  Mohism springs from the teachings of Mo Di, or Mozi (“Master Mo”),[1]  about whom little is known, not even what state he was from. The Shi Ji, a Han dynasty record, tells us only that he was an official of the state of Song and that he lived either at the same time as or after Confucius (d. 479 BCE), with whom he is often paired by Qin (221–206 BCE) and Han dynasty (206 BCE–219 CE) texts as the two great moral teachers of the Warring States era. Most likely, he flourished during the middle to late decades of the 5th century BCE, roughly contemporaneous with Socrates in the West. ‘Mo’ is an unusual surname and the common Chinese word for “ink.” Hence scholars have speculated that the name may have been an epithet referring to the dark or tattooed skin of a laborer or convict or a transliteration from a non-Chinese language. However, ‘Mo’ could simply have been an uncommon ancient surname that later ceased to be used.