Northern Song thinker of the image-and-number school who lived as a recluse in Luoyang and wrote the cosmological Supreme Principles that Rule the World
Mural guide
A thatched pavilion open on three sides stands among tall bamboo; one person sits with their back turned at the veranda rail beside a zither and a stack of bamboo slips, while a stone path runs to a calm pond reflecting clouds and distant hills.
Shao Yong, courtesy name Yaofu, came from a Fanyang family that had moved to Gongcheng in Weizhou, where as a youth he studied by the Baiyuan spring on Mount Sumen, going without a stove in winter or a fan in summer. The magistrate Li Zhicai taught him the River Chart, the Luo Writing and the trigrams ascribed to Fuxi, from which he built his 'before Heaven' system of images and numbers. Around 1050 he settled in Luoyang, at first in a bare hut, until Fu Bi, Sima Guang, Lu Gongzhu and others bought him a house and garden that he called his Nest of Contentment. He twice refused office on grounds of illness. His *Supreme Principles that Rule the World* (*Huangji jingshi*) charts cosmic history in nested cycles, while his poems in the *Yichuan jirang ji* celebrate a retired life. He died in 1077 at sixty-seven; Cheng Hao wrote his epitaph, and he was later named Kangjie.
Shao Yong, courtesy name Yaofu, came from a family of Fanyang that moved to Gongcheng. Li Zhicai, acting magistrate there, passed to him the River Chart, the Luo Writing and Fuxi's diagrams of the eight trigrams and sixty-four hexagrams, and he expanded Fuxi's Former Heaven (xiantian) teaching. He wrote the Huangji jingshi, the inner and outer Guanwu chapters, the Yuqiao wendui, and a verse collection, the Yichuan jirang ji. He named his home the Nest of Ease and styled himself Master of Ease. He died in the tenth year of Xining at sixty-seven and was given the posthumous name Kangjie in the Yuanyou years.
Song
Literature · Poetry
