency in pre-Han times, and this may account for its appearance in the place of btA- here.

Lau has selected 9 as the form for his conflated text, without explaining why. This choice, implying that the et is not original, leads to the unlikely conclusion that 4t in B arose independently of 4t in the R texts, or else that it is the result of contamination by R. There is no reason or evidence to think that either of these possibilities is likely; it seems preferable to take et as original, and explain the 9 as the innovation in A, perhaps through the influence of the already independently attested occurrences of the phrase A,.

2) A: R,[] tse :: B: jtjj erh. Here the difference is largely formal, and not especially significant. While it may be that the tse fIt] implies "if ... then" more strongly than erh -fli does, this is not an absolute or discrete difference in meaning between the two conjunctions, but rather is a matter of degree. Lau chooses Aly, and translates "when ... .," a rendering that would be equally appropriate for the B text with -fTi.'9 There is no real basis for preferring one reading to the other, in particular since the R texts have neither, and so we must designate this pair of alternatives as a "toss-up." Since the

19 It is possible that the two conjunctions are ultimately cognate, fQIJ tse<*snak and -jfj erh<*znjag, and thus share the same fundamental function of subordinating the first of the two conjoined sentences to the second.


meaning is the same regardless of which we choose, there is no need to encumber the translation by giving both possibilities.

3) A: a ai < * 2ad :: B: {A [i < * 2jad]. To take { of the B manuscript as i < * 2jad "rely on" makes no sense here. The only reasonable explanation is to recognize it as a graphic variation of g standing for the word ai <*9 ad "sorrowful, impassioned." The two words * 2jad "rely on" and * 2ad "impassioned," differing only in that the former is a division iII word, and the latter is division i, are phonetically similar enough to permit a single graph to be used to write both of them, which is what we find represented here in the B manuscript. Lau regards the A form as preferable, and this agrees well with the received texts, and with post-Han graphic conventions in general. But he is silent on why he chooses this over the B's 'W. There is no way we can claim that the original version of the Ma wang tui text wrote :a and not W. All we can say is that after the script was standardized in the Han, the graph g was used to write the word * 2ad, and the graph { was used to write * ?jad. We have no way, short of new manuscript finds, of knowing what the pre- Han convention, if indeed there was a convention, might have been.20 This is not a serious problem for the establishment of the text since it is only a formal matter. The word in the text, and hence the meaning, is not in doubt.

Graphic questions of this kind have to do with the nature of the writing system prior to the regularization in the Ch'in-Han period, and arise at nearly every turn in these Ma wang tui manuscripts. Lau does not touch upon this subject, even when it bears on the establishing of the "conflated" text.

4) A: a sheng <*hrjangh :: B: m [chen <*grjangh].21 This is another case of graphic variation, specifically the presence or

20 Characters as used in extant bronze inscriptions, especially the comparatively late bronzes of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, might give some indications about graphic conventions, but the corpus of bronze inscription texts in general is not voluminous enough for us to be able to draw any but the most tentative conclusions about "normal" vs. "unusual" usage.

21 Modern Chinese chen<MC dzjgm' shows a peculiar shift in this one word from OC -jangh to MC -jami. It is not clear how or when this shift took place, but it does seem likely that the original final was -jangh (Shih ching , cheng 7fi rime group), because the phonophoric of Ig/ I' is & 3, attested as -(j)ang in several hsieh-sheng series, all belonging to the cheng ); rime group: J/ A *tang, 7R/ A *djang, and I/ F *hjang.


absence of a semantic determinative (that is, classifier, or what is commonly but misleadingly called a "radical.") The A form has ) with DC 19; the B version has just the graph R without the }j. As we mentioned above, prior to the regularization of the script in the Han variations of this sort were common, and largely inconsequential as long as there was no ambiguity as to what words were being written by the variant graphs.

