Zhong Yi shu 史佚書

Zhong Yi shu 史佚書 "The book of Scribe Yi" was a Mohist treatise attributed to Yin Yi 尹佚 (also written 尹逸, also called Ce Yi 冊逸), who was Grand Scribe (taishi 太史) of the Zhou dynasty 周 (11th cent.-221 BCE). The family name Yin is derived from the territory with which a son of the mythological emperor Shao Hao 少昊 (Di Zhi 帝摯) was invested. The family served for many generations the house of Zhou.

The identity of Yin Yi is not clear. While Ban Gu 班固 (32-92 CE) believed that he lived during the time of the kings Cheng 周成王 and Kang 周康王, Jia Kui 賈逵 (30-101 CE) dated him to the time of King Wen 周文王, and Du Yu 杜預 (222-284) saw in him the Grand Scribe of King Wu 周武王. However, a sentence in the book Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋 says that during the time of Duke Hui of Lu 魯惠公 (r. 769-723), the king of Zhou sent Scribe Jiao 史角 to the state of Lu, where he was detained. His descendants stayed in Lu and instructed Master Mozi 墨子, the founder of Mohism. This means that the text cannot be ascribed to an individual person.

The bibliographical chapter Yiwen zhi 藝文志 in the official dynastic history Hanshu 漢書 lists the text of two chapters among the Mohist treatises. It is not found in later book catalogues and seems to have been lost before the end of the Han period 漢 (206 BCE-220 CE). The Qing-period 清 (1644-1911) scholar Ma Guohan 馬國翰 (1794-1857) collected quotations from and about Yin Yi in the books Zuozhuan 左傳, Guoyu 國語, Yizhoushu 逸周書, Shuoyuan 說苑 and Huainanzi 淮南子 and published them in his series Yuhan shanfang jiyi shu 玉函山房輯佚書. Sun Yirang 孫詒讓 (1848-1908) constated that these fragments were not necessarily quotations from the old text, but just statements about Scribe Yi.