# The Siku Quanshu corpus includes the Wang Bi Daodejing commentary as imperial stock

Date: 1782

## The fact

By 1782 the Qing Siku Quanshu project had copied the received Daodejing with Wang Bi’s commentary into the imperial manuscript library.

## Context

Imperial collecting preserves and canonises. It also decides which commentary counts as the text.

[Laozi](/people/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

Official museum, encyclopedia, agency, or edition pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: ChinaKnowledge.de — Siku quanshu (http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Science/sikuquanshu.html; ChinaKnowledge.de — An Encyclopaedia on Chinese History and Literature (Ulrich Theobald)).

## Significance

A Siku copy is a Qing instrument. Do not back-date it to the Warring States.

A Siku copy is a Qing instrument. Do not back-date it to the Warring States.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

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. Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. 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

- http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Daoists/daojia.html
- http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Science/sikuquanshu.html

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/lz-wang-bi-siku-1782