The validity of the stemmatic method of ordering and analyzing the extant manuscripts and editions of a text depends on a closed and non-contaminated textual history. That is, it allows for only the "vertical" transmission of a text through time, and its claims are dependent on that premise. When texts of different lineages, that is, different branches of the tree, have come into contact and influenced each other across their respective branchings "horizontally," this is called contaminatio, and may contravene the results of applying rules like our 2a and 2b. In other words when the textual critic suspects contamination he may disregard the claim of the "normally applicable" rule, and choose an alternative reading, providing his reasons for suspecting contamination are sound. Lau has sometimes recognized this, sometimes not. Ch. 8, line 2 has:

A: Jflt,'t B: ) R: J

The pair A: su :: B: M yuan presents a classic example of the lectio difficilior,lectiofacilior contrast. The graph a does not occur in any extant transmitted pre-Han text, but it occurs three times in the Ma wang tui manuscripts, and also in the Shuo wen, where it is glossed as Ri1M "deep and clear" (SWKL 4947). The meaning of

yuan JM is, as is well known, "whirlpool, swirling pool of water," and by extension any kind of "deep pool." It is a very common graph in pre-Han texts. Presumably because su ? is not found in any pre-Han texts apart from these manuscripts, Lau has chosen to take the word as yuan, translating it somewhat freely as "depth." But the general principle of giving precedence to the lectio difficilior in cases of this kind applies perfectly here. If we consider the original to have had the common wordyyuan we have no basis for explaining


the appearance of a rare graph like i as a later variant. Conversely, if we take a standing for a rare word su in the original, then the occurrence ofyuan later with approximately the same meaning (and a fortuitous graphic resemblance as a bonus) can be explained by the fact that an original obscure word is easily supplanted by a common word in an effort, either deliberate or inadvertent, to make the meaning of the text clearer.

Rule 2b ought to require that we take yuan )M as original in [,

and regard su a as the innovation in A, as Lau does. But here I think the contrast between su X as lectio difficilior andyuian JiM as lectio

facilior is so marked that we are better advised to regard su a as original, and yuan IM as arising through contamination by a text from the R branch. The word su 0 is so obscure, and the wordyuian iM so common, that it does not seem likely that if , had yuan )M it would ever had undergone a change to su if in A.22

Lau does adhere to the principle of lectio difficilior potior in some cases, though without commenting on the reasoning involved. In ch. 49, line 5 we find:

A: WAt*X6 A ;A B: D it#DD R: W

Even given the fragmentary state of B we can see that the opposi- tion between A: * shu "attach to" :: B: it chu "focus on" is another case where A seems to have the lectio difficilior and B the lectiofacilior. Lau does choose the A reading, and translates "the people all have something to which to attach their eyes and ears," and I think he is right in spite of the fact that according to rule 2b we ought to reconstruct a chu. The notion of attaching one's eyes and ears to something (or someone; the context suggests this ought to be translated .... attach their eyes and ears to him," "him" being the sheng jen VA mentioned in the preceding line of the chapter) was ap-

22 One of the other two occurrences of j su in the Ma wang tui manuscripts comes in Lao tzu ch. 4, where Lau has also accepted JX yuan, the B manuscript form, instead of a su as the original. The same objection obtains in this instance as well. Derek Herforth included a full discussion of the a su -MAl yuian pair in his paper ("Through the Paren- theses in the Ma wang tui Han mu po shu") and discussion presented at the Ma wang tui texts workshop convened at the University of California, Berkeley, in June, 1979, and I have made use of his notes here.


parently peculiar enough to have called for clarification, and given rise to the more readily understood it chu "focus" in B, presumably through direct contamination by R.

We should notice that not only is the word chu a more readily understood verb than shu here, but at the Old Chinese stage the two words bear considerable phonetic similarity to each other: chu < *trjugh and shu <*drjuk. This is in all likelihood not a coincidence. That is to say, like the fortuitous graphic similarity between su M and

yuan t, the word that ends up replacing the original difficult word in more cases than not has some feature, either phonetic or graphic, or occasionally both, in common with the word it is replacing. It is easy to see why this should be so. When the changes in the text are inadvertent, that is, unconscious, the most likely thing to have come to the scribe's mind when confronting a puzzling passage is something that either looks or sounds like the original, but that can be understood at that spot in the line. In languages that are written alphabetically, the distinction between graphic similarity and phonetic similarity, of course, does not normally exist, and the generalization is simply that the innovation, or secondary reading, is often very similar to the original, rather than being an entirely dissimilar and unrelated word.23

Chapters 18 and 19 both have the same case of lexical variation between the A and B manuscripts, showing that the textual differences between them are to a limited extent consistent. In both cases it looks like the A manuscript ought to be taken as the original form,

23 Moreover, since alphabetically written languages are frequently characterized by a complex morphology, it is often the case that variations between texts are alternate morphological forms of the same stem. This is a kind of textual variation entirely absent (or at least unidentifiable) in Chinese texts.

