# James Legge publishes the Daodejing in Sacred Books of the East volume 39

Date: 1891

## The fact

In 1891 James Legge’s translation of the Tao Teh King appeared as Sacred Books of the East volume 39, with notes that already mark textual and biographical uncertainty.

## Context

Victorian comparative religion put [Laozi](/people/laozi) beside the Bible and the Vedas. That frame can distort. It also created the English working text many later readers used before Waley and Lau.

Laozi is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

The sacred-texts reprint of SBE 39 and the Gutenberg Legge text independently carry the 1891 translation. Different hosts of the same dated book.

Official or archival record: Sacred Books of the East vol. 39 — The Tao Teh King (Legge) (https://sacred-texts.com/tao/sbe39/index.htm; sacred-texts.com / Clarendon Press 1891 reprint).

## Significance

Knowledge-access path. High confidence on 1891. Medium on welfare lag into Chinese politics.

An English classic is not an excavated slip. Keep the date on the book.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Legge’s SBE volume 39 appeared in 1891. Not established: that Legge settled authorship.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is edu-[digital-learning-access](/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access). The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Laozi: https://factrail.ai/people/laozi

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/216
- https://sacred-texts.com/tao/sbe39/index.htm

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/lz-legge-sbe-1891