Lie Yukou

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Note: This article is about the philosopher Liezi. For the text, please see Liezi.

Lie Yukou (Chinese: 列圄寇/列禦寇; pinyin: Lìe Yǔkòu; Wade-Giles: Lieh Yü-k'ou; fl. ca. 400 BCE) is considered the author of the Daoist book Liezi, which uses his honorific name Liezi (列子; Lièzĭ; Lieh-tzu; "Master Lie"). The second Chinese character in Yukou is written kou 寇 "bandit; enemy"; the first is written yu 圄 "imprison", yu 禦 "resist; ward off", or occasionally yu 御 "drive (carriage); ride (horse); control" (the Zhuangzi claims Liezi could yufeng 御風 "ride the wind").

Since there is little historical evidence of Lie Yukou as a Hundred Schools of Thought philosopher during the Warring States Period, some scholars believe that the Zhuangzi invented him as a Daoist exemplar. Frederic H. Balfour, who translated several Daoist texts, called Liezi "a philosopher who never lived" (1887:?) Lionel Giles expresses doubt in his Introduction:

Very little is known of our author beyond what he tells us himself. His full name was [Lie Yukou], and it appears that he was living in the [Zheng] State not long before the year 398 B.C., when the Prime Minister [Zi] Yang was killed in a revolution. He figures prominently in the pages of [Zhuangzi], from whom we learn that he could 'ride upon the wind'. On the insufficient ground that he is not mentioned by the historian Sima Qian, a certain critic of the [Song] dynasty was led to declare that [Liezi] was only a fictitious personage invented by [Zhuangzi], and that the treatise which passes under his name was a forgery of later times. This theory is rejected by the compilers of the [great Catalogue of Qianlong Emperor's Library], who represent the cream of Chinese scholarship in the eighteenth century." (Giles 1912:12-13)[1]

[edit] References

Balfour, Frederic H. Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook. London: Trubner. 1887. Reprint. 2001.
Giles, Lionel, tr. Taoist Teachings from the Book of Lieh-Tzŭ. London: Wisdom of the East. 1912.