Talk:List of early Chinese texts

Shizi and other items to add or delete

A question was raised today by Guss2 (Does there exist a work called Shizi?) about whether there is an early Chinese text called Shizi, and Guss2 surmised that Shiji might have been intended. I personally am ignorant of such a work, but looking at the page history I note that:

1. The original included the Shiji, so this was not likely what the original editor intended.

2. The original included two references,

Michael Loewe (ed.): Early Chinese texts: a bibliographical guide, Berkeley 1993

Reiner Stoppok (ed.): An Alphabetical Index to the Bibliography of the Hanyu Da Zidian (forthcoming)

Loewe is a strong reference but it does not include any Shizi or Shih tzu; the Stoppok is forthcoming and thus not an available, verifiable reference.

3. This is a very good example of why it is imperative that we include not just pinyin, but also characters and tone marks when writing pinyin, so that others can understand what is being referred to.

4. The author of the page was Reiner Stoppok, who is also the ed. of the second reference. Since the good Herr Stoppok does not provide a specific reference to the Shizi other than his own forthcoming but currently unavailable work, the Shizi entry is for all intents and purposes unreferenced and may be removed after a fair period of time. On the other hand, I would note that there are many, many early Chinese texts of which the average Western amateur scholar (or typical editor here) may not have heard of, and I would presume from the high quality of Stoppok's first reference and the implications of his own editorial position for the 2nd reference that he has reasonable knowledge of early Chinese texts. Therefore I would recommend not removing the Shizi entry, pending release of the Stoppok (ed.) work. Dragonbones (talk) 16:55, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Dragonbones!, thanks for your balanced and well-formulated response. However, there are still some remarks I'd like to make. 1. Does there exist a work called Yilin? I thinks the objections against this title are the same you hold for Shizi. 2. Do you think it is appropiate to add the following titles to the list?

• Huang Shigong sanlüe, 黃石公三略 (Three tactics of Huang Shigong, Three Strategies of Master Yellow Stone)
• Guangya 廣雅, a dictionary compiled by Zhang Ji (張揖, begin 3rd century)
• Fan Shengzhi shu 氾勝之書 (Fan Shengzhi Book is a collective name for some agricultural writings from the end of the Western Han Dynasty)
• Huangdi sijing 黃帝四經 (The Four Classics of the Yellow Emperor)
• Kongcongzi 孔叢子 (a collection of Confucian teachings by Kong Fu 孔鮒)
• Taiping Jing 太平经 (The Classic of the Great Peace)
• Xijing zaji 西京雜記(Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital, historical anecdotes, collected by or attributed to Liu Xin?).

Thanks in advance for answering this and the time you'll spend on it, Guss2 (talk) 08:57, 2 June 2008 (UTC). BTW see this site for a list of the entire [sic!, 101 texts] body of pre-Han and Han traditional texts. Guss2 (talk) 09:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

According to this list Shizi should be Shizi 尸子, according to this site written by Shi Jiao, a scholar in the Warring States, was born in Jin, who had assisted Shang Yang with the political reform. Then Shang Yang failed his reform and was condemned to death. At the same time, Shi Jiao left for Shu, where he finished his work ShiZi. Guss2 (talk) 11:25, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Early texts isn't my forte, and my main reference work on them is Loewe, which does not list Yilin. If you have good references on any early Chinese texts, then by all means, be bold, and add them to the list! If a page on them does not yet exist, I'd recommend adding pinyin with tone mark diacriticals (this is still just as legible as pinyin to someone who doesn't know Chinese, but is very helpful for those who have learned a little and know how to read tone marks but might not know the Chinese characters which follow). If you want to start a stub for any of the books you add to the list, that would be great of course. As for the titles you list, I think adding Guangya is a must, and the rest are up to you, but I'd say the more complete the list is, the better, since info on this kind of stuff is VERY hard to find in English (and for that reason, the more info added on each text, the better). Speaking of which, I think I'll add 史籀篇 Shizhoupian to the list and start a page on it too. Oh, thanks for the link to that site! I notice the list doesn't include Shuowen, LOL. Dragonbones (talk) 12:13, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Herr Stoppok was so kind to answer my questions on [1]. There you can see Shizi is 尸子 and Yilin is 易林 (as an abbreviation of Jiaoshi Yilin. I am doing some research on the list now and have (temporarily) placed the results on [2]. I'll put the results on the English list afterwards. Guss2 (talk) 14:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

List versus Category? & Discussion of suggestion to merge this article with Chinese classic texts

This list bears a tag suggesting merger with Chinese classic texts. I would disagree because there are many early texts which are not 'classics'. I would like to see a category created for 'early Chinese texts' so that we may appropriately tag each page, however, but have no idea how to add a category.Dragonbones (talk) 13:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)