Changyan
昌言 (Considerations)
Writing as the Han dynasty visibly collapses around him, a disillusioned scholar argues that dynasties rise and fall by cyclical necessity regardless of any single ruler's virtue, a bleaker reading of history than Confucian moralism allows; three of its chapters survive complete, quoted in full in Zhongchang Tong's Hou Han Shu biography, with further fragments preserved in the Qunshu Zhiyao, Yilin, and Qimin Yaoshu.
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