The semi-legendary archivist credited with writing the Dao De Jing and then vanishing west through the border gate.
Documented
The archive keeper
Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian (c. 100 BCE) offers three candidates: Li Er, an archivist of the Zhou court; Lao Laizi, a contemporary of Confucius; or a historian named Dan. The famous scene has the gatekeeper Yin Xi refusing to let Laozi leave until he wrote down his teaching.
Assessment: Documented: the biography exists; the man inside it is unverifiable by its own admission.
Stories
The old master who rode west
Later tradition has him born already white-haired (Laozi means Old Master), departing on an ox toward the mountains, and in some versions reappearing in the west as the teacher of teachers. Temples made him a god.
Assessment: Stories: religious accretion layered over a name that may have started as a title, not a person.
Interesting claims
A committee wearing one name
Textual analysis suggests the Dao De Jing is an anthology, sayings gathered over generations and pinned to a single sage for authority. Laozi in this view is not an author but a binding: the name that holds the collection shut.
Assessment: Interesting: fits the stratified text and the Mawangdui evidence; scholars argue about where anthology ends and author begins.
Sources and further reading
Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), chapter 63, c. 100 BCE
Mawangdui silk manuscripts, excavated 1973, Hunan Provincial Museum
Guodian Chu bamboo slips, excavated 1993, Jingmen Museum
Worth asking
If the author may never have lived, who wrote the book that shaped two thousand years?