Editing Tao Te Ching (section)

=== Archaeologically recovered manuscripts ===
''Tao Te Ching'' scholarship has advanced from archaeological discoveries of manuscripts, some of which are older than any of the received texts. Beginning in the 1920s and 1930s, [[Marc Aurel Stein]] and others found thousands of scrolls in the [[Mogao Caves]] near [[Dunhuang]]. They included more than 50 partial and complete manuscripts. Another partial manuscript has the ''[[Xiang'er]]'' commentary, which had previously been lost.<ref>{{Citation |last=Boltz |first=William G. |title=The Religious and Philosophical Significance of the Hsiang erh Lao tzu 相爾老子 in the Light of the Ma-wang-tui Silk Manuscripts |work=Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies |volume=45 |year=1982 |jstor=615191 |author-link=William G. Boltz}}</ref>{{rp|95ff}}<ref>{{Citation |last=Zandbergen |first=Robbert |title=The Ludibrium of Living Well |journal=Monumenta Serica |volume=70 |issue=2 |pages=367–388 |year=2022 |doi=10.1080/02549948.2022.2131802 |s2cid=254151927}}</ref>

In 1973, archaeologists discovered copies of early Chinese books, known as the [[Mawangdui Silk Texts]], in a tomb dated to 168&nbsp;BC.<ref name="stanford" /> They included two nearly complete copies of the text, referred to as Text A ({{lang|lzh|甲}}) and Text B ({{lang|lzh|乙}}), both of which reverse the traditional ordering and put the ''Te Ching'' section before the ''Tao Ching'', which is why the Henricks translation of them is named "Te-Tao Ching". Based on calligraphic styles and imperial [[naming taboo]] avoidances, scholars believe that Text A can be dated to about the first decade and Text B to about the third decade of the 2nd century&nbsp;BC.<ref>{{Citation |last=Loewe |first=Michael |title=Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide |pages=269 |year=1993 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e10hAQAAIAAJ |publisher=Society for the Study of Early China |language=en |isbn=978-1-55729-043-4}}</ref>

In 1993, the oldest known version of the text, written on [[bamboo slips]], was found in a tomb near the town of Guodian ({{zhi|郭店}}) in [[Jingmen]], Hubei, and dated prior to 300&nbsp;BC.<ref name="stanford" /> The [[Guodian Chu Slips]] comprise around 800 slips of bamboo with a total of over 13,000 characters, about 2,000 of which correspond with the ''Tao Te Ching.''<ref name="stanford" />

Both the Mawangdui and Guodian versions are generally consistent with the received texts, excepting differences in chapter sequence and graphic variants. Several recent ''Tao Te Ching'' translations utilise these two versions, sometimes with the verses reordered to synthesize the new finds.<ref>{{multiref|{{harvp|Lau|1989}}|{{harvp|Henricks|1989}}|{{harvp|Mair|1990}}|Henricks (2000)|Allan and Williams (2000)|Roberts (2004)}}</ref>