Gōngyáng Gāo 公羊高
Pseudo-historical or semi-historical figure traditionally said to have been the originator of the Gōngyáng zhuàn 公羊傳 (KR1e0006 / KR1e0007) and named in the work’s title. The Hàn tradition, recorded in Dài Hóng’s 戴宏 preface (preserved in Xú Yàn’s 徐彥 Gōngyáng shū), holds that the Gōngyáng tradition was transmitted orally over five generations: Zǐxià 子夏 → Gōngyáng Gāo → his son Píng 平 → grandson Dì 地 → great-grandson Gǎn 敢 → great-great-grandson Shòu 壽, with Shòu and his collaborator Húmǔ Zǐdū 胡母子都 setting it down on bamboo and silk only in the time of Hàn Jǐngdì 漢景帝 (r. 157–141 BCE). On the conventional dating Gōngyáng Gāo would be a 5th-century-BCE figure, a contemporary or near-contemporary of Zǐxià.
The historicity of Gōngyáng Gāo has been challenged from at least the Sòng. The Sìkù tíyào on the Gōngyáng zhuàn (under KR1e0006) accepts that the present zhuàn could not have been composed by Gāo himself: it cites him in the third person (“Master Gōngyángzǐ says,” zǐ Gōngyángzǐ yuē 子公羊子曰), and contains material from a series of post-Zǐxià masters (Shěnzǐ, Sīmǎzǐ, Nǚzǐ, Běigōngzǐ) inconsistent with single-author composition by a 5th-century BCE Confucian. Modern scholarship (Gentz 2001, Queen 1996) treats “Gōngyáng Gāo” as a name attached to the school of Chūnqiū exegesis that crystallised in the late Warring States and was textualised under the Western Hàn.
The Western Hàn dating of the surviving zhuàn fits with its first appearance as a recognised bóshì 博士 chair under Hàn Wǔdì 武帝 (r. 141–87 BCE), and with the elaboration of its hermeneutic devices by Dǒng Zhòngshū 董仲舒 (179?–104?). The Qīng Gōngyáng revival under Liú Féngdì 劉逢綈, Liào Píng 廖平, and Kāng Yǒuwéi 康有為 generally accepted the Hé Xiū 何休 / Dǒng Zhòngshū tradition without committing on Gōngyáng Gāo’s historicity.
Gōngyáng Gāo is conventionally said to have been a man of Qí 齊 (so Bān Gù in the Hàn shū yìwén zhì).