《老解老》摘登

A synthetic study of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching in Chinese

民国海军将领、外交家蔡廷干1922年自行刊印了《道德经》逐字索引《老解老》。该书实为我国最早的逐字索引。如该书自叙、序言所述,'古今注老数十百家……读注愈多而理解愈晦。'……'《老解老》一书……以经证经,字字皆原经之注脚。'其核心思想正合'文本之外无意义'的短语学释义法。本期摘登《老解老》序跋、体例说明及部分逐字索引(蔡氏称'串珠')正文,以揭示《老解老》的编制缘由、理念及操作方法。此次摘登文字由许家金誊录,李文中、许家金、吴进善多次审校文字及句读。学识所限,难免有不察之错,望读者指正。

Tsai Ting-kan,an admiral and senior diplomat of the Republic of China(1912-1949),selfpublished A synthetic study of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching in Chinese(SSLTTTC),an exhaustive concordance to Tao Te Ching,the holy scripture of Taoism It turns out to be the first serious concordancing work in China The preface to this book comments on Tsai’s puzzle that“Hundreds of interpretative works and annotated versions of Tao Te Ching are available The more annotations I read,the more obscure the original meaning of Tao Te Ching becomes My humble work,SSLTTTC,approaches the meaning of Tao Te Ching by referring to the meanings in the text itself,i e,each character/morpheme and its context in the book serves as an annotation to the text”The central theme is exactly in line with the phraseological perspective of searching for meaning,that is,there is no meaning outside the text The preface and postscript to SSLTTTC,its reader’s guide section,and a sample of concordance lines(chuanzhu,‘stringed-beads’,in Tsai Ting-kan’s term)of the text are reproduced to inform the reader of the underlying motivation and context in which such a concordance was compiled.