Wang Xizhi王羲之（附）

Style & Daoist names

Yishao (courtesy name), Wang Youjun (General of the Right), Sage of Calligraphy

Period

Eastern Jin

Dates

303 — 361

School

Way of the Celestial Masters (Tianshi Dao)

Role

CalligrapherAdherent of the Way of the Celestial Masters

Birthplace

Linyi, Langya (present-day Linyi, Shandong)

Life

Wang Xizhi, styled Yishao, was a celebrated calligrapher of the Eastern Jin who rose to the office of General of the Right Army and Interior Minister of Kuaiji, known to his contemporaries as "Wang Youjun" ("General of the Right"), and revered by later generations as the "Sage of Calligraphy." The Wang family of Langya "for generations served the Zhang family's Way of the Five Pecks of Rice" (Book of Jin, "Biography of Wang Ningzhi"), and Wang Xizhi himself was a devout follower of the Way of the Celestial Masters, associating with the Daoist priest Xu Mai, ingesting elixirs and gathering herbs — "together with the Daoist Xu Mai he practiced the ingestion of herbs and minerals, traveling a thousand li without hesitation to gather medicinal herbs and stones, roaming widely through the various commanderies of the eastern region"; many members of his family bore the character "zhi" in their names, which Chen Yinke, in his "The Way of the Celestial Masters and Its Relationship to Coastal Regions," held to be a mark of hereditary Celestial Masters families. Wang Xizhi is said (according to legend) to have written out the Huangting jing in exchange for geese, and his Preface to the Poems Collected from the Orchid Pavilion was composed during the Lustration Festival gathering in the ninth year of the Yonghe era (353). This entry is included as an appendix figure, illustrating the close relationship between the Eastern Jin gentry and the Way of the Celestial Masters.

Contributions & Influence

• A representative figure of Celestial Masters belief among the Eastern Jin gentry
• His surviving small-script transcription of the Huangting jing promoted the circulation of Daoist scriptures within the history of calligraphy

Works

• Scripture of the Yellow Court (calligraphic work, attributed)
• Preface to the Poems Collected from the Orchid Pavilion

Legends

Legend holds that he wrote out the Huangting jing (according to one account, the Daodejing) in exchange for white geese from a Daoist priest of Shanyin.