Pu (Taoism)


Pu is a Chinese word meaning "unworked wood; inherent quality; simple" that was an early Daoist metaphor for the natural state of humanity, and relates with the Daoist keyword ziran "natural; spontaneous". The scholar Ge Hong immortalized pu in his pen name Baopuzi "Master who Embraces Simplicity" and eponymous book Baopuzi.

Terminology

Pu can be written with either of the variant Chinese characters or, which are linguistically complex.

Characters

Both 樸 and 朴 are classified as radical-phonetic characters, combining the semantically significant "tree" radical with the phonetic indicators pu or bu.
The Chinese character pu 樸 was first recorded on Chinese bronze inscriptions from the Spring and Autumn period, and the character pu 朴 was first recorded in Chinese classics from the Warring States period.
When the People's Republic of China promulgated simplified Chinese characters in 1956, the established variant pu 朴 was chosen to replace the traditional Chinese character pu 樸.
One of the two Mawangdui silk manuscript versions of the Daodejing, discovered in 1973 by archeologists excavating a tomb, uses a rare textual variant character for pu 樸: wò 楃 "a house tent ", written with the "tree radical" and wu 屋 "room; house" phonetic. The "B" text, like the received version, uses pu 樸 8 times in 6 chapters; the "A" text uses wò 楃 6 times in 4 chapters and has lacunae in chapters 19 and 57. The Shuowen jiezi defines wo 楃 as muzhang 木帳 "wood canopy", and the Guangya defines it as choumu 幬幕 "curtain; cover". These variant words pú < *phrôk 樸 "unworked wood" and wò < *ʔôk 楃 "house tent" are semantically and phonologically dissimilar.

Pronunciations and meanings

The comprehensive Chinese character dictionary Hanyu Da Zidian lists 2 pronunciations and 8 meanings for the character 樸, and 6 pronunciations and 11 meanings for 朴; which are summarized below.
The glyph 樸 can be read:
  1. "unworked wood",
  2. "cut down; fell trees"
  3. "nature; essence; intrinsic quality"
  4. "simple; plain; unadorned; unaffected"
  5. " net cost"
  1. "grow thickly ; shrub"
  2. "an oak tree"
  3. "attached; affixed"
The glyph 朴 can be read to mean:
  1. "unworked wood; natural; plain; etc."
  2. "large"
  3. "uncured meat"
  1. "root; basis; origin"
  2. "beat; hit; an instrument of torture"
  1. "tree bark; magnolia bark" in houpo 厚朴 "Magnolia officinalis bark "
  2. in pòshù 朴樹 "Celtis sinensis, Chinese hackberry"
  1. in pōdāo 朴刀 "a kind of two-handed sword"
  1. "a surname", namely Park
  1. "a surname"
The Erya, which is the oldest Chinese dictionary, defined pu 樸 and supu 樕樸 as "oak" names. First, pu 樸 is defined as bao 枹. Guo Pu's Erya commentary identified this pu tree as yupu 棫樸 "Quercus acutissima, saw-tooth oak". Bao 枹 is usually read fu "drumstick", and Guo noted this name bao denoted "a kind of oak [樸] that grew in clumps", and quotes the Shijing usage as baoli 枹櫟 instead of baoli 苞櫟 "bushy oak". The Bencao Gangmu says there are two varieties of hu 槲 "Quercus mongolica, Mongolian oak", the bao 枹 is small and grows in clumps while the li 櫟 is tall and has large leaves. Second, supu 樕樸 is defined as xin 心 "heart; mind". Guo identifies supu as husu 槲樕, the "Quercus dentata, daimyo oak". While xin "heart; mind" is a common Chinese word, this Erya definition is the only known context in which it names a tree. The Yijing uses xin to mean "thorn; prick", : "Among varieties of wood it means those which are firm and have much pith".
The Shuowen Jiezi, the first Chinese dictionary of characters, simply defines pu 朴 as mupi 木皮 "tree bark; wood with bark", and pu 樸 as musu 木素 "plain wood; unworked lumber".
Returning to the central Daoist meaning of pu,
Pas and Leung challenge the stereotyped "uncarved block" translation of pu: "The idea implied in it comes closer to "wholeness," which is also contained in "uncarved block," except that "uncarved block" has been reified. As a result, what was an excellent analogy of the Tao has become sterile and counterproductive."
Citing the pu translations of Séraphin Couvreur "wood that has not been worked on; simple, without ornament, without disguise" and Bernhard Karlgren "wood in its natural state, not worked: rough, plain, natural, simple"; Pas and Leung conclude, "it is obvious where the expression "uncarved block" came from, but the addition of "block" is an interpretation. The term means "plain wood," "uncarved wood.""

Etymology

pronunciations have transformed Chinese etymology. Old Chinese reconstructions of pu or bu 樸 include:
Victor Mair suggests that pu < *phluk 樸 "unhewn log" is "almost certainly related to the English word "block," which probably derives from the Indo-European root bhelk."
Axel Schuessler says the etymology of pú < *phrôk "to trim wood" could either be an "aspirated iterative derivation" from bāo < *prôk 剝 "cut up, peel, pluck", or "belong to the homophonous etymon with the basic meaning 'in a natural state, unworked', as in pú 樸 'in a natural state', 璞 'unworked precious stone'."

Early textual references

Pu occurs in some of the earliest Chinese classics, frequently in Daoist ones.

