Laozi (Lao-Tzu)

Also known as Li Er · Lao Dan · Bo Yang

Little is known of Laozi for certain. His biography in the *Records of the Grand Historian* (*Shiji*) says he came from Quren village in Ku county of Chu, bore the surname Li, the personal name Er and the courtesy name Dan, and kept the archives of the Zhou court. The same chapter says Confucius visited Zhou and asked him about ritual. It adds that, seeing Zhou in decline, he left and at the frontier pass wrote a book in two parts of some five thousand words on the Way and its virtue at the request of the gatekeeper Yin Xi, after which no one knew where he went. Sima Qian also records that some identified Laozi with Lao Laizi or with the Zhou grand historian Dan, admitting that no one could tell. The received *Laozi*, also called the *Classic of the Way and Virtue* (*Daodejing*), remains disputed in date. In 666 Emperor Gaozong of Tang gave Laozi the title Most High Emperor of Mysterious Origin.