My hope for this book is that it will provide help to students
making the transition from "textbook texts" to "real texts". Introductory
textbooks of Classical Chinese naturally use texts which do not present serious
philological problems, and whose understanding does not depend on a detailed
knowledge of their historical context. Students beginning their own research
therefore often find themselves at a loss reading "real" texts, in which such
problems abound. This textbook uses a significant historical text, and all of
the problems which it presents are confronted in the glosses and notes.
The text used here is the biography of Huo Guang in the Han shu ,
together with the commentaries compiled by Yan Shigu (A.D. 541-645). Glosses are given for most unfamiliar words and phrases, and
notes are provided on grammatical matters and on the historical context. Most
of the glosses are translated directly from Chinese and Japanese dictionaries,
and the source of each is indicated. It should be encouraging to see that one
can arrive at a useful understanding of a significant historical text using
standard reference works, without the help of an erudite Chinese master -
though of course those who have such a master will always have the advantage
over those who do not.
Advice to the student
Background reading
We are concerned here with a historical text, and in reading it you will need
to know something of the history, culture, and institutions of the Han dynasty.
Reading or re-reading the chapter on the Han period in any general work on
Chinese history, whichever one you are already familiar with, should provide an
adequate (though minimal) background as you start on the textbook. If you are
at all interested in early Chinese history, however, you will want to read
more. An excellent broad introduction to Han history is:
Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens, Michèle
The Han Dynasty, tr. by Janet Seligman. New York: Rizzoli, 1982.
Also published with the title The Han culture of China. Orig. La
Chine des Han, 1982.
Before reading further in the research literature
on Han history it will be important to be familiar with the historical sources
for the period. The most important of these are the three Official Histories
(Zheng shi):
Shi ji
(Records of the historian), by Sima Qian (ca. 145-90 B.C.) and his father Sima Tan .
A history of the known world from the beginnings to the authors' own time, thus
incorporating approximately the first century of the Han period.
Han shu
(The book of Han), by Ban Gu (A.D. 32-92), his sister Ban Zhao ,
and others. A history of China from the beginning of the Han to the period of
the usurper Wang Mang ,
i.e. from 206 B.C. to A.D. 25. For the first century of the Han it overlaps
with the Shi ji, and in these parts the Han shu text is usually
copied from the Shi ji, slightly rewritten.
Hou Han shu
(The book of Later Han), by Fan Ye (A.D. 398-445). A history of China from the Wang Mang period to the final fall
of the dynasty, i.e. from about A.D. 25 to 220. In writing this history Fan Ye
drew on a number of earlier histories of the same period, many of which had
this same title, Hou Han shu, which have survived only in
part.
There is a vast literature available on these works, of which the
following may be mentioned as some of the best:
Watson, Burton
Ssu-ma Ch'ien, Grand Historian of China. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1958.
Chavannes, Édouard (tr.)
Les mémoires historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien. T. 1, 1895; t. 2,
1897; t. 3, 1898; t. 4, 1901; t. 5, 1905; t. 1-5 repr. Paris: Maisonneuve,
1967. T. 6, ed. and completed by Paul Demiéville, Max Kaltenmark, &
Timoteus Pokora, Paris: Maisonneuve, 1969.
"Introduction", t. 1, pp.
i-ccxlix.
Van Der Sprenkel, O. B.
Pan Ku, Pan Piao, and the Han history. Canberra 1964.
Swann, Nancy Lee
Pan Chao: Foremost woman scholar of China. First century A.D. Background,
ancestry, life, and writings of the most celebrated Chinese woman of letters.
(1932). Repr. New York 1968.
Bielenstein, Hans
"The restoration of the Han dynasty: With prolegomena on the historiography
of the Hou Han shu", Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern
Antiquities 1954, 26: 1-209.
"Text history", pp. 9-20;
"Historiography", pp. 20-81.
Beck, B. J. Mansvelt
The treatises of Later Han: Their author, sources, contents and place in
Chinese historiography. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990 (Sinica Leidensia, 21).
Much more important than any of the secondary literature, however, is to
read the sources themselves, in translation at first and later in the original.
The following translations from the Shi ji and Han shu seem to be
the most useful for students:
Chavannes' translation of the Shi ji,
cited above, covers the first 52 chapters, most of which are related to
pre-Han periods and thus are of less importance here.
Watson, Burton (tr.)
Records of the Grand Historian of China: Translated from the Shi chi of
Ssu-ma Ch'ien. 2 vols., New York & London: Columbia University Press,
1961.
Rev. and expanded ed., Records of the Grand Historian: by Sima
Qian. 1993.
Translates most of the chapters of the Shi ji which
relate to the Han period.
Watson, Burton (tr.)
Courtier and commoner in ancient China: Selections from the History of
the Former Han by Pan Ku. New York & London: Columbia University Press,
1974.
Dubs, Homer H. (tr.)
The history of the Former Han Dynasty, by Pan Ku, a critical
translation with annotations. Vols. 1-3, Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1938, 1944,
1955. Tr. of juan 1-12 + 99 of Han shu. Further volumes were
planned but never published.
Watson is justly famous for his highly
readable translations of ancient Chinese texts, but he is criticised for the
very sparing commentary and philological apparatus in his translations; Dubs'
translations from the Han shu are much more "scholarly", but not at all
easy to read.
Published translations from the HouHan shu are few, but one can
indirectly read it in translation by reading translations from the Zizhi
tongjian .
This book is a year-by-year history of China from the fifth century B.C. to the
tenth century A.D., compiled by Sima Guang (1019-1086) by a scissors-and-paste method from the sources available to him.
