Liu Xiang

Liu Xiang (77–6 BCE), born Liu Gengsheng and known by the courtesy name Zizheng, was a Chinese scholar of the Western Han dynasty. He worked as a historian, astronomer, poet and librarian, and his interests ranged widely across these fields. He is remembered above all for cataloguing and editing the vast imperial library, a task that shaped how early Chinese texts were arranged and passed on.

He belonged to the ruling house by birth, as a distant relative of Liu Bang, founder of the Han dynasty, and his father held the rank of marquess. Under Emperor Yuan he sided with a circle of Confucian officials who wanted to curb the power of the consort clans, the Shi and the Xu. The struggle went against him: he lost to the eunuchs Hong Gong and Shi Xian, was briefly imprisoned, dismissed, and then kept out of office for about fifteen years.

When Emperor Cheng came to the throne, a shift in court alliances allowed him to return to public life. Around 26 BCE, on imperial command, he devoted much of the remaining two decades of his life to organizing the palace library. His son Liu Xin helped with the work and finished it after his death. Liu Xiang compiled the first known catalogue of that library, the Bielu, and is the earliest recorded editor of the Classic of Mountains and Seas, which his son completed. He also edited collections of anecdotes and biographies. For a long time he was credited with compiling the Biographies of the Immortals, an attribution now regarded as mistaken. He is also credited with the 'Nine Laments' in the Songs of Chu.

His legacy lies mainly in the transmission of ancient texts. His catalogue served as a model for later bibliographic classification, and much of what survives of early Chinese thought reached later readers through the editorial work he began.