Page 655 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

LAOZI AND LAOJUN 613

(1941) tried to find him in history, making him an impoverished aristocrat of
the third century BCE whose ideas served to recover some of his lost status
and power.
Formation of the myth. The most up-to-date evaluation of the early history
of Laozi is by A. C. Graham (1986b). Beginning from the appearance of
Laozi as Confucius's teacher in the Zhuangzi, he shows that this tale probably
originated with a Confucian story on the master's humility and eagerness to
learn. In the fourth century BCE, according to Graham, when the Daode jing
was first compiled and the growing Taoist school needed a hoary founder,
Lao Dan was adopted to serve as archetypal Taoist. When the Qin gained
supremacy in the second century BCE, Lao Dan was presented to them as a
powerful political thinker and was moreover linked with Grand Scribe Dan
(Taishi Dan A ~ fit), who in 374 BCE had predicted the rise of this state. This
necessitated an unusual longevity for the philosopher, who was then said to
have lived 160 or 200 years.
After the Qin had come to power, however, this longevity became a lia-
bility because Laozi was no longer around to advise the emperor in person.
As a result, so Graham speculates, the story of Laozi's western emigration
was invented, a convenient way not only of "disposing the body" but also of
accounting for the compilation of the Daode jing, allegedly transmitted under
duress to the border guard *Yin Xi on the Hangu Pass (Hangu guan l:fl i+ ~m).
Finally, under the Han, when his close connection to the Qin turned problem-
atic, Laozi's birthplace was relocated to Bozhou oB JH (present-day Luyi %g
E3, Henan) near the Han rulers' homeland of Pei ?rTi, and he was linked with
the Li ~ clan, a family of faithful retainers of the Han house. At this time
Laozi was known for two key episodes: his service as an archivist and reclusive
thinker under the Zhou, and his western emigration and transmission of the
Daode jing to Yin Xi. Also, he had acquired a birthplace in Bozhou, the family
name Li, his personal name Dan, and a lifetime in the sixth century BCE. This
analysis by Graham fits the facts of the multifaceted presentation of Laozi in
the early sources and accounts for the oddities of the Shiji biography. It also
tallies with a recent manuscript find, the *Guodian Laozi, which contains parts
of the Daode jing datable to between 350 and 300 BCE.
Han developments. Legends about Laozi grew massively over time. In the Han
dynasty, he was adopted by three separate groups: 1. the magical practitioners
(*fangshi) or individual seekers of immortality, who adopted Laozi as their
patriarch and idealized him as an immortal (see his biographies in the *Liexian
zhuan, trans. Kaltenmark 1953,60-61, and in the *Shenxian zhuan, trans. Kohn
1996a, and Campany 2002, 194-204); 2. the political elite, the imperial family
and court officials, who saw in Laozi the personification of the Dao and