Since the Hou Han shu was very nearly his only source for the Later Han
period, the following translations from the Zizhi tongjian can be useful
to students as substitutes for translations from the Hou Han shu:
DeCrespigny, Rafe (tr.)
The last of the Han: Being the chronicle of the years 181-220 A.D. as
recorded in chapters 58-68 of the Tzu-chih t'ung-chien of Ssu-ma Kuang (Centre of Oriental Studies, Monograph 9). Canberra: Australian National
University, 1969.
DeCrespigny, Rafe (tr.)
Emperor Huan and Emperor Ling: Being the chronicle of Later Han for the
years 157 to 189 AD as recorded in chapters 54 to 59 of the Zizhi tongjian of
Sima Guang (Faculty of Asian Studies monographs: New series, 12). 2
vols., Canberra: Australian National University, 1989.
Besides the Official
Histories there are numerous other historical sources for Han history, of which
the following are two of the best known:
Yan tie lun
(Discourses on salt and iron), by Huan Kuan (1st cent. B.C.). Report on a state conference on administrative and economic
problems held in 81 B.C.
Hua yang guo zhi
(Treatise on the states south of Mount Hua), by Chang Qu (4th cent. A.D.). A history and geography of the region of modern Sichuan from
the Han to the author's own time.
There are two partial translations of the Yan tie lun:
Gale, Esson M. (tr.)
Discourses on salt and iron: A debate on state control of commerce and
industry in ancient China. Taipei: Ch'eng-wen, 1967. This is a combined
facs. repr. of the Leiden 1931 tr. of chapters 1-19 and the tr. of chapters
20-28 in Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,
1934, 65: 73-110.
Baudry-Weulersse, Delphine, Jean Levi, & Pierre Baudry (trs.)
Chine, an -81: Dispute sur le sel et le fer. Yantie lun.
Presentation par Georges Walter. Seghers, Paris, 1978.
At the moment there
is not much available in Western languages from or about the Hua yang guo
zhi, but an article by Harald Bøckmann is expected.
Extremely informative and reliable on books of the Han and before is:
Loewe, Michael (ed.)
Early Chinese texts: A bibliographical guide (Early China special
monograph series, 2). Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China and
Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1993.
After
becoming familiar with the most important sources for Han history you will be
prepared to begin reading the research literature on the period. The place to
start is:
Twitchett, Denis & Loewe, Michael (eds.)
The Cambridge history of China. Vol. 1: The Ch'in and Han
empires, 221 B.C. - A.D. 220. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
This
book, 1000 pages without a single illustration, is intentionally and
emphatically an old-fashioned history. You may not wish to read it, but you
will certainly want to use it as a reference work. Either read it or browse
through it, then go on to its bibliography. Consider especially works by B. J.
Mansvelt Beck, Hans Bielenstein, Rafe DeCrespigny, Patricia Ebrey, A. F. P.
Hulsewe, Michael Loewe, Henri Maspero, C. M. Wilbur, and L. S. Yang.
On the material culture and archaeology of the Han there is not as much
available as one would like, but a certain amount can be gained from the
following:
Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens, Michèle
The Han dynasty, cited earlier
Wang Zhongshu
Han civilization. Tr. by K. C. Chang a.o. New Haven & London:
Yale University Press, 1982. Tr. of a series of lectures given in the U.S.,
later published in China: Han dai kaoguxue gaishuo (A survey of Han archaeology). Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1984.
Dien, Albert E. (et al., eds.)
Chinese archaeological abstracts, vols. 2-4 (Monumenta
archaeologica, vols. 9-11). 3 vols., Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology,
University of California, 1985.
Two more specialized works, by Hayashi
Minao and Käthe Finsterbusch, will be mentioned further below.
The text we are concerned with here is the biography in the Han shu of
Huo Guang (d. 68 B.C.), the de facto holder of supreme power under two Emperors.
Most of the relevant chapters of the Han shu can be found in English
translation in the books by Watson and Dubs cited above.[1]
Two important books deal at length with our period:
Loewe, Michael
Crisis and conflict in Han China, 104 B.C. to A.D. 9. London: Allen
& Unwin, 1974.
Liu Pak-yuen (Liao Boyuan )
Les institutions politiques et la lutte pour le pouvoir au milieu de la
dynastie des Han antérieurs (Mémoires de l'Institut des
Hautes Études Chinoises, 15). Paris: Collège de France /
Diffusion de Boccard, 1983.
Either of these books will be useful for the
background to the events covered by Huo Guang's biography, but the most
interesting aspect is the comparison between the two. Broadly speaking, Michael
Loewe follows the traditional Chinese view, that Huo Guang was a faithful
servant of the Emperors under whom he served, while Liu Pak-yuen sees him as a
manipulator who usurped the legitimate powers of the Emperors. What is more,
this disagreement is sustained in spite of the fact that the authors use the
same sources (chiefly Huo Guang's biography), and use them almost uncritically,
believing virtually every word of the Han shu. I invite you to read both
books and then, while reading the biography of Huo Guang, consider how such
different interpretations of the same text can be possible. This is not the
place to give my own view, but I suggest that you consider whether the reason
is perhaps to be sought in events and currents of thought of Ban Gu's own
time.
In reading Han historical texts it is important to know something of Han
bureaucracy and institutions. The following can help:
Loewe, Michael
"The orders of aristocratic rank of Han China", T'oung-pao, 1960, 48.1/3: 97-174.
Wang Yü-ch'üan
"An outline of the central government of the Former Han dynasty", Harvard journal of Asiatic studies, 1949, 12: 134-187.
Bielenstein, Hans
The bureaucracy of Han times. Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Hucker, Charles O.
A dictionary of official titles in Imperial China. Stanford
University Press, 1985.
