Laozi
Legendary Chinese figure to whom tradition attributes the Tao Te Ching and who is regarded as the founder of Taoism, the second great philosophical and religious tradition of China after Confucianism. According to the biographical account given by Sima Qian, the great historian of the Han dynasty, Laozi (literally 'the old master') is said to have been an archivist at the Zhou court, an older contemporary of Confucius, with whom he reportedly had an encounter in which he reproached him for his pride and attachment to ritual; disillusioned with the kingdom's decline, he is said to have abandoned his post and, while crossing the western frontier riding a water buffalo, to have been persuaded by a border guard to set down his teachings in writing before vanishing forever, thus giving rise to the Tao Te Ching, a brief text of some five thousand characters arranged in eighty-one aphoristic verse chapters. Laozi's historicity is today much disputed among sinologists: many consider him a composite or outright legendary figure, and the text itself a compilation by several hands over several periods, probably from the fourth or third century BCE, perhaps assembled from older oral materials. Regardless of actual authorship, the Tao Te Ching —with its central teaching of the Tao as an ineffable principle, prior to language and names, that precedes and sustains all things; of wu wei or 'non-action' as a way of living in harmony with it, without forcing or opposing the natural course of events; and a paradoxical ethics exalting the weakness, emptiness and humility of water over hardness and ambition— is, after the Bible, the most translated book in history and one of the most influential spiritual sources across all of East Asia, with a decisive bearing on Chinese aesthetics, medicine, martial arts and political governance.