Page 50 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

10 THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TAOISM VOL. I

vigorous, but Taoism has declined the most; another dictum specifies this
decline (in daojia, in this case) as having taken place in two phases, from Laozi
to the pursuit of immortality, and thence to the rituals and prayers which put
it on a par with shamanic religion.
This rhetoric of decline, essential to the self-image of the Neo-Confucians
as revivers of their Way, imposed a unity on the phenomenon known indiffer-
ently as daojia/ daojiao in a completely ahistorical fashion, but a fashion that
was irresistible to Protestant missionaries of the nineteenth century, whose
religion was founded upon a somewhat analogous rhetoric with regard to
Catholic Christianity. Meanwhile, Japanese scholars, under the greater tradi-
tional influence of medieval Buddhist polemics (see *Bianzheng lun) tended to
bifurcate daojia, signifying the philosopher Laozi and his peers, from daojiao,
signifying the religious elements opposed to Buddhism-this, too, clearly
appealed to the Protestant element in Western thought. (Fukui Fumimasa
1995, 14, lists the key Japanese contributions to clarifying this issue; Penny 1998
explores some Protestant approaches to Taoism.)
Thus the manipulation of the term daojiao by non-Taoists to suit their
own agendas has in no small measure created the marked twentieth century
confusion as to what Taoism is and was. It has at last been observed in a good
discussion of the topic by Stephen R. Bokenkamp (1997, II), that Taoists were
perfectly capable of defining themselves through their own writings. By relying
on those writings this encyclopedia seeks to make clear what daojiao meant
to those who appropriated this term as their own: for a complete definition,
the reader is hereby cross-referred to the sum total of other entries in this
volume.

T. H. BARRETT
III Barren 2000; Chen Guofu 1963, 259 and 271-74; Fukui Fumimasa 1995;
Kirkland 2000; Robinet 1997b, 1-23; Seidel 1997; Thompson 1993
* DAOJIA