Much of this discussion of dictionaries and reference works is now (2024) out of date, but some parts can still be useful.
The only good Chinese-English dictionary of Classical Chinese is:
Karlgren, Bernhard
"Grammata Serica recensa", Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern
Antiquities (Stockholm) 1957, 29: 1-332. Facs. repr. as a separate
vol., Göteborg 1964.
It is however concerned only with single
characters and only with usage in pre-Han texts, and is therefore of limited
use here. It is often useful in attempting to determine the primary or original
meaning of a word and, as will be discussed below, it is also useful in dealing
with the fanqie sound glosses given by commentators of the Six Dynasties and Tang periods.
Using "Grammata Serica recensa" can unfortunately be rather laborious. In the
body of the work, characters with the same phonetic part are grouped together,
and the phonetic parts are listed by radical in the index. To find ,
for example, it does not help to look under the character's own radical, ,
no. 149. Instead one looks up the phonetic part, ,
under its radical, ,
no. 86. This is on p. 327 of the index, and one finds here the number 617.
Group no. 617 is listed on p. 165, where is no. 617a and is no. 617l. The definition for no. 617l, on p. 164, is "id. speak
(Shï)." Here "Shï" (for Shi jing)
indicates Karlgren's source for this meaning; normally he indicates the
earliest text in which the character is used with the given meaning.
"Id." means that the pronunciation is the same as that of the previous
character, which in this case is given as "*d'âm / d'âm / t'an". These are the reconstructed Archaic and Ancient
pronunciations, followed by the Mandarin pronunciation. The transcription
system used for the reconstructed pronunciations is explained on pp. 3-4. The
transcription system used for the Mandarin pronunciation is Karlgren's own, but
it resembles the Wade-Giles system, and is easy enough to understand. The
Mandarin tone is not given, but can often be worked out from the reconstructed
Ancient pronunciation using rules given by Karlgren on p. 5.
I continue trying to persuade students not to use Mathews' Chinese-English
dictionary or Liang's New practical Chinese-English dictionary in
reading Classical Chinese texts, but without much success. These are the only
Chinese-English dictionaries which are even barely adequate for the purpose,
but they really cannot be recommended. They mix up meanings from all periods
from the most ancient to the most modern, giving no indication of period and no
usage examples; and they are also very often simply wrong. This one is somewhat
better:
Couvreur, F. S.
Dictionnaire classique de la langue chinoise. [3ême éd. 1911]. Repr. Taiwan, 1963.
However I do not recommend Couvreur
either, for we now have excellent modern Chinese dictionaries of Classical
Chinese that are definitely preferable to anything available in Western
languages. Most of the Chinese dictionaries to be discussed below are concerned
with Classical Chinese only, and give along with each definition one or more
examples of usage.
Wenyan changyong babai zi tongshi Nanjing Daxue Chubanshe, 1987.
One of the first two should be your basic
"first try" dictionary; the second is better, but is more difficult to find in
bookstores than the first. The third includes only 800 characters, and
therefore cannot be used alone, but it gives a wealth of information on the
usage of each of the characters which it does include.
For grammatical particles the following are quite good:
Characteristic for
all of the modern Chinese dictionaries listed so far are that they are small
and fairly cheap, that they are concerned primarily with single characters
(though a few of the most common character combinations are also included), and
that characters generally must be looked up in their simplified forms, which
can sometimes be a nuisance.
When such small dictionaries are not adequate, a different sort of dictionary
is required. The next step is to look up the character or phrase in one of the
medium-sized dictionaries:
These are larger, less handy, and much more expensive than the
dictionaries listed earlier, and they are also more difficult to obtain outside
China. Both include both single characters and combinations of characters. Ci yuan is devoted entirely to Classical Chinese, while Ci hai has modern meanings as well (with the period clearly indicated). For most
purposes I prefer Ci yuan, but Ci hai also has its uses; in
particular it seems to be better on classical names of animals and plants.
Obviously these Chinese-Chinese dictionaries often give definitions which one
cannot understand, and it is then necessary to look up one or more words in a
Chinese-English dictionary of modern Chinese; there are several good ones, but
it would take us too far afield to discuss them here.
For those who are at ease with Japanese there is a wide selection of
medium-sized Chinese-Japanese classical dictionaries available, one of which is:
Kadokawa Kan-Wa chuu jiten.
Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1959. Many reprs.
This seems to have about as
many entries as Ci yuan, but it does not give usage examples and is
therefore less useful.
When the medium-sized dictionaries are not enough one must go on to the large
dictionaries, and this will normally mean a trip to the library. Few students
will want to own these dictionaries themselves, because they are expensive and
take up a great deal of bookshelf space.
("Encyclopedic dictionary of the Chinese language"). 40 vols., Taibei:
Zhongguo Wenhua Xueyuan Chubanshe, 1962-68. Many reprs.
Hanyu da
cidian is a marvellous dictionary, definitely the best we have for
Classical Chinese, and for most purposes it supersedes Morohashi, which was
once the standard. The present book was largely written before it had been
completely published, however, and it will be seen that I have often used
Morohashi for the glosses where today I would use Hanyu da cidian.
Morohashi's dictionary does however still have its uses. One does not have to
be very good at Japanese to use it: perhaps one semester's university
instruction would be enough. One looks up a word, finds a definition in
Japanese, and looks this up in Nelson's Japanese-English Character
Dictionary or in Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary,
whichever is appropriate. It is only necessary to note that Morohashi uses
pre-reform kana, which means that a word like (or ),
which looks as if it should be pronounced kofu, is actually pronounced kou, and must be looked up as such in the Kenkyusha dictionary. There is
a useful table of the older kana combinations in Nelson's dictionary, pp.
