Three in the morning, four at night / monkey ration joke
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 73). 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.4th–3rd centuries BCE; Zhuangzi, Inner Chapter 2
Region: China
Workbook date-sort bounds: 400 BCE to 201 BCE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
Monkeys resent three morning rations and four evening rations, then rejoice at four in the morning and three at night: the total remains seven.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
The monkey-rations story is preserved in Zhuangzi and repeatedly discussed by later interpreters.
What remains uncertain
A clever and reusable story is not itself evidence of contemporary popular uptake; no ordinary-audience transmission evidence is supplied.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria