Early Chinese History and Taoism

Taoist texts can help us to understand early Chinese history. Taoism was initially different from normal Chinese culture, or Confucianism. Taos believed in celestial masters who supposed to establish a new political structure. One thing found out about the Taos was that they did not use physical objects for worship. This shows that maybe the early Chinese were not able to afford materials to build religious figures in a way to worship them properly. The Taos's writing was a religious canon, which is very hard to decipher.  Taoism was not really recorded yet it shies another aspect of Chinese society.  There is little philological tradition like this in China. The main philological work in Chinese Buddhism, for example, was done by Japanese and Western scholars. They dated the material and produced catalogs. There’s been very little work in Taoism or Chinese religion comparable to the work done on Christianity. For example, you can internally date texts and say this part is earlier than that part. This is common in the Bible, but very uncommon in Chinese texts. This shows that Taoism was not the most popular religion, yet it played an important role in ear,t Chinese culture because of the impacts it had. It's philosophies are still present in our society today and are widely used in many people's lives.