16 China in World History
the School of the Dao. Dao (Tao in some translations) means literally
the Way, and it was used by Confucians and others to mean the way one
should live, or the way rulers should govern. For Sunzi it meant the way
of warfare. However in two enigmatic early Chinese texts, the Daode-
jing (or Tao Te Ching—The Classic of the Way and Its Power) and
theBook of Zhuangzi, the concept of dao has cosmic implications and
includes such meanings as the fi rst cause of all things, the totality of the
universe, the laws of nature and all creation, and whatever is unchang-
ing and everlasting. To make matters more complicated, the Daodejing
begins with the admonition “The Way (Dao) that can be told is not the
constant Way; The name that can be named is not the constant name.”^10
So this Way is the mysterious source of all things that can’t be captured
in words. Yet the Daodejing goes on to use 5,000 words to say a num-
ber of things about the Way in its eighty-one sections (some in poetic
form and some in prose).
Attributed to the philosopher Laozi (who may or may not have
existed), the Daodejing has long been beloved as a great work of lit-
erature by Chinese of every persuasion. In mystical poetry and cryptic
prose, the author extols the Dao, harmony, and what is natural, and
gives concrete advice on individual survival in a dangerous age and even
military advice to would-be rulers.
The earliest known version of this work was found in 1993 in a
tomb at Guodian, Hubei Province, dating from about 300 bce. This
text, the Guodian Laozi, consisted of seventy-one bamboo slips in three
bundles, which included material from thirty-one of the eighty-one sec-
tions in today’s Daodejing. Also in the tomb were more than six hun-
dred other bamboo slips containing writings we would mostly associate
with the Confucian school of thought, suggesting that the Confucian
and Daoist schools of thought were not necessarily oppositional in their
early evolution. The Guodian texts are quite representative of the over-
all gist of the later Daodejing, but not so explicitly anti-Confucian or
anti-Mencian as later versions of the text. These fi ndings lend credence
to the view that the Daodejing was an anthology compiled by several
anonymous hands over a century or more.
The general tone of the Daodejing is that rulers should not try to
build a powerful state because the main principle of change in the uni-
verse is the reversal of opposites (unceasing alteration of yin and yang,
as seen in the phases of the moon, the alteration of the seasons, and
the endless cycles of human life and death). To become powerful is to
guarantee one’s fall. To remain weak and inconspicuous is to increase
one’s chances of survival. Nothing is softer or more yielding than water,