Four Classics of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi sijing)黄帝四经

Also known as

The ancient lost texts preceding the 'B' manuscript of the Laozi in the Mawangdui silk manuscripts, Jingfa (Canon Law), Shida jing (Ten Great Classics), Cheng (Aphorisms), and Daoyuan (Origin of the Dao)

Author / transmission

Anonymous

Period

Warring States to early Han · Unearthed in 1973 from Han Tomb No. 3 at Mawangdui, Changsha, copied out in the early years of Emperor Wen of Han; scholars conjecture the work was composed in the mid-to-late Warring States period. Tang Lan was the first to identify it with the Huangdi Sijing recorded in the Yiwenzhi (Treatise on Literature) of the Han Shu, a view that has become widespread but remains disputed.

Canon division

Outside the Canon

Collected in

Outside the canon (an excavated text, not included in the Daoist Canon)

Category

Daoist Philosophy

Fascicles

Four sections: Jingfa, Shida jing (also called the Shiliu jing, Sixteen Classics), Cheng, and Daoyuan, some 11,000 characters in all

Synopsis

The Huangdi Sijing (Four Classics of Huangdi) comprises four ancient lost texts found at the head of manuscript B of the Laozi among the Mawangdui silk manuscripts, and is the most important primary source of Huang–Lao learning now extant. Of the four texts, the Jingfa (Constant Standards) discusses 'the Dao gives rise to law,' advocating governance by law while holding that law itself derives from the Dao; the Shidajing (Ten Great Classics, also called the Shiliujing, Sixteen Classics) uses a dialogue between Huangdi and his ministers to discuss punishment and virtue, yin and yang, and the use of arms; the Cheng (Aphorisms) is a compilation of maxims; and the Daoyuan (Origin of the Dao) discusses the ontology of the Dao. Its thought combines Laozi's Dao with the techniques of forms and names and Legalist method, discussing punishment and virtue nurturing each other, according with the seasons of Heaven, and holding to the feminine constancy — representing the theoretical foundation of Huang–Lao governance from the Warring States to the early Han, and corroborating the four chapters of the Guanzi, the Heguanzi, and the Wenzi. The discovery of this text rewrote scholarly understanding of the content of early Han Huang–Lao learning, and provided the intellectual-historical source for the Daoist Huang–Lao Dao tradition that venerates Huangdi and Laozi as its founders.

Key Ideas

• The Dao gives rise to law: statutes are rooted in the Dao
• Punishment and virtue nurturing each other; punishment and virtue in yin-yang terms
• One who holds to the Dao is empty and still, taking no action, so as to examine names and realities
• Holding to the feminine constancy: valuing softness while capable of hardness
• The political myth of Huangdi as sovereign of the Dao and its laws

Structure

Four texts: the nine chapters of the Jingfa, the fifteen chapters of the Shidajing, the Cheng, and the Daoyuan.

Editions

• Research Office of Ancient Documents, State Administration of Cultural Heritage, Mawangdui Han Mu Boshu (Yi) [Silk Manuscripts from the Han Tomb at Mawangdui, Vol. 1] (Cultural Relics Publishing House, 1980)
• Chen Guying, Huangdi Sijing Jinzhu Jinyi [The Huangdi Sijing, Annotated and Translated into Modern Chinese] (Commercial Press, 2007)
• Qiu Xigui (ed.), Changsha Mawangdui Hanmu Jianbo Jicheng [Complete Collection of the Bamboo and Silk Texts from the Han Tombs at Mawangdui, Changsha] (Zhonghua Book Company, 2014)

Translations

• Robin D. S. Yates, Five Lost Classics (1997)
• Leo S. Chang & Yu Feng, The Four Political Treatises of the Yellow Emperor (1998)

Full Text & Online Resources

• CTEXT: Mawangdui Silk Manuscripts
• Wikipedia: Huangdi Sijing

Related scriptures

Related figures