Punctuation in the Tao Te Ching
In one of my classes this term, an independent study really, we’re going over the 道德经 chapter by chapter, going over all the little details of each word and possible translations. I’ll be posting on that as the weeks go on.
Thinking about this got me thinking about the issue of punctuation. One of the big issues that comes up in things like Qur’anic interpretation (from my former life before coming to China) is that at the time of writing, there was no such thing as punctuation in the language. Fortunately, Arabic is a highly inflected language and so for the most part it’s really not that much of an issue. But it seems we’re not so lucky with Wenyan, which if I had to describe in a single word, I’d say “vague”.
Specifically I was thinking about the first line of the first chapter of the 道德经. Sans punctuation, it’s as follows:
道可道非常道
Typically this is then broken up as follows:
道可道，非常道。
With some translation like “the Dao that can be named is not the eternal Dao”. I recently picked up Victor Mair’s translation which I rather like for the more road-based translation, “The ways that can be walked are not the eternal Way”.
However an alternative (Buddhist?) reading could be
道可，道非，常道。
That is, something like “The Dao that is and the Dao that is not, that is the Eternal Dao”. To me at least, that’s not a minor difference. This sort of thing extends throughout classical Chinese philosophy. Maybe not great for the amateur philosopher, but damn interesting to me for linguistic reasons.
I’m not going anywhere with this. I just find it fascinating. The good news is if gives plenty of practice thinking about how sentences and ideas are constructed.
Other examples are welcome.
doro be doro oci ojorongge, enteheme doro waka
This is from the Manchu version of Dao De Jing. My translation is: A way that is a way is not the eternal way.
I’ve often wondered about how the Chinese version should be parsed. Is it [[道[可道]][非[常道]]], or [[[道可]道][[非常]道]], or what?
Your “Buddhist” reading is very interesting. It seems to ring true with the paradoxes in the rest of the text. I wonder if there is any strong reason not to consider such a translation.
I’d love that in the Manchu script if you happen to have a scan handy.
Keeping in mind I’m far from an expert on this sort of thing, My understanding is that the reason the 道可道－非常道 reason is accepted is mostly just because it’s what’s accepted.
I’ll post more on this tomorrow after I’ve had a chance to address it in depth with someone who really knows about this stuff.
I’m not an expert either, so I’m looking to reading that post. My two cents: perhaps 道可道非常道 cannot be parsed as [[道可][道非]][常道] because for the sentence to mean “The Dao that is and the Dao that is not, that is the Eternal Dao”, as you suggested, you would expect [[可道][非道]][常道]. After all, if we parse it as you suggested, in 常道 the adjective precedes the noun, but in 道可 and 道非 it does not. There’s an inconsistency here.
Also, as far as I know, in classical Chinese NPs, adjectives hardly ever appear after their heads, if they do so at all. I can’t come up with any examples of NP > N Adj at the moment. Any suggestions would be welcomed
(Oh, and slightly off-topic, Kellen, do you think it would be possible to make this text box a bit bigger? It’s so small – I keep typing my replies in Notepad, then pasting them in.)
Daan: it’s that bad, huh? I gotta fix the whole comment section anyway so I’ll be sure to fix the box as well.
I’ll post on the whole 道 thing in a new post.
Interesting post Kellen. I haven’t seen the “Buddhist” interpretation before, but kind of like it! Looking forward to anymore insights that come out of your Daodejing studies.