ABSTRACT
Throughout the twentieth century, the history of Taoism remained poorly known. Today few people, even scholars, have a good understanding of the whole sweep of Taoist history, and few presentations of Taoism have successfully shown its changes and continuities from one period to the next. Even today’s scholarship still sheds very limited light on many elements of Taoist history that are quite note-worthy or might someday be found to be noteworthy. And there remain historical arguments that are pegged to broader interpretive disputes about whether given data are or are not important, or even relevant, for understanding “Taoism.”1
