Search Results: Titles starting with Y from Jonathan A. Hill, Bookseller, Inc.

Printed in Hangul & Chinese characters. 22; 57; 28; 55 folding leaves. Four vols. Small folio (302 x 197 mm.), orig. semi-stiff wrappers (upper cover of first vol. is a little soiled), manuscript title labels on upper covers, old stitching. [Korea]: 1907. An extremely rare Korean edition with no copy listed in WorldCat; this is a translation of Nü sishu, a collection of Confucian works all written by women. The collection was first published in China before appearing in Korea. "The Nü sishu (Four Books for Women) were regarded as a counterpart to the famous Sishu 《四書》(Four Books) grouped by Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200 CE), a Song Neo-Confucian. In the Confucian tradition, the four books for gentlemen's learning included: (1) the Analects, (2) the Mencius, (3) the Great Learning, and (4) the Book of the Mean. The Sishu exerted immense influence on Chinese society, thought, and culture, particularly in the period from 1313 to 1905 during which these four books were used as standard… Read More

One full-page woodcut county map. Wooden movable type. 74 folding leaves. Large 8vo (320 x 202 mm.), orig. brown semi-stiff wrappers (wrappers a little tired & soiled), new stitching. [Korea]: 1897. Rare edition of this local gazetteer of Yeonggwang (or Yŏnggwang) county, located on the coast of South Jeolla province in the southeastern part of the Korean peninsula. We find no copy of this edition in WorldCat, but it is held at a few libraries in South Korea. The word "gazetteer" is used in reference to a genre of East Asian historical and geographical texts generally known in Korea as ŭpchi 邑誌, which term translates roughly to "local treatises." The now rare English word "gazetteer" is here used in analogy with a similar genre that existed in British India. As one of the colophons to this work puts it, "a gazetteer is the traces of a locality, and personages, customs, mountains and rivers, and local products are all recorded in it." In Korea, truly local gazetteers covering smaller… Read More

21.5 folding leaves. 8vo, orig. yellowish-brown wrappers, new stitching. [Korea]: n.d. Yuhap is a common primer for children dating from the early Chosen period. The book teaches Chinese characters by giving their Sino-Korean pronunciation along with a vernacular Korean translation. Both the pronunciation and the translation are given in han'gul, the Korean alphabet promulgated in 1443. The characters are arranged by category, as indicated by the title. The end of a list of characters belonging to a certain category is indicated by a short sentence in classical Chinese. Yuhap was widely used in Chosen Korea alongside the Thousand Character Essay for the teaching of written classical Chinese to children. Yet, unlike the Essay, which is Chinese in origin, Yuhap is apparently a Korean text, even its Chinese characters. The Chinese text of this book must have been written for Korean children, not Chinese children. An early edition of Yuhap was compiled by Yu Hui-chun (1513-77), a noted Confucian… Read More

Numerous woodcuts in the text, mostly full-page. Four vols. Large 8vo, orig. blue wrappers (some mostly marginal worming) bound in orihon style (accordion), block-printed title labels on each upper cover. Tokyo: Suharaya Mohe, 1763. First edition of this important and handsomely illustrated work on Japanese-style wood-carved motifs and patterns which stem from the "Tachikawa [or Tatekawa] Ryu" school of design, decoration, and building techniques. Tachikawa (active 1763-71), a master carpenter who lived in Tokyo, focused on the taisha-zukuri (or oyashiro-zukuri), which is the oldest Shinto shrine style. The handsome woodcuts depict a series of small motifs and larger designs for carvings on pillars, rafters, gables, and other structural elements of a shrine or house. The book, printed in the orihon style, allows for the consecutive pages to be laid out for multi-page overhead schematic views. Most of the woodcuts are highlighted by hand in red as guides for correct proportions and placement of… Read More

Eight vols. 8vo, orig. printed wrappers, orig. stitching. [China]: s.n., [before 1927]. First edition of the first installment of this guide to the locations connected by the Beijing-Hankou railway. Following China's defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, constructing railroads became a priority for the Qing government in its quest for modernization. A line between the imperial capital at Beijing and Hankou - an important commercial city on the northern bank of the Yangzi river - was one important project under this program. The construction, financed by a Belgian consortium, was finished in 1906. The line was important both for freight and passenger travel. It appears that our book was intended for travelers on the railroad. The content of our book follows the rail line. First, it provides information about Beijing, including its imperial inner city, its outer walls, and "scenery" (shanshui 山水). It then covers Tang 唐 county, which today contains the southwestern outskirts of… Read More

