Gu Huan顾欢

Style & Daoist names

Jingyi, Xuanping

Period

Song and Qi of the Southern Dynasties

Dates

c. 420 — c. 483

School

Shangqing (Highest Clarity) School

Role

Daoist ScholarsCompiler of the Shangqing Scriptures

Birthplace

Yanguan, Wu Commandery (present-day Haining, Zhejiang)

Places of activity

Mount Tiantai

Life

Gu Huan, styled Jingyi (also styled Xuanping), was a Daoist scholar and recluse of the Southern Dynasties. Poor but devoted to study, he lived in reclusion on Mount Tiantai in Shan county, Kuaiji, gathering disciples and teaching them. During the fierce Buddhist-Daoist polemics of the late Song and early Qi, Gu Huan wrote the Yixia Lun (Treatise on the Chinese and the Barbarians), arguing that Buddhism and Daoism shared a common origin while Chinese and foreign peoples remained distinct — "the Buddha is not the Way of the Eastern Florescence [China], and the Dao is not the method of the Western Rong [foreign peoples]" — provoking rebuttals from Buddhist figures such as Ming Sengshao and Xie Zhenzhi, and becoming a famous instance of the Southern Dynasties debate over Chinese versus barbarian identity. He also collected the authentic manuscripts of Yang Xi and Xu Mi, compiling them into the Zhenji jing (also called the Zhenji), a forerunner of Tao Hongjing's later compilation of the Zhengao (Tao Hongjing made many corrections to his ordering). He also wrote a commentary on the Laozi, of which the Daode Zhenjing Zhushu survives in fragments. He died around the first year of the Yongming era of Qi (483).

Contributions & Influence

• Wrote the Yixia Lun, a representative text of the Buddhist-Daoist polemics of the Southern Dynasties
• Compiled the authentic Shangqing manuscripts of Yang Xi and Xu Mi into the Zhenji jing, a forerunner of Tao Hongjing's Zhengao
• Wrote a commentary on the Laozi, an important commentator of the Southern Dynasties

Works

• Yixia Lun (Treatise on the Chinese and the Barbarians)
• Zhenji Jing (Scripture of the Traces of the Perfected)
• Commentary on the Laozi (compiled)