Hán Kāngbó 韓康伯
Given name Bó 伯; zì (style name) Kāngbó 康伯, by which he is universally known in the Yì-commentary tradition. Native of Yǐngchuān 潁川 commandery (modern Hénán). Lifedates ca. 332–380 (the Jìnshū gives no precise birth or death year; the conventional reckoning is based on his recorded ages at office).
Eastern Jìn 東晉 court official: rose through Court Gentleman of the Imperial Library and Director of the Imperial Secretariat (Zhōngshū lìng 中書令) to Grand Master of Ceremonial (Tàicháng 太常); died in office. The Jìnshū (juan 75) gives him a brief biography in the liè zhuàn of his uncle Yīn Hào 殷浩’s circle. Jìnshū presents him as a qīng tán 清談 (“pure conversation”) talker of the second post-Wáng-Bì generation, attached to the cultural nexus around Yīn Hào, Wáng Mēng 王濛, and the early Sūn Chuò 孫綽 group.
His sole surviving work is the continuation of Wáng Bì’s Zhōuyì zhù by writing his own commentaries on the four philosophical wings — Xìcí zhuàn 繫辭傳, Shuōguà zhuàn 說卦傳, Xùguà zhuàn 序卦傳, and Záguà zhuàn 雜卦傳 — which Wáng Bì had not lived to comment on (= KR1a0006 Zhōuyì zhù). His commentary continues Wáng Bì’s Xuánxué 玄學 reading and is the locus of medieval philosophical engagement with Xìcí-cosmology; in the Shísān jīng zhùshū 十三經注疏 it is consequently the Xìcí-and-Shuōguà layer commented on by Kǒng Yǐngdá’s zhèngyì. He produced no other surviving works.
Often confused in modern citation with the Eastern Hàn man Hán Kāng 韓康 (also styled Bóxiū 伯休, the herb-gatherer of Hòu Hànshū fame); the Yì-commentary Hán Kāngbó is a distinct, post-Wáng Bì, fourth-century figure.