The Daozang is a large canon of Taoist writings, consisting of around 1,500 texts that were seen as continuing traditions first embodied by the Daodejing, Zhuangzi, and Liezi. The canon was assembled by monks c. 400 CE in an attempt to bring together these disparate yet consonant teachings, and it included commentaries and expositions from various masters on material found in the aforementioned core texts of Taoism. The anthology consisted of three divisions based on what were seen at that time in Southern China as Taoism's primary focuses: meditation, ritual, and exorcism. These three grottoes rather than seeing them as a doctrine of immanent ascendance or a kind of hierarchical staking that is ranked by skill level, it is better to understand them as a kind of scaffolding that the lower section is as important as the highest as seen within the body of the text with exorcism being the lowest Grotto and meditation the highest Grotto — both being used by for the Taoist masters and Monastics.