Scripture Portions

De Jing

Also Known As Te Ching (Classical Chinese) Latin script. · The Book of Virtue (English)Original Term Dejing (Classical Chinese) Latin script. · 德經 (Classical Chinese) Han script.

Tao Te Ching

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "De Jing." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://divinity.interactivelion.com/scripture-portions/de-jing.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). De Jing. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://divinity.interactivelion.com/scripture-portions/de-jing

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-de-jing,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {De Jing},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://divinity.interactivelion.com/scripture-portions/de-jing},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The second part of the received text, forty-four chapters, opening with the claim that the highest virtue is not virtuous and therefore has virtue. Its subject is de, the power or efficacy that accrues to whatever accords with the way, and it turns more often to government, war, taxation and the conduct of a state than the first part does. In the Mawangdui silk manuscripts, the earliest substantially complete witnesses, this part comes first, which is why they are often called the Te-Tao Ching.

Facts

Disputed

Attributed Author / Compiler

Traditionally ascribed to Laozi, though most modern scholars regard the Tao Te Ching as a compilation assembled from older sayings rather than the work of a single author. 2

The De Jing, the second of the Tao Te Ching's two traditional divisions, is ascribed by tradition to Laozi alongside the Dao Jing, but the Guodian bamboo slip manuscripts, excavated in 1993 and studied in Robert G. Henricks's Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching: A Translation of the Startling New Documents Found at Guodian (Columbia University Press, 2000), are the earliest surviving physical witnesses to the text and do not preserve it in the received two-part division. The method is manuscript-based textual criticism, comparing the material and ordering of the third century BCE Guodian slips against the received text's De Jing material to determine how much of it existed, and in what form, at that early date. Because the Guodian find shows only a partial selection arranged differently from the received text, whether the De Jing existed as a distinct, complete unit attributable to one author at the time reflected in the earliest manuscript evidence is not settled by the manuscript record Henricks studies.

Point in Dispute

Whether the eighty-one chapter division belongs to the text 5

The division into eighty-one chapters, a number that is nine squared and carries its own numerological weight, is not present in the Mawangdui manuscripts and has no counterpart in the Guodian slips, where the material appears in three bundles with different groupings and no chapter marks. One position treats the division as a Han period editorial imposition on an anthology of independent sayings. Another holds that many of the units are genuine and that the received arrangement preserves older groupings. The atlas records the number because every citation uses it, and records that it is editorial.

Origins

Era of Composition

from 400 BCE 2

Language

Classical Chinese 3

Classical Chinese of the Warring States period, in a terse rhymed and parallel style that leaves grammatical subjects, number and tense unmarked, which is a principal reason the translations differ so widely

Structure

Chapters 38 to 81 of the received text 4

Verses

Forty four chapters in the received division. 4

Identity

Parent Work

Tao Te Ching 1

Position in the Canon

Chapters 38 to 81 of the received (Wang Bi) text of the Tao Te Ching, treating De; the older Mawangdui silk manuscripts place this half first rather than second. 1

Transmission

Manuscript Tradition

Earlier versions survive among the Guodian bamboo slips, buried around 300 BCE, and the Mawangdui silk manuscripts, buried in 168 BCE, both differing in wording from the received text. 2

Learn More

What the Second Part Is About

The De part opens with the sentence that gives it its subject and its difficulty: the highest power is not powerful, and therefore has power. De is usually rendered as virtue, which imports a moral sense the Chinese word does not carry on its own; it is closer to the efficacy or force that accrues to a thing by being what it is, the potency of something in accord with the way it goes.

The chapter that opens the part sets out a decline. When the way is lost there is power; when power is lost there is benevolence; when benevolence is lost there is rightness; when rightness is lost there is ritual, and ritual is described as the thinning out of loyalty and trust and the beginning of disorder. The named virtues of the surrounding culture, the Confucian vocabulary in particular, are treated not as goods but as the symptoms by which a loss can be dated.

From there the part turns more often to the conduct of a state than the first does. There is taxation, and the observation that the people are hungry because those above eat too much of it. There is war, treated as an instrument of ill fortune, with victory to be observed by funeral rites. There is capital punishment, and a warning to whoever takes the executioner's place. There is the picture of a small state whose people find their food sweet and never travel, which has been read as an idyll and as a reactionary fantasy and as satire, and which the text does not gloss.

Eighty-One, and What the Number Is Doing

The division into eighty-one chapters is universal in modern printing, is used by every citation, and is not a feature of the earliest witnesses.

Eighty-one is nine squared, and nine carries weight in Chinese numerology, so the figure is not neutral. The Mawangdui silk manuscripts do not divide the text this way. The Guodian slips have no chapter division at all, and their groupings do not correspond to the received chapters. The division as it stands is associated with the received commentarial recensions rather than with any manuscript of the text alone.

Two positions on this are current. On one, the Laozi is an anthology of independent sayings drawn from a body of oral material, and the chapters, the parts and the number are Han period editorial work imposed on it; on that reading, arguing about where one chapter ends and the next begins is arguing about an editor. On the other, many of the units are genuine compositional wholes and the received arrangement preserves older groupings rather than inventing them; the rhyme schemes and the internal parallelism of individual chapters are the evidence usually adduced.

The disagreement has practical consequences. It bears on whether a chapter should be read as a unit with an argument, or as several sayings that a later hand put next to each other, and translators differ accordingly, some presenting the text as connected exposition and some as an assembly of fragments.

The atlas uses the chapter numbers, because a reader needs an address, and records that the address is editorial.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Contained In

Tao Te Ching

Source Tao Te ChingLaozi (attributed)