The Tao Te Ching or Dào Dé Jīng, () also known simply as the Laozi, is an ancient Chinese classic text traditionally credited to the sage Laozi, regarded as the foundational Taoist text. Central to both philosophical and religious Taoism, it has been "profoundly influential" more broadly in Chinese culture, art and medicine.
The texts' authorship and dating is debated, with several similar early versions recovered. Its oldest excavated manuscript fragments, the Guodian Chu slips, date to around the 300 BCE, the latter half of the Warring States period (475 – 221 BCE). Though its bundles are unlikely as a unified text, they are nominally taken as a version from the fourth century BCE (400-300 BCE). While tradition places Laozi earlier, a conservative estimation would date modern versions of the text to the mid third century BCE - the late Warring States period, consolidating a range of associated writings dating back a century or two.Chan: "different collections with overlapping contents" argued to emerge dating back the latter half of fifth century B.C.E. as "bodies of sayings", but only traceable back to the fourth
Terminology originating within the text has been reinterpreted and elaborated upon by Legalist thinkers, Confucianists, and particularly through Chinese Buddhism, which arrived in China well after the formation and wide spread use of this text.. First translated into French in the early nineteenth century, Editors Introduction: Historical unfolding it is one of the most translated texts in world literature, next to the Bible.
Biography
The Tao Te Ching is traditionally ascribed to Laozi, whose historical existence has been a matter of scholarly debate. His name, which means "Old Master", has only fueled controversy on this issue. Legends claim variously that Laozi was "born old" and that he lived for 996 years, with 12 previous incarnations starting around the time of the Three Sovereigns before the 13th as Laozi. Some scholars have expressed doubts about Laozi's historicity.
The first biographical reference to Laozi is in the Records of the Grand Historian,, tr. Chan 1963:35–37. by Han dynasty historian Sima Qian (), which includes three stories. Though even by late estimates, A.C. Graham believed that the idea of Lao Dan as a contemporary of Confucius existed by the late Warring States period, 250 BCE.
In the first, Laozi was a contemporary of Confucius. His surname was Li (), and his personal name was Er () or Dan (). He was an official in the imperial archives, and at the request of the keeper of the Han-ku Pass, Yinxi, wrote a book in two parts before departing to the West, composing the Tao Te Ching. In the second story, Laozi, also a contemporary of Confucius, was Lao Laizi (), who wrote a book in 15 parts. In the third, Laozi was the grand historian and astrologer Lao Dan (), who lived during the reign of Duke Xian of Qin ().
Feng Youlan did not consider it a significant issue for tradition if the Tao te Ching turned out to be a later work than the traditional Laozi. He did not believe the traditional account required Laozi to personally write the book named for him, or that this would therefore void him having been a real person.
Sinology Alan Chan (SEP) finds "little reason" to doubt the "traditional claim that Laozi was a senior contemporary of Confucius (551–479 BCE)".
Thomas Michael (2021) doubts that "anyone had ever heard" of Laozi before association with a supposed late Warring States period (250 BCE~ - Graham) Tao te Ching compilation (or at least collection) drawing on earlier sources - the old late dating theory of A.C. Graham. The Analects quote Laozi material anonymously. The Zhuangzi prefers the name Lao Dan (Old Dan), who Graham took as originating in Confucianism. adopted by the Inner Zhuangzi "towards 300 BCE".
A Lao Dan is a consultant to Confucius in the Book of Rites, advising on royal funerals. If the Confucians invented him in opposition to a Daoist Lao Dan, there is no anti-Daoist rhetoric in Lao Dan's funeral instructions. The Inner Zhuangzi references Lao's Dan's funeral. Graham suggested that this (funerals) is the older stratum of his theming. He is a royal archivist and contemporary of Confucius in Zhuangzi chapters 13 and 14. Even so, although not part of the Book of Rites, Graham believed he was probably already known as an archivist in the fourth century BCE.
The late Xunzi's criticisms, by the middle of the third century ("230 BCE"- Graham), are the first reference to Lao Dan as a philosopher under the title Laozi. It's Tian Lun chapter says "Laozi had insight into retreat and yielding, but no insight into firmness and trustworthiness."https://ctext.org/xunzi/tian-lun A Lao Dan is similarly mentioned alongside other classical figures in the late Warring States Lushi Chunqiu, taken as "valuing the soft" or "yielding."
Textual history Principal versions Among the many transmitted editions of the Tao Te Ching text, the three primary ones are named after early commentaries. The "Yan Zun Version", which is only extant for the Te Ching, derives from a commentary attributed to Han dynasty scholar Yan Zun (, ). The "Heshang Gong" version is named after the legendary Heshang Gong ("legendary sage"), who supposedly lived during the reign of Emperor Wen of Han (180–157 BCE). This commentary has a preface written by Ge Xuan (164–244 CE), granduncle of Ge Hong, and scholarship dates this version to . The origins of the "Wang Bi" version have greater verification than either of the above. Wang Bi (226–249 CE) was a Three Kingdoms-period philosopher and commentator on the Tao Te Ching and I Ching.