Several folding maps. Three vols. 8vo, orig. printed wrappers. Beijing: Zhonghua yin zi guan 中華印字館, 1930-31. First edition of this uncommon book on the local history of Beijing. Chen Zongfan (1879-1954), after his studies, moved to Beijing where he worked in various agencies of the city administration. He bought a plot of land by Andingmen and erected a property (and rented rooms to professors at the nearby university, including the towering intellectual figure Fu Sinian 傅斯年 [1896-1950]). Chen took a great interest in his adopted city, which in this post-imperial period was undergoing radical change. In 1927, Chen even bought a part of the Beijing city wall to save it from demolition. Chen's care for the history of Beijing is on full display in our book, which "contains the most detailed descriptions of the sights and historical remains of the Beijing inner city of any book from the Republican period." Chen used a great variety of historical sources, "of which quite a few are no… Read More

Four vols. 8vo, orig. printed wrappers & stitching. [Taipei]: Zhong yang yan jiu yuan Li shi yu yan yan jiu suo 中央研究院歷史語言研究所, 1960. A scarce edition of these foundational medieval clan rules presented alongside various commentaries. The Family Instructions for the Yan Clan were written by Yan Zhitui 顏之推 (531-93). His work is the "first extant family instructions book." It is "also (and rightly) one of the most, if not the most, famous." Instructions in the tradition of Yan Zhitui's were "based on the rules of behavior and moral imperatives expressed in the Confucian ritual Classics." However, Yan's "work (divided into 20 subject categories) is unusual in many ways. He was not only a scholar but also someone who had learned how to survive by serving both northern and southern courts at a time of constant warfare. He wrote for his sons a testament stressing the importance of probity in conduct and accurate use of words that also provides much detail on contemporary… Read More

64.5 folding leaves. Four juan in one vol. 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. block-printed title label on upper cover, orig. stitching. [China]: Privately Published by Zhiyuan 止園, 1867. First edition of this annotated and classified vocabulary of expressions used in the Hebei region. Shi Menglan (1813-98) was from Leting 樂亭 in present-day Hebei province. Shi had an extensive book collection at his home, which he named Zhiyuan. He achieved renown as a precise scholar of classical exegesis who did not take sides in the debates between the various schools of Qing scholarship. He compiled several works on lexicology, including the present work, Yan shuo. The title refers to the ancient state of Yan, which occupied present-day Beijing, Hebei, and environs. A number of works from the Qing period record dialect vocabulary from the Hebei region and its exclaves, Beijing and Tianjin. According to Gao Guangxin, with 600 entries, Shi's Yanshuo presents the most extensive collection of all of them. The… Read More

36; 19; 20; 27; 37; 31 folding leaves, neatly interleaved throughout. Ten juan in five vols., plus one vol. of commentary by Dunren Zhang. 8vo, modern blue wrappers, new stitching. [China]: 1807. A rare and important edition of this notable text; the sixth volume contains the valuable commentary and notes of Dunren Zhang (1754-1834), Qing scholar, mathematician, historian, and book collector. After the death of Emperor Wu in 87 B.C., his successor summoned to the capital scholars from throughout the empire to discuss the most important problems of the day. Emperor Wu had "implemented a series of centralized economic measures to support his territorial expansion, particularly to sustain wars with Xiongnu, a confederation of nomadic tribes from Central Asia. For example, the state monopolized salt, iron, and liquor industries; operated nationwide transportation facilities; and ran retail businesses. After the emperor died, the new emperor gathered his officials and more than sixty Confucian literati… Read More

Four vols. 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. [China]: 1925. Occidental scholars used to think that there had been no study of grammar in China before large-scale Western influence in the late 19th century. Today we know that a rich tradition of grammatical studies existed in the form of Manchu-Chinese bilingual textbooks, in which Chinese sentence structures were paired with the corresponding structures in Manchu. Zhou Shanpei (1875-1958), in Method, illustrates the use of classical Chinese function words - so-called "empty characters," devoid of lexical meaning - by contrasting them with the corresponding expressions in Mandarin Chinese. For ease of comparison, the parts of speech are underlined and affixed with numbers. Zhou likens lexical words to the skeleton and flesh of the human body, and function words to the nervous system that puts it all into motion. Zhou Shanpei, of Zhuji 諸暨, Zhejiang, studied in Japan and then worked as a private secretary to high officials (muyou 幕友) and… Read More

