Xí Kāng 嵇康 (223–262), zì Shū yè 叔夜, native of Zhì 銍 in Qiáo 譙 (modern Sùxiàn 宿縣 in Ānhuī), was the most famous of the Zhúlín qī xián 竹林七賢 (Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove) and the philosophical and stylistic point of reference for Wèi–Jìn xuán xué 玄學 culture. By Wèi connection (married to a granddaughter of Cáo Cāo) he held the rank of Zhōngsǎndàifū 中散大夫, hence the conventional title Xí Zhōngsǎn 嵇中散. He famously refused to take office under the rising Sīmǎ family, lived as a forge-master at Shānyáng 山陽 with his friend Xiàng Xiù 向秀, and was executed in 262 in the Luòyáng marketplace at the instigation of Zhōng Huì 鍾會 — playing the Guǎng líng sǎn 廣陵散 on the qín immediately before his death — under the regency of Sīmǎ Zhāo 司馬昭. He was 40 sui. Standard biographies in Sānguó zhì, Wèi shū 21 (with Péi Sōngzhī’s commentary), Jìn shū 49 (which mistakenly classes him as a Jìn man), and Shìshuō xīn yǔ 世說新語. His writings survive in KR4b0005 Xí Zhōngsǎn jí 嵇中散集. The dates 223–262 follow the standard Wèi-calendar reckoning; CBDB gives 224–263 by an alternative calculation, a one-year displacement that does not affect the substantive chronology.