Shijing

Two odes in the Shijing "Classic of Poetry" use pu 樸 compounds to mean "an oak".
Pusu 樸樕 occurs in Ode 23: "scrubby oaks", "a clump of oaks", "low shrubby trees". The Mao commentary describes the pusu as a 小木 "small tree". The Erya writes this reversible compound as supu 樕樸.
Yupu 棫樸 is the name of Ode 238, which records using this tree for firewood: "the yih and the p'oh", "the oak clumps". Commentaries describe the yupu as a "dense and shrubby tree".
In addition, Ode 132 has baoli 苞櫟: "the bushy oaks", "a clump of oaks", "luxuriant oaks". The Erya has baoli 枹櫟, writing bao as 枹 "an oak" instead of 苞 "bushy; luxuriant".

Shujing

The Shujing "Classic of History" uses pu once in the compound pozhou 樸斫 : "as in working with the wood of the rottlera, when the toil of the coarser and finer operations has been completed, they have to apply the paint of red and other colours", "It is as when one works on catalpa wood; when he has toiled in trimming and carving it, he should take measures for making it red or green". Legge notes that pu means "the rough fashioning of the work" and zhou means "the fine finish given to it". Karlgren quotes the Han commentator Ma Rong that po 樸 denotes "wood that has not yet been worked into a utensil; unworked wood", and concludes po means "to treat the unworked wood ; to trim" is a variation of the same stem as pu 樸 "in a natural state; simple".

Daodejing

Six Daodejing chapters use pu 樸, two of them twice, for a total of 8 occurrences.
Chapter 19 parallels the near-synonyms su "raw silk; white; plain; simple; quiet" and pu 樸 "unworked wood; plain; simple", and was the source for Ge Hong's pen-name Baopuzi "Master who Embraces Simplicity".
Holmes Welch describes pu "the Uncarved Block" and su "Raw Silk" as symbols that Laozi used to expound his basic doctrine of "the return to our original nature". In modern usage, pu and su mean "plain," but originally pu "was wood as it came from the tree before man had dressed it", while su "was silk that man had never dyed or painted."
Chapters 28 and 57 mention simple pu in reference to shengren "sages", Chapter 15 similarly refers to ancient Daoist adepts and describes pu as dun "sincere; honest; plain".
Among all the Daodejing occurrences of pu, chapter 28 is the only case in which the transmitted and excavated versions are significantly different – the transmitted text has an extra grammatical particle zhi 之 "a possessive marker; a 3rd person pronoun" after yong 用 "use; employ". Robert G. Henricks explains this small grammatical change between the standard text saying the sage yong zhi "uses it" and the excavated silk text saying yong "is used". The transmitted version 樸散則為器聖人用之則為官長 "When the uncarved wood is broken up, it is turned into concrete things. But when the sage uses it, he becomes the leading official." should be read 樸散則為器聖人用則為官長 "When uncarved wood is cut up, it's turned into vessels. When the Sage is used, he becomes the Head of Officials." D. C. Lau says the traditional passage "seems to say that when the uncarved block shatters it becomes vessels. A vessel is a specialist who is only fitted to be an official. Hence the sage when he makes use of these vessels becomes the lord over the officials.", but in Mawangdui passage, "The meaning is very different. The uncarved block is a symbol for the sage. Just as the uncarved block becomes vessels when it shatters so does the sage become the chief of the officials when he allows himself to be employed, and just as the uncarved block is ruined when it becomes useful, so does a sage become ruined when he becomes useful." The word qi 器 "vessel; utensil" is translated here as "tools", "concrete things", "vessels", "specialists", and "officials".
Chapters 32 and 37 both address houwang 侯王 "feudal lords and kings" and describe the Dao as wuming "nameless", while 37 also calls pu "nameless".
Chapter 37 has a minor textual difference between buyu 不欲 "not desire" in the standard version and buru 不辱 "not disgrace" in the Mawangdui version.
Lau explains pu in the Daodejing primarily means "the uncarved block is in a state as yet untouched by the artificial interference of human ingenuity and so is a symbol for the original state of man before desire is produced in him by artificial means".
The Heshang Gong commentary version of this Daoist text interchangeably writes pu as both 樸 and 朴. Three chapters use 樸 in both text and commentary, and one uses 朴 in both. One uses 樸 in text and 樸朴 in commentary, and another uses 朴 in text and 樸 in commentary.
Of nine Daodejing chapters without 樸 or 朴 in the text, three use 樸 in commentary, and six use 朴. For examples,
Welch paraphrases the Daodejing relationship among pu, de "inherent character; inner power", and wuwei "non-action; non-doing". Outwardly, one cannot achieve de "until you have erased the aggressive patterns etched by society into your nature. You must return to your natural self, to . You must discard morality and ambition, for if you keep these you will never be capable of compassion, moderation, and humility. When you discard some of your wishes, you will have them all." Inwardly, one performs several cultivations. "For, to achieve the outward you will have to cultivate a of the mind. And when the mind is quiet, will deepen. It will become a faculty for intuitively sensing the order of the universe—the that can be named."

Zhuangzi

Pu occurs 20 times in the Daoist classic Zhuangzi. The standard Zhuangzi text writes pu both with the 16–stroke character 樸 six times in three chapters and with the 6–stroke variant character 朴 fourteen times in six chapters, which evidences the heterogeneous textual origins. For instance, the word pubi is written both 樸鄙 "crude, mean " and 朴鄙 "simple and unsophisticated ".
A frequently occurring Zhuangzi metaphor contrasts returning to pu 樸 "unhewn log" with carving qi 器 "vessels".
Another Zhuangzi chapter uses this term fupu 復朴 "return to simplicity".