The historicity of Lao Ai has been doubted by modern historians, who consider that
Confucian ideologues, who were in favor with the
Han court during the composition of the
Records of the Grand Historian, had the ulterior motive of portraying
Qin Shi Huang, a foe of Confucians who had
ordered their mass execution in 212 BCE, as a
bastard. Supporters of this theory point out that Lao Ai's name appears etymologically fanciful: the characters used to write Lao Ai literally mean "lustful misdeed" in
Old Chinese, and that his defining characteristic, his large penis (in Chinese ), can also be taken to mean "great conspiracy". Given that
Sima Qian, author of the historical work that canonized this traditional account of Lao Ai, was himself subject to the punishment of castration some years before, skeptically minded historians believe that the story of Lao Ai is meant to be understood allegorically, as a "personified phallus" who represented "a basic threat to the transmission of the imperial bloodline and hence the purity of the 'united cosmos'". The story of Lao Ai was also told by Yu Shaoyu (), the 16th-century author of
Chronicles of Many States During the Age of Spring and Fall, the length of which was nearly tripled by
Feng Menglong (1574–1646), after which the book was then known as
Chronicles of the Eastern Zhou Kingdoms. ==Notes==