Hé Xiū 何休
Style name Shàogōng 邵公; native of Rènchéng 任城 (modern Jǐníng 濟寧, Shāndōng). The most influential Eastern-Hàn Gōngyáng commentator and the foundational figure of imperial Gōngyáng exegesis. Lifedates 129–182, given by the Hòu Hàn shū biography (juan 79). Studied under the Gōngyáng master Yáng Bì 羊弼 of the Yánshì 顏氏 sub-school (descended from Húmǔ Shēng 胡母生 → Yán Pénggǔ 嚴彭祖); was a protégé of the doomed reforming Grand Tutor Chén Fán 陳蕃 (d. 168), in whose suppression during the Dǎng gù 黨錮 proscription of 166–168 Hé was implicated. After Chén’s death he withdrew into seventeen years of seclusion, during which he composed his major work, the Chūnqiū Gōngyáng jīng zhuàn jiě gǔ 春秋公羊經傳解詁 (KR1e0007).
He was also the author of three polemical works defending Gōngyáng doctrine against the rising Zuǒzhuàn: Gōngyáng mò shǒu 公羊墨守 (“Gōngyáng impregnable as Mòzǐ’s defence”), Zuǒshì gāo huāng 左氏膏肓 (“Zuǒ tradition is incurably ill”), and Gǔliáng fèi jí 穀梁廢疾 (“Gǔliáng is feeble and infirm”). All three drew rebuttals from his contemporary 鄭玄 (127–200): the Fā Mò shǒu 發墨守, the Zhēn Gāo huāng KR1e0011, and the Qǐ Fèi jí 起廢疾. The exchanges between Hé and Zhèng are the principal extant Hàn-period debate on the relative authority of the Sān zhuàn — though all three of Hé’s polemical works are now lost in their original form, surviving only in fragments in Zhèng’s rebuttals (themselves only fragmentarily preserved).
The Jiě gǔ — Hé’s only fully extant work — systematised the Gōngyáng hermeneutic into the sān kē jiǔ zhǐ 三科九旨, the zhāng sān shì 張三世 (“expanding three eras”), and the yì wài nèi 異外內 (“differentiating outer and inner”). All three programmes became the core doctrinal apparatus of the late-imperial Gōngyáng revival under Liú Féngdì 劉逢綈, Liào Píng 廖平, and Kāng Yǒuwéi 康有為, where they were used to argue for the Chūnqiū as a constitutional blueprint for political reform.
Hé held only minor official positions; his short stints as Erudite of the Imperial Academy (Tàicháng bóshì 太常博士) and Director of the Imperial Library (Yìláng 議郎) are recorded in the Hòu Hàn shū. He died in 182 CE before the final collapse of the Eastern Hàn.