Fu Yi

Fu Yi (554–639) was a Tang scholar, astronomer, and polemicist. He collated and edited the "old text" (古本) of the Daodejing from several old copies, including, by tradition, one from a Han tomb. Fu Yi's "old text" survives in the Daozang (《道德經古本篇》) and is prized by textual critics because it transmits the treatise's wording as it stood before the Tang era: in numerous places its readings diverge from the received Wang Bi text. These divergences let one see the text before its final standardization, and Song compilations drew on them — above all Fan Yingyuan's 《老子道德經古本集注》. In a number of such readings it stands closer to Mawangdui than the received text does.