1015-1016.
The Zhongwen da cidian is said to be largely a translation of Morohashi.
It appears to be full of typographical and other errors, and since the
publication of Hanyu da cidian it is no longer recommended.
A person can be referred to in a classical text by several different names, and
this can sometimes give problems. The fastest way of dealing with alternate
names is to look them up in the indexes to personal names in the three Han
histories:
Zhong Hua (comp.)
Shi ji renming suoyin.
Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1977.
Wei Lianke (comp.)
Han shu renming suoyin.
Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1979.
Li Yumin (comp.)
Hou Han shu renming suoyin .
Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1979.
In the Han shu index, for example,
one can look up Bolu Hou,
"the Marquis of Bolu", and find (on p. 222), that three men are referred to in
the Han shu by this title: Huo Guang ,
Huo Yu ,
and Huo Yang .
(Huo Yu was Huo Guang's son and Huo Yang was the great-grandson of a cousin.)
Under Huo Guang (on p. 52) we find a list of the names by which he is referred
to in the Han shu: Huo Zimeng ,
Bolu Hou ,
Bolu Xuancheng Hou ,
and Huo jiangjun .
Of course every personal name used in this text will be found in the Han
shu index. Even when reading other texts, however, these indexes will be
useful, for the greater part of all the persons known at all from the Han are
mentioned in one or another of the Han histories. Failing that, one can try Ci yuan, Ci hai, and Morohashi (there are no personal or place
names in Hanyu da cidian). Often help can also be obtained from Zhongguo renming da cidian (orig. 1921, numerous reprints), but it pays to be wary of mistakes and
typographical errors in this book.
In dealing with the technical terms of Chinese administration the following can
be used:
Bielenstein, Hans
The bureaucracy of Han times. Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Hucker, Charles O.
A dictionary of official titles in Imperial China. Stanford
University Press, 1985.
In talking and writing about Han history we need to
have an agreed standard set of translations for official titles. Until recently
the de facto standard was that used by Dubs in his translation (cited
above); Bielenstein uses Dubs's translations and where necessary creates new
translations after the same pattern. Since translations of official titles are
in any case arbitrary, it would have been sensible to stick to one standard,
but now we are in the unfortunate situation of having three competing
sets of translations: Hucker has created a completely different set of
translations, and the Cambridge history of China uses still another set.
Whether one set of translations will in time win out as a new standard, and if
so which, is impossible to predict today: I continue to use those of Dubs and
Bielenstein, but am aware that the other two have their good points.
For a great many glosses concerning material objects the place to go is:
Hayashi Minao
Kandai no bunbutsu.
Kyooto Daigaku Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyuusho ,
1976.
It is not necessary to know Japanese to use this book, though one can
get much more out of it if one does. If for example one finds in a Han text a
reference to a weapon called a gourangone
can look it up in the glossary (p. 586) and find references to p. 462 and
figures 10-50 and 10-51. On p. 462 is a short description in Japanese of the gourang, with a quotation in Chinese of a Han text which describes it
and a reference (through item 375 on p. 574) to an article about it in a
Chinese archaeological journal. Figure 10-50 is a sketch of an actual gourang found in a Han grave, and figure 10-51 is a sketch of a Han
tomb-relief showing a gourang in use.
Further help in dealing with references to material objects can be found in:
Finsterbusch, Käthe
Verzeichnis und Motivindex der Han-Darstellungen. Bd. 1: Text, 1966. Bd. 2: Abbildungen und Addenda, 1971. Wiesbaden: Otto
Harrassowitz.
Here one can find Han illustrations of a crossbow or a flute
(by looking in the index under Armbrust or Flöte, pp. 200,
210) or indeed even a gourang (Wade-Giles kou-jang, here
mistakenly transcribed kou-hsiang, p. 220).
Two versions of our text are reproduced here, from the Zhonghua Shuju edition (pp. T3-T41) and from the edition of Wang Xianqian , Han shu buzhu (pp. T43-T65):
Han shu.
Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1962.
Wang Xianqian (ed.)
Han shu buzhu.
Changsha: Xushou Tang ,
1900. Facs. repr. 2 vols., Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983.
Both include Yan
Shigu's commentary, and Wang Xianqian gives additional commentary. The Zhonghua
Shuju edition, being typeset and punctuated, is obviously the more convenient
to read, and it will be used as the basic text here. Line numbers have been
added for convenient reference.
In Wang Xianqian's edition the commentary is printed as in all pre-modern
editions: each comment is printed in smaller characters directly after the
point in the main text to which it refers. He gives Yan Shigu's comment, then
adds his own, if any, preceded by .
In the Zhonghua Shuju edition the comments are gathered in convenient groups
and keyed to the text using numbers.
The Zhonghua Shuju editors' text emendations are given as follows. A small
character in parentheses is a character in Wang Xianqian's edition which should
be deleted, and a large character in brackets is a character not in that text
which should be inserted. For example, in lines 7-8 (p. T3), we find: .
This means that the character in Wang Xianqian's edition is to be replaced with the character .
The editors' reasons for their emendations are given at the end of each
chapter, in this case on p. T40 (p. 2968 of the original): three early editions
have in this passage. The conventions followed by the editors are given in their
preface.
Yan Shigu in his commentary quotes a number of earlier commentaries. Most of
these are no longer extant, and what we know of them comes almost entirely from
Yan Shigu's preface. I give some of this information in the notes.
Yan Shigu's commentary often indicates the pronunciation of individual
characters using the fanqie ("turning and cutting") system. Two characters are given, from which the reader
is to use the initial consonants of the pronunciation of the first and the
final part of the pronunciation of the second. A common error of beginners is
to attempt to use the modern pronunciations of the two characters, which
can give bizarre results. It is necessary to use the pronunciation of the time
of the commentator: in this case the Tang period. Bernhard Karlgren has
reconstructed this pronunciation, which he calls Ancient Chinese, in Grammata Serica recensa (cited above).