70 folding leaves. Small 8vo, orig. wrappers (a little frayed). Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan 商務印書館, 1935. A facsimile reprint of a Yuan edition of this work on the Han dynasty capital of Chang'an and its environs. The book provides detailed descriptions of the area's streets and markets, neighborhoods and villages, hunting parks, ponds, city gates and watchtowers, palaces, temples, tombs, storehouses, government offices, ceremonial halls, academies, and other important elements of architecture. It furthermore describes ancient sites left from Zhou and Qin times. The descriptions are detailed. "It is an important source for the study of Han-era Chang'an as well as the historical geography of the Guanzhong plains region" (Zheng & Tan, Zhongguo lishi da cidian, 81). The book has the alternative title Xi jing huang tu 西京黃圖 [Yellow Chart of the Western Capital], where "Western" is used to distinguish it from the eastern city of Luoyang, which also served as the capital in one… Read More

Illus. & diagrams in the text. Four vols. 8vo, orig. printed wrappers, orig. stitching. [China]: n.d. but [1941]. An early and rare edition of this collection of lectures on Quanzhen Daoism, which "appeared around 1170 in North China under the Jürchen Jin 金 empire (1115-1234), as one among a number of new Daoist movements founded by charismatic leaders teaching self-cultivation techniques, healing arts, and other rituals...Quanzhen rose to fame when the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan summoned Qiu for an audience in 1223 and granted him extensive privileges and a leading role in supervising Daoist affairs in North China...Its fortunes waned and waxed under the various regimes" (Liu & Gossaert, "Introduction," 1-2). The sect is still in existence today. The book contains two Prefaces, one by Gao Enhong 高恩洪, who published it, and one by Ye Yian 葉一盦. Gao explains how he came across the book and how it came to be published: When I served as supervisor of trade at Kiautschou (Jiaozhou, in… Read More

Nine vols. 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. [China]: Xiao shuang ji an, 1925-27. First edition of the final and best edition of "the most important dictionary of dates in the Chinese language" (Hummel). Qian Daxin (1728-1804), arguably the most distinguished scholar of the Qing Dynasty, "took special interest in recording the dates of birth and death of historical figures. The result was the well-known Yinian lu (Record of Uncertain Dates), which became the basis of the most important dictionary of dates in the Chinese language. This work, in four juan, which recorded dates of birth and death of some 364 persons, was left incomplete at the time of Qian's death, but was supplemented in 1813 by a pupil named Wu Xiu (1764-1827), and published in 1818 with a few additions...Further supplements to this work were compiled later...[and the author lists four further supplements from 1838 to 1908]...Finally all these were brought together by Zhang Weixiang who reedited them and printed them in 1925, with… Read More

14 juan in four vols. 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. Jianling: Tian shi ding chu shi; Beijing: Wen kai zhai juan, 1924. First edition of this study on quotations from Xu Shen's (d. ca. 149) Shuowen jiezi [Explain the Graphs to Unravel the Written Words], the first dictionary of Chinese characters. We learn from Tian's Preface that Sounds & Meanings refers to two different editions of this work: one is the edition by Xuanying (fl. 7th cent.), which is also known as Da Tang zhongjing yinyi [Sounds & Meanings of the Many Scriptures of the Great Tang]; the other is the more famous edition by Huilin (737-820). Tian's book compares quotes from Xu Shen's Shuo wen jiezi from ca. 100 CE - quotes that Tian found in Xuanying's and Huilin's glosses on the Buddhist canon - to two recensions of Shuowen jiezi that date from the 10th century. His book is thus primarily a study of Shuowen jiezi. Regarding Shuowen jiezi, Françoise Bottéro writes, "For the first time, all the characters included in [a… Read More

19 folding leaves. Large 8vo (293 x 189 mm.), orig. brown patterned semi-stiff wrappers, orig. stitching. Jeollanam-do: Chukkok chŏngsa , 1929. An exceedingly rare edition of Yi I's Ŭnp'yŏng chŏngsa hakkyu (or Eunpyeong jeongsa hakkyu) 隱屏精舍學規 [School Rules for the Hidden Study Hall], Ŭnp'yŏng chŏngsa yaksok 隱屏精舍約束 [Compact for the Hidden Study Hall], and related texts as an independent work on "school rules." We find no other copy in WorldCat, the Korean Old and Rare Collection Information System, or in other catalogues available to us. The copy at the Academy of Korean Studies (Jangseogak, MF35/8172) appears to be from a different edition, as the catalogue gives no publisher. These texts are usually found as a part of Yi's collected works. Yi I (Yi Yulgok 栗谷, 1536-84) was an official and one of the most influential Neo-Confucian thinkers of the Chosŏn period. The first text of this collection is titled "school regulations" (hakkyo kyubŏm 學校規範) and is… Read More

