Liezi Compiled (Jin Era, c. 285–400 CE)
From the lost Han bibliography entry to the received eight-chapter book: the Liezi's Jin-era compilation, with the 285 CE terminus, Zhang Zhan's commentary, and the Tang canonization.
The event, in layers
The received Liezi is a Jin-era book with a Han-era ghost. The layers, in order:
- c. 90 CE — the lost entry. The Hanshu bibliography records a Liezi in eight chapters. Whether that book is the ancestor or only the name-source of the received text is part of the controversy — but the entry is the anchor for the traditional attribution.
- c. 285 CE — the terminus. Ji Xianlin’s demonstration: the automaton story in the received text’s Tangwen chapter follows Dharmarakṣa’s Sheng Jing translation, completed in 285 CE. Whatever else the book contains, that passage cannot predate 285 — and it drags the received text’s compilation window open at the late third century.
- c. 314–400 — the compilation and its commentator. The received eight-chapter book arrives with Zhang Zhan’s Eastern Jin commentary (his preface describes its transmission through his family’s book collection, and already notices that the book’s meaning “often corresponds with the Buddhist scriptures” — the tradition’s own early observation of the borrowing the scholars would later prove). This is the “Jin-era compilation” of the text page.
- 8th c. — the canonization. Tang Daoism raised the book to the Chongxu zhenjing, one of the four classics beside the Daodejing, Zhuangzi, and Wenzi — the moment the fable treasury became scripture.
Why this event matters to the site
Because it is the mirror-case of the Zhuangzi compilation timeline: two books, two compilations, two different relations between name and content. The Zhuangzi grew in strata around an authorial core; the Liezi’s received text is a Jin-era assembly wearing a Warring States name — and the site’s layer discipline exists precisely so that citations of the two books can carry their different weights without collapsing into “the classics say.”
Uncertainty preserved: the skeptics’ terminus (285) is demonstrated for one passage, not for the whole book; the traditionalist position (that the received book transmits the lost Han Liezi) remains argued in scholarship; the page records the window (c. 285–400) as the working consensus, with both positions alive on the text page.
Sources
- Hanshu 'Yiwenzhi' bibliography (c. 90 CE): a Liezi in eight chapters, since lost
- Ji Xianlin's demonstration that the Tangwen automaton story follows Dharmarakṣa's Sheng Jing (completed 285 CE); Qian Zhongshu, Guanzhui Bian, on Buddhist influence; Ma Xulun, Liezi Weishu Kao
- Zhang Zhan's preface and commentary (Eastern Jin); Tang canonization as Chongxu zhenjing (8th c., with the other 'Four True Classics')