 Of the ten “Legalist” texts in the Han imperial catalogue, six ceased circulating more than a millennium ago; two arrived at our days relatively intact, and of two others only a few fragments survived vicissitudes of time. The earliest (in terms of its composition) surviving text is the Book of Lord Shang (Shang jun shu 商君書), attributed to Shang Yang (aka Gongsun Yang 公孫鞅 or Lord Shang/Lord of Shang 商君), a major reformer who orchestrated the rise of the state of Qin 秦 to the position of a leading power of the Chinese world. In the process of transmission, the book lost at least five chapters; a few others had been badly damaged, becoming barely legible. Since the late 18th century efforts have been made to prepare a critical edition of the text and amend its corrupted parts; yet more than two centuries passed before the comprehensive critical edition was published (Zhang Jue 2012). The text is highly heterogeneous in terms of its composition: some chapters were likely penned by Shang Yang himself; others may come from the hand of his immediate disciples and followers, but a few other were written decades and even more than a century after his death (Pines 2016a). This said, the text presents a relatively coherent ideological vision, and it is likely that it reflects intellectual evolution of what Zheng Liangshu (1989) dubbed Shang Yang’s “intellectual current” (xuepai 學派).