Notice the cases we have already discussed: Phonetic similarity:

(14.3) f{4 *hrjagw(h) _ *mljiagwh M *kiagwx; (12.1) M *mjiang *mrang; (49.5) )% *drjuk -a *trjugh.

Graphic similarity:

(27.5) P39 (02.4) I

(52.6) -

(08.2) aKJf


and that the B has been influenced by the R text. The pertinent lines are: Ch. 18, line 2:

A: t B: 2 R: t

Ch. 19, line 2:

A: RA RF B: KM*RtE R: K;5*8

In both cases Lau has elected to take the hsiao t of the B manuscript as the basic form, and translate accordingly (18: "there are the filial," 19: "And the people will return to being filial.") It seems clear that hsiu X "to rear" is the lectio difficilior, and ought to be regarded as original. It is comparatively easy to imagine a copyist altering hsiu tz'u WE "the instinctive affection associated with begetting and rearing offspring" to hsiao tz'u *:t "filial piety and parental affection," especially in view of the phonetic similarity between hsiu < *hjagwh and hsiao < *hragwh. Notice that we are allowing the assumption that A stands for tz'u "parental affection towards children, storge" (now written V) to pass unquestioned when in fact it is just possible that, at least when juxtaposed with hsiu & in the original version, the graph could be representing the word tzu "beget, proliferate offspring," now written V. In this case the expression W would have to mean "rear and beget," apparently devoid of any strong emotional content, at least overtly. But the sense of A aside, it seems likely that the Ma wang tui text should be reconstructed as having hsui & in these two chapters, and the B manuscript's hsiao a is again the result of contamination from R.

Ch. 18 shows another example of exactly the same kind of problem, and once more we have to disagree with Lau's choice. In line 1 we have:

A: B>:tC7A B: BLtCDD R: bWgff 4)dA,


As with the last-preceding example, the received texts all match the B manuscript, and Lau has apparently been persuaded by this to choose M/ huit<*gwiadh "cleverness' for his preferred text, as is called for by rule 2b. But the use of 1; k'uai < *khwadh "quickness, quick-wittedness" together with chih X is far less conventional, and more idiosyncratic, than hui B. The expression 0B is in fact almost a cliche, and so we would judge it to be the lectio facilior, and the result in B of contamination by R; and )ivR; as original in p.24

The number of times we invoke contamination to justify the choice of a reading that is not in accord with rule 2b may at first seem untenable. But in fact the more cases we have, the more persuasive each case becomes. It would be less likely for horizontal contamination to have been registered in just one or two places of the text, leaving a dozen or more equally vulnerable passages ("vulnerable" because of comparatively difficult or obscure readings in the face of an easier reading in R) untouched than to find the effects of such contamination in a significant number of cases. When speculating about contamination the collective value of a significant number of cases is greater than the sum of their individual parts.

Rule 2a. If A#AB, and A=R, then 1t=A. This is, of course, the counterpart to rule 2b, where A agrees with

the R text. There are a few cases of this in the Ma wang tui manuscripts, but not a large number. What is significant is that there are no cases yet identified of contamination of A by R. That is to say, at our present state of study of these manuscripts it does not seem that the A manuscript has been influenced at all by any received text, whereas the B manuscript, as we have just seen, certainly has been. This is an important difference in the history of these two manuscripts.

We shall give three examples of the application of rule 2a, all of which Lau has treated in accordance with the rule, and none of which is particularly troublesome.

24 The graph ) here should probably be read in the ch'u sheng -t-, equivalent to later

V. The locus classicus for the phrase j is Mencius 2A. 1. It has come to mean "wisdom," and we now even have the expression ? a4CZ "wisdom literature."


