Tao Hongjing

Timeline

1. 456–492Jiankang (Jinling) · YangzhouBorn in Moling, Danyang (present-day Nanjing), Tao Hongjing loved reading from childhood, mastering the Classic of Filial Piety, Analects and other classics by age ten while also studying Daoist texts. He entered service under Southern Qi, holding posts such as reader to princes and court attendant, excelling at calligraphy and chess, well regarded at court, while privately devoted to Daoist cultivation.
2. 492–520Maoshan · JiangsuIn 492 Tao Hongjing resigned and retired to Maoshan (Jurong), took Shangqing school masters as teachers, collected and compiled authentic Shangqing scriptures left by Yang Xi, Xu Mi and others, distinguished genuine from spurious, and compiled the twenty-volume Zhengao, systematically organizing the Shangqing school's pantheon and methods, becoming the actual founder of Maoshan Daoism.
3. 502–536Maoshan · JiangsuAfter Emperor Wu of Liang (Xiao Yan) ascended the throne, he repeatedly summoned Tao Hongjing to court, all politely declined. Yet on major military and state matters he often sent envoys to the mountains for advice, hence contemporaries called him the 'chancellor of the mountains.' During this period Tao Hongjing wrote the seven-volume Bencao Jing Jizhu, supplementing the Shennong Bencao Jing, systematizing drug classification and laying the foundation of Chinese materia medica taxonomy, deeply influencing the later Xinxiu Bencao and Li Shizhen's Bencao Gangmu. He passed away at Maoshan in 536 at the age of eighty-one.