The spear-and-shield salesman / self-contradiction (zixiang maodun)
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 71). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Spread only
Date or witness: c.3rd century BCE; Han Feizi
Region: China
Workbook date-sort bounds: 300 BCE to 201 BCE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
A salesman claims his spear pierces everything and his shield stops everything, then cannot answer what happens when they meet. A compact comic argument that became the familiar spear–shield idiom for contradiction.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
An ancient philosophical fable survives in Han Feizi and has a durable later idiomatic afterlife.
What remains uncertain
No dated evidence here identifies non-elite adopters or independent ancient variants. Modern familiarity with the idiom cannot establish grassroots spread in the third century BCE.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria