Daodejing PDF
- Ian Felton
- 36 minutes ago
- 1 min read
Welcome to the podcast.
This is the version of the Daodejing that I use for the reading and translation. It uses simplified Chinese characters. Simplified characters arrived in China after the People's Republic of China took power in the 1950s with the aim of making written Chinese, well, simpler.
This version also includes the romanized pinyin. Pinyin uses Roman characters to help Western speakers pronounce the Chinese characters. Chinese is tonal and so there are also accents in pinyin to let the speaker know which tone to use.
This version of the Daodejing is from the Wang Bi lineage. He was a philosopher in China. Born in 226 AD, he lived only 23 years. But his commentaries on ancient Chinese texts have profoundly influenced Chinese philosophy, especially Daoism.