Tao Hongjing

Also known as Zi Tongming · Huayang Yinju

Tao Hongjing, courtesy name Tongming, came from Moling in Danyang. Before he was twenty, the regent Xiao Daocheng made him a reading companion to the princes. In 492 he resigned his stipend, hung his court robes on the Shenwu Gate and withdrew to Mount Gouqu (Mount Mao) near Jurong, calling himself the Recluse of Huayang and gathering the scriptures of the Shangqing school into works such as the Declarations of the Perfected (Zhen gao). Emperor Wu of Liang often sent envoys into the mountains to consult him on major affairs, and the History of the Southern Dynasties (Nanshi) says he was called the chancellor in the mountains. Revising the Divine Farmer's Classic of Materia Medica with drugs used by later physicians, he produced the Collected Annotations (Bencao jing jizhu); he also built an armillary sphere. He died in 536 and received the posthumous name Master Zhenbai. That work was later lost, but fragments survive among manuscripts from Dunhuang and Turfan.