What is Daojia

Daojia (tao-chia) literally means "Family of the Dao," but is sometimes rendered as "School of the Dao." In terms of contextualized meanings, daojia is an Early Han dynasty (206 BCE-8 CE) bibliographic category, which was used as a taxonomic classification for texts. Historically speaking, its earliest known usage appears in Early Han historiography, specifically in Sima Tan (d. 110 BCE) and Sima Qian’s (145-86 BCE) Shiji 史記 (Records of the Historian). In that work, daojia is used as a veiled reference to the Huang-Lao school, a syncretist movement combining "Daoist" and Legalist elements, and as one category in a six-part taxonomic classification system. Later daojia became employed in the bibliographic chapter of Ban Gu’s  (32-92 CE) Hanshu  (History of the Former Han). Here the term is only one among a large number of bibliographical categories; daojia is a way of classifying texts.
 
However, recent revisionist scholarship has suggested that daojia might best be interpreted as "lineage of the Dao." This claim is supported by a deeper familiarity with the historical context of the Warring States period (480-222 BCE) and a closer reading of the texts of classical Daoism, including the fact that the content and redactive history of the texts supports a vision of classical Daoism as composed of master-disciple lineages and cultivation communities. Such details have led Harold Roth (Brown University) to refer to the earliest Daoist communities as "inner cultivation lineages."
 
In later usage, both within elite Chinese society and by Daoists, daojia eventually came to refer to texts on any subject concerning Daoism that were housed in imperial libraries—writings on alchemy, hygiene, ritual, and so forth. It was also applied as a designation for ordained Daoist priests at least through the Six Dynasties period (316-589). That is, from a historical contextualist perspective, daojia encompassed everything that Daoists included in their religious tradition. It might best be understood as the "Daoist community," which would include the early master-disciple lineages of the Warring States period through the emergence of organized Daoism during the early and early medieval periods.  
 
In the modern world, the term daojia is used inaccurately as a designation for so-called "philosophical Daoism," which is often misidentified as "pure" or "original" Daoism. Preliminary research indicates that that usage begins in the mid to late nineteenth century in the context of Western colonist and Christian missionary interests in China. Under that modern construction, classical Daoism (Warring States period to Early Han) is characterized by a certain set of "ideas" or "thought" extracted from selective readings of the Laozi (Book of Venerable Masters; a.k.a. Daode jing) and Zhuangzi (Book of Master Zhuang). In fact, many passages in these texts emphasize quietistic meditation aimed at mystical union with the Dao. The "philosophical" aspects of Daoism cannot be separated from Daoist "soteriology" and "theology" or from embodied activity in the world ("practice"). In addition, those who would reduce classical Daoism to a "philosophy", whether modern philosophers, historians of "Chinese thought," or "seekers of the Way," fail to provide a comprehensive, close reading of the texts, texts which, in content and redactive history, suggest master-disciple communities in which emphasis was placed on specific forms of practice.
 
More research needs to be done on both historical constructions of "Daoism" as well as indigenous Daoist referents for "Daoism" and the ways in which Daoists set parameters for inclusion in their tradition. In any case, there are no theoretically grounded, historically accurate, or anthropologically relevant referents for the Western distinction between "philosophical Daoism" and "religious Daoism." "Philosophical Daoism" is wholly a modern fiction.