Laozi riding an ox
An old man with a long beard riding an ox is Laozi, the sage to whom Daoists trace their tradition, leaving China by the western pass. It is one of the most popular ways he is shown.
Meaning
Laozi, “old master”, is the sage to whom the Daode jing is ascribed. Fabrizio Pregadio, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, writes that hardly any school or lineage of Daoism denies that the whole tradition derives in the end from Laozi and his book, and the Victoria and Albert Museum says that Daoists honour him as the founder of Daoism. The V&A calls Laozi riding an ox “one of the most popular depictions of the sage” and gives the story behind it: leaving China for the western regions, he gave a compendium of his teachings to a guard at the Hangu Pass and went west on an ox. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, describing a bronze made by Xue Mingyang in 1569 or 1629, calls it an apocryphal moment, when he “departed for the west on a dark ox to become a hermit”. Whether Laozi lived at all is another question: Pregadio writes that current Western scholarship is “virtually unanimous” that there was no historical Laozi.
Origin and history
The story goes back to Sima Qian, whose biography of Laozi in the Shi ji (Records of the Grand Historian, about 100 BC) is the earliest known. Princeton University Art Museum summarises it: Laozi’s surname was Li and his given name Er, and he was an archivist for the state of Zhou. In James Legge’s account of the same biography, Laozi, grieving at the decline of the dynasty, wished to withdraw from the world and went to the pass leading from China to the west (Legge writes Hsien-ku). The warden of the pass, Yin Xi, “himself a well-known Taoist”, insisted that he leave a writing before going into seclusion. Laozi wrote a work in two parts of more than 5,000 characters, gave it to the warden and went his way, “nor is it known where he died”. Legge called the account “strange enough” and thought it no wonder that it was “embellished with many marvels” later. One embellishment he found in a student’s handbook: the warden set tea before Laozi, the origin, it said, of the custom of tea between host and guest.
Laozi then became a god. In 165 and 166, rites were held at his supposed birthplace, and in 166 the Emperor Huan held a ceremony in his honour in the palace, the only time in Chinese history. Daoists came to worship him as Laojun, Lord Lao, of whom, Pregadio writes, the “historical” Laozi who wrote the Daode jing is only one of the forms he has taken to guide humanity.
How artists show him
The V&A’s eighteenth-century bronze shows an old man with a long beard in a long draped gown, holding a scroll in his left hand, astride the animal; the museum catalogues it as riding a buffalo and describes it as riding an ox. The Met’s essay on Daoist art says he is often shown on an ox or in an ox cart. Princeton has a hanging scroll, probably of the sixteenth century, in which he rides in an ox-drawn cart with four attendants while Yin Xi stands before it with his hands respectfully clasped.
Read next
- Next in Taoist symbolsYin yang (taijitu)A circle divided into a dark and a light half that curl into each other, each holding a dot of the other colour. It pictures yin and yang, the two complementary forces of Chinese thought, and in Daoism the taiji, the “great ultimate” from which they come.
- The same shape in Andean and Inca symbolsInti Raymi (festival of the sun)The Inca festival of the sun, held at the June solstice in Cusco. Banned under Spanish rule, it was revived in 1944 and is staged every 24 June at the Coricancha, the main square and Sacsayhuamán.
See also
Bagua (the eight trigrams), Eight Immortals, Fu talisman (符), Crane, Peach of immortality.
Sources
- Bronze figure of Laozi riding a buffalo, Qing dynasty, 18th century, Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, object O157398, Victoria and Albert Museum, Summary; Physical description
- Laozi riding an ox, Xue Mingyang, Copper alloy and pigments; 1569 or 1629, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Laozi at the Western Pass, Hanging scroll, probably 16th century, Princeton University Art Museum, Description
- The Texts of Taoism, part I (The Sacred Books of the East, vol. XXXIX), James Legge, translator; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891, Internet Archive, Introduction, ch. II, pp. 4–5 and note
- Religious Daoism, Fabrizio Pregadio, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1. Early Daoist Texts; 2.5 The Divinization of Laozi
- Daoism and Daoist Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (December 2011), The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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