These may have been chapters the tutor was fond of teaching to the prince and others. The Laozi 's antiauthoritarian teachings have been considered a counterpoint to Confucianism's reverence for ritual and hierarchy, and the two philosophical schools have long argued over whether Daoism or Confucianism is older. Current Chinese scholarship favors the Daoists. The other possibility, favored mostly by Western scholars, is that the Guodian bundles are collections of sayings that were circulating in fourth-century B.C. China and were later combined with other sources by one or several editors to produce an updated version of the book, known from a text dating to 200 B.C. discovered in a tomb in Mawangdui, Hunan Province, in 1973. The philosophical orientation of the different Guodian bundles awaits further research.
Some scholars say they focus on different subjects, such as ruling and self-improvement.
While it is possible the first two bundles were written by the same hand, Henricks says the third was clearly brushed by a different person. No definitive statement can yet be made about this scribe's interests and beliefs. Scholars of early China have been tantalized by reports of another discovery of philosophical writings dating to the same period as the Guodian cache. Unfortunately, these texts were stolen from a woman's tomb a few miles from Guodian and smuggled to Hong Kong.