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29-701: According to the Book of Han , "the Xiongnu called the Heaven (天) ' Chēnglí ' (撐犁) and they called a child (子) gūtú (孤塗). As for Chányú (單于), it is a "vast [and] great appearance" (廣大之貌).". L. Rogers and Edwin G. Pulleyblank argue that the title chanyu may be equivalent to the later attested title tarkhan , suggesting that the Chinese pronunciation was originally dān-ĥwāĥ , an approximation for *darxan . Linguist Alexander Vovin tentatively proposes

58-587: A Yeniseian etymology for 撐犁孤塗單于, in Old Chinese pronunciation *treng-ri ka-la dar-ɢā , from four roots: * *tɨŋgɨr- "high", * kala- "son, child", * tɨl "lower reaches of the Yenisei " or "north", and * qʌ̄j ~ * χʌ̄j "prince"; as a whole "Son of Heaven, Ruler of the North". (赫連勃勃) Book of Han The Book of Han is a history of China finished in 111 CE, covering

87-786: A Ph.D. in philosophy (1925). He taught at University of Minnesota and Marshall College before undertaking the Han shu translation project at the behest of the American Council of Learned Societies. Subsequently, Dubs taught at Duke University , Columbia University and Hartford Seminary . In 1947, Dubs moved to England to take up the Chair of Chinese at Oxford University , which had been vacant since 1935. He retired in 1959 and remained in Oxford until his death in 1969. Homer H. Dubs, like many early American sinologists, had his introduction to

116-466: A battle against the Han. Defeated again, they were settled at a place called Liqian located in modern Yongchang County , Jinchang , Gansu province. Although this story has been seized upon by enthusiastic Chinese of the area and non specialist Westerners, at least two eminent Chinese authorities have shown that the notion has serious shortcomings. Following publication of the first volume of History of

145-408: A chronological overview of the most important occurrences, as seen from the imperial court. Biao (表, tables), 8 volumes. Chronological tables of important people. Zhi (志, memoirs), 10 volumes. Each treatise describes an area of effort of the state. Zhuan (傳, exemplary traditions, usually translated as biographies), 70 volumes. Biographies of important people. The biographies confine themselves to

174-865: A missionary, studying Chinese in Nanjing before moving on to work in Hunan. Returning from China, Dubs attended the University of Chicago and earned a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1925 with a dissertation entitled "The Philosophy of Hsüntze: Ancient Confusionism [ sic ] as Developed in the Philosophy of Hsüntze", which was the basis for his later two-volume work on the Xunzi . After receiving his degree, Dubs taught philosophy, first at University of Minnesota (1925–27) and then at Marshall College (1927–34). Throughout his life, Dubs researched and published on

203-560: A wide range of topics in Chinese philosophy and history. In the mid-1930s he was commissioned by the American Council of Learned Societies to undertake the work for which he would become best known, a translation of Ban Gu 's Han shu . During 1934-37, Dubs worked on the translation assiduously with three Chinese collaborators, Jen T'ai, C.H. Ts'ui, and P'an Lo-chi. They produced a copiously annotated three-volume translation of

232-523: Is a modern commentary. Homer H. Dubs Homer Hasenpflug Dubs (March 28, 1892 – August 16, 1969) was an American sinologist . Though best known for his translation of sections of Ban Gu 's Book of Han , he published on a wide range of topics in ancient Chinese history, astronomy and philosophy. Raised in China as the son of missionaries, he returned to the United States and earned

261-425: Is recorded, "The people of Wo are located across the ocean from Lelang Commandery , are divided into more than one hundred tribes, and come to offer tribute from time to time." It is later recorded that in 57, the southern Wa kingdom of Na sent an emissary named Taifu to pay tribute to Emperor Guangwu and received a golden seal . The seal itself was discovered in northern Kyūshū in the 18th century. According to

290-779: Is translated to English by Cullen. Ban Gu's history set the standard for the writings of later Chinese dynasties, and today it is a reference used to study the Han period. It is regarded as one of the "Four Histories" 四史 of the Twenty-Four Histories canon, together with the Records of the Grand Historian , Records of the Three Kingdoms and History of the Later Han . Ji (紀, annal), 12 volumes. Emperors' biographies in strict annal form, which offer

319-464: The Book of Wei , the most powerful kingdom on the archipelago in the third century was called Yamatai and was ruled by the legendary Queen Himiko . The comments of both Yan Shigu (581–645) and Su Lin are included in the Palace Edition. The Hanshu Buzhu 漢書補注 by Wang Xianqian (1842–1918) contains notes by a number commentators, including Wang himself. Hanshu Kuiguan 漢書管窺 by Yang Shuda

