Yang Xiong

Who was Yang Xiong?

Yang Xiong was a Chinese Daoist, poet, and author from modern Chengdu, Sichuan. His name written in Chinese is 揚雄, but it is also frequently mistaken as 楊雄 in historical documents, for example in the Sancai Tuhui.

Yang is considered a materialist. He did not believe human nature was inherently good as Mencius had written, nor inherently bad as Xunzi had written, but came into existence as a mixture of both. His works include the divinatory Taixuan, the Fayan anthology, and the first dialect dictionary Fangyan. He was a close associate of the official and philosopher Huan Tan, an Old Texts realist who may have heavily influenced the works of Wang Chong. Yang is also known for his protest against the verbosity of the fu. He was hailed by Huan Tan as the "Confucius from the western parts".