Ch. 26, line 1:

A: liTP : B: A-P E TT4, : R: m Vt.,4 H f<T/T< OM':

A: R ii :: B: j*yfian :: R: t Ii. There is no reason not to suppose that the evidence of A: f li= R: f 1i should determine ,u to be f Ii. Lau translates "the gentleman travels all day without ever

letting his heavily laden carts out of sight" (p. 305). The variant A,B: 5:Y chuin tzu :: R: ), sheng jen does not affect

the Ma wang tui exemplar, since A and B agree (rule 1, see below.) The A: * *tjangwh :: B: A [*tangw] *tjangw (for 4) pair could be interpreted as lexical variation, in which case the A manuscript would have to be understood as "for his amassed days," i.e., "all his days, everyday," vs. B's "all day," or it could be taken as simply graphic variation, where * stands for *tjangw, "normally" written g after the regularization of the script in the Han. In either case the exemplar ,u would be posited as having *tjangw (K4) since, if the variation is graphic, the word is not in doubt, if it is lexical, rule 2b would justify the *tjangw. Ch. 27, line 1:

A: - -t A B: - i<t Ei R: t (t)

A: ; hap. gr. [fjt *djat] :: B: a *dat :: R: e *djat. Given the occurrence of e *djat "wheel-rut" in R, and the perfectly under- standable meaning of *ft- ch'e chi "wheel-ruts and tracks" (or, possibly, as adjunct-head, "wheel-rut tracks"), there does not seem to be any reason not to regard rule 2a as applicable, accepting the hapax graphomenon in A as standing for *djat "wheel-rut." Ch. 61, line 5:

A: DF } B: t it@ k R: AS TNWA

A: X chien :: B: X, ping:: R: X chien. According to rule 2a we should choose X as the reading for Iu, and Lau does, translating


somewhat freely "All that the large state wants is to take the other under its wing," exactly as he did in his 1963 version (pp. 227, 89).25

We have so far been discussing cases of lexical variation between the two Ma wang tui manuscripts, and how to choose the better reading of two such variants. This is the central textual problem in establishing a "conflated" text out of the two extant manuscripts, if by "conflated" we mean the best representative of the Ma wang tui textual lineage as possible. When both A and B agree, and are identical, or when they differ in what can easily be shown to be only a graphic variation, and not lexical, there can be no question about what the conflated text should be: it is what the manuscripts are. This is expressed by the first rule we proposed above: Rule 1. If A = B, then It also-A and B. There is no possible exception to this, if we are going to be precise about what we mean by a Ma wang tui textual prototype. Even were the manuscripts to show a glaring error, if both manuscripts had it, then it must be taken as a feature of the Ma wang tui branch, that is, of the Ma wang tui textual lineage as a whole, and reconstructed in the prototype. The importance of this should be clear. If we "correct" the presumed error in our conflated version, we are in effect saying that the error does not characterize the Ma wang tui exemplar in spite of the fact that both (i.e., all) witnesses of that exemplar have it. On what grounds can such a claim possibly be defended? Moreover, to "correct" an error that occurs in both Ma wang tui manuscripts is to eliminate precisely the kind of thing that sets the Ma wang tui lineage apart from the other recognized lines of textual transmission of the Lao tzu. Lau has missed this point, and in a fairly large number of places has reconstructed a Ma wang tui prototype that is not based on the evidence of the two manu-

25 The change from the A manuscript I pang to B K kuo, and to K kuo in all R texts, is due, of course, to the fact that after the beginning of the Han dynasty the word ff, which was the personal name of Han Kao tsu M ytj, Liu Pang, could not be freely written in texts. So it was replaced by the synonymous M. This is one of the indications that the date of the A manuscript must be earlier than the death of Kao tsu in 195 B.C., while the B manuscript must be later (but earlier than 186, because it does not avoid writing _ ying, the personal name of Hui ti who died in 186 B.C.).


scripts, but on something else instead, usually the received text. To object to such a procedure is not "nit-picking" or gratuitous fault- finding. By relying on textual traditions outside of the Ma wang tui lineage where the Ma wang tui manuscripts are uniform, Lau has materially contaminated and distorted his presentation of that lineage. In a way Lau has fallen victim to his own broad knowledge of the Lao tzu. He knows very well what the text "ought to be" (i.e., what the received text is, and what the traditionally sanctioned interpretations are), and when the manuscripts differ from that he automatically "corrects" them to conform to what is (in the received tradition) "right." But in doing so he eliminates exactly those features that distinguish the Ma wang tui textual lineage from the others, and that make it an important independent version of the text, with all of the interpretative value that such an independent version naturally has.

