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Tao Te Ching
ink on silk manuscript of the Tao Te Ching, 2nd century BC, unearthed from Mawangdui
Author	Laozi (trad.)
Original title	道德經
Country	China (Zhou)
Language	Classical Chinese
Genre	Philosophy
Publication date	6th century BC
Published in English	1891
Media type	Book
Original text	道德經 at Chinese Wikisource
Translation	Tao Te Ching at Wikisource

Tao Te Ching

Hanyu Pinyin

Dàodéjīng (listen)

Transcriptions

Hanyu Pinyin

Lǎozǐ

Transcriptions
Hanyu Pinyin		Lǎozǐ
Wade–Giles	Lao-tzu

Taoism
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People Laozi Zhuangzi Lie Yukou Heshanggong Wei Boyang Zhang Daoling Gan Ji Zhang Jue Zhang Lu Ge Xuan He Yan Wang Bi Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove Guo Xiang Sun Hanhua Wei Huacun Ge Hong Bao Jingyan Kou Qianzhi Lu Xiujing Tao Hongjing Cheng Xuanying Chen Tuan Zhang Boduan Sun Bu'er Wang Chongyang Qiu Chuji Zhang Guoxiang Zhang Sanfeng Zhu Quan Fangshi
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The Tao Te Ching (

Daoism

. The Tao Te Ching is a short work, numbering only 5,000 Chinese characters in length, arranged into 81 brief chapters or sections. Though not a typical literary work, the Tao Te Ching contains frequent use of rhyming in its sayings, and shows a strong tendency to express ideas and principles in enigmatic, counter-intuitive, or even paradoxical sayings.

The text has traditionally been attributed to Laozi—a name literally meaning "the old master"—about whom nothing is reliably known, and whose historicity is widely debated.

History

Authorship

The Tao Te Ching is traditionally attributed to an obscure figure called

24 dynastic histories, contains a biography of Laozi, though the account contains nothing that is historically factual.^[1] Sima's biography states that Laozi was a native of the State of Chu who served as an archivist at the Zhou dynasty court, and gives his surname as Li (李) and his given name as Dan (聃) or Er (耳).^[1] During the Han dynasty (206 BC – AD 220) it was widely said that Confucius had sought out Laozi for instruction regarding the ancient Chinese principles of "ritual propriety" (li 禮), and thus the Chinese traditionally assumed that both Laozi and the Tao Te Ching predated Confucius himself.^[1] The American Sinologist and Laozi expert William Boltz has written: "None of this can be historically documented, and indeed Sima Qian's biography of Laozi contains virtually nothing that is demonstrably factual; we are left no choice but to acknowledge the likely fictional nature of the traditional Laozi figure."^[2]