Gǔliáng Chì 穀梁赤
Pseudo-historical or semi-historical figure traditionally said to have been the originator of the Gǔliáng zhuàn 穀梁傳 (KR1e0008 / KR1e0009 / KR1e0010) and named in the work’s title. Yáng Shìxūn’s 楊士勛 Gǔliáng zhuàn shū gives “Master Gǔliáng’s name was Chū 俶, zì Yuánshǐ 元始, alternative name Chì 赤; he received the classic from Zǐxià 子夏 (卜商) and made the zhuàn on the jīng” — placing him as a 5th-century-BCE figure, a contemporary or near-contemporary of Zǐxià.
This direct authorship attribution was already challenged in the Táng. As Xú Yàn 徐彥’s Gōngyáng shū observes (and the Sìkù tíyào under KR1e0010 endorses), the Gǔliáng zhuàn contains internal references inconsistent with a 5th-century-BCE single-author composition: it cites “Master Shěn says” (Shěnzǐ yuē 沈子曰), a Gōngyáng-school teacher who post-dates Zǐxià; it cites “Master Gǔliáng says” (Gǔliángzǐ yuē 穀梁子曰) in the third person, incompatible with self-authorship; and it cites Shī Jiǎo 尸佼, the teacher of Shāng Yāng 商鞅, who fled to Shǔ after Shāng Yāng’s execution in 338 BCE — placing the citation after the late Warring States. Modern scholarship treats “Gǔliáng Chì” as the eponym of the school of Chūnqiū exegesis whose received text was set down in writing in the early Western Hàn, perhaps by transmitters of the Western Hàn scholar Shēn Péi 申培 (Shēn Gōng 申公).
The Gǔliáng zhuàn was raised to bóshì 博士 status under Hàn Xuāndì 漢宣帝 at the Shíqú gé 石渠閣 conference of 51 BCE — the famous adjudication between Gōngyáng and Gǔliáng presided over by the emperor in person, which favoured the Gǔliáng. Liú Xiàng 劉向 (77–6 BCE) was a Gǔliáng transmitter whose Shuō yuàn 說苑 preserves Gǔliáng readings of the Chūnqiū opening (recorded in the Sìkù tíyào on KR1e0010).
The character 赤 is graphically similar to and perhaps a phonetic variant of 寘 / 俶; the Sìkù tíyào (under KR1e0010) notes the late-imperial speculation (Luó Bì 羅璧, Wàn Jiànchūn 萬見春) that “Gōngyáng” and “Gǔliáng” are themselves homophonic disguises for the surname Jiāng 姜, so that “Gǔliáng Chì” might be a literary fiction; this view is dismissed in the tíyào itself.