Huang–Lao
'Huangdi–Laozi') was the most influential Chinese school of thought in the early Han dynasty, having its origins in a broader political-philosophical drive looking for solutions to strengthen the feudal order as depicted in Zhou politics.
Not systematically explained by historiographer Sima Qian, it is generally interpreted as a school of Syncretism, developing into a major religion, the beginnings of religious Taoism.
[2] Coming to mean something like Daoism, Sima Tan likely coined the term Daojia (Dao family or "school") with Huang–Lao content in mind, and is traditionally classified under it.
Sima Tan (at least possibly) studied under a Huang–Lao master with a philosophical lineage dating back to the Warring States period Jixia Academy at the court of Qi in modern Shandong.
Excepting the Huangdi Neijing, most Huang–Lao texts vanished, and traditional scholarship associated the philosophical school with syncretist Chinese classics, namely the legalistic Hanfeizi, the Taoistic Huainanzi, but also the more Confucian Xunzi and Guanzi.
Other proposals include parts of the Daoist Zhuangzi,[8] sections of the historical Guoyu ("Discourses of the States"), Chunqiu Fanlu ("Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals"), and Lüshi Chunqiu ("Mister Lü's Spring and Autumn Annals"), the Heguanzi ("Book of Master Pheasant-Cap"), and the military Huang Shigong San Lüe ("Three Strategies of Huang Shigong").
"[18] Besides these received texts, the imperial library bibliography preserved in the (111 CE) Hanshu ("Han History") lists many books titled with the Yellow Emperor's name.
However, with the exception of the medical Huangdi Neijing ("Yellow Emperor's Internal Classic"), all were believed destroyed or lost – until the recent Mawangdui discoveries.
Silk manuscripts found in Mawangdui tomb number three, dated 186 BCE, included two versions of the Daodejing, one of which ("B" or yi 乙) had copies of four texts attached in front.
Some Chinese specialists, such as Tang Lan (唐兰),[20] and Yu Mingguang (余明光),[21] interpreted these four manuscripts as the no longer extant Huangdi Sijing (黃帝四經 "Yellow Emperor's Four Classics"), which the Yiwenzhi (藝文志) bibliography of the Hanshu listed as having four sections.
Other specialists, such as Robin D. S. Yates[22] and Edmund Ryden,[23] interpreted the four manuscripts as mutually incompatible texts deriving from diverse philosophical traditions.
For instance, Herbert J. Allen proposed that since Han prince Liu Ying practiced both Huang–Lao and Buddhism, Huang–Lao did not mean Huangdi and Laozi, but "Buddhists (literally Yellow-Ancients, perhaps so-called from the colour of their garments).
[28] Dao (道 "way; path") is the ultimate basis for fa (法 "model; law") and li (理 "pattern; principle") essential for sagely governance.
Our limited exposure to the "lost texts" in the Silk Manuscripts seems to indicate that the thought of Huang-Lao contains several apparently unrelated but actually fully integrated philosophical concepts: a cosmological vision of the Way (tao) as the primordial source of inspiration; an administrative technique (fa-li), based on the principle and model of the naturalness of the Way; a concern for the cultivation of penetrating insight (kuan), so that a king could reign without imposing his limited, self-centered view on the order of things originally manifested in nature; and the necessity of attaining a kind of dynamic balancing (ch'eng) in order to ensure a steady flow, as it were, of the political system as a mirror image of the cosmos.
Therefore, "The government of the true king is neither sentimental nor vacillating, and neither arbitrary nor domineering," it fully conforms with the "pattern of the Dao as expressed in the natural order, it is balanced, moderate, and irresistibly strong."
The Taoist school enables man's numinous essence to be concentrated and unified, to move in unison with the formless, and to provide adequately for the myriad things.
As for its methods, it follows the general tendency of the Naturalists (Yinyang chia), picks out the best of the Confucians and Mohists, and adopts the essentials of the Terminologists (Ming-chia) and Legalists.
