The religious and philosophical signicance of the ‘Hsiang erh’Lao tzuin the light of theMa-wang-tuisilk manuscripts

Among the many texts and manuscripts that Sir Aurel Stein brought to London from the Grottoes of the Thousand Buddhas at Tun-huang early in this century was a text of the first half of the Lao tzu (chapters 1–37 of the standard, received version of the text) with a commentary known as the Hsiang erh chu (Stein MS 6825 in the British Museum). This document has attracted considerable scholarly interest because of its ostensible connexion with the origins and early history of Celestial Master (t'ien shih ) Taoism in the Later Han dynasty. Lu Te-ming (c. 550–c. 630) listed the Hsiang erh chu as a commentary to the Lao tzu in his Ching tien shih wen , and said that accordingto one tradition it was written by Chang Lu (d. 216). This is the earliest known suggestion that the Hsiang erh chu is a text of the Celestial Master school.