KO HUNG

born AD 283, ?, Tan-yang, China died AD 343, , Tan-yang Pinyin Ge Hong, also called (WadeGiles romanization) Pao-p'u-tzu perhaps the best-known Taoist alchemist of China, who tried to combine Confucian ethics with the occult doctrines of Taoism. In his youth he received a Confucian education, but later he grew interested in the Taoist cult of physical immortality (hsien). His monumental work, Pao-p'u-tzu (He Who Holds to Simplicity), is divided into two parts. The first part, The 20 Inner Chapters, discusses Ko's alchemical studies. Ko gives a recipe for an elixir called gold cinnabar and recommends sexual hygiene, special diets, and breathing and meditation exercises. He even prescribes a method for walking on water and for raising the dead. The second part of the book, The 50 Outer Chapters, shows Ko as a Confucianist who stresses the importance of ethical principles for the regulation of proper human relations and who severely criticizes the hedonism that characterized the Taoist individualists of his day. A partial English translation of Ko's writings appeared in 1967 in James R. Ware's Alchemy, Medicine, and Religion in China of A.D. 320, The Nei P'ien of Ko Hung.