Of course Lau does not do this exhaustively, or he would end up with a text that is nearly identical to the received, and there would be no sense in making a new translation at all. In fact his introduction to the Ma wang tui half of this book emphasizes how by virtue of their variant readings the Ma wang tui manuscripts make pre- viously obscure, or inconsequential, passages clear and significant. Lau is certainly aware of the value of isolating the Ma wang tui version for comparison against the tradition of the received text. By republishing his former translation of the Wang Pi text along with this new translation he is inviting us to compare the two, and this is much to his credit. All the more, then, is it regrettable that he has not maintained the integrity of the Ma wang tui text throughout, but has allowed external influences from the received tradition, or just his own intuitive sense, to affect his establishing of the "conflated" text in enough cases to have significantly distorted the character of the Ma wang tui version, and his presentation of it. A few examples should make this clear. In ch. 2, line 1 we have:

A: W?t /T-1lf _:1

B: t1 ,T'1 R: 1

As can be seen at a glance, the R text has a three character phrase,


chih wei shan , not in the Ma wang tui manuscripts. Lau's conflated text is identical with R, except that he puts i 4 as the final particle. And he translates "it knows the good as the good, and this is, indeed, bad" (p. 267, emphasis added). Clearly his conflated text has been "inflated" by the R text in a way that cannot be justified by the evidence of the Ma wang tui manuscripts. Lau cites this particular line in his introductory discussion (p. 159) as an example of the close affinity the two Ma wang tui manuscripts have for each other, and in this he is perfectly right. But his wording is not accurate. He says that both of these manuscripts share the same mistakes, and are therefore of the same line of transmission, the missing three characters chih wei shan t being a shared "mistake." To assert that not having these three characters is a mistake is itself a mistake. The corollary would be that the R text with them is the "correct" form, But there is no basis whatsoever to claim that R is "correct," i.e., original, and that the Ma wang tui version is not. This is really a misconception of what the terms "mistake" and "correct" mean in the context of textual criticism. There is no sense in which they have any significance except when by "correct" we mean "original." It is ironic that while Lau uses this particular feature of the two Ma wang tui manuscripts to persuade us that they can be grouped together to represent a single distinct textual lineage, a single branch on the stemma codicum in other words (and in this he is unquestionably right), he then proceeds to eliminate the very feature on which the texts' independent status was established in the first place.

Nor is the difference between the Ma wang tui version and the R text merely a formal one. The Ma wang tui version says simply "in all cases, as for recognizing good, this would not be good." The R text's ". . . recognizing the good's functioning as good . . ." is quite a different thing. In the former case what is said to be not good is just the acknowledgement of the good per se, but in the other it is acknowledging the functioning (wei ) of the good as good that is said to be not good. The difference is between acknowledging a status and a process, and in a text as dense as the Lao tzu sometimes is, this could lead to significantly different interpretations of the whole chapter. We need not demonstrate that this is a major theoretical question of interpretation; it is enough to show that such a difference


may exist to illustrate the importance of maintaining the distinct identity of the Ma wang tui version.

Similarly, in ch. 25, lines 1-2, we find:

A: NAFIFD -piDD1 it:

R:

Lau translates: "It stands alone and does not change, /Goes round and does not weary./ It is capable of being the mother of heaven and earth." His only reference to the fact that he has added a line to the English translation that is not present in either of the Ma wang tui manuscript versions is a brief note to the Chinese text to the effect that "the A and B manuscripts have dropped these five characters" (kLi AB s$). Apart from this no explanation is given as to why Lau decided that this five character phrase should be considered a part of the Ma wang tui text. Even, I stress again, if there is good reason to suspect that the manuscripts have dropped this line (and there is no such compelling reason that I can see), its absence in all extant Ma wang tui witnesses bars us from at- tributing it to the Ma wang tui prototype, the so-called "conflated" text of A and B. How can one conflate the absence of a feature in both texts and come up with a five character sentence in the resultant version ?

On the other hand Lau recognizes the phrase t'ien ti Ui1 at the end of this line as characteristic of the Ma wang tui text, as opposed to the less grand t'ien hsia i-f of the R text, and translates accordingly. When differences like this are preserved we can see in any subsequent comparative studies where the doctrinal and "philosophical" differences may lie, and associate those differences with the historical background of the text in general. This is the real value of having variant texts that reflect different lines of transmission, and comparisons of this kind ought to be apparent whenever they exist. But they are frequently obscured, if not entirely eradicated, through the kind of inconsistent handling of the texts just illustrated.