An example of the use of the fanqie system is in comment no. 2 after
line 16 (p. T4): ,
"The sound of is given by the fan[qie] of zhi and yu."
To use this one looks up zhi and yu in Grammata Serica
recensa and finds their pronunciations in Ancient Chinese, respectively and .
The initial part of the first is ,
and the final part of the second is (the whole syllable, because there is no initial consonant). Putting these
together gives .
Now looking up in Grammata Serica recensa, one finds that the character has two
meanings, with two different pronunciations:
modern shu, Ancient ,
"be attached to"
modern zhu, Ancient ,
"to attach"
Yan Shigu has thus told us which of these meanings the
character has here, and such information can be very useful.
In my glosses I have included the Ancient pronunciation of every character
involved in a fanqie sound gloss. You will notice that the results are
not always as straightforward as in the above example; such cases are matters
for the linguists to worry about, and I have only rarely had anything to say
about them.
The gloss list gives definitions of words which are likely to be
unfamiliar to students who have read no more than an introductory textbook such
as Harold Shadick's A first course in literary Chinese (1968). The
emphasis is on multi-character words (because single-character words are much
easier to find in dictionaries) and on rare meanings for familiar words. In
each case I have translated the definition from a Chinese or Japanese
dictionary and added a reference to this source, using the abbreviations in the
list below. There is very little system in my choice of which dictionary to use
for any particular gloss: this book has grown with use, and my taste in
dictionaries has changed over time.
I use certain conventions in the glosses. Distinctly different meanings are
separated by semicolons. Three dots at the beginning of a definition indicate
that I have omitted one or more familiar meanings and give only an unusual
meaning, while three dots at the end of the definition indicate that I have
omitted one or more meanings which I consider obscure and/or irrelevant.
Occasionally it can be useful to know that a certain character combination is not found in a major dictionary; here this is indicated with the sign
"\", so that for example "\CY" means "Not in Ci yuan".
Numbers in the left margin indicate the line number in which the word glossed
occurs. An indication like "16.2" means "comment no. 2 after line 16".
As noted above, Karlgren's reconstruction of the Ancient Chinese pronunciation
is given for all characters involved in fanqie sound glosses in the
commentary.
For each official title I include Bielenstein's translation, for example
"General of Agile Cavalry" for piaoji jiangjun (line 1). Here and there I have also felt it necessary to quote what
Bielenstein says about the rank and duties of the position, but in general
interested students will have to go to Bielenstein's book to find out this sort
of thing.
The pronunciations are taken from Chinese dictionaries, and where the
dictionaries do not agree I have normally used the pronunciation given in the
little Xinhua zidian (1979 and later reprints), which in the matter of pronunciations is
prescriptive rather than descriptive. If you have a Chinese teacher you should
of course follow his or her pronunciation - it is absolutely silly to argue
about pronunciation with a native speaker, even when other native speakers
disagree.
You will have to decide for yourself how important correct pronunciation is in
a language like Classical Chinese, which you will never have occasion to speak.
There is a particular problem here concerning what some Western Sinologists insist upon as correct. Many teachers tell their students that, in
reading Classical Chinese, bai is to be pronounced bo, che is to be pronounced ju, etc. These special pronunciations were learned
by an early generation of Sinologists from their Chinese teachers. They are
examples of a venerable tradition of yan wen yi du,
"different readings in speech and writing", which, curiously enough, seems to
have been preserved only in the West. Very few of these variant readings are
indicated in modern Chinese dictionaries, and as far as I have been able to
determine, most scholars in China today (mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong) neither
use them nor have even heard of them. Many students, having laboriously learned
that the "correct" pronunciation of the poet 's
name is Lî Bo rather than Lî Bai, have had the embarrassing
experience of being politely corrected by Chinese friends who find it odd that
they should mispronounce such a common character. For linguists the yan wen
yi du tradition provides valuable historical evidence; the rest of us can,
in my opinion, take an entirely pragmatic view of what is correct.
One may very well wonder where to stop in looking up character combinations in
dictionaries. For example, was it really necessary to look up qiuwen (in the glosses for line 4) in Morohashi's dictionary? The first character
means "to seek", the second "to ask", and in context the combination clearly
means "to inquire about". There are three remarks to make here. First, the mere
fact that the combination is in Morohashi tells us that it was a commonly used
word, and the characters are not to be translated separately, as something like
"to seek and inquire". Second, Morohashi gives an example of the use of the
combination, in this case from the Shi ji, and such examples can be very
useful in understanding the use of the word in other texts. I have not felt
that I had the time or the patience to include the usage examples in my
definitions, though that would in principle have been a good thing to do, but
students can check them out in the locations indicated. Finally, if for example
in line 3 one translates the combination guixing according to the individual characters, as something like "honoured and
fortunate", one will miss the whole point of the sentence in which it occurs,
for this word means specifically to be favoured by a ruler. The only way to
find out this sort of fact is to look up the word in a dictionary.
But having said all this, it is also necessary to note that dictionaries have
their limits, and that one's time is limited. One needs an instinct for what is
worth looking up, and perhaps this textbook will be of some help in developing
such an instinct.
Teachers have their teaching methods, and do not really want to be told their
job, so I have nothing to say to them here. I hope, however, that the book will
also prove useful in self-study, and in that context there are perhaps a few
things to say.
Depending on your purposes, and on how advanced you are in Classical Chinese,
you can choose to read either the modern typeset and punctuated edition (pp.
