Die Leishu der imperialen Bibliothek des Kaisers Qianlong.

• Author: KERN, MARTIN
• Position: Review

Die Leishu der imperialen Bibliothek des Kaisers Qianlong. By CHRISTOPH KADERAS. Asien- und Afrika-Studien, no. 4, der Humboldt-Universit[ddot{a}]t zu Berlin. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 1998. Pp. 336. DM 158.

This book, the author's dissertation submitted to Humboldt University, Berlin, introduces the sixty-eight works included under the category lei-shu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in the Ssu-k'u ch'[ddot{u}]an-shu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the monumental collection of books commissioned by the Ch'ien-lung [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] emperor (r. 1736-95). Technically, the study is carefully produced, with page-bottom footnotes, a generous use of Chinese characters throughout the text, and useful appendices; typos occur within acceptable limits. The unfortunately high price for the book may in part be explained by the hard-cover binding; as such, the publication seems to be primarily directed towards libraries.

Kaderas begins his study by questioning the equation of the Chinese term lei-shu with the European encyclopedia. As he points out, this now-standard correspondence in Western sinological literature can be traced back to an article by Julius Heinrich Klaproth (1773-1835) in 1826 where the voluminous Ku-chin t'u-shu chi-ch'eng [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII](first printed 1728) is introduced as "la grande Encyclop[acute{e}]die chinoise"; from here on, the term has found its way through the works of scholars like Hirth, Mayers, Julien, Pelliot, Giles, Otto Franke, and many others. Challenging this by now almost mechanical equation, the author effectively argues that so far it never has been unambiguously determined "which literary genre of the Chinese tradition should after all be the counterpart of which European genre" (p. 9)--a simple yet remarkable observation. He traces the early history of the words lei and lei-shu and concludes that the term lei-shu as a bibliographic category emerges only in the eleventh century, comprising various contents and formats.

Unfolding the history of the term lei-shu both as a bibliographic concept and as an element of book titles, Kaderas rightly observes that the question whether or not a work carries the words lei or lei-shu in its title "says almost nothing about its bibliographic classification as 'leishu'" (p. 35). A complementary analysis of the European "encyclopedia" shows that this term is equally problematic and represents anything but a historical continuity. As Kaderas makes clear, the...