Notes on modern editions of the Taoist Canon1

Judith Magee Boltz

doi:10.1017/S0041977X00001683

Notes on modern editions of the Taoist Canon1

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009

Judith Magee Boltz

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The three publishing houses of Wen-wu in Peking, Shanghai shu-tien, and Ku-chi in Tientsin joined forces to produce a new edition of the Taoist Canon. The Tao-tsang they published in 1988 is meant to be an improvement on the so-called Cheng-t'ung Tao-tsang printed in 1921–23 by the Han-fen lou branch of Shanghai Commercial Press. The latter takes as its foundation the copy of the Ming Canon from the archives of the Pai-yün Kuan (White Cloud Abbey) in Peking. The woodcut edition of the Ming Canon contains two components. The core collection appeared under the title Ta Ming Tao-tsang ching in the years 1444–45 of the Cheng-t'ung reign period. A small supplement entitled Hsü Tao-tsang ching was issued in 1607.

Type: Articles
Information: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , February 1993 , pp. 87 - 95

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00001683 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1993

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References

² For an incisive history of the Taoist Canon from the Sung to Ming, see Piet van der, Loon, Taoist books in the libraries of the Sung period; A critical study and index (Oxford Oriental Institute Monographs no. 7, London: Ithaca Press, 1984), 29–63.Google Scholar

³ An account of the 1845 restoration of the Taoist Canon in the Pai-yün Kuan archives by Cheng Yung-hsiang and Meng Chih-ts'ai , entitled ‘Pai-yün Kuan ch'unghsiu Tao-tsang chi’ , is included in the prefatory materials of the Tao-tsang mu-lu hsiang-chu Tao-tsang ching-hua lu , ed. Ting Fu-pao (Shanghai: I-hsüeh , 1922; repr. Hangchow: Che-chiang ku-chi , 1989).

⁴ See van der, Loon, Taoist books in the libraries of the Sung period, 59–61, regarding the comparable format of the Ming Taoist Canon and southern editions of the Buddhist CanonGoogle Scholar.

⁵ The three major, twelve subsidiary, and supplementary divisions of the Taoist Canon are outlined in Judith, M. Boltz, A survey of Taoist literature, tenth to seventeenth centuries (China Research Monograph no. 32, Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987), 7–9Google Scholar.

⁶ The discrepancies of the two numbering systems are outlined in Boltz, Survey of Taoist literature, 247–50.

⁷ The contributions of the two indices and methods of citation are discussed in Boltz, Survey of Taoist literature, 10–12.

⁸ I am grateful to Professor Piet van der Loon for pointing out the extent to which missing and misplaced folios mar the Taipei reprints. A list of such defects that he compiled in June 1986 serves as the foundation for the tabulation here.

⁹ I am grateful to Professor van der Loon for pointing out five improvements and five remaining defects in the 1988 Tao-tsang (personal communication, 19 April 1989), nearly two years before I had access to it. Chinese language collections in American university libraries, unlike their counterparts in England, have been slow to acquire the 1988 edition.

¹⁰ I owe the identification of the duplicate text to Professor van der Loon (personal communication, 19 June 1991).

¹¹ Professor van der Loon notes that this text is not to be found in the 1598 printing of the Canon in Paris and should be checked in Tokyo (personal communication, 19 June 1991).

¹² A copy of the 1588 Chuang-tzu i is in the Rare Book Room of the East Asia Library, University of Washington, Seattle. Two copies are also to be found in Peking, according to Chung-kuo shan-pen shu t'i-yao , comp. Wang Chung-min (Shanghai: Shanghai ku-chi ch'u-pan she, 1983, repr. 1986), p. 237Google Scholar. A reprint is available in Chung-kuo tzu-hsüeh ming-chu chi-ch'eng , chen-pen 60–61 (Taipei, 1978)Google Scholar.