Jiāo Yánshòu 焦延壽 (also known as Jiāo Gàn 焦贛)
Style name Yánshòu 延壽 (with personal name Gàn 贛 / Jiāo Gàn). Native of Liáng 梁 (in modern Hénán). Active during the reigns of Wǔdì and Zhāodì (mid-Western Hàn, mid-1st century BCE). Birth and death years not securely recorded.
A foundational figure in the Hàn-period Yìjīng numerical-divinatory tradition. Originally a county clerk; promoted to Xiǎohuáng lìng (Magistrate of Xiǎohuáng) under Zhāodì by jǔxiào lián recommendation. The famous Yìjīng commentator Jīng Fáng 京房 (KR3g0030) was his student; the Hànshū records Jīng Fáng’s biographical details including the Jiāo Yánshòu transmission, providing the principal historical evidence for Jiāo Yánshòu’s existence and intellectual position.
Jiāo Yánshòu’s distinctive contribution: he created the guàqì zhírì 卦氣值日 (hexagram-pneuma duty-day) tradition — a Yìjīng-divinatory system in which each hexagram is assigned a calendar-day position, with auspicious-or-inauspicious determinations derived from the day-on-which-divination-falls. This methodology became the foundation of all subsequent xiàngshù (image-and-number) Yì-tradition divinatory practice, transmitted through Jīng Fáng to the Hàn imperial court and through subsequent commentators down to the SòngYuán period.
His principal work is the KR3g0029 Jiāoshì Yìlín 焦氏易林 in 16 juàn — a divinatory-poetry compendium containing 4,096 (= 64 × 64) four-character-line yáocí (oracular verses), one for each combination of an “original” hexagram and a “transformed” hexagram. The work’s compositional ambition is monumental: each entry presents a unique cosmological-cum-ethical situation in compact verse-form, with the entire 4,096-entry set serving as a divinatory reference. The work is also a rich source for the study of Hàn-period folk-cosmology, language, and culture (its verse-language preserves vocabulary and idioms not always documented elsewhere).
A separate work, the Yìlín biànzhàn 易林變占 in 16 juàn, is recorded in the Suí Jīngjí zhì but is now lost.