The Book of Gongsun Long Taoist Scriptures 公孙龙子

The Hanshu·Yiwenzhi (Book of Han·Treatise on Literature and Arts) recorded fourteen chapters of the Gongsun Longzi in the School of Names category; it was written by Gongsun Long, a retainer of Lord Pingyuan of the State of Zhao during the Warring States Period.

The book became incomplete after the Wei and Jin dynasties. The existing version is an annotated text in three volumes and six chapters by Xie Xishen of the Song Dynasty. This work is a classic of ancient Chinese logic. Gongsun Long was famous for his adeptness at argumentation; his theories of "a white horse is not a horse" and "hardness, whiteness and stone are one" analyzed the similarities and differences between names and actualities, whose logical thinking echoes the dialectical ideas in the Laozi, forming a unique philosophical system. The Daozang (Daoist Canon) includes this book in its Taiqing (Supreme Purity) section. Yan Kejun commented on the editions of this book in his Postscript to Gongsun Longzi, stating that "among all editions, the Daozang version is relatively the best".