Legendary Warring-States Daoist figure, said in the Daoist hagiographic tradition to have been a “high officer of Zhōu” (周之卿士) and a disciple of Lǎozǐ 老子. He appears in Zhuāngzǐ 莊子 ch. 25 Zé yáng 則陽, where he is described as having “studied with Lǎo Dān 老聃” before travelling to Qí 齊, where, on encountering an executed man (gū rén 辜人) lying in the marketplace, he removed his court-robes to cover the corpse and lamented to Heaven: “Oh, my master, oh! There is great calamity in the world, and you have suffered it first.” His meditation that follows — “Do not be a thief! Do not be a murderer! Honour and shame are set up, and only then is the source of suffering visible; goods and wealth are accumulated, and only then is the source of contention visible. Now they vex men’s bodies and give them no rest. To desire that men should not come to such a state — can it be done?… When the strength is not enough, men make false claims; when knowledge is not enough, they cheat; when wealth is not enough, they steal — and this thievery, on whom can the responsibility be laid?” — is a classic Daoist diatribe against the social conditions that produce crime, framed as a complaint to Heaven on behalf of the executed.
In the Daoist tradition Bó Jǔ is counted as the eighth of the shízǐ 十子 (“Ten Masters”) of Lǎozǐ’s lineage, “having received much from Lǎozǐ” (柏矩之言得於老子爲多), and figures as such in Zhào Mèngfǔ’s 趙孟頫 Xuányuán shízǐ tú 玄元十子圖 (KR5a0164). The figure is purely literary, attested only in the Zhuāngzǐ. No CBDB record.