A further example of the consequences of relying on the R text contra the evidence of the Ma wang tui manuscripts can be seen in ch. 37, line 3:


A: I &E. B: X

R:(X 't'1p1 11E

Lau registers the expression pu ju >5 of the manuscripts as pu yu >ft in his conflated text, and translates "when they do not desire and are still, heaven and earth will be proper of their own accord." The implied, but undefended, justification for this is that the graph

0, normally representing the word ju < *njuk "defile (d), de- grade(d)," is here being used to write the word yiu< *grjuk "desire," regularly written f. But such a claim, were it to be explicitly made, would at once be called into doubt when we see that not only do the manuscripts never write the wordyu "desire" with the graph & anywhere else in the text, but even in the immediately preceding line of the same chapter the word yiu "desire" is written with f. While it is true that before the regularization of the writing system in the Han the script was subject to considerable variation, it is never so lopsided as to write a word that occurs more than two dozen times in a given text once with an unusual graph, and every other time, including immediately adjacent occurrences, with the expected graph. Beyond this there is also the not inconsequential phonological problem of reconciling the initials of ju <*njuk and

yfi<*grjuk if we want to allow the same graph to represent both words, irrespective of which of these two graphs that might be.26

Lau does not touch on any of these issues, but rather accepts the R reading and translates "do not desire," remaining silent on what, if the Ma wang tui text is accepted at face value, as it must be in a textually rigorous study, the difficult expression >f4 could mean in this context. Looked at another way, this is a case where the Ma wang tui manuscripts preserve (the word is used advisedly) the lectio difficilior, and the R texts have the lectiofacilior. Again, it is easy

26 This may not be an insurmountable problem. The OC initial of 1ju may have been *gnj-, which then would not be irreconcilable with the *grj- of tkyfi. There are several examples of OC *gnj- > MC ziij- ( H f), perhaps the best being the number "two," erh, MC ziji < *gnjagh, to which cf. Wr. Tib. gnyis "two." Even if we can reconcile the initials, it means only that this is a case where the two variants are phonetically similar, not that both graphs stand for the same word.


to imagine a scribe, puzzled just as we may be, at the expression TR here, changing it, either deliberately or inadvertently, to a coincidentally- riming phrase that is much easier to understand, and makes perfect sense overall: >5g.

Curiously, in contrast to his succumbing to the allure of the easier reading in the >4/T pair, Lau adheres to the Ma wang tui reading in the second sentence, translating "heaven and earth" for t'ien ti Xit as against the R text's t'ien hsia XT, exactly as we saw in the preceding example from ch. 25. These two cases in this line illustrate the inconsistency that mars Lau's treatment of the Ma wang tui texts overall. There is in principle no difference between accepting the manuscripts' Xt4f and their >f4. If you are going to accept one, you should accept the other. Conversely, there is no basis for rejecting T4 in favor of the R text, if at the same time you are not going to reject ti1 in favor of the R text's X-F.

There is a further kind of distortion that Lau could have easily avoided if he had been more careful about keeping the texts apart in his translation. When both the A and B manuscripts are defective, and thus missing a portion of text, Lau fills the gap by turning to the R text. His motivation, we assume, was to avoid having fragmentary and incomplete phrases and sentences appearing in the English rendering. But the price he paid for this nicety is the further blurr- ing of the distinction between the Ma wang tui text and the R version. This could have been avoided simply by putting whatever part of the translation is based solely on the R text in brackets, or in some other way marking it as apart from the Ma wang tui text, with the explicit acknowledgement that both the A and B manuscripts are missing at that spot, and the text is filled in on the basis of the R version. This would prevent the reader from erroneously assuming something is a feature of the Ma wang tui version when in fact it does not appear in either manuscript, but only in the R text. Lau does "box" the Chinese characters in such cases, so that looking at the Chinese text it is easy to see where he has filled in according to the R text. But this is of no use to the "serious student of the work who is unable to cope with the Chinese" whom Lau invokes in the close of his introduction (p. 184). The first part of ch. 64, for example, shows how extensive this filling in can be. It appears as follows in Lau's translation, but without the italicizing:


"It is easy to maintain a situation while it is still secure; It is easy to deal with a situation before symptoms develop; It is easy to break a thing when it is yet brittle; It is easy to dissolve a thing when it is yet minute. Deal with a thing while it is still nothing; Keep a thing in order before disorder sets in. A tree that can fill a man's embrace Grows from a downy tip" (p. 233).

