Jia Dao



Jia Dao (779–843), courtesy name Langxian (浪仙), was a Chinese Buddhist monk and poet active during the Tang dynasty.

Biography
Jia Dao was born near modern Beijing; after a period as a Buddhist monk, he went to Chang'an. He became one of Han Yu's disciples, but failed the jinshi exam several times. He wrote both discursive gushi and lyric jintishi. His works were criticised as "thin" by Su Shi, and some other commentators have considered them limited and artificial.

According to Dr. James J.Y. Liu (1926–1986), a professor of Chinese and comparative literature, Jia's poem The Swordsman (劍客) "seems...to sum up the spirit of knight errantry in four lines." "The Swordsman" reads in Liu's translation as follows:

A metric translation of the original Chinese poem with one iamb per Chinese character reads as follows:

The original Chinese:

劍客: 十年磨一劍, 霜刃未曾試. 今日把示君, 誰有不平事.

The opening line of The Swordsman is often used as a proverb to refer to a long and arduous undertaking.