The Development of the Book in China

As members of this SOCiETY we are each of us familiar with the evolution of the book in that portion of Asia where our interests lie. But Asia is a continent of many diverse practices, and few things exhibit that diversity more than the varying forms the book has taken in different places and at different times. In order to bring to view some grounds for comparison I shall sketch briefly the history of the book in China in the past three thousand years. In doing this I must at times treat of matters familiar to some, and to that extent lay myself open to the charge, as the Chinese proverb says, of trying to sell a copy of the Classic of Filial Piety to Confucius. It will be necessary, however, to recount some things that are fairly well known in order to present others that are less familiar. The earliest evidence we have of books in China is that to be found on the incised divination bones which were discovered in Honan province in 1899. These inscriptions, incised on bones of animals and on tortoise shells, date back to the 13th and 14th centuries B. C., to the dynasty called Shang. They consist of short sentences addressed to the spirits, and therefore cannot themselves be regarded as books, but the pictographic form of certain characters confirms the view that books existed at that time. This fact had, of course, already been known from numerous references to lost books in the Classics, as well as from rather long excerpts preserved in the Classics. The word ts'e J or a, one of the words in common use today to designate a volume, appears both on the oracle bones and on early bronzes. The pictograph represents several narrow slips of wood laid side by side and held together by two cords, one near the top, another near the bottom. This is the interpretation of the character given in the dictionary, Shuo-wen, in 100 A. D. when books of that type were still to be seen; and is confirmed by wooden slips, two thousand years old, which have recently been found. The 3rd century lexicon, Shih ming, likens the arrangement of the slips to the teeth

Archaeology · China · Development (topology) · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Mathematics

• Arthur W. Hummel (1884–1975)

  Open Access•Edwin G Beal, Janet F Beal•The Journal of Asian Studies•1976

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