Zheng Xuan (AD 127–200)

Zheng Xuan, perhaps the most influential commentator on the Confucian classics, is widely credited with constructing both a compelling unitary vision of Chinese civilization and a hierarchy of written authorities which upheld the supremacy of the five Confucian classics as infallible guides to morality and history. Inevitably, scholars (including Zheng’s many critics) have ‘read’ early Chinese society through the filter of Zheng’s surviving commentaries, which ultimately superseded earlier divergent scholastic traditions.