The Taoist Canon: A Guide to Studies and Reference Works
Fabrizio Pregadio
Stanford University, Department of Religious Studies
The term daozang, usually translated as "Taoist Canon," originally referred to the collections of texts housed in each Taoist monastery, and later designated imperially-sponsored collections of Taoist texts kept in Taoist temples and in the imperial libraries. The Taoist Canon of the Ming period -- the Zhengtong Daozang or Taoist Canon of the Zhengtong Era -- is the last of these collections and the only one that is extant today.
The present guide is concerned with studies and reference works that help one find orientation in this and other collections of Taoist texts, both as a whole and with special reference to some of the texts that they include. As the focus of these notes is the Taoist Canon, this should not be understood as an introductory bibliography on Taoism, and even less so as a guide to Taoist studies.
A revised and expanded version of this guide is published as an appendix in The Encyclopedia of Taoism (London: Routledge, 2007).
Contents
1. General bibliography
2. Taoist Canon
3. Surveys of texts
4. Catalogues
5. Other collections of Taoist texts
6. Concordances and indexes
7. Encyclopedias and dictionaries