Huainanzi淮南子
- Also known as
- Huainan honglie (Huainan's Vast Illumination), Honglie (Vast Illumination)
- Author / transmission
- Liu An
- Period
- Western Han · Compiled by retainers gathered by Liu An, Prince of Huainan (179–122 BCE), completed around the second year of Jianyuan (139 BCE), before being presented to Emperor Wu.
- Canon division
- Taiqing Section
- Collected in
- Daoist Canon of the Zhengtong Era, Taiqing Section (as the Explanation of the Vast Brilliance of Huainan)
- Category
- Daoist Philosophy
- Fascicles
- Twenty-one scrolls (originally twenty-one Inner Chapters and thirty-three Outer Chapters; the Outer Chapters are lost)
Synopsis
The Huainanzi is a summa of early Western Han Huang-Lao Daoist thought, compiled by scholars and masters of methods gathered by Liu An, Prince of Huainan; it takes Daoism as its main thread while also drawing on the Yin-Yang, Confucian, Mohist, Legalist and Military schools, and was accordingly classified by the Bibliographic Treatise of the History of the Han among the Miscellaneous Schools. The book, in twenty-one chapters (Originating the Dao, Activating the Genuine, Celestial Patterns, Terrestrial Forms, Seasonal Rules, Surveying Obscurities, Quintessential Spirit, Basic Warp, Techniques of the Ruler, Miscellaneous Sayings, Equalizing Customs, Responses of the Dao, Boundless Discourses, Sayings Explained, Military Strategy, Mountain Sayings, Forest Sayings, Among Others, Cultivating Effort, The Great Lineage, and Summary of the Essentials), takes the "Dao" as the origin of the cosmos and systematically expounds cosmogony, astronomy and calendrical science, geography and seasonal phenomena, the nourishing of body and spirit, and the principles of statecraft and warfare, preserving a great body of myth (Nüwa mending the sky, Hou Yi shooting down the suns, Chang'e flying to the moon) and material on the arts of the masters of methods. Liu An was fond of the arts of immortality and alchemical transmutation of gold, and later Daoism revered him as the legendary figure who "attained the Dao"; his book is also regarded as a forerunner of Daoist external-alchemical and life-nourishing thought. Gao You and Xu Shen of the Eastern Han both wrote commentaries, of which Gao You's survives today.
Key Ideas
- The Dao as the formless and imageless root, generating Heaven and Earth through the transformation of qi
- Governing through non-action, following naturalness
- A theory of nourishing life through the joint cultivation of form, spirit and qi
- Yin-Yang, the Five Phases, and seasonal governance
- A compendium of myth and the arts of the masters of methods
Structure
Twenty-one chapters; the final chapter, Summary of the Essentials, is an overview of the whole work.
Editions
- Daoist Canon of the Zhengtong Era edition (as the Explanation of the Vast Brilliance of Huainan)
- Gao You's annotated edition
- Liu Wendian, Collected Explanations of the Vast Brilliance of Huainan
- He Ning, Collected Explanations of the Huainanzi (Zhonghua Book Company, 1998)
- Zhang Shuangdi, Collation and Explanation of the Huainanzi
Commentaries
- Gao You, Explanation of the Vast Brilliance of Huainan
- Xu Shen's commentary (lost)
- Liu Wendian, Collected Explanations of the Vast Brilliance of Huainan
Translations
- Complete English translation by John Major et al., The Huainanzi (2010)
- French translation by Charles Le Blanc and Rémi Mathieu (2003)
Full Text & Online Resources
Related scriptures
Daodejing (Tao Te Ching), Wenzi, Four Classics of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi sijing), lüshi-chunqiuRelated figures
Liu An- 《汉书·淮南衡山济北王传》
- 何宁《淮南子集释》
- John Major et al., The Huainanzi, Columbia UP 2010
- 维基百科「淮南子」条