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348-586: The Western Regions contained in the 96th fascicle. The "Annals" section and the three chapters covering the reign of Wang Mang were translated into English by Homer H. Dubs . Other chapters have been rendered into English by A. F. P. Hulsewé , Clyde B. Sargent, Nancy Lee Swann , and Burton Watson . The text includes a description of the Triple Concordance Calendar System 三統曆 developed by Liu Xin in fascicle 21. This

377-488: The Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. The work was composed by Ban Gu (32–92 CE), an Eastern Han court official, with the help of his sister Ban Zhao , continuing the work of their father, Ban Biao . They modelled their work on the Records of the Grand Historian ( c.  91 BCE ), a cross-dynastic general history, but theirs

406-765: The "Annals" section of the Han shu (chapters 1-12) and the three chapters (99A,B&C) devoted to Wang Mang , published under the title History of the Former Han Dynasty (Baltimore, 1938–55). The first two volumes were awarded the coveted Prix Stanislas Julien of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres . Two companion volumes, including a prolegomena and a glossary were planned. Dubs' publications on China (he remained interested in philosophy throughout his life) were characterized by solid scholarship and an extraordinary breadth of interests. He did pioneering work on ancient Chinese astronomy , in particular

435-518: The 1962-63 academic year at the University of Hawai'i and lecturing in Australia. He lived in Oxford until his death in 1969. As a person, Dubs was characterized by his generosity and his eccentricity. He was once described as a " Spinozan saint who had missed some of the bigger academic plums because he wouldn't press his pants" and offended some of the Oxford dons by parking his motorcycle in

464-729: The Former Han Dynasty , Dubs taught at Duke University and its Divinity School, Columbia and the Hartford Seminary . He also worked on the Chinese History Project of the Institute of Pacific Relations with Karl August Wittfogel at Columbia University. Finally, in 1947 he was invited to join the faculty at Oxford University , where he took up the chair of Chinese that had been occupied by eminent pioneer Sinologists James Legge and William Edward Soothill . He retired from Oxford in 1959 and subsequently spent

493-681: The Roman empire . He wrote several articles on the subject, culminating in the controversial A Roman City in Ancient China . This work purported to show that a Roman legion that had been part of the army of Marcus Licinius Crassus defeated at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 B.C. had settled in Northwestern China . The defeated legion, Dubs speculated, had been relocated further east by the victorious Parthians , for whom they fought in

522-468: The book in 111, 19 years after Ban Gu had died in prison. An outstanding scholar in her own right, she is thought to have written volumes 13–20 (eight chronological tables) and 26 (treatise on astronomy), the latter with the help of Ma Xu. As with the Records of the Grand Historian , Zhang Qian , a notable Chinese general who travelled to the west, was a key source for the cultural and socio-economic data on

551-491: The death of the Han Project's director, Jack Dull , the manuscript still had not been published, and with the end of the project, the materials were scattered and some of them lost. Recently, however, the [Glossary] materials have been recovered and are gradually being made available on-line, as have been the three volumes of History of the Former Han Dynasty . Together with the already published materials, they constitute

580-599: The description of events that clearly show the exemplary character of the person. Two or more people are treated in one main article, as they belong to the same class of people. The last articles describe the relations between China and the various peoples at and beyond the frontiers, including the contested areas of Ba in present-day Yunnan; Nanyue in present-day Guangdong, Guangxi, and Vietnam; and Minyue in present-day Fujian. The people of Japan make their first unambiguous appearance in written history in this book ( Book of Han , Volume 28, Treatise on Geography), in which it

609-527: The fifth century by Fan Ye (398–445 CE). This history developed from a continuation of Sima Qian 's Records of the Grand Historian , initiated by Ban Gu's father, Ban Biao , at the beginning of the Later Han dynasty. This work is usually referred to as Later Traditions (後傳), which indicates that the elder Ban's work was meant to be a continuation. Other scholars of the time, including Liu Xin and Yang Xiong also worked on continuations of Sima's history. After Ban Biao's death, his eldest son Ban Gu

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638-434: The hallway. Like some others at Oxford, he also dabbled a bit in the occult. But he was an erudite and respected scholar, and his former student David Hawkes remembered "was always able to relate what he studied as an academic with what he had lived through as a younger man and to remind us by anecdote or example that the ancient texts he taught formed part of a continuum with the living present." At Professor Dubs' death,

667-612: The material planned for the two companion volumes to the History of the Former Han Dynasty remained unpublished. A group of scholars reworked the manuscripts – said to total over 1000 pages – to replace the romanization and render it acceptable to an academic press. Responsibility for it was taken over by the Han Dynasty History Project at the University of Washington , where Wittfