A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han and Xin Periods, 221 B.C.-A.D. 24.

• Author: Kroll, Paul W.
• Position: Reviews of Books

A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han and Xin Periods (221 B.C.-A.D. 24). By MICHAEL LOEWE. Handbook of Oriental Studies, sect. 4: China, vol. 16. Leiden: BRILL, 2000. Pp. xxiii + 837. $245.

The early imperial period, comprising the Qin and Han dynasties, has long been a favorite and well-worked field of study for Sinologists. Even so, it is currently enjoying a season of specially renewed interest and energetic reevaluation. Scholars such as Michael Nylan and Martin Kern are in the forefront of this activity, but there is no doubt who the presiding dean of Han studies is, and that is Michael Loewe. For nearly four decades Loewe's painstaking scholarship, evident in more than half a dozen books and in numerous articles, coupled with his professional generosity in encouraging the work of younger scholars, has scattered much of the seed responsible for the present vitality of the field and its proliferation in many new areas. His influence has been felt not only through his own, plentiful writings but also through his editorial efforts, notably with the invaluable and now indispensable Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographic Guide (Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China, 1993), not to mention The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1: The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C.-A.D. 220 (1986, co-edited with Denis Twitchett) and The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C. (1999, co-edited with Edward Shaughnessy). The most recent fruit of his labors is a book that is magnificent in its breadth and usefulness, and practically unimaginable as the work of an individual scholar.

What we have here, in double-column pages of about the same size as those in this journal, is a hefty five-pound reference work containing biographical information on more than six thousand named persons who lived and died between 221 B.C. and A.D. 24. In the words of the author, "The book is designed to ... serve students who are embarking on a study of the primary sources for that period, sinologists who do not specialise in the history of the early empires, and historians of cultures and empires that grew up outside China. It is intended to provide the help that is sorely needed by newcomers to Chinese historical texts, who are seeking in some despair to find answers to immediate questions of the time, place and context of the passages with which they wrestle" (p. ix). All of this it does admirably.

Previous biographical dictionaries in the China field have been collective endeavors requiring the cooperation of large groups of scholars over many years. These...