Text and Edition in Early Chinese Philosophical Literature

Students of the textual history of Chinese works of all periods and genres encounter the problem that we do not always distinguish clearly between the concepts of text and edition. A further problem arises when one seeks to differentiate the strata of editions relating to the textual history of a given work. In this article, based on the author's research into the textual history of three early philosophical works, Huai-nan Tzu, Chuang Tzu, and Lao Tzu, an attempt is made to resolve these issues by proposing working definitions for the key terms, text and edition, and for a number of other related terms, including exemplar, recension, ancestral redaction, received text, and witness. The relevant Western text-critical models are surveyed and the closely related fields of textual history and textual criticism are discussed with regard to Chinese works.