刘歆 / Liu Xin (Western Han)

Overview

刘歆 / Liu Xin (Western Han) enters the wiki as a late Western Han scholar-official whose importance rests on the combination of court office, inherited textual work, and system-building bibliography. Hanji 564 presents him as the son and successor of 刘向, appointed by 汉哀帝 to audit and collate texts gathered in the capital and to complete the imperial cataloging project that becomes 《七略》.

Current Profile

Hanji 564 gives Liu Xin a dual identity. Politically, he is recommended by 王莽, becomes shizhong, and rises to Guanglu Dafu with imperial favor. Intellectually, he becomes the visible finisher of Liu Xiang’s unfinished work: he reviews the collected texts, organizes the material, and submits Qilue to the throne.

The episode also marks the name-taboo layer. After Liu Xin’s namesake, Liu Xin of Dingtao, becomes 汉哀帝, the scholar changes his name to Liu Xiu. That detail matters because it ties a bibliographic career to ordinary court rules about imperial names and rank.

Liu Xin’s intellectual profile is not merely archival. Through Qilue’s classification of books and its account of the nine schools, the source presents him as someone who turns scattered texts into a theory of how knowledge traditions arise, diverge, and can be recombined for governance.

Key Characteristics

• Western Han scholar-official recommended by Wang Mang and trusted by Han Aidi.
• Son and successor of Liu Xiang in the imperial text-collation project.
• Compiler who submits Qilue after auditing capital-held texts.
• Name-taboo case who changes his name to Liu Xiu after Han Aidi’s accession.
• Bibliographic thinker whose school classification treats rival traditions as historically situated and politically usable.

Evidence

• Recommendation and office: Hanji 564 says Wang Mang recommends Liu Xin for talent and conduct, after which he becomes shizhong and Guanglu Dafu.
• Name taboo: Hanji 564 says Liu Xin changes his name to Liu Xiu after Han Aidi’s accession.
• Text collation: Hanji 564 says Aidi orders Liu Xin to review and collate texts brought to the capital.
• Qilue compilation: Hanji 564 says Liu Xin completes Liu Xiang’s unfinished project and submits Qilue.
• School synthesis: Hanji 564 presents Liu Xin’s view that the nine schools arose from political fragmentation yet could be corrected and used by a wise ruler.

Qualifications

This page is source-scoped to Hanji 564. The episode summarizes Liu Xin’s office, name change, and Qilue compilation, but it does not reconstruct the full catalog text, the complete mechanics of imperial library collation, Liu Xin’s later career under Wang Mang, or the scholarly disputes around old-text and new-text classics. The source transcript appears to render his name as “刘兴”; the canonical entity is Liu Xin because the described biography and Qilue attribution match Liu Xin.

What Changed

• Created the Liu Xin entity as the canonical page for the scholar described in Hanji 564.
• Added the Qilue compilation, name-taboo, and nine-schools synthesis layers.

Relationships

• 刘向 - father and predecessor in the imperial collation project.
• 《七略》 - bibliographic work compiled and submitted by Liu Xin in this source.
• 汉哀帝 - ruler who commissions the text-review work and whose name creates the taboo.
• 王莽 - recommender who brings Liu Xin forward in the episode’s court notice.
• 目录分类作为治国术 - concept grounded in Liu Xin’s cataloging work.
• 诸子九流综合观 - concept grounded in Liu Xin’s explanation of the nine schools.