Chinese Classics: Tao Te Ching by D. C. LauReview by: William G. BoltzJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 105, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1985), pp. 176-177Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/601571 .

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176 Journal of the American Oriental Society 105.1 (1985)

regular transformations within a larger system" (p. 1 1). Each bundle of such transformations is included in a "legend set." "A legend set will include all accounts of the transfer of rule or the establishment of hereditary succession at any one period and any other legends which are related to this pas- sage of rule in the texts" (p. 6). Five legend sets are dealt with here, involving the transfer from Yao to Shun; Shun to Yi; Yu to Ch'i; Chieh to T'ang; and Chou to Wu Wang.

Two major conclusions become explicit at the end of the author's analyses. The first concerns the raison d'etre of the legends and their transformations. The author contends that "in any society that differentiates one kinship group from another there is inherent conflict between the obligation to one's own family or kinship group and the obligation to the larger community or state that includes other kinship groups" (p. 10). The author hypothesizes "that the sets of legends sur- rounding each crucial period of change or continuation of rule serve as models to resolve the opposition between the conflicting principles of rule by heredity and rule by virtue" (p. 12). She further hypothesizes that "the references to the legends in the texts are 'surface structures'. . . . The limited range of the variation of the references implies underlying 'deep structures', a level from which specific variations of the legends may be derived, but only according to certain trans- formation laws" (pp. 18-19).

The second conclusion resulting from the author's analyses concerns the suggestion "that the ancient Chinese philoso- phers were at least intuitively aware of the [deep] structure and deliberately manipulated the system as a means of ex- pressing political and philosophical ideas" (p. 123) through the use of various transformations. In a separate chapter the author analyzes these transformations in the philosophical texts of the Mo-tzu, Lun-yi', Meng-tzu, Hsun-tzu, Han Fei- tzu (discussed together with the Ku-pen chu-shu chi-nien), and Chuang-tzu.

The book is useful and interesting. Useful, because there are very few books in English on ancient Chinese myths and legends, and Allan's book may serve as a useful new text in the area of Chinese mythology (very broadly interpreted; p. 12) where there is relative abundance of data, namely, the early dynastic legends. The book is also very interesting; Chinese mythology has often been regarded as an impover- ished field of study, but Sarah A-llan has shown that fertile soil can actually be found in it. The approach to ancient Chinese myth-making through a theoretically explicit study of bundles of variants is an original approach in the study of ancient history of China, and at the very least it injects fresh ideas into a tired discipline.

To bring to substantial fruition this fresh approach would require additional studies into many aspects of ancient Chi- nese political history and history of political thought. For example, insofar as Eastern Chou was a period of major

transition in the system of political succession, and in view of the fact that the ancient dynasties of Hsia, Shang, and Chou were contending states as well as succeeding dynasties (p. 55), the tension between heredity and virtue may be regarded more as one between contending families each claiming greater virtue than one between a single family and its larger community. The various "transformations" could have been derived from various oral traditions of diverse regional sources rather than from any structural principles of media- tion that are abstract and are Chinese in scope. As for the varying use of the legends in the philosophical texts of the Warring States period, Chinese historians have engaged in significant deliberations, which could have been referred to in this book with profit. Two outstanding examples of recent scholarly works on the use of legends by philosophers are Hsiao Kung-ch'uan's Chung-kuo Cheng-chih Ssu-hsiang Shih (Chungking: Commercial Press, 1945) and Hou Wai- lu's Chung-kuo Ku-tai She-hui Shih Lun (Peking: People's Press, 1955), especially the latter's Chapter 12.

KWANG-CHIH CHANG

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Chinese Classics: Tao Te Ching. Translated by D. C. LAU. Pp. xl + 325. Hong Kong: THE CHINESE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1982. $23.00.

The discovery in December, 1973, of a large number of silk manuscripts at Ma wang tui in Hunan province is now well known, as is the fact that among these manuscripts were two independent, and nearly complete, texts of the Lao tzu, Tao te ching. These two manuscripts, known simply as the chia If(or A) and i aJor B) texts, can be dated from internal evidence, viz., the characters that are or are not avoided as "taboos," to approximately 200 B.C.E. and 180 B.C.E. respec- tively. This means that the version of the Lao tzu text that they represent was current very near the beginning of the Han dynasty, and exists untouched by the hands of either Wang Pi (226-249 C.E.) or Ho-shang Kung (approximately contemporary with Wang Pi), a fact of crucial importance in determining, through comparison with the received, trans- mitted text (hereinafter designated R), what has been either lost from or added to, the original. These manuscripts precede by several centuries any other extant Lao tzu manuscript, and are therefore of immeasureable value in determining the textual history of this work.

