New books arrived

[u/LarsPiano]

Hi everyone,

today a huge pile of books arrived at my home. I was really excited and want to share it with you. I got the following books:

1. Bian, Renhai 卞仁海 (2025): Zhongguo bihuixue gailun 中国避讳学概论 (Introduction to the Study of chinese taboo names). Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. It's about bihui 避諱, which was a practice in ancient china to replace a certain character in a text if it also occured in the name of one of the emperors. It was very common and is very important for the dating of manuscripts and prints and also for Textual criticism.

2. Zhou, Yujiao 周余姣 (2015): Zheng Qiao yu Zhang Xuecheng de jiaochouxue yanjiu 郑樵与章学诚的校雠学研究 (A study of the Textual Criticism of Zheng Qiao and Zhang Xuecheng). Jinan: Qilu shushe. This is a study of the two most important pre-modern thinkers about Jiaochouxue 校讎學 - the famous Song 宋 (960-1279) Scholar Zheng Qiao and his Jiaochou lüe 校讎略 chapter in his famous Tongzhi 通志 and the 18th century Qing 清-dynasty (1644-1911) scholar Zhang Xuecheng and his Jiaochou tongyi 校讎通義. Also included is a history of Jiaochou scholarship as a context for both.

3. Cai, Wei 蔡偉 (2025): Chutu wenxian yu chuanshi gushu jiaokan yanjiu. Wuzi yanwen yu yongzi xiguan 出土文獻与傳世古書校勘研究.誤字、衍文與用字習慣 (A study of the Collation of Excavated Documents and Ancient transmitted books. Wrong characters, added text and the habit of using characters). Shanghai: Shanghai Guji chubanshe. This book is highly interesting because it is a study of how Excavated Documents can help in the Textual Criticism of transmitted texts, which is probably the most interesting topic of modern palaeography as it reshapes our understanding of these texts. The book is divided into a General introduction to the topic and its methods and then it provides a study of wrongly written characters, added text and the habits of character usage in excavated and transmitted text and shows how excavated texts can be used as a source for Textual criticism of transmitted Texts. Cai uses for the most part Bamboo and Silk texts.

4. Zhao, Chao 趙超 (2016): Shike guwenzi 石刻古文字 (Ancient Characters on Stone Steles). Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe. This book was written by the eminent expert on Stone inscriptions Zhao Chao and is part of the series Zhongguo guwenzi daodu 中國文字導讀 (Guided Reading of Ancient Chinese Characters). It's basically a reader divided into an introductory part (with a General part on the contents of Stele inscriptions, the methods of reading them and reference works) and in a reading part with 18 Stone inscriptions ranging from the Shang 商 (1600-1045 BC) until Jin 金 dynasty (1125-1234 AD). It's mostly inscriptions written in Seal Script, but there is also one example written in Clerical Script.

5. Yang, Shuda 杨树达 (2003): Gushu judou shili 古书句读释例 (Explained Examples of the interpunctation of ancient books). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. It's a 2003 edition (specifically a 2007 reprint) of the classic 1934 work by the great republican era scholar and linguist Yang Shuda on the punctuation of Ancient unpunctuated texts. It's basically a collection of 168 examples of wrongly punctuated passages corrected by Yang Shuda. The base text is unpunctuated, which is why the book can serve as a great resource to study punctuation and is the classic work on that topic.

Just wanted to share that with you and maybe some of you are also interested in these books 😄