University of Virginia Library

PREFACE

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".