Libro dei monti e dei mari (Shanghai jing): Cosmografia e mitologica nella Cina antica.

• Author: Kroll, Paul W.

During the past fifteen years Sinology has been enriched by the work of an exceptional group of scholars with connections to Italian universities and to the recently founded Scuola di Studi sull'Asia Orientale in Kyoto. Under the able direction of Antonino Forte, the Italian School of East Asian Studies has established three publication series to disseminate the work of its members. Among the School's notable sinological productions to date have been: in the "Essays" series, a symposium volume called Tang China and Beyond: Studies on East Asia from the Seventh to the Tenth Century (ed. Forte, 1988); in the "Epigraphical Series," Tonami Mamoru's The Shaolin Monastery Stele on Mount Song (tr. P. Herbert, 1990); in the "Occasional Papers" series, Giuliano Bertuccioli's Travels to Real and Imaginary Lands: Two Lectures on East Asia, Ochiai Toshinori's The Manuscripts of Nanatsu-dera: A Recently Discovered Treasure-House in Downtown Nagoya (tr. S. Vita, 1991), and A. Forte's The Hostage An Shigao and his Offspring: An Iranian Family in China (1995). A fourth, reference series is soon to bring out its first offering. It is no exaggeration to say that Italian Sinology has, in a relatively short span of time, burst into full flower.

One of the most prolific scholars to have been associated with the school is Riccardo Fracasso who has published important articles in journals such as T'oung Pao and Numen, in Tang China and Beyond, as well as authoring a handbook titled A Technical Glossary of Jiaguology (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1988). His recent work on early mythology and religion has resulted in the book at hand, a well-annotated, Italian translation of the Shanhai jing.

The Book of Mountains and Seas is perhaps the most peculiar of early Chinese texts. Fracasso has previously summarized in English its contents, questions of authorship, textual transmission, and provided a list of its principal editions, commentaries, and studies, in a valuable eleven-page entry on the book in M. Loewe's Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China, 1993). The introduction, including attached charts, to Fracasso's translation (pp. xiii-xxxviii) is a much expanded version of that precis. One of the more interesting sections of it is that dealing with what Fracasso calls "the problem of classification." Just what the Shanhai jing is has been unclear from Han times, when it was regarded as either a...