T3-T41) or Wang Xianqian's unpunctuated wood-block edition (pp. T43-T65). You
can also choose to read Yan Shigu's commentary or to ignore it. After you have
been through the text, using the glosses and looking up whatever more you need,
Burton Watson's translation (in Courtier and commoner in ancient China,
cited above, pp. 121-157) will be very useful in checking your understanding.
When you have been through this book you will have a detailed understanding of
a significant Han text, and will be able to use that understanding in any
number of ways. You may for example look at it as a historical source, or a
literary text, or a linguistic example, and analyse it as such. If you are
primarily interested in improving your command of Classical Chinese, you will
want to learn its vocabulary and its grammatical structures. We all have our
ways of doing this, but one way that I and some of my students have found
useful is to read the text aloud many times over. After reading and
understanding a page or so, one places ten coins on the table and reads the
text aloud ten times, taking a symbolic reward of one coin for each reading.
--Reading aloud is important, for when reading silently it is too easy
to "cheat". Most Chinese teachers would advise you to memorise large parts of
the text, and what I suggest here is a lazy person's version of memorisation.
Either way, this is a useful means of both learning vocabulary and becoming
intimately familiar with the grammatical and rhetorical patterns of Classical
Chinese.
A good way forward for more advanced self-study after this textbook would be to
read some of the other chapters in the Han shu which touch in one way or
another on the story of Huo Guang. In reading these you will already know the
historical background and also a certain amount of the vocabulary, so that the
amount of dictionary work required will be less than in reading an unrelated
text.
An obvious place to begin is the biography of Jin Midi ,
which follows directly after Huo Guang's in juan 68. It is reproduced
here (pp. T31-T36), but I have not provided glosses or notes for it. Then there
are the Annals of the two Emperors Huo Guang served, Zhao-di and Xuan-di , juan 7-8 of the Han shu, which have been translated by Dubs
(cited above, vol. 2, pp. 151-175 and 199-265). For those who are seriously
interested in Han history it will be important to read examples like these of Han shu Annals, but they are dry and disjointed, and many will prefer to
continue reading biographies, for example juan 63, the collective
biography of the five sons of the emperor Wu-di .
This has been translated by Watson (Courtier and commoner, pp. 46-78,
cited above).
. . .
This book owes a great deal to all the students who have worked
with me over the years. There are several whom I would have liked to thank by
name for their trenchant (sometimes caustic) comments, but the list became too
long - in this place a collective anonymous thanks will have to suffice. All
errors are mine.
A book like this is a heap of details, and I am heavily conscious of how many
errors must remain. I hope teachers and students will share with me their
experience in using the book, and inform me of errors to be corrected in a
later edition.
Tch'oun ts'iou et Tso tchouan: Texte
chinois avec traduction française. 3 vols., Ho Kien Fou :
Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique. Facs. repr. retitled La chronique de la
principauté de Lóu, 3 vols., Paris: Cathasia, 1951.
The history of the Former Han Dynasty, by Pan
Ku, a critical translation with annotations. Vols. 1-3, Baltimore: Waverly
Press, 1938, 1944, 1955.
GHY
Gu Hanyu changyong zi zidian .
Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1979.
GSR
Karlgren, Bernhard
"Grammata Serica recensa", Bulletin of the Museum of
Far Eastern Antiquities (Stockholm) 1957, 29: 1-332. Facs. repr. as
a separate vol., Göteborg 1964.
Han
shu
Han shu.
Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1962.
Hou
Han shu
Hou Han shu.
(The history of the Later Han dynasty, A.D. 25-220, by Fan Ye ,
398-445). Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju, 1965; repr. 1973.
Hucker
Hucker, Charles O.
A dictionary of official titles in Imperial
China. Stanford University Press, 1985.
"Compendium of phonetics in Ancient and Archaic
Chinese", Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1954 , 26: 211-367.
Knechtges, Wen xuan 1
Knechtges, David R. (tr.)
Wen xuan, or Selections of refined
literature. Vol. 1: Rhapsodies on metropolises and capitals.
Princeton University Press, 1982.
KXZD
Kangxi zidian.
Repr. Hong Kong: Zhonghua Shuju, 1958.
Legge, Ch'un
ts'ew
Legge, James (tr.)
The Chinese classics: With a translation, critical
and exegetical notes, prolegomena, and copious indexes. Vol. 5, pts. 1-2: The Ch'un ts'ew, with the Tso chuen. Hongkong: Lane, Crawford; London:
Trübner, 1872. Facs. repr. Hong Kong University Press, 1960.
Legge, Li
ki
Legge, James (tr.)
The sacred books of China. The texts of
Confucianism, Parts III-IV: The Li ki. London: Clarendon Press, 1885; facs.
repr. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1966.
Legge, Shoo
king
Legge, James (tr.)
The Chinese classics: With a translation, critical
and exegetical notes, prolegomena, and copious indexes. Vol. 3, pts. 1-2: The Shoo king. Hong Kong: Legge; London: Trübner, 1865. Facs. repr.
Hong Kong University Press, 1960.
Loewe, Crisis
and conflict
Loewe, Michael
Crisis and conflict in Han China, 104 B.C. to A.D. 9.
London: Allen & Unwin, 1974.
M
Morohashi Tetsuji
Dai Kan-Wa jiten .
13 vols., Tokyo Taishukan, 1955-60. Facs. repr. n.p. (Taiwan), n.d.
Wang
Xianqian
Wang Xianqian (ed.)
Han shu buzhu.
Changsha: Xushou Tang ,
1900. Facs. repr. 2 vols., Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983.
NB: juan 68
is reproduced here on pp. T43-T65.
