Huan K'uan: Spor o Soli y Zheleze (Yan Te Lun).

• Author: Bodde, Derk
• Position: Book Review

Huan K'uan: Spor o Soli y Zheleze (Yan Te Lun) [Huan K'uan: Debate on Salt and Iron (Yen t'ieh lun)]. Translated by Ju. L. KROLL. Vol. 1, St. Petersburg: RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, INSTITUTE OF ORIENTAL STUDIES, ST. PETERSBURG BRANCH, 1997. Pp. 416 (paper). Vol. 2, Moscow: RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, INSTITUTE OF ORIENTAL STUDIES, 2001. Pp. 831 (paper).

This is the first complete translation into a Western language of all sixty chapters of the Yen-t'ieh lun. (The English translation by Esson M. Gale covers only chapters 1-28; see his Discourses on Salt and Iron: A Debate on Commerce and Industry in Ancient China [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1931], covering chapters 1-19, and his rendering of chapters 20-28, with the collaboration of Peter A. Boodberg and T. C. Lin, in Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 65 [1934]: 73-110.) In 81 B.C. a socio-economic debate was held at the imperial court of Han China between officials of the central government and scholars and officials from the provinces; the Yen-t'ieh lun is a record of that debate. Jurii L. Kroll, member of the Institute of Oriental Studies in St. Petersburg, has rendered into Russian chapters one through twelve of the text in his volume 1 and the remaining chapters, thirteen through sixty, in volume 2.

Volume 1 contains two chapters of general introduction (pp. 7-128); translation of the Yen-t'ieh lun's first twelve chapters (pp. 131-80) with extensive notes (pp. 183-364); a bibliography (pp. 367-96); glossary of Chinese characters (pp. 397-407); and an English-language summary (pp. 408-12). The summary says little about how Yen-t'ieh lun was compiled, its transmission, and commentaries, or its socio-economic significance then and later. Instead, this summary focuses on the...