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Li Kui
Early Warring States minister of Wei who, under Marquis Wen, promoted intensive farming and state grain buying, and to whom later sources credit the Canon of Laws
In a riverside storehouse, sacks of grain and white salt blocks are stacked high; workers weigh grain in a basket hung from a large steelyard, others carry sacks along a plank onto a barge at the right, and a clerk sits at an abacus beside bundled tally sticks.
Also known as Li Ke
Li Kui served Marquis Wen of Wei in the early Warring States; the bibliographic treatise of the Han History (Han shu) lists a legalist book in thirty-two sections under his name, with Ban Gu's note that he was chief minister and made the state rich and strong. The Han History's treatise on food and money credits him with a policy of making the most of the land, and with a scheme by which the state bought surplus grain in good years and sold it at fair prices in bad ones. The Jin History (Jin shu) adds that he compiled the penal laws of the various states into a Canon of Laws (Fajing) in six sections, which Shang Yang later took to Qin. No copy survives, and since the claim first appears in a history compiled in the early Tang, its reliability is disputed. Whether he is the same man as Li Ke, another adviser of Marquis Wen in the Shiji, has also long been debated.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; served Marquis Wen of Wei