Wang
Zhongshu, Han civilization
Wang Zhongshu
Han civilization. Tr. by K. C. Chang a.o. New Haven & London: Yale
University Press, 1982.
Watson, Courtier
and commoner
Watson, Burton (tr.)
Courtier and commoner in ancient China: Selections
from the History of the Former Han by Pan Ku. New York & London:
Columbia University Press, 1974.
Watson, Records
Watson, Burton (tr.)
Records of the Grand Historian: by Sima Qian.
New York & Hong Kong: Columbia University Press, 1993.
[1] The basic sources for the period have been
translated into Swedish by Arvid Jongchell in Huo Kuang och hans tid:
Täxter ur Pan Ku's Ch'ien Han shu (Göteborg: Elanders
Boktryckeri, 1930). Jongchell translated all of the relevant chapters of the Hàn shū, then cut up and rearranged the translations to form a
continuous text with almost no further comment. This "scissors-and-paste"
method is no longer accepted as a way of writing history, but the book will
nevertheless be of great value to any student of the Hàn who can read
Swedish.
in the Han shu 
,
together with the commentaries compiled by Yan Shigu 
(A.D. 541-645). Glosses are given for most unfamiliar words and phrases, and
notes are provided on grammatical matters and on the historical context. Most
of the glosses are translated directly from Chinese and Japanese dictionaries,
and the source of each is indicated. It should be encouraging to see that one
can arrive at a useful understanding of a significant historical text using
standard reference works, without the help of an erudite Chinese master -
though of course those who have such a master will always have the advantage
over those who do not.
):
(ca. 145-90 B.C.) and his father Sima Tan 
.
A history of the known world from the beginnings to the authors' own time, thus
incorporating approximately the first century of the Han period.
(A.D. 32-92), his sister Ban Zhao 
,
and others. A history of China from the beginning of the Han to the period of
the usurper Wang Mang 
,
i.e. from 206 B.C. to A.D. 25. For the first century of the Han it overlaps
with the Shi ji, and in these parts the Han shu text is usually
copied from the Shi ji, slightly rewritten.
(A.D. 398-445). A history of China from the Wang Mang period to the final fall
of the dynasty, i.e. from about A.D. 25 to 220. In writing this history Fan Ye
drew on a number of earlier histories of the same period, many of which had
this same title, Hou Han shu, which have survived only in
part.
.
This book is a year-by-year history of China from the fifth century B.C. to the
tenth century A.D., compiled by Sima Guang 
(1019-1086) by a scissors-and-paste method from the sources available to him.
Since the Hou Han shu was very nearly his only source for the Later Han
period, the following translations from the Zizhi tongjian can be useful
to students as substitutes for translations from the Hou Han shu:
(1st cent. B.C.). Report on a state conference on administrative and economic
problems held in 81 B.C.
(4th cent. A.D.). A history and geography of the region of modern Sichuan from
the Han to the author's own time.
(A survey of Han archaeology). Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1984.
(d. 68 B.C.), the de facto holder of supreme power under two Emperors.
Most of the relevant chapters of the Han shu can be found in English
translation in the books by Watson and Dubs cited above.
)
sound glosses given by commentators of the Six Dynasties and Tang periods.
,
for example, it does not help to look under the character's own radical, 
,
no. 149. Instead one looks up the phonetic part, 
,
under its radical, 
,
no. 86. This is on p. 327 of the index, and one finds here the number 617.
Group no. 617 is listed on p. 165, where 
is no. 617a and 
is no. 617l. The definition for no. 617l, on p. 164, is "id. speak
(Shï)." Here "Shï" (for Shi jing 
)
indicates Karlgren's source for this meaning; normally he indicates the
earliest text in which the character is used with the given meaning.
"Id." means that the pronunciation is the same as that of the previous
character, which in this case is given as "*d'âm / d'âm / t'an". These are the reconstructed Archaic and Ancient
pronunciations, followed by the Mandarin pronunciation. The transcription
system used for the reconstructed pronunciations is explained on pp. 3-4. The
transcription system used for the Mandarin pronunciation is Karlgren's own, but
it resembles the Wade-Giles system, and is easy enough to understand. The
Mandarin tone is not given, but can often be worked out from the reconstructed
Ancient pronunciation using rules given by Karlgren on p. 5.
.
.
Kunming: Yunnan Renmin Chubanshe, 1985.
& Qin Zhipei 
Nanjing Daxue Chubanshe, 1987.
& Tian Shusheng 
(eds.)
.
Changsha: Hunan Renmin Chubanshe, 1983. Repr. 1985.
.
.
.
,
1983.
.
.
.
13 vols., Tokyo: Taishukan, 1955-60. Facs. repr. n.p. (Taiwan), n.d.
.
(or 
),
which looks as if it should be pronounced kofu, is actually pronounced kou, and must be looked up as such in the Kenkyusha dictionary. There is
a useful table of the older kana combinations in Nelson's dictionary, pp.
1015-1016.
(comp.)
.
Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1977.
(comp.)
.
Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1979.
(comp.)
.
Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1979.
,
"the Marquis of Bolu", and find (on p. 222), that three men are referred to in
the Han shu by this title: Huo Guang 
,
Huo Yu 
,
and Huo Yang 
.
(Huo Yu was Huo Guang's son and Huo Yang was the great-grandson of a cousin.)
Under Huo Guang (on p. 52) we find a list of the names by which he is referred
to in the Han shu: Huo Zimeng 
,
Bolu Hou 
,
Bolu Xuancheng Hou 
,
and Huo jiangjun 
.
(orig. 1921, numerous reprints), but it pays to be wary of mistakes and
typographical errors in this book.
.
