From Text To Book Circulation

Laozi zhigui has been regarded as the work of Yan Zun,who used to be the teacher of Yang Xiong,the famous scholar in Western Han Dynasty.However,No record had mentioned Yan's work in Han Dynasty.The reference to the title and its content hadn't appeared until Western Jin Dynasty.After that,Yan's work became more and more popular from Tang to Song Dynasty.The book appeared.both in historical records and Taoist books.However,the work then lost half of its content,that is,the Dao part.In Ming dynasty,the book only remained the content of De part.From Ming to Qing Dynasty,the printed Laozi zhigui had two forms:one held six volumes printed by Hu Zhenheng,the other held seven printed by Taoist Sutra(Zhengtong daozang).Besides the seventh volume,the later one had four more parts than the former one,that is,the general preface(Zongxu),the Laozi scripture,the annotation of Laozi,and the annotation of zhigui.However,the huge differences between the two printed forms thade scholars keep skeptical towards Laozi zhigui,therefore they made various conclusions towards the time when the book had been finished.In this paper,the concept of "text" is used to refer to Yan's work,which aims to study the static and dynamic aspects of the content of Laozi zhigui.The first chapter analyzed historical data to study the change happened on the character image of Yan Zun and his book.From the 2th AD to Tang Dynasty,historical books changed the character's image according to the intention of writing.Meanwhile,the Taoist books turned the character image of Yan Zun into gods.Moreover,according to the bibliography in historical books and Taoist classics from Tang to Ming Dynasty,the content and the shape of the book had always been changing.Therefore,it is advisable to study each layer of text separately.The second and third chapters have a profound analysis of the text content.First,the content of each layer of text is analyzed separately.According to the structure and ideological characteristic of each layer,the paper makes a judgment on the time when the very part was accomplished.Then,each layer is analyzed comprehensively with other layers,so the relationship between them can be observed.The text consists of six layers.The theory of chapter-separation(Shuomu)was based on the theory of Yin Yang and divination.The systematization of the chapter-separation theory of Laozi and the mystification of Taoist classics led to the creation of this article.The general preface(Zongxu),which was arranged according to Shuomu,should be written in the same time of Shuomu or later.In the seven-volume form of Laozi zhigui,the Laozi scripture conflicted with the meaning of zhigui.Meanwhile,the Laozi scripture in Taoist Sutra(Zhengtong daozang)was contrary to the Taoist books from Tang to Song Dynasty,which recorded the Laozi scripture from Yan's book.Therefore,the Laozi scripture in Taoist Sutra(Zhengtong daozang)was probably added in Laozi zhigui on purpose after Southern Song Dynasty.The annotation of Laozi scripture mostly based on zhigui,so the annotation should be created later than zhigui.According to Sui Book(Sui Shu)and Qiang Siqi's work,the time when the annotation of Laozi scripture had been accomplished was probably from the Southern Dynasty to Tang Dynasty.The annotation of zhigui was written in Tang Dynasty,after the completion of the annotation of Laozi scripture.The quotations of Laozi scripture in the annotation of zhigui differed a lot from the meaning of zhigui and the seven-volume Laozi scripture.As for zhigui,the flowery text consists of various ideas and detailed narration,it's no doubt that zhigui was the creation of Taoism in Han Dynasty.