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Preface
A translation of the Yen T'ieh Lun,
Discourses on Salt and Iron, by the Han literatus
Huan K'uan (Ist cent. B.C.), has not hitherto been attemped. The present
rendering of the first four chüan (nineteen
chapters) of the ten (sixty chapters) into which the work has
usually been divided, is primarily for the
uses of Western readers; and, accordingly, much that has been familiar or
even commonplace to the Chinese scholar erudite, is set forth in detail
in the notes. Nevertheless, this important literary work of the early Han period,
containing what has been termed material of
fundamental importance, is perhaps not known as fully to the Chinese
themselves, as it deserves; and the present
rendering into English may serve the further useful purpose of attracting
the attention of Chinese students to a work which so graphically
describes the social order of early China.
Hitherto the efforts of Western sinologues have been centred very
largely on an exposition of the life and thought of China before the
great imperial consolidations of the Ch'in (220-206 B.C.) and Han
(206 [202] B.C.-220 A.D.) eras. To be sure, the principles of Chinese
ethics, political science and social economy were formulated in the
ante-Han centuries, and a literature, rich enough indeed, but whose
authenticity is often in dispute, has passed down from these early times.
But much of our concept of the earlier era, particularly of the venerated
Chou dynasty (? 1122-249 B.C.), risks being but an idealized creation of
the Han scholars and administrators. It is in the first two centuries
before the Christian era that a knowledge of the conditions attending the
societal development of the Chinese people rests on firmer ground. The
mists of antiquity lift then, and the innumerable and indefatigable
writers, compilers, and editors, who make the time so fruitful in
letters, disclose the vast Empire, filled with an active and energetic
people, creating a cultural system, which for impressiveness and
influence upon the world of Asia Major, was not surpassed by Greece and
Rome in the Occident.
Of this world we have as yet only glimpses, and its richness, in
all the varied aspects of human activity, still remains largely a
subject for such studies, as our own prototypes, the Mediterranean
civilizations, have already enjoyed. One work, monumental in scholarship,
the translation into French of the first forty-seven chapters of the
Shih-chi, the Historical Memoirs of Ssŭ-ma
Ch'ien, by the late Édouard Chavannes, provides in part a view of
China of the second century B.C. Other Western scholars are continuing
the task of translating documents of this era, disclosing more and
more the Chinese world contemporary with the Roman empire at its greatest
extent. The Yen T'ieh Lun is one of the significant
works of the time, dealing as it does with the fundamental problems,
social, political and economic, which confronted the administrators
of the expanding Chinese empire of two milleniums ago. It comprises, in
effect, an epitome of Chinese thought and racial experience to the time
of the compilation of the work, in the first half of the century before
the Christian era. The wealth of historical and literary allusion which
embellishes the text, forms a thesaurus for the Western student of early
China. For Huan K'uan's pages not only introduce the reader to the
author's own times, but lead back to the earlier world of Chinese origins
in history and tradition.
In the undertaking of reproducing in a Western language, utterly
alien to the original Chinese literary medium, Huan K'uan's first
nineteen chapters, I have been fortunate in availing myself of the
methods of the European school of sinology. For this advantage I am
especially grateful to Dr. J. J. L. Duyvendak, Professor of Chinese and
Director of the Sinologisch Instituut at the University of Leiden,
Holland, who has generously provided his suggestions and criticism toward
a solution of many difficult and obscure passages in the Chinese text.
Professor Duyvendak's studies in the economic and political principles of
the Chinese School of Law have enabled him to
indicate in the Yen T'ieh Lun important currents of
thought which prompted the administrative policies of the Han period, and
which proceeded from centuries earlier than Huan K'uan's time.
I have drawn freely, as well, for material in my notes, on the
studies of other European scholars, such as Professors Soothill, Maspero,
Pelliot, Granet, Karlgren, Franke, Forke, and Margouliès.
For interpretations of the political and economic
theory of ancient China, the writings of the late Liang Ch'i-ch'ao have
furnished me with valuable suggestions; and for a consideration of the
prose of the Han period in its relation to the vernacular language of
the time, I have relied on Dr. Hu Shih's studies. It has seemed
unnecessary to append a bibliographical list of authorities consulted.
These are cited by name in the foot-notes. The various editions of the
Yen T'ieh Lun are discussed in the Introduction.
References to Chinese works are usually made only by chapter or book, as
the enumeration of the folio number is rarely of
utility, due to the variations in the pagination of the innumerable
editions of the older standard works. Citations from secondary Chinese
sources have been generally avoided as of questionable value.
In the preliminary translation work, I have had the cooperation
of Mr. Lin Tung-chi, M. A., assistant in the department of Oriental
languages of the University of California, scion of a distinguished
family of administrators and scholars, who happily combines, as so many
of his nationals of the present generation, a sound background in his
national culture with an alert appreciation of Western critical
methodology. It is a truism that the most fruitful work in Chinese
studies will continue to grow from the cooperation of Chinese and
Occidental scholarship. To Baron Peter A. Boodberg, Ph. D., I owe
frequent suggestions in the phrasing of certain passages; and the not
inconsiderable task involved in the compilation of the glossaries has
been undertaken by him.
I am to acknowledge my special indebtedness to Dr. Robert G.
Sproul, President of the University of California, and to the Chairman of
the Board of Research, Professor Armin O. Leuschner, for their generous
support of the protracted research connected with the present work; and
to Dr. Berthold Laufer, dean of American sinologists, for his continued
interest and encouragement. For the completion of the translation of the
Yen T'ieh Lun, the American Council of Learned
Societies, through the Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Studies,
has provided a subvention.
For rendering the many quotations found in the Yen
T'ieh Lun, I have had recourse to the standard translations of
Legge, Soothill, Duyvendak, Dubs and others, on the principle of not
doing over again what has already been adequately done. In
style, my own translation of Huan K'uan's text may at times appear a
departure from the English idiom, for in this admittedly difficult text,
it has often been found necessary to provide the literal rendering of the
original Chinese, to retain its true meaning and spirit. The temptation
is ever present to interpret, rather than to translate. Passages will
doubtless be found which have been misconstrued. The responsibility
for such lapses will be wholly assumed by the translator, the more
readily as I shall not be the first to fall into such error, "for where
even the strongest fall, the weak need not be ashamed to slip".
Esson M. Gale. Leiden, September 18, 1931.
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