The italicized parts have been filled in on the basis of the R text, both of the Ma wang tui manuscripts being defective at these places. These parts constitute nearly twenty-five percent of the chapter, and yet they are presented in the English version without any indication that they are entirely unattested in the Ma wang tui texts. They may well have been there, of course, but in view of the actual state of the manuscripts, and their absence now, we cannot presume that they were, much less that they would have been exactly the same as they appear in the R text. There are many cases like this, not usually involving such hefty chunks of text, but nevertheless significant.

It is the nature of reviews, particularly lengthy reviews, of translations and textual studies, to find fault in the handling of the texts, and this one is no exception in that regard. But it would be an unfair representation of Lau's work to leave the impression that the book is so flawed that its value and usefulness have been heavily diminished. That is certainly not the case. It is clear that Lau has given extended thought to a great many difficult, sometimes intract- able, problems of reading and interpretation of the Lao tzu. This is reflected in the many imaginative, perceptive, and cogently expressed analyses and renderings that he has registered throughout the book, explicitly in the introductory remarks, and implicitly in the translation. The objections that I have brought out above arise from Lau's inconsistency in applying the procedures and principles of textual criticism, not in any sense from a wholesale ignorance of them. There are many cases, some of which we have already mentioned, where Lau's judgments are perfectly in accord with the best handling of the texts. As with any serious textual study of difficult and formidable substance and scope, even the soundest analysis can yield debatable results. The first six lines of ch. 39 provide such a case, which deserves an extended discussion.


A: (1) B: 4

R: L 14 -t X - Upi'4 - 18

A: t@-4fiWLp1 (2) B: ;N P - 1X 4 -

R: tZ1@ XSttX1

A: /DDLIliri4lA (3) B: 9344- S1&FIE

R: 0314 - E- S1- -

A: ,

(4a) B: , i . R: AR31

A: D XttJ It . W (4) B: -5t:

R: iMltXW tlWD

A: Wew 5wteW ~(sic)5g (5) B: DDLI* 9,0

R: t3f4D _

A: W@EDDDDD0 (6) B: AR i 0D t

Apart from an additional six character sentence at the end of line 2, and its eight character complement at the beginning of line 6, the only significant difference between the Ma wang tui manuscripts and the R text is that the five cases of eE (lines 4, 5, and 6) all appear as 4JL in R. Every known post-Han verison of the Lao tzu has 4JL in these lines, and so there is naturally a strong tendency to regard the manuscripts' 3 as standing for wu i <*mjag ragx, which we expect to be written 419, and which we take to mean "without a means." This is all the more the case since * is a common enough allograph of M in early texts in general, and U, is only slightly less common as an allograph of t1. The lines are then seen as sequences to their preceding counterparts, that is, line 4, understood as "heaven without the means to become limpid will risk


cleaving;27 earth without the means to become steadfast will risk bursting," matching line 1, "heaven obtains the One, thereby becoming limpid; earth obtains the One, thereby becoming steadfast." So, mutatis mutandis for line 5 as a complement to line 2, and line 6 to line 3 (disregarding the lines that are present only in R, but not represented in the Ma wang tui texts.)

The question that should come quickly to mind in examining these manuscripts in this connection is why, if the scribe wrote E for i < *ragx "means" in lines 4, 5, and 6 did he write V. for the same word in lines 1, 2, and 3 ? It is not just a case of free variation between E and V., since the graph e occurs systematically after WE, but not elsewhere for V. in this chapter.28

Of all published studies of the Ma wang tui Lao tzu that I have seen, Lau's is the only one to notice that the E/V. alternation in these lines is not a case of free variation. He translates lines 4 through 6 as:

It will mean that not knowing when to stop in being limpid heaven will split;

It will mean that not knowing when to stop in being settled earth will sink;

It will mean that not knowing when to stop in being potent gods will get spent;

It will mean that not knowing when to stop in being full the valley with run dry;

It will mean that not knowing when to stop in being noble and high lords and princes will fall (pp. 191-93, emphasis added).

