The 5,000-character classic of the Way and its power, the most translated Chinese text in the world.
Documented
A layered compilation
The Guodian bamboo slips (tomb closed c. 300 BCE, excavated 1993) contain partial, differently ordered chapters; the Mawangdui silk copies (sealed 168 BCE, found 1973) reverse the two halves. The received Wang Bi edition is later still. The text accreted rather than arriving whole.
Assessment: Documented: three archaeological versions disagree, which is itself the finding.
Stories
Written at the gate
The traditional scene: one man, one ox, one border guard, one night, and a complete scripture handed over before dawn. Clean, singular, and probably too neat.
Assessment: Stories: beautiful, and difficult to square with the messy manuscript record.
Interesting claims
Water as the book's true hero
Chapter 8 ranks water highest because it settles where people disdain to be; chapter 66 says rivers rule valleys by staying below them; chapter 78 says nothing softer defeats the hard. Some readers hold the whole book is one water metaphor with commentary.
Assessment: Interesting: the water passages are verbatim; whether they are the skeleton key is an interpretive bet.
Sources and further reading
Guodian Laozi bamboo slips, c. 300 BCE
Mawangdui Daodejing silk texts A and B, sealed 168 BCE
Wang Bi edition and commentary, 3rd century CE
Dao De Jing chapters 8, 66, 78 (received text)
Worth asking
Can a book about the impossibility of fixed words survive being fixed into words?