Wujing tu ("Illustrations of the Five Classics").

Lujiang, China: , [1614]. 2,000 years of Chinese learning First edition of this visual and textual guide to the Five Confucian Classics - one of the world's oldest and most enduring textual canons - through the lenses of philosophy, geography, and science. We have traced a single copy at Kyoto University, with none traced at auction. Until the early 20th century, the Five Confucian Classics - the Book of Changes (Yijing), Book of Documents (Shujing), Book of Odes (Shijing), Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu), and Book of Rites (Liji) - were the cornerstone of Chinese understandings of politics, society, and the self. As some texts were long thought to have been written by Confucius himself, the canon formed the basis of all scholarly learning and the imperial examinations system from the second century BCE through to 1905. "Thus the more cultured members of society in premodern China, even those who had failed the examinations or had passed but never held office, enjoyed a familiarity with the Classics that afforded them a common store of knowledge. As successive governments throughout East Asia came under the cultural sway of the Chinese system, the Classics came to influence thought and politics in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, so that the collection as a whole once occupied in East Asia a position roughly analogous to that of the Bible in the West" (Nylan, pp. 1-2). The opacity and sophistication of much of this textual canon spawned a commentarial genre called "tu", in which pictures and diagrams play an equal, if not more important, role as words. In the opinion of the genre's intellectual proponents, these illustrations, forming an expansive ready reckoner when read in conjunction with captions and explanatory text, could offer scholars and learners alike new conduits to master the wisdom of the ancients. In this example, the 54 folios are divided equally between the Five Classics and the Rites of Zhou (Zhouli), another canonical ancient Chinese text. For the first, the Book of Changes, a series of intricate diagrams elucidates the meaning of the famous trigrams and hexagrams used for ritual divination. For the Book of Documents, a collection of historical materials pertaining to China's oldest dynasties, the reader is offered chronological tables, diagrammatic representations of musical theory, an astronomical instrument for tracking Epsilon Ursae Majoris, weaponry and objects, and a full-page map showing the nine administrative states of the Han Dynasty. A breakdown of the structure of the poems in the Book of Odes is followed by astronomical diagrams, another map of the Chinese world showing the Great Wall, and more illustrations of the many objects which appear throughout the varied verses of the Odes. Opening the second half, the folios devoted to the Spring and Autumn Annals juxtapose chronological tables, lists of members of the most important clans, and a guide to key place names. Another full-page map shows the territories (such as Wu, Yue, Chu) that waged war against each other during the middle of the second millennium BCE. The final two sections, both concerning ritual texts, are peppered with layouts, depictions of objects used in ceremonies, figures in court attire, flags, and vignettes of processions. The opening text for each section attributes this production to Zhang Da (fl. 1614), the senior official in China's Lujiang province, and Lu Qian (d. 1635), a native of Lujiang and an elite scholar who passed the jinshi examination - China's most exclusive civil service test - in 1603. Lu is believed to have used rubbings to take the text and illustrations from old stone tablets preserved at a local school. The product of Zhang and Lu's collaboration was likely made available to fellow intellectuals and perhaps local educators. Within a century of publication, this particular "tu" was already rare. The Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao (a catalogue of published books in the Qianlong emperor's library) noted this scarcity and lamented that the royal book collection contained only an inferior later edition riddled with errors and cramped illustrations. As only one other example is now traceable, this first edition is thus a true treasure of Ming dynasty printing. This copy has been preserved without the original introduction and afterword by Zhang and others. The facsimile restoration required to the final half-folio means that this missing introduction and afterword may have been too severely damaged to be retained, although they may also have long been discarded by a past owner more interested in the substantive contents than the loquacious observations of the compiler. Folio (480 x 334 mm). 54 folding woodblock folios, sometime divided along marginal crease and mounted in late-Qing dynasty concertina album, creating one folio per double-page opening. Patterned brocade boards, front board with manuscript title label, boards more recently relined. Housed in custom blue silk solander box with spine labels. Profusely illustrated throughout. Bound without 2 folios (foreword and afterword); loss to approximately one third of final folio skilfully restored in later manuscript facsimile. Ownership label of internet entrepreneur Richard L. Adams on rear pastedown and inner face of box. Rear pastedown with old pen and ink notations and early 20th-century printed cataloguing label with manuscript entries; remnants of early 20th-century shelf sticker on front cover. Boards and title label worn, panel hinges sometime strengthened with Japanese tissue, folios with worming pre-dating mounting, text occasionally affected, tidemarks, printing generally sharp. A very good copy. Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao, juan 34. Michael Nylan, The Five "Confucian" Classics, 2001.