The phrase "not knowing when to stop" is Lau's effort to render the sense of aE, which if taken literally means simply "without end," and is a common enough expression in both Classical and mediaeval Chinese. My own preference is to abide by the literal

27 B: - [*ljan] for R: R *Ijat "split, segmented," while not an attested chia-chieh usage, nevertheless makes both phonetic and semantic sense. Written without DC 140, X lien "to be connected, arrayed in order, linked in a row" is probably cognate with V lieh "to be separated, disconnected" (cf. yIj lieh<*ljat "distributed in a row, ranked"). The apparently opposite meanings "connected" and "separated" are actually just two different ways of looking at a series of things arrayed linearly, or segmentally.

28 The systematic and non-random nature of the -E/.7 pair in these lines was first pointed out to me by Nancy Sprick, a graduate student at the University of Washington, in a Spring, 1982, seminar on Classical Chinese philology.


meaning rather than introduce a somewhat nebulous notion of "knowing," and the apparent attribution of this form of con- sciousness to such things as heaven, earth, and valleys. I would suggest a translation for line 4, for example, as "Should heaven remain limpid in perpetuity, it risks cleaving; should earth remain steadfast in perpetuity, it risks bursting." The meaning is not that these phenomena lack a means to achieve a certain state, but that if they exist in that state unchanging in perpetuity, then some disintegration is inevitable.

Such an interpretation, faithful to the actual text of the manuscripts as it tries to be, would still be somewhat speculative were it not for the remarkable fact that this seems to be precisely the intent of the Ho-shang Kung PfLL commentary. For line 4, translated above, the Ho-shang Kung commentary says:

-233 Pkn M e N W, R e ! a .

That is, heaven ought to manifest the protracted expansions of Yin and Yang, the alternating operations of day and night; it cannot fain only to remain limpid and bright for time without end, for then it should, we fear, separate and split, and not function as heaven.

That is, earth ought to manifest both exalted and modest, firm and flexible, the regulations of the pneumata, and the sequences of the Five Agents; it cannot fain only to remain stable and quiescentfor time without end, for then it should, we fear, burst and break open, and not function as earth.

The clue here is the phrase wu i shilh PEI "time without end." This, together with the sense of the whole passage, seems to me to confirm the validity of taking the manuscripts' E in the literal meaning of "without end, in perpetuity," and not as a pair of loan graphs for the 4JL1 of the R text. Ho-shang Kung's JLfL La commentary to lines 5 and 6 uses the same phrase, wui i shih fE , in the parallel spot, and shows the same basic sense of recommending cyclical alternation over perpetual stasis that the line cited here shows. This is an important doctrinal difference between the text of the Ma wang tui manuscripts and the post-Han R text, and at the same time illustrates that we cannot assume that the text that commentators like Ho-shang Kung or Wang Pi TA had before them


was necessarily the one that has been transmitted with their commentaries down to the present. Ho-shang Kung must have been working from a text that matched the Ma wang tui manuscript version, even though the so-called "Ho-shang Kung text" now matches the version given as R above.29

Philological progress is, to re-cast another of Bertrand Russell's justly celebrated bon mots, like approaching a mist enshrouded mountain. Its outline gradually becomes clearer than before, but even up close still appears provocatively hazy. The Lao tzu is a textual mountain that has been mist enshrouded for two millennia. D. C. Lau has now brought us measurably closer to its substance, and as a result its outline is perceptibly sharper than heretofore. Russell's goal as a philosopher was to get the mountain in as clear a focus as possible, without being lured astray by the seductive, but illusory, mist itself, which he firmly refused to believe conveyed any useful elements of truth.'0 Our goal as philologist and textual critic should be no less fixed on clarity of substance, and our resistance to the allure of ethereal mists equally steadfast. Professor Lau has in this work always kept his sights on the mountain, and has scrupulously resisted following after fanciful mists. We would do well to emulate his example.

29 There are numerous examples of this kind of "mis-matching" of text and commentary that can be found throughout the R text. For notes on other cases, involving the Wang Pi commentary as well as the Ho-shang Kung, see Boltz, "The Religious and Philosophical Significance," pp. 106-07.

30 See Robert E. Egner and Lester E. Denonn, eds., The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), p. 7.

textual criticism and the ma wang tui lao tzu

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