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Eighty-one short chapters concerned with Dao, de, governing and ways of living. The received arrangement differs from early manuscript witnesses. Legge’s terminology reflects his historical translation.
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The Dao De Jing takes its familiar title from two recurring terms, dao, often rendered “way,” and de, variously translated as virtue or power. Traditional accounts attribute the text to Laozi, the Old Master. One account has him leaving a written teaching with a keeper of a frontier pass. That account belongs to the history of Laozi’s biography. The date, authorship and process by which the sayings became a book remain subjects of historical discussion.
Manuscripts from Guodian and Mawangdui preserve early forms of material familiar from the received text. They differ in arrangement and wording. The Mawangdui silk copies, for example, put the part associated with de before the part associated with dao. The familiar sequence of eighty-one chapters thus represents one influential stage in the work’s transmission.
The chapters move between the conduct of a ruler and images drawn from ordinary experience. Water, a valley and an unfilled vessel can illustrate the value of yielding or leaving room. James Legge’s nineteenth-century English version belongs to the history of European translation of Chinese classics. Its spellings, capital letters and explanatory parentheses reflect his choices as a translator.