 ink on silk manuscript of the Tao Te Ching, 2nd century BC, unearthed from Mawangdui | |
| Author | Laozi (trad.) |
|---|---|
| Original title | 道德經 |
| Language | Classical Chinese |
| Genre | Philosophy |
Publication date | 6th century BC |
| Publication place | China (Zhou) |
Published in English | 1891 |
| Media type | Book |
Original text | 道德經 at Chinese Wikisource |
| Translation | Tao Te Ching at Wikisource |
| Tao Te Ching | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 道德經 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 道德经 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hanyu Pinyin | Dàodéjīng () | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Alternative Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chinese | 老子 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hanyu Pinyin | Lǎozǐ | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Taoism |
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The Tao Te Ching (Chinese: 道德經; pinyin: Dàodéjīng) is an ancient Chinese text that contains a large collection of sayings and aphorisms relating to the concepts of philosophical Daoism. It is, along with the Zhuangzi, one of the two foundational texts of 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.