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Lao Zi Are Used Retroactively to Interpret the Meaning of the Source Text

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Lao Zi Are Used Retroactively to Interpret the Meaning of the Source Text Laozi - Daodejing ( Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching ) Word by Word Two Literal English Translations One Simple, One Complex, The Chinese Text and a Pinyin Transcription by Bradford Hatcher Copyright © 2009, Bradford Hatcher, All Rights Reserved 1st Edition, Published in Nucla, CO: Hermetica.info, 2009 Find Current Information at http://www.hermetica.info DDCS 299.51…. LAO …. LCCN BL 1900 L26 E5 …. ISBN 978-0-9824191-0-6 Table of Contents Section A - A Simple Translation 1 Introduction 1 A Simple Translation 7 Footnotes 49 Section B - A Matrix Translation and Chinese Text 51 Introduction and Search Tips 51 A Matrix Translation 55 Common Variations in the Text 195 Guodian Index 203 Section C - Glossary 207 Words 209 Characters Not in the Glossary 235 Common Words 253 Phrases and Idioms 254 Pronouncing Pinyin Chinese 256 Pinyin to Wade-Giles Conversion 258 Section D - Bibliography 259-265 Introduction With more than a hundred English translations of this little book in print it has become customary to begin each new version with an apology explaining the need for yet another English version. But this one may come as a surprise to many readers: nobody has yet attempted a rigorously literal translation of the Dao De Jing. Nobody has produced a stand-alone English version wherein all of the Chinese words are represented by English counter- parts. And nobody has yet attempted a translation which fully resists the temptation to insert grammatical subjects and genders which do not exist in the Chinese original. However a number of translators have demonstrated an admirable res- pect for the original Chinese text and there exist many fine to passable trans- lations, even if not strictly literal. My own favorites are highlighted in bold in the Bibliography. Further, several versions have provided readers with Eng- lish equivalents alongside each of the Chinese characters. These too are noted in the bibliography. Unfortunately most do not mention which of the many variations in the text are being used or point out places where other versions differ. Typos are usually a problem with these as well. There are several reasons for such a confusion of books. The most ob- vious is that there exists a large popular market for this book, while most of the readers within this market know next to nothing about the Old Chinese language. They seem to trust that publishing house editors, or the reviewers quoted on the covers, are more knowledgeable. This is not the case. But there is a still deeper source of confusion: the original work is not that much better understood in Chinese than in English. Thousands of volumes of interpreta- tion exist in the Chinese language, dating as far back as Wang Bi and Heshang Gong in the third century CE. Interpretations tend to follow schools of thought and the cumulative error that this often entails. Often systems of thought which were in some way derived from Lao Zi are used retroactively to interpret the meaning of the source text. The original’s language is terse, ambiguous in places, and full of word play. The Old Chinese language itself has no set parts of speech, no tense, gender, voice, mood, plurals, etc. In many ways it resembles Tarot cards more than it does conventional language: most words carry a large number of possible translations, in many parts of speech, and intended meanings do not become clearer until studied in their more limiting contexts. The fact that the original is rhymed is not as impor- tant as some scholars seem to think: with only 411 syllables, rhyming in the Chinese language is easy. But where the book makes effort to rhyme it often makes the grammar less familiar. Finally, hundreds of older editions exist, and rarely will two be found which agree word for word throughout. Choices must often be made between these. As the book began to be translated into languages other than Chinese, a few more interpretive problems entered the picture. The earliest editions were authored by Christian missionaries. These formed a substratum of schol- 1 arship upon which most later work was built. But the phrase “full of precon- ceptions” could almost stand in as a definition of the word “missionary.” To give credit where due, their minds seemed more open than their less scholarly brethren. But in their effort to save Lao Zi’s soul they made his words sound almost as though Jesus might have spoken them, even unto the absurdity of translating Dao as God. There were also a number of wrong assumptions made about the impossibility of translating Chinese literally, particularly about the need to insert non-existent subjects of non-existent genders. This assump- tion continues, but I challenge it