Edited by Yi To-jung 李度中. One woodblock text diagram. 62 folding leaves. Large 8vo (307 x 207 mm.), orig. semi-stiff wrappers (wrappers slightly soiled), orig. stitching. Korea: 1816. Yi I (1536-84) was one of the most important Neo-Confucian thinkers of Chosŏn Korea. This book is concerned with sŏng (Ch.: xing), "human nature," and i (Ch.: li), "principle" or "coherence." These were key concepts in Neo-Confucian metaphysics. Indeed, in Chinese, Neo-Confucianism is often called "the learning of nature and principle" (Ch.: xingli xue 性理學). Yi To-jung, the descendant of one of Yi I's disciples, excerpted texts dealing with human nature and principle from Yi I's Yulgok chŏnsŏ 栗谷全書 [Complete Writings from Chestnut Valley] to make the present work. The book's colophon, written by Pak Ki-jik 朴基稷, is dated pyŏngja 丙子, which the cataloguers of the Kyujanggak copy and those of the Harvard-Yenching copy conjecture refers to 1816. By contrast, the Berkeley catalogue… Read More

57 folding leaves. 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. Chengdu: Dun mu tang 敦睦堂, 1924. A fine copy of Jiang Yong's phonological magnum opus. Phonology, especially historical phonology, developed greatly in the Qing period, and Jiang was one of the scholars who advanced the discipline. Our book is a kind of advanced textbook or compendium of Chinese phonological learning as it stood by the mid-18th century. Jiang discusses key notions such as the 36 initials, "open-mouth" and "closed-mouth" syllables, and the four tones. Yet he also ventures into other topics, such as "the sounds made by children" (yingtong zhi yin 嬰童之音), and the origin of speech. The book "sums up the phonological theory of the preceding period, explains technical phonological terminology, quotes from the works of earlier scholars, and contains many original ideas of Jiang's. The book reflects the state-of-the-field of phonetic learning at the time and has great value as a reference" (Jianming Zhongguo guji… Read More

Numerous fine full-page woodcuts throughout. 67; 63 folding leaves (pagination continuous). Two vols. Tall 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. Haichang: Jiang shi bie xia zhai, 1929. A critical and augmented illustrated edition of the Daoist religious text Lord Wenchang's Tract on Unpublicized Merits 文昌帝君陰隲文. Wenchang is an important deity in Chinese popular religion, often worshipped by students in search of academic success. This careful edition reflects his standing among the literati in late imperial China. The editor and author of the critical notes is Xu Guangqing (1801-62), a philologist and physician from Haining, west of Shanghai who also authored several works of classical philology. For many years, he worked as a tutor for his neighbor Jiang Guangxu 蔣光煦 of the Biexia Zhai 別下齋 studio. When Jiang published his eponymous collectanea, Xu helped collate it. Lord Wenchang's Tract on Unpublicized Merits was published as part of that collectanea in 1844. Our copy is… Read More

Fine photographic reproductions throughout. 78; 87; 78; 69 folding leaves. 24 parts in four vols. Folio, orig. blue wrappers, orig. block-printed title labels on upper cover, orig. stitching. Shanghai: Shanghai chu ban gong si, 1955. First edition of one of the most important studies of the phonological materials found within the Dunhuang manuscripts, which were then located in Europe. Jiang (1902-95), linguist, a leading Chinese scholar of Dunhuang studies, lived in France in 1935-37, gathering reproductions of many of the manuscripts spread throughout the continent, especially at the BnF in Paris and the British Museum. Jiang had studied phonology with Wang Guowei (1877-1927), a towering figure in early Republican intellectual history, at Tsinghua University in Beijing. In 1933 Jiang had published an introduction to Chinese phonetics, which was reissued in 1935. Jiang's background in phonetics might have prompted Wang Zhongmin (1903-1975) to ask him to take charge of surveying the phonological… Read More

61; 49 folding leaves. Two vols. 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. [Shenyang]: Liao hai shu she, Preface dated 1908. [with]: WU, Tingxie 吳廷燮. Xuande bie lu 宣德別錄 [Separate Records of the Xuande Reign]. 67; 69 folding leaves. Two vols. 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. [Shenyang]: Liao hai shu she, Preface dated 1917. First editions. Wu (1865-1947), a late Qing, early Republican government official, was one of the most indefatigable compilers of chronological tables of office holders. The son of a Qing official, Wu himself served as an official both under the Qing and in several of the regimes that controlled China in the early Republican period. He participated in some of the great scholarly projects of the republic, including the historiography commission that produced the Draft History of the Qing [Qingshi gao 清史稿] in 1927 and in the writing of bibliographical précis for a projected continuation of the Complete Writings of the Four Repositories [Siku quanshu… Read More