PFUSRC-052: Textual Authentication and Ontological Reconstruction of the Daodejing On the Wang Bi Edition as the Sole Authentic Dharma-Text of Daoist Transmission

Since the excavation of the Mawangdui silk manuscripts of Laozi in 1973, scholars have debated for decades whether the earlier silk texts are closer to Laozi’s original writing. This paper draws a negative conclusion and proposes a new authentication criterion: the authenticity of the Daodejing is judged not by archaeological chronology, but by the ontological essence of Daoism. Although the Wang Bi edition was compiled later than the silk manuscripts, it owns an unbroken Daoist practical inheritance spanning nearly two thousand years, continuously verified and collectively recognized by successive Daoist practitioners, making it the only orthodox transmitted text consistent with the noumenon of Dao. This paper conducts research from three dimensions: weight comparison between inherited lineage and unearthed relics, collation of critical textual variants, and analysis of the orientation of textual revisions. The core conclusion is that Wang Bi did not merely annotate the Daodejing; instead, he reconstructed a complete cosmic ontological system centered on "taking Non-Being as the root", upgrading Laozi’s cosmogony to pure ontology. Revisions in the Mawangdui silk manuscripts share a unified tendency: eliminating cyclic dynamics and solidifying static monism, constrained by the official unification ideology of the Han Dynasty. The silk manuscripts were never integrated into orthodox Daoist transmission and only carry archaeological documentary value, unable to overturn the Wang Bi canonical text passed down for two thousand years. Without further newly unearthed bamboo and silk slips as evidence, the Wang Bi edition remains the sole authoritative text bearing the complete ontological thought of Daoism.