Overt and Covert Treasures: Essays on the Sources for Chinese Women’s History

10. Women in Chinese Encyclopedias

Women in Chinese Encyclopedias Harriet T. Zurndorfer INTRODUCTION Leishu 類書 (literally, “classified matters” or “classified books”) are not an obvious source to gather information about women, and their changing status in imperial China. For one thing, leishu are anthologies, and not reference encyclopedias in the European sense of the word. Unlike a Western encyclopedia which includes studies written for the express purpose of summarizing earlier material and the current state of knowledge, leishu consist of large numbers of excerpts from primary sources rather than specially written exposés. But the name encyclopedia is applied to leishu because these works presumably compare the whole realm of knowledge at the time of their compilation (Teng and Biggerstaff [hereafter TB], p. 106).1 The Chinese leishu originated out of a need by the emperor and his officials to have a “quick” source for finding moral and political precedents. The earliest known encyclopedia, the Huang lan 皇 覽 (Mirror for the Emperor) was issued under imperial auspices around 220 CE during the Wei 魏 dynasty, but it is no longer in existence. Between the early third century and the eighteenth century, some six hundred leishu were compiled, of which only two hundred are still extant. In his guide to Chinese historical sources, Wilkinson estimates that historians nowadays use ten to twenty of these works (Wilkinson, pp. 602–603). For the modern historian, leishu are informative with regard to how the Chinese literati elite predicated moral and social norms, and handed down the Confucian heritage from one era to the next. These two hundred leishu vary in scope, length, and purpose. This genre is a particularly multifarious kind of compilation. It can gather literary or biographical anecdotes as well as administrative documents or Buddhist and Daoist ideas. Chinese encyclopedias 280 | Overt and Covert Treasures are sometimes as short as one chapter, or juan 卷, or can consist of several thousand juan, and they can be compiled by only one scholar, or by several thousand in the employ of the government. Many of these works served as “examination aids,” while the large-scale, imperially-sponsored compilations, such as the Cefu yuangui 冊府 元龜 (Outstanding Models from the Storehouse of Literature) from 1013, under the guidance of Wang Qinruo 王欽若 (d. 1025), may be viewed as monumental tributes to erudition and broad learning.2 Recent scholarship has shown that, like other genres of Chinese writing, encyclopedias have evolved in different directions over time, and the motivation of individual compilers has varied according to time and place. One may define leishu as a collection of classified materials, but the kind of materials collected is not consistent. One should also take note that modern bibliographies and catalogues may also assess encyclopedias differently. Thus, the well-known Jiangsu shengli guoxue tushuguan zongmu 江蘇省立國學圖書館總目(General Catalogue of Books in the Provincial Library of Jiangsu Province), compiled by Liu Yizheng 柳詒徵 et al., and published in Nanjing 1933–1935, distinguishes between general and specialized encyclopedias, and encyclopedias that are classified according to rhyme, or characters, and lastly those specialized leishu focusing on technology, administration, and so on. In contrast, another familiar reference guide, Teng and Biggerstaff’s An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Chinese Reference Works groups encyclopedias into seven main categories, which in effect, overlap in some cases. Leishu were first marked as a class of books in bibliographies issued in the Song dynasty. The Xin Tangshu 新唐書 (New Tang History), compiled by Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 (1000–1072) and Song Qi 宋祁 (998– 1061), classified leishu as a subcategory in the division of philosophers (Hu, p. 3). It was here that two of the oldest extant encyclopedias, Ouyang Xun’s 歐陽詢 (577–641) Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚 (Collection of Literature Arranged by Categories, 604) and Xu Jian’s 徐堅 et al. (659– 729) Chuxue ji 初學記 (Writings for Elementary Instruction, ca. 730) were classified accordingly. Nevertheless, despite this official approval of the leishu category, Song bibliographies as well as those bibliographies compiled later do not agree on what works should be labeled leishu. Leishu could include compendia of names, anecdotes, documentary and epistolary genres, broad collections of historical and literary materials, administrative texts, as well as specialized texts on particular subjects such as monetary policy, or military institutions. According to the modern scholar Lucille Chia, even traditional library catalogues Women in Chinese Encyclopedias | 281 using the siku 四 庫 system (jing 經 [classics]; shi 史 [history]; zi 子 [philosophers or specialists in many fields of knowledge]; ji 集 [literary collections]) differed about what or what not might be classified as leishu (Chia, p. 358n92...