Abstract: Hui Dong achieved fame as an early champion of Han learning. His promotion of Han classicism, method of starting from written words and sounds, goal of applying classical scholarship to statecraft, and his works themselves—all of these attainments made him a model for later scholars and created a new research tradition, laying the foundations for the subsequent development of Qing scholarship. Yet the shortcomings of Hui Dong’s thought and methodology both reflect the limits of the time and suggest the inadequacy of scholarship itself