Introduction and Notes for a Translation of the Ma-wang-tui Manuscripts of the Lao Tzu

Sino-Platonic Papers #20

by Victor H. Mair

These materials were originally intended to accompany my Tao Te Ching: The Classic of Integrity and the Way which was published by Bantam Books in September, 1990. When I was informed by my editors that the remarks herein, although expressly intended for the layman, were too scholarly in nature, it became necessary for me to rewrite completely the introduction and notes to the published translation. The contents of the two versions are now quite dissimilar. The Bantam introduction (now actually an afterword) is but a pale reflection of what I had originally written. Because there are ideas and information in these pages that may still be of interest to some, I have decided to issue them in the present form.

90 pages, ebook

Published October 1, 1990

About the author

Victor Henry Mair (/mɛər/; born March 25, 1943) is an American Sinologist and professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania.