Traditional Chinese 藝文志 Hanyu Pinyin Yale Romanization Ngaih-màhn ji | Simplified Chinese 艺文志 Wade–Giles I-wen chih | |
Literal meaning Monograph on Arts and Letters Similar Book of Han, Siku Quanshu, Records of the Grand Historian, Dream Pool Essays, Spring and Autumn Annals | ||
"Yiwenzhi" (Chinese: 藝文志), or the "Treatise on Literature", is the bibliographical section of the Hanshu (Book of Han) by the Chinese historian Ban Gu (32–92 AD), who completed the work begun by his father Ban Biao. The bibliographical catalog is the last of its ten treatises, and scroll 30 of the 100 scrolls comprising the Hanshu.
Contents
- Material and morphology of books in the Yiwenzhi
- Research
- Comparison to the Pinake of Alexandria
- References
The basis for the catalog came from Liu Xin's Qilüe (七略), which gives detailed bibliographical information about holdings in the Imperial Library, which itself was an extension on Bielu (別錄) by Liu Xin's father Liu Xiang, on which the two had collaborated. The catalog provides important insights into the literature of the various Chinese intellectual currents of the pre-Qin period (Nine Schools of Thought), of which only some 20% are presently known.
Material and morphology of books in the "Yiwenzhi"
Scrolls in bamboo strips, mostly for text, were referred to as pian (篇), while those in woven silk, mostly for large pictorial representations, as juan (卷); both are called scrolls because they were rolled up, bound, and tagged for identification. The practice of using scroll pouches called ji (帙) to hold five to ten scrolls had been in existence (Shuowen Jiezi defines the character as "book clothes"), but paper had not been invented by Cai Lun until 13 years after Ban Gu's death. The earliest form of back-bone binding of books, the butterfly binding (蝴蝶裝), was not invented until around 1000.
Research
Commentaries on "Yiwenzhi" were done by Yan Shigu (581–645) and Wang Yinglin (王應麟; 1223–1296). Modern researchers on the topic include Gu Shi (顾实), Chen Guoqing and others.
Comparison to the Pinake of Alexandria
The Hanshu Yiwenzhi catalogued the Former Han Imperial Library holdings under "6 domains, 38 classes, 596 families; 13,269 scrolls in all" (大凡書，六略三十八種，五百九十六家，萬三千二百六十九卷。) concludes the treatise. An estimated 20% of the titles are extant today. This compares favourably with the estimated 10% survival of the Pinakes titles that consisted of works in Greek, Egyptian, Aramiac, Hebrew, Persian, and other languages, in the Great Library of Alexandria of the 3rd century BCE, which according to one tradition, at one time held some 120,000 parchment scrolls and papyri.