Sūn Yíràng 孫詒讓

(1848–1908) Qīng philologist whose work crystallised the modern study of Mohism. His Mòzǐ jiāngǔ established the textual foundations on which virtually all subsequent research on the Mòjīng has been built, while his 1896 Yǔ Liáng Zhuōrú lùn Mòzǐ shū (‘Letter to Liáng Zhuōrú on the Mòzǐ’) argued for the intellectual importance of Mohist studies and helped inspire Liáng Qǐchāo’s subsequent research. Combining meticulous philology with an exceptional command of earlier scholarship, Sūn systematically assembled, evaluated, and synthesised previous interpretations rather than simply replacing them with his own. Through this combination of textual criticism and historical vision, he transformed the Mòjīng from an obscure classical text into a central object of modern scholarship.