died in AD 249, at the early age of twenty-four. This work has always been much prized. It was its text which Lu Tê-ming used in his Explanation of the Terms and Phrases of the Classics , in the seventh century. Among the editions of it which I possess is that printed in 1794 with the imperial moveable metal types.
I need not speak of editions or commentaries subsequent to Wang Pi’s. They soon begin to be many, and are only not so numerous as those of the Confucian Classics.
All the editions of the book are divided into two parts, the former called “ Tao ”, and the latter “ Tê ,” meaning the Qualities or Characteristics of the Tao , but this distinction of subjects is by no means uniformly adhered to.
I referred already to the division of the whole into eighty-one short chapters (37 + 44), which is by common tradition attributed to Ho-shang Kung, or “The old man of the ho -side.” Another very early commentator, called Yen Tsun or Yen Chün-ping, made a division into seventy-two chapters (40 + 32), under the influence, no