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Jiao Xun
Qing classical scholar from Yangzhou who wrote the Correct Meaning of the Mencius and studies of the Changes, and used letters for numbers in his arithmetic treatises
In a calculation room, a wide table holds a board of black and yellow counting rods laid in neat bundles, beside an abacus, a ruler and a sheet with a circle divided into equal parts; one person sits at a far desk with their back turned, and terraced fields lie outside.
Also known as Zi Litang · Diao Gu Lou Zhu Ren
Jiao Xun, courtesy name Litang, came from Ganquan near Yangzhou and passed the provincial examination in 1801; after failing the metropolitan examination the next year he gave up further attempts to care for his mother and spent more than ten years writing in his Diaogu Tower north of the city. His main classical work was on the Book of Changes, in three studies known together as the Diaogu Tower trilogy, and on the Mencius, for which he wrote the thirty-chapter Correct Meaning of the Mencius (Mengzi zhengyi), gathering Qing philological scholarship; he died before it was printed. As a young man he discussed mathematics with Wang Lai and Li Rui, the three being called the Three Friends Who Talk of Heaven, and his arithmetic and algebra treatises, collected as Litang's Notes on Mathematics, use cyclical characters to stand for numbers in explaining the rules of operation. He died in 1820, and the Draft History of Qing places him among the Confucian scholars.
Life and times
Dates 1763 CE–1820 CE