The Taoist Canon (Chinese 道藏, pinyin Dào Zàng), is a voluminous collection of Taoist writings, containing well over a thousand texts. Its most well known members would be the Dao de jing and the Zhuang zi, but most are concerned with Taoist alchemy, divination, history or other, non-"philoshophical" types of Taoism. Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: 汉è¯æ‹¼éŸ³; Traditional Chinese: 漢語拼音; Pinyin: Hà nyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n), also known as scheme of the Chinese phonetic alphabet (Simplified Chinese: 汉è¯æ‹¼éŸ³æ–¹æ¡ˆ; Traditional Chinese: 漢語拼音方案; Pinyin: Hà nyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n fÄngà n), while pin means spell(ing) and yin means sound(s)), is a system of romanization (phonemic notation... For other uses of the words tao and dao, see Dao (disambiguation). ... The Tao Te Ching (道德經, Pinyin: Dào Dé Jīng, thus sometimes rendered in recent works as Dao De Jing; archaic pre-Wade-Giles rendering: Tao Teh Ching; roughly translated as The Book of the Way and its Virtue (see dedicated chapter below on translating the title)) is an ancient Chinese... // The Person ZhuÄng ZÇ (pinyin), Chuang Tzu (W-G), or Chuang Tse (Chinese 莊å, literally meaning Master Zhuang) was a famous philosopher in ancient China who lived around the 4th century BC during the Warring States Period, corresponding to the Hundred Schools of Thought philosophical summit of Chinese thought. ... For other uses, see Alchemy (disambiguation). ... Taoism (sometimes written as Daoism) is the English name for: (a) a philosophical school based on the texts the Dao De Jing (ascribed to Laozi) and the Zhuangzi. ...
There is not one Taoist Canon per se. Rather, there are a number of different canons, some of which have now been lost. Some were associated with a particular school, such as Lingbao or Shangqing; some were published under Imperial edict. Even those belonging to a particular school often include the texts of other schools also, and sometimes even popular texts from other Chinese religious traditions (Confucianism or Buddhism.) Lingbao refers to a branch of Taoism that originated in the late 4th century CE. It is notable for its adoption of certain Mahayana Buddhist ideas and for its development of a system of ritual that was to become pervasive in Taoism and survive to the present. ...
External links
Daozang (Taoist Canon) - maintained by Fabrizio Pregadio at Stanford University
The Daoist Canon - maintained by Taoist Culture and Information Centre in Hong Kong.
The Taoist Canon - maintained by David K. Jordan at UCSD. See also his overview of the canons of all three major Chinese religions, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, here.
Canon Law, all legislation adopted by an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church or promulgated by papal decree
Canon (fiction), the body of works that are considered to be "genuine" or "official" within a certain fictional universe.
Canon was originally an ancient Babylonian word for a Reed - a commonly growing plant in the marshes of the fertile crescent which was used for measurement.
Taoist alchemist Ge Hong, also known as Baopuzi (The "Master Embracing Simplicity") was active in the third and fourth centuries CE and had great influence on later Taoism.
The number of "Taoists" is difficult to estimate, partly for definitional reasons (who counts as a Taoist?), and partly for practical ones (it is illegal for private parties to conduct surveys in China).
Taoist temples in southern China and Taiwan may often be identified by their roofs, which feature Chinese dragons and phoenixes made from multi-colored ceramic tiles.
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