Táo Shàn 陶善 (1736–1780)
A late-Qīng Pure Land lay-Buddhist scholar of Chángzhōu 長洲 (Sūzhōu, Jiāngsū). Zì Qìngyú 慶餘; hào Qiónglóu 瓊樓 (“Jade Tower”). CBDB person id 70170. A close friend of 彭紹升 / 彭際清 Péng Jìqīng within the seminal Sūzhōu jūshìfójiào 居士佛教 (lay-Buddhist) circle of the Qiánlóng era.
His personal poetry collection, the Qiónglóu yíngǎo 瓊樓吟稿, was edited posthumously by Péng Jìqīng in 1780 and an excerpt of it is preserved in the Xùzàngjīng as the 《瓊樓吟稿節鈔》 Qiónglóu yíngǎo jiéchāo KR6p0131 (X1213). Péng’s preface divides Táo’s poetic life into three phases — early fēnghuā xuěyuè 風花雪月 (wind-flower-moon) lyrical, middle Confucian-Buddhist wèijǐ zhī xué 為己之學 (“learning-for-oneself”), late Pure Land fǎyuán devotional — and treats the late-period verses as a record of Táo’s mature Pure Land insight.
Catalog-vs-external dating note: the CBDB record gives 1736–1795. The 1736 birth-year is consistent with all available evidence. The 1795 death-year, however, conflicts with Péng Jìqīng’s contemporary 1780 testimony — Péng records in his 1780 preface to the Qiónglóu yíngǎo that Táo had died twenty days before the second-month full moon of gēngzǐ (= mid-February 1780). Péng’s first-person 1780 attestation is followed here as authoritative (1780); the CBDB death-year of 1795 is presumably an error.