Scripture Portions

Dao Jing

Also Known As Tao Ching (Classical Chinese) Latin script. · The Book of the Way (English)Original Term Daojing (Classical Chinese) Latin script. · 道經 (Classical Chinese) Han script.

Tao Te Ching

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Dao Jing." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://www.divinityatlas.com/scripture-portions/dao-jing.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Dao Jing. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://www.divinityatlas.com/scripture-portions/dao-jing

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-dao-jing,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Dao Jing},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://www.divinityatlas.com/scripture-portions/dao-jing},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The first part of the received text, thirty-seven chapters, opening with the statement that a way which can be put into words is not the constant way. Its subject is the nameless source that precedes and produces things, and the conduct that follows from taking it seriously: emptiness as usefulness, water as the model, softness outlasting hardness, and a ruler whose people barely know he is there. The order is not original. In the Mawangdui manuscripts this part comes second.

Facts

Disputed

Attributed Author / Compiler

Traditionally ascribed to Laozi, though most modern scholars regard the Tao Te Ching as a compilation assembled from older sayings rather than the work of a single author. 2

The Dao Jing, the first of the Tao Te Ching's two traditional divisions, is ascribed by tradition to Laozi, but the historicity of Laozi as a single identifiable author is itself disputed, and the text's own transmission history complicates the ascription further. Robert G. Henricks's Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching: A Translation of the Startling New Documents Found at Guodian (Columbia University Press, 2000) is a translation and study of the Guodian bamboo slip manuscripts excavated in 1993, the earliest physical witnesses to the text. The method is manuscript-based textual criticism, comparing the Guodian slips, which contain only a partial and differently arranged selection of material, against the received text's fuller version and its traditional two-part division, to see how much of the received arrangement was already fixed by the third century BCE date of the Guodian burial. Because the earliest physical witness does not yet show the received text's full content or arrangement, the traditional ascription to a single author writing the complete work is not what the manuscript evidence is read as supporting.

Point in Dispute

Whether the Dao material stood first 5

The received text, transmitted through the Heshang Gong and Wang Bi recensions, puts the Dao part first, and that order is what the title Dao De Jing records. The Mawangdui silk manuscripts, the earliest substantially complete witnesses, put the De part first, which is why their editors title them the Te-Tao Ching. Scholars differ over whether the received order is a later rearrangement or one of two orders in circulation from early on. The Guodian slips are too partial to settle it.

Origins

Era of Composition

from 400 BCE 2

Language

Classical Chinese 3

Classical Chinese of the Warring States period, in a terse rhymed and parallel style that leaves grammatical subjects, number and tense unmarked, which is a principal reason the translations differ so widely

Structure

Chapters 1 to 37 of the received text 4

Verses

Thirty seven chapters in the received division. 4

Identity

Parent Work

Tao Te Ching 1

Position in the Canon

Chapters 1 to 37 of the received (Wang Bi) text of the Tao Te Ching, treating the Dao itself; the older Mawangdui silk manuscripts place this half second rather than first. 1

Transmission

Manuscript Tradition

Earlier versions survive among the Guodian bamboo slips, buried around 300 BCE, and the Mawangdui silk manuscripts, buried in 168 BCE, both differing in wording from the received text. 2

Learn More

What the First Part Is About

The thirty-seven chapters of the Dao part circle a single difficulty: the thing the book is about cannot be said, and the book is made of words. It opens by stating the problem outright, that a way which can be put into words is not the constant way, and then proceeds for five thousand characters anyway. Every subsequent chapter is written in the shadow of that opening admission, which is why so much of the part proceeds by negation, by paradox and by pointing at ordinary objects.

The objects are its best known feature. A cart is useful because of the hole at the hub. A pot is useful because of the space inside it. A room is useful because of the doorways cut in the walls. Water benefits everything and contends with nothing and settles where people do not want to be. A valley is defined by what is not there. An uncut block of wood is worth more than anything that can be made from it, because once it is cut the possibilities are gone.

The political material in this part follows from the same principle rather than sitting beside it. A ruler who acts least is best, and the best of all is one whose people barely notice him and say afterwards that things happened by themselves. Prohibitions produce the behaviour they name. Exalting the worthy produces competition. Prizing rare goods produces theft. The consistent recommendation is subtraction: remove the occasions rather than punishing the consequences, which is the political form of the same argument that finds usefulness in a hole.

The Part That Comes Second in the Oldest Manuscripts

The title Dao De Jing records an order, and the order is not the oldest one known.

In 1973, excavation of a tomb at Mawangdui sealed in the second century BCE recovered two silk manuscripts of the text. Both put the De material first and the Dao material second, which is why the scholarly editions of them are titled the Te-Tao Ching. They are the earliest substantially complete witnesses to the work, and they disagree with the received arrangement on the first thing anyone would notice about it.

In 1993, a tomb at Guodian, dated around 300 BCE, produced bamboo slips carrying roughly a third of the material in three separate bundles, in groupings that match neither arrangement and with no chapter divisions at all. Those slips are the earliest witnesses of any kind, and they show a body of material in circulation before it had settled into the shape either later arrangement gives it.

What follows is genuinely disputed. One position treats the received order as a later editorial decision imposed on an anthology of sayings that had no fixed order to begin with. Another holds that both orders were in circulation early, and that the received one preserves a real grouping rather than inventing it. The Guodian material is too partial to decide between them.

The atlas records the received order because it is the one every citation uses, and records that it is one order among more than one.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Contained In

Tao Te Ching

Source Tao Te ChingLaozi (attributed)