Second, the Text and Commentary of Wang Pi (called also Fu-ssŭ), who died AD 249, at the early age of twenty-four. See Introduction, par. 8 .
Third, Helps ( lit. Wings) to Laozi ; by Chiao Hung (called also Jo-hou), and prefaced by him in 1587. This is what Julien calls “the most extensive and most important contribution to the understanding of Laozi, which we yet possess.” Its contents are selected from the ablest writings on the Treatise from Han Fei ( Introd. , par. 3 ) downwards, closing in many chapters with the notes made by the compiler himself in the course of his studies. Altogether the book sets before us the substance of the views of sixty-four writers on our short Ching . Julien took the trouble to analyse the list of them, and found it composed of three emperors, twenty professed Taoists, seven Buddhists, and thirty-four Confucianists or members of the literati. He says, “These last constantly explain Laozi according to the ideas peculiar to the school of Confucius, at the risk of misrepresenting him, and with the express intention of throttling his system;” then adding, “The commentaries written in such a spirit have no interest for persons who wish to enter fully into the thought of Laozi, and obtain a just idea of his doctrine. I have thought it useless, therefore, to specify the names of such commentaries and their authors.”
I have quoted these sentences of Julien, because of a charge brought by Mr. Balfour, in a prefatory note to his own version of the Tao Te Ching , against him and other translators. “One prime defect,” he says, though with some hesitation, “lies at the root of every translation that has been published hitherto; and this is, that not one seems to have been based solely and entirely on commentaries furnished by members of the Taoist school. The Confucian element enters largely into all; and here, I think, an injustice has been done to Laozi. To a Confucianist the Taoist system is in every sense of the word a heresy, and a commentator holding his opinion is surely not the best expositor. It is as a grammarian rather than as a philosopher that a member of the Ju Chia deals with the Tao Te