here. A great mass of speculation, set forth with great cleverness and erudi- tion, has been done on what this little book says and means, often flying right in the face of the many things that Lao Zi himself had to say on the difficul- ties that we humans have due to cleverness and erudition. This is delightfully, wickedly perverse. Lao Zi will say something like: “The five colors will make the human eye blind.” Commentators will then rush to “enlighten” us, with great detail, about what the five colors are, presumably so that we can watch out for them. For the above reasons I perceived a need to return to the original text, as best as this can be reconstructed, and plod word by word through this until it made sense. It is after all the original, and neither a translation nor a com- mentary, which has survived these two dozen centuries. And, as it turned out, the book was able to speak for, and even introduce itself. In other words I have tried to present Laozi’s Dao De Jing as a simple book with lots of com- plex thoughts, and not as a Daoist text or even a philosophical work. Com- mentary in this edition will be limited to a few footnotes on some of the more obscure cultural references and passages where misinterpretation has been the most common. Restraint has been the most difficult where refraining from explaining such key Chinese terms as Dao (way, path, truth), De (character, merit, virtue), Po (unworked wood, original nature, simplicity) and Wei (to do, perform, make, become, regard as). For these the reader is referred to the Glossary at the back of the book. Two different kinds of translations are given here. The first is familiar- a linear representation of thoughts in one language given in another. Particu- larly between these two languages, much is lost in translation. The original is far too broad in implication to be fully captured by so narrow and specific language as English. English words cannot be made as fat with meaning as Chinese, unless they spread out in another direction or dimension. The second translation addresses this problem by offering a multi-dimensional matrix from which a practically infinite number of linear translations can be derived. This offers an average of perhaps four to five different English options for each Chinese word, and often demonstrates choices between different gram- matical constructions. This may be so unfamiliar and so confusing to most readers that it is best thought of as an intricate set of footnotes, or a demon- stration of the thought processes by which the linear translation of each line was derived. It can still be used to answer specific questions about the turning 2 of certain phrases and the (often deliberate) polysemy, ambiguities and double entendres in the original. The combined speculation on Lao Zi’s history and the origin of this book would fill hundreds of volumes in Chinese and dozens in English. If we set aside all the speculation, this is what we have left: The Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching) was written in China during either the late Spring and Autumn Period or the Warring States Period of the Zhou Dynasty, at some time be- tween 550 and 350 BCE, by one or more persons either named, writing un- der the pen name of, or who came to be named Lao Zi (Lao Tzu). Two things often said of Shakespeare apply also to Lao Zi: if the Dao De Jing was not written by Lao Zi, it was by someone else of the same name; and if Lao Zi did not write the Dao De Jing he most certainly missed the opportunity of a lifetime. The name “Lao Zi,” which also stood for a few centuries as the book’s title, could be a real name, meaning Elder Sir, or a pen name meaning the Old Youngster. Sima Qian (Ssu-Ma Ch’ien, 145-86 BCE), the Han Dy- nasty historian, offered the most widely accepted - but still speculative - his- tory: Sima Qian shi ji, Lao Zi chuan Sima Qian’s historical record, Lao Zi’s story Si-ma Qian yue Sima Qian writes: Lao Zi zhe Lao Zi was Chu, Ku xian, Li xiang, Qu-ren li ren ye. (A) Chu (Province), Ku district, Li county Quren hamlet resident. Xing Li shi Surnamed of the Li gentry Ming Er Proper name Er Zi Dan Styled Dan Zhou shou cang shi zhi shi ye. A Zhou official in charge of historical archives. Kong Zi shi Zhou Kong Zi [Confucius] went to Zhou Jiang wen li yu Lao-zi In order to confer with Lao Zi about ceremony Lao Zi yue, zi, suo yan zhe Lao Zi said, Sir, that of which (you) speak, Qi ren yu gu jie yi xiu yi! These men, along with their bones, are all done with and decayed! Du qi yan zai er Only their words remain to be heard 3 Qie jun zi de qi shi ze jia Now a nobleman who has his timing then rises Bu de qi shi ze feng lei er xing Failing to find his timing then drifts among involvements and wanders about Wu wen zhi: This I hear: Liang gu shen cang ruo xu The good merchant is well guarded, (and) seems to be poor Jun zi sheng de rong mao ruo yu A nobleman
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