Liu An

Liu An was a royal kinsman, man of letters, and thinker of the Western Han dynasty. A grandson of Liu Bang, the founding emperor of Han, he was enfeoffed as King of Huainan. Fond of reading and of playing the qin, he gathered thousands of retainers and presided over the compilation of the Huainanzi (also known as Huainan Honglie), a work that draws on Daoist, Confucian, Legalist, and Yin-Yang teachings; its chapter "Tianwen xun" contains the earliest complete record of the twenty-four solar terms and is significant in both the history of Chinese thought and the history of science. The works associated with him center on the Huainanzi, including chapters such as "Binglüe xun," "Chuzhen xun," and "Quanyan xun," which treat philosophy, politics, military affairs, and natural knowledge in a rich style marked by apt analogy and are commonly classed among works of Eastern philosophy and classics. He took his own life by cutting his throat after a planned rebellion was exposed. Public sources on his birth and death years are limited, and many details of his life cannot be reliably established; modern readers chiefly know him and his thought through his writings and historical records.