Tao Te Ching

The Tao Te Ching or Dào Dé Jīng, (traditional Chinese: 道德經; simplified Chinese: 道德经; lit. 'Classic of the Way and its Virtue') also known simply as the Laozi, is an ancient Chinese classic text traditionally credited to the sage Laozi, regarded as the foundational Taoist text. Central to both philosophical and religious Taoism, it has been "profoundly influential" more broadly in Chinese culture, art and medicine. The texts' authorship and dating is debated, with several similar early versions recovered. Its oldest excavated manuscript fragments, the Guodian Chu slips, date to around the 300 BCE, the latter half of the Warring States period (475 – 221 BCE), nominally taken as a version from the fourth century BCE (400-300 BCE). While tradition places Laozi earlier, a conservative estimation would date modern versions of the text to the mid third century BCE - the late Warring States period, drawing from a wide range of collected writings dating back a century or two. Terminology originating within the text has been reinterpreted and elaborated upon by Legalist thinkers, Confucianists, and particularly through Chinese Buddhism, which arrived in China well after the formation and wide spread use of this text. First translated into French in the early nineteenth century, it is one of the most translated texts in world literature, next to the Bible.