Ji Ben
Han dynasty imperial physician (died 218)
Ji Ben (died 218) was an imperial physician who lived during the late Eastern Han dynasty of China. In 218, he started a rebellion with several others in the imperial capital, Xu (許; present-day Xuchang, Henan), but the revolt was suppressed and the conspirators were captured and executed.
Error in name
Ji Ben's given name was actually "Pi" (丕; Pī). His name is believed to have been erroneously recorded as "Ben" (本; Běn) in historical texts to avoid naming taboo, because "Pi" was the personal name of Cao Pi, the first ruler of the Cao Wei state. Besides, the Chinese character for "Pi" might have actually been 㔻 instead of 丕. There were instances where 㔻 had been mistakenly written as 丕.
Life
Ji Ben served as a court physician (太醫令) in the imperial court of the Eastern Han dynasty during the reign of Emperor Xian (r. 189–220). Around the time, the Han central government had fallen under the control of Cao Cao, the Imperial Chancellor. Emperor Xian was merely a figurehead ruler. In 216, Emperor Xian granted Cao Cao the title of a vassal king – King of Wei (魏王) – and allowed him to establish a vassal kingdom in northern China which was still nominally under the Han administration.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ji Ben” is han dynasty imperial physician (died 218). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through dynasty, imperial and physician, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “han dynasty imperial physician (died 218)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2220028.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Ji Ben”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Ji Ben primary sources, Ji Ben archive and dynasty research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ji Ben”?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Ji Ben” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.