Yan Ruoqu

Who was Yan Ruoqu?

Yan Ruoqu was an influential Chinese scholar of the early Qing Dynasty. He was born to a scholarly family in Taiyuan, Shanxi. Yan Ruoqu is most famous for proving that the "Old Text" chapters of the Confucian classic Book of Documents were forgeries. He also made observations and theories about the motions of the moon and the planets.

Yan's work on the Classic of History was independently verified and praised by Hui Dong, the verification work was finished by him and Sun Xingyan.

Liang Qichao praised Yan as being "number one textual scholar of the recent 300 years". As such, he became an important precursor of the Doubting Antiquity School.