That's right! Te-Tao Ching not Tao-Te Ching...read on McDuff...This is a new translation based on the recently discovered Ma-wang-tui texts. Translated, with an introduction and commentary by Robert Henricks".
The introduction contains an excellent discussion of the different materials discovered in a tomb near athe village of Ma-wang-tui in 1973. The date of the tomb was April 4, 168 B.C. Two of the most important texts found wer the I-Ching (Book of Changes) and two copies of Lao-Tzu.
The newly discovered "...texts do not differ in any radical way from later versions of the text... The differences tend to be more subtle. A different word used here and there, or a word, phrase, or a line is added in or left out, or the syntax of a phrase or line is not the same." The Ma-wang-tui texts "...are much more 'grammatical' than the later editions".
Henricks points out that "...the standard texts of Lao-Tzu are divided into two parts, chapters 1-37, which are sometimes called the Tao ('The Way'), and chapters 38-81, sometimes called the Te ('Virtue'). The Ma-wang-dui texts do not have the same two-part division, but in reverse order: the 'Virtue' part preceding the 'Way'."
"We still don't know why this was done." Henricks says some scholars think that the author "...was all along more interested social-political matters...than metaphysics and pyschology." Other scholars think it was just a question of 'packaging' and that "...when the Ma-wang-tui texts were copied the chapter divisions in Lao-Tzu were not yet firmly determined."
Interesting thought...All this time we thought Lao-Tzu was a Daoist with an emphasis on individual enlightenment, when it may turn out he was a secret legalist with Daoist tendencies...who would have thought.
The whole introduction is a valuable discussion of the literature up to 1989. The introduction ends with a fascinating dicussion of 'wang' to perish, and 'wang' to forget. "'He who dies but does not really perish enjoys long life'" or "'To die but not be forgotten - that's true long life'".
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