Lǐ Hánguāng 李含光 (hào Xuánjìngxiānshēng 玄静先生 / 玄靜先生; 683–769), the principal Shàngqīng 上清 patriarch of the mid-Tang and the personal Daoist preceptor of emperor Xuánzōng 玄宗 (r. 712–756). Lǐ was a native of Guǎnglíng 廣陵 (in modern Jiāngsū); he is the thirteenth-generation patriarch of the Shàngqīng / Máoshān 茅山 tradition, following directly from Sīmǎ Chéngzhēn 司馬承禎 (also a Xuánzōng preceptor), in whose lineage he had received initiation in 723. From the Tiānbǎo era onwards he resided primarily at Máoshān, where he reorganised the abbey’s library and ritual practice; Xuánzōng visited him there in 731 and at the Dàojūngōng 道君宮 audience hall at Cháng’ān. His personal seal at court was sufficient that, on Lǐ’s death in 769, the emperor Dàizōng 代宗 personally composed his epitaph.
Lǐ is named in the canonical record as the editor and xù-writer of several major Tang Daoist works: the Tàishàng cíbēi dàochǎng xiāozāi jiǔyōu chàn KR5b0246 (DZ 543; preface dated to his Máoshān years); the Sānyuán pǐnjiè jīng (DZ 456); and the now-lost Xuánjìng wénjí 玄静文集 in 30 juǎn. His honorific Xuánjìngxiānshēng was granted by Xuánzōng. The source rubric of DZ 543 spells his name 李舎光 by graphical slip from 含光; the Xuánjìng xiānshēng title (uniquely Lǐ’s) confirms the identification. Lǐ is the principal mid-Tang exemplar of the close imperial-Daoist preceptor relationship that characterised Xuánzōng’s reign; the parallel Buddhist case is the Vajrayāna master Bùkōng 不空 (Amoghavajra). No CBDB record (CBDB is sparse on pre-Sòng Daoist clerics). Standard study: Russell, “Li Han-kuang and the Maoshan Tradition,” Journal of Chinese Religions 18 (1990): 79–105; Barrett, Taoism Under the T’ang (1996).