We must not fail to recognize the improbable good for- tune that not one, but two, early Han manuscripts were found. The significance of this cannot be overestimated. If

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Reviews of Books 177

only one manuscript had been discovered, and it differed at some point from R in a particularly peculiar and unexpected way, we might be tempted to dismiss the variant as anom- alous and of no significance. But if two early Han manu- scripts, separated by as much as a generation in time, showed the same unexpected variant, no matter how peculiar or bizarre, it cannot be regarded as anomalous, but must be acknowledged and accounted for to the extent possible through the normal procedures of textual criticism.

Two seemingly contradictory generalizations can be made about the text of the Ma wang tui Lao tzu manuscripts. First, they attest to a remarkable overall fidelity in the transmission of the R text; this because of the generally high degree of conformity we find between the Ma wang tui manuscripts and the transmitted text. Second, they preserve a substantial number of non-trivial variants, sometimes matching variants known from post-Han versions of the text, other times unknown apart from these manuscripts them- selves. The full interpretative significance of these variants is yet to be realized, but many can be seen to have important implications for the understanding of the text.

Professor Lau's book here under review consists of two parts. Part one is a reprinting of his translation of the Wang Pi text, and first appeared in 1963 (Harmondsworth, Mid- dlesex: Penguin Books, Ltd.) Part two is a new translation based on the text of the Ma wang tui manuscripts. The appearance of these two translations side by side greatly facilitates comparison and enables us to spot just where the variations are, and how significant they may be. In many places Lau has presented novel, imaginative, and thought- provoking interpretations based on the evidence of the Ma wang tui manuscript variants. To give only two examples of the kind of thing Lau has noted:

(1) Chapter 41. R: _ MWT:

"When the best student "When the best student hears about the way, is told about the way, He practices it It is barely within his assiduously;" power to practice it;"

(p. 61, emphasis added.) (p. 193, emphasis added.)

By taking the graph -"of the Ma wang tui manuscripts as ehin<*gjianh "barely" (written II in standardized script) rather than as ch'in<*gjan "diligently, assiduously," and by reading t as neng "be able" instead of as a graphic variant for erh<*znjag P'7, Lau makes the sense of this line fit the context of the subsequent lines more satisfactorily than the traditional rendering: (1) the best student is barely able to practice the Tao, (2) to the middling student (4bt) the Tao

seems now present, now lost, and (3) the worst student (F At) only laughs at it.

(2) In connection with the avoidance of characters that constitute a part of an emperor's name Lau points out that there seems to have been a conceptual distinction in the pre- Han Lao tzu between heng Upland chang ;$, the former used mainly attributively, i.e., either as "adjective" or "adverb," and the latter substantively. This distinction was lost when all occurrences of heng were changed to chang after the time of Han Wen ti (r. 176-156 B.C.E.) whose personal name was heng. Thus, we find, for example, expressions like heng tao 4f j&"constant way" and heng ming 4j -t"constant name" (ch. 01, p. 267), or heng shan chiu jen 4d J a> _ "always good at saving people" (ch. 27, p. 307) on the one hand, but sentences like fu ming chang ye IX *p 1 "Re- turning to one's destiny is normal" (ch. 16, p. 289), and chih chang ming ye :?a H $ 6 "knowledge of the nor- mal is discernment" (ibid.).

It is the inclusion of observations and inferences of this kind that makes this a valuable work. Still, Lau takes little heed of technical linguistic, philological, or paleographical details, nor does he give many notes to his translations. And sometimes he allows his formidable knowledge of the back- ground and history of the traditional R text to influence his interpretation of the Ma wang tui text in ways that cannot be entirely justified. This makes the resulting translation less accurate as a reflection of the early Han Ma wang tui Lao tzu than it could have been.'

WILLIAM G. BOLTZ UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Symbolism of Indian Architecture. By ANANDA KENTISH COOMARASWAMY. Pp. 77. Jaipur: [THE HISTORICAL RE- SEARCH DOCUMENTATION PROGRAMME]. 1982. $16.00.

A. K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), whose career began as a geological scientist and ended as curator of Indian art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was unquestionably a seminal figure in the small world of Western Indologists. When he made the effort, he wrote professionally and with precision; but in later life, when his interests centered on metaphysics and the philosophia perennis, he sometimes

' For a full discussion of the textual criticism of the Lao tzu in connection with the Ma wang tui manuscripts, and this aspect of Lau's work, see my "Textual Criticism and the Ma wang tui Lao tzu," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 44.1 (June, 1984), 185-224.

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