Publication of the Punctuated Edition of the Shunzhi Lishui County Gazetteer

The punctuated edition

According to a report by China Jiangsu Net dated 12 April 2017, a punctuated and annotated edition of the Lishui County Gazetteer (Shunzhi edition) was formally published after about a year and a half of editorial work.

The same report further states that only five editions of the Lishui County Gazetteer survive, namely the Wanli, Shunzhi, Kangxi, Qianlong and Guangxu editions. That is the sequence of surviving editions as this report gives it; this library holds a separate source card for each of the other four, and the sequence agrees with the report.

The base text

The version of the base text used for the punctuated edition can be given here from bibliographic records: a woodblock edition of the fifteenth year of the Shunzhi era (1658), in 10 juan with 1 prefatory juan, revised by Min Pailu and compiled by Lin Gudu. It should be noted that this set of particulars comes from bibliographic records and has not yet been settled against the title leaf and colophon of the original book; other catalogues give the present work as a woodblock edition of the thirteenth year of the Shunzhi era and do not record the prefatory juan. This catalogue divergence is recorded here without judgement.

The reviser, Min Pailu, served as magistrate of Lishui from the eleventh (1654) to the thirteenth year of the Shunzhi era; volume 1 of the Kangxi gazetteer, in its "Annals of the County", records that he rebuilt the county office, repaired the granaries at Honglan port, compiled a record of the temples, and had the Register of Equal Fields and Levied Labour drawn up. The compiler, Lin Gudu, was a poet of the late Ming and early Qing. The present work follows the plan of the Wanli gazetteer with additions and reductions, and includes such sections as the annals of the county, tables of administrative change, the treatise on establishments, the treatise on rituals, customs, the treatise on rivers and mountains, the treatise on geography, biographies of famous officials, biographies of loyal officials, and biographies of local worthy people.

The facsimile and the punctuated edition are not the same version

This library also holds, from the sample-copy submission list of the Jiangsu Provincial Library, confirmation that a modern facsimile of the Shunzhi Lishui County Gazetteer exists: it was facsimile-published by Nanjing Press as part of the Jinling Quanshu series, in one volume for the Shunzhi edition.

Two things must be strictly distinguished. A facsimile is a modern reproduction of an old book, while a punctuated edition is a work edited on the basis of the base text with punctuation and annotations added, and the year of publication, publisher and editors of the two may differ. The 2017 report relied on here records only the fact of publication of the punctuated edition and does not record the facsimile; conversely, the publication particulars of the facsimile cannot be used to fill in those of the punctuated edition. The report and the list each record one matter and are attributed separately.

Comparison of editions

For comparison, this site has examined volume 11, the "Literature" section, of the Kangxi edition of the gazetteer, which carries pieces such as the following:

自溧水道中哭王炎三首 李 白

Translated: Three Poems Mourning Wang Yan on the Road from Lishui, by Li Bai.

The differences in volume division and contents between the Shunzhi and Kangxi editions have not been checked volume by volume; the comparison is offered only as a lead.

Awaiting further material

First, the publication year, publisher, editors and book number of the punctuated edition still could not be verified and are not supplied here; citation should follow a formal bibliographic record. The year of the woodblock edition and the names of the reviser and compiler given above are particulars of the base text, not publication particulars of the punctuated edition.

Second, the editorial principles of the punctuated edition, its punctuation rules and the source documents for those rules could not be verified and are not supplied here.

Uncertainties

Quotations from the punctuated edition must be checked against the facsimile or the original before use. The sources held by this site are leads to the fact of publication and to bibliographic records only, and nothing is inferred from them about the editing of other gazetteers.

The archive status of this library's source card for the Shunzhi gazetteer is catalogued-only, meaning that no accessible online full text or facsimile has yet been found; this entry therefore quotes no text of that gazetteer, and does not assert from that card that the facsimile has been checked page by page.

The difference between "woodblock edition of the thirteenth year of the Shunzhi era" and "woodblock edition of the fifteenth year of the Shunzhi era" is a divergence of bibliographic records; the entry records only that a divergence of this kind exists and does not judge which is the year of the original engraving.