Xu Fancheng
Scholar, poet and artist (1909-2000)
Xu Fancheng (Chinese: 徐梵澄), Courtesy name Jihai (Chinese: 季海) (26 October 1909, Changsha - 6 March 2000, Beijing), also known as Hu Hsu and F.C. Hsu in India, was a Chinese scholar and translator, indologist and philosopher. He translated 50 of the Upanishads into classical Chinese. He also translated Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra, Kalidasa's lyric poem Meghaduuta (Cloud Messenger), and several of Sri Aurobindo's works into Chinese. He was familiar with Greek, Latin, English, French, as well as Sanskrit and German. A 16-volume edition of his complete works was published in 2006.
His life and studies
He was born into a wealthy family in Changsha, Hunan. His name was "Hu"(琥) by birth. Fancheng is his Pen name. The childhood of Xu was marked by a complete study of Classical Chinese. He was taught by the student of the late Qing dynasty Confucian scholar Wang Kaiyun.
The public source identifies “Xu Fancheng” as scholar, poet and artist (1909-2000). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Fancheng, Scholar and poet.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Xu Fancheng”, the useful work is to connect “scholar, poet and artist (1909-2000)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 21, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q8045092. VIAF identifies the subject as 26065552. The Library of Congress control number is n85352877. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1909, 2000 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Xu Fancheng” 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.