Heshang Gong河上公

Style & Daoist names

Elder of the Riverside, Perfected of the Riverside

Period

Western Han

Dates

? — ?

Role

Daoist PhilosopherScriptural Commentator

Birthplace

Unknown

Life

Heshang Gong ("Master on the River") is traditionally held to have been a recluse in the time of Emperor Wen of Han, who built a thatched hut on a riverbank and taught Emperor Wen the Laozi zhangju (Commentary on the Laozi Arranged by Chapter and Verse), hence his name. Ge Hong's Biographies of Divine Immortals records that Emperor Wen was fond of Laozi's teachings but had questions he could not resolve, and sent an envoy to ask Heshang Gong, who gave him the two-scroll Sushu (Plain Book). The Biography of Yue Yi in the Records of the Grand Historian separately records that at the end of the Warring States period there was a "Heshang Zhangren" (Elder of the Riverbank) who transmitted the learning of Huang-Lao, and later writers have sometimes conflated the two figures. The Heshanggong Commentary on the Laozi that survives today divides the Daodejing into eighty-one chapters, taking as its aim the joint cultivation of the nourishment of life and the governing of the state, advocating the cherishing of qi and the nourishing of the spirit, and clarity and stillness and non-action, and expounding the text through a theory of primordial qi (yuanqi) that links the cultivation of the body with the governing of the state; it is one of the earliest complete surviving commentaries on the Laozi, though scholars disagree over its date of composition, with views ranging from the Western Han to the Eastern Han and even the Wei-Jin period. This commentary had enormous influence within Daoism and was the most widely circulated before the Tang, ranked alongside Wang Bi's Commentary on the Laozi.

Contributions & Influence

• The Heshanggong Commentary on the Laozi is one of the most important ancient commentaries on the Laozi
• Interpreted the Laozi through the cultivation of the body and qi, pioneering the Daoist tradition of exegesis through life-nourishment
• Its eighty-one-chapter division has been passed down to later generations

Works

• Heshanggong Commentary on the Laozi

Legends

According to legend, when Emperor Wen personally visited the thatched hut, Heshang Gong clapped his hands and rose sitting into the air, hovering more than a hundred zhang above the ground and answering the emperor's questions from on high; only then did Emperor Wen realize he was a divine being. Later generations called him the Perfected of the River (Heshang Zhenren).