Kyooto Daigaku Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyuusho 
,
1976.
one
can look it up in the glossary (p. 586) and find references to p. 462 and
figures 10-50 and 10-51. On p. 462 is a short description in Japanese of the gourang, with a quotation in Chinese of a Han text which describes it
and a reference (through item 375 on p. 574) to an article about it in a
Chinese archaeological journal. Figure 10-50 is a sketch of an actual gourang found in a Han grave, and figure 10-51 is a sketch of a Han
tomb-relief showing a gourang in use.
edition (pp. T3-T41) and from the edition of Wang Xianqian 
, Han shu buzhu 
(pp. T43-T65):
.
(ed.)
.
Changsha: Xushou Tang 
,
1900. Facs. repr. 2 vols., Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983.
.
In the Zhonghua Shuju edition the comments are gathered in convenient groups
and keyed to the text using numbers.
.
This means that the character 
in Wang Xianqian's edition is to be replaced with the character 
.
The editors' reasons for their emendations are given at the end of each
chapter, in this case on p. T40 (p. 2968 of the original): three early editions
have 
in this passage. The conventions followed by the editors are given in their
preface.
("turning and cutting") system. Two characters are given, from which the reader
is to use the initial consonants of the pronunciation of the first and the
final part of the pronunciation of the second. A common error of beginners is
to attempt to use the modern pronunciations of the two characters, which
can give bizarre results. It is necessary to use the pronunciation of the time
of the commentator: in this case the Tang period. Bernhard Karlgren has
reconstructed this pronunciation, which he calls Ancient Chinese, in Grammata Serica recensa (cited above).
,
"The sound of 
is given by the fan[qie] of zhi 
and yu 
."
To use this one looks up zhi and yu in Grammata Serica
recensa and finds their pronunciations in Ancient Chinese, respectively 
and 
.
The initial part of the first is 
,
and the final part of the second is 
(the whole syllable, because there is no initial consonant). Putting these
together gives 
.
Now looking up 
in Grammata Serica recensa, one finds that the character has two
meanings, with two different pronunciations:
,
,
"to attach"
(line 1). Here and there I have also felt it necessary to quote what
Bielenstein says about the rank and duties of the position, but in general
interested students will have to go to Bielenstein's book to find out this sort
of thing.
(1979 and later reprints), which in the matter of pronunciations is
prescriptive rather than descriptive. If you have a Chinese teacher you should
of course follow his or her pronunciation - it is absolutely silly to argue
about pronunciation with a native speaker, even when other native speakers
disagree.
is to be pronounced bo, che 
is to be pronounced ju, etc. These special pronunciations were learned
by an early generation of Sinologists from their Chinese teachers. They are
examples of a venerable tradition of yan wen yi du 
,
"different readings in speech and writing", which, curiously enough, seems to
have been preserved only in the West. Very few of these variant readings are
indicated in modern Chinese dictionaries, and as far as I have been able to
determine, most scholars in China today (mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong) neither
use them nor have even heard of them. Many students, having laboriously learned
that the "correct" pronunciation of the poet 
's
name is Lî Bo rather than Lî Bai, have had the embarrassing
experience of being politely corrected by Chinese friends who find it odd that
they should mispronounce such a common character. For linguists the yan wen
yi du tradition provides valuable historical evidence; the rest of us can,
in my opinion, take an entirely pragmatic view of what is correct.
(in the glosses for line 4) in Morohashi's dictionary? The first character
means "to seek", the second "to ask", and in context the combination clearly
means "to inquire about". There are three remarks to make here. First, the mere
fact that the combination is in Morohashi tells us that it was a commonly used
word, and the characters are not to be translated separately, as something like
"to seek and inquire". Second, Morohashi gives an example of the use of the
combination, in this case from the Shi ji, and such examples can be very
useful in understanding the use of the word in other texts. I have not felt
that I had the time or the patience to include the usage examples in my
definitions, though that would in principle have been a good thing to do, but
students can check them out in the locations indicated. Finally, if for example
in line 3 one translates the combination guixing 
according to the individual characters, as something like "honoured and
fortunate", one will miss the whole point of the sentence in which it occurs,
for this word means specifically to be favoured by a ruler. The only way to
find out this sort of fact is to look up the word in a dictionary.
,
which follows directly after Huo Guang's in juan 68. It is reproduced
here (pp. T31-T36), but I have not provided glosses or notes for it. Then there
are the Annals of the two Emperors Huo Guang served, Zhao-di 
and Xuan-di 
, juan 7-8 of the Han shu, which have been translated by Dubs
(cited above, vol. 2, pp. 151-175 and 199-265). For those who are seriously
interested in Han history it will be important to read examples like these of Han shu Annals, but they are dry and disjointed, and many will prefer to
continue reading biographies, for example juan 63, the collective
biography of the five sons of the emperor Wu-di 
.
This has been translated by Watson (Courtier and commoner, pp. 46-78,
cited above).
& Qin Zhipei 
.
Nanjïng Daxue Chubanshe, 1987.
.
,
1983.
:
Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique. Facs. repr. retitled La chronique de la
principauté de Lóu, 3 vols., Paris: Cathasia, 1951.
.
(et al., eds.)
.
Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1931. Numerous reprs.
.
.
.
.
,
398-445). Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju, 1965; repr. 1973.
.
.
Kunming: Yunnan Renmin Chubanshe, 1985.
.
.
13 vols., Tokyo Taishukan, 1955-60. Facs. repr. n.p. (Taiwan), n.d.
(ed.)
.
Changsha: Xushou Tang 
,
1900. Facs. repr. 2 vols., Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983.
& Tian Shushëng 
(eds.)
.
Changsha: Hunan Renmin Chubanshe, 1983. Repr. 1985.