Archaeologically recovered manuscripts Tao Te Ching scholarship has advanced from archaeological discoveries of manuscripts, some of which are older than any of the received texts. Beginning in the 1920s and 1930s, Marc Aurel Stein and others found thousands of scrolls in the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang. They included more than 50 partial and complete manuscripts. Another partial manuscript has the Xiang'er commentary, which had previously been lost.
In 1973, archaeologists discovered copies of early Chinese books, known as the Mawangdui Silk Texts, in a tomb dated to 168 BCE. They included two nearly complete copies of the text, referred to as Text A () and Text B (), both of which reverse the traditional ordering and put the Te Ching section before the Tao Ching, which is why the Henricks translation of them is named "Te-Tao Ching". Based on calligraphic styles and imperial naming taboo avoidances, scholars believe that Text A can be dated to about the first decade and Text B to about the third decade of the 2nd century BCE.
In 1993, the oldest known version of the text, written on bamboo slips, was found in a tomb near the town of Guodian () in Jingmen, Hubei, and dated prior to 300 BCE. The Guodian Chu Slips comprise around 800 slips of bamboo with a total of over 13,000 characters, about 2,000 of which correspond with the Tao Te Ching. Both the Mawangdui and Guodian versions are generally consistent with the received texts, excepting differences in chapter sequence and graphic variants. Several recent Tao Te Ching translations utilise these two versions, sometimes with the verses reordered to synthesize the new finds.
Text The modern Tao te Ching is divided into two parts; part one, chapters 1–37, which came to be known as the Daojing (Classic of Dao), often considered more "metaphysical"; and part two, the Dejing (Classic of Virtue), chapters 38–81, often considered more "political". Chapter one begins with "Dao", chapter thirty eight with "de". Although Dao and de are in both parts of the work, all but four of sixteen uses of the term de virtue appear in the second de "virtue" half of the work.
The shorter Laozi materials of the Warring States period Guodian Chu slips are undivided apart from section endings. The early Han Mawangdui versions divide the text in two parts, in opposite order, with one still lacking chapter numbers.
The typical Tao te Ching has chapter numbers but no titles; alongside the recovered Huangdi Sijing, the late Warring States period texts Xunzi and Han Feizi were the first to give titles to chapters. Traditional sources report that early versions had 64, 68, or 72 chapters. The later Han dynasty Heshang Gong divided it into today's number of chapters (81) and gave it chapters titles, but it wasn't universally accepted until "perhaps" the Tang dynasty.
Title Ancient Chinese books were commonly referenced by the name of their real or supposed author, in this case the "Old Master", Laozi. As such, the Tao Te Ching is also sometimes called the Laozi, especially in Chinese sources. The title Tao te Ching is based on the terms dao and de. Though their origins date back to at least the Western Zhou, the compound term dao-de, or "way and virtue", was not used in the time of Mencius: it emerges in the late Warring States period.
The title Tao Te Ching, designating the work's status as a classic (經; 经; jīng), was first applied during the reign of Emperor Jing of Han (157–141 BCE), but "appears not to have been widely used" until near the end of the Han dynasty. Later sources added that it was Emperor Jing himself who named it a classic, but the Shiji states that his mother the Empress Dowager Dou was a more dedicated student of the text.
Title translations In English, the title is commonly rendered Tao Te Ching, following the Wade–Giles romanization, or as Daodejing, following pinyin. It has been translated under such titles as The Classic of the Way and its Power, The Book of the Tao and Its Virtue, The Book of the Way and of Virtue, The Tao and its Characteristics,. The Canon of Reason and Virtue,. The Classic Book of Integrity and the Way, or A Treatise on the Principle and Its Action.
Other titles for the work include the honorific True Classic of the Way and Virtue (), the Classic of the Way and Virtue of the Highest Profound Origins (太上玄元道德經; Taishang xuanyuan daodejing), and the informal descriptive Five Thousand Character text ().
Scholarship conventionally refers to the text of the Guodian Chu slips as the Guodian Laozi Materials (GDL), or Guodian Laozi in short. It is questionable that it's three different sets of bundles represent a unified text; and are referred to as Laozi A, B, and C. A & B do only contain Laozi materials.
Compilation A traditional early dating places Laozi before Zhuang Zhou in the time of Confucius (551–479 BCE). No scholarship in the west follows traditional early theory. Before the Guodian discovery (1993), D.C. Lau (1963) hypothesized that a Laozi text likely existed by the beginning of the third century BCE. Lau greatly contributes to a late dating theory in modern Sinology, expecting a late Warring States (475 – 221 BCE) compilation for a Tao te Ching.
Because the Guodian's (c. 300 BCE) Laozi materials are shorter, they do not eliminate late dating theories for completion of the text, but do make a text (or at least "intellectual field") before the third century BCE more probable, taken as representative of a broader oral tradition. Few scholars follow old "after-Zhuangzi" late dating theories as such. Most modern scholarship holds the text to be a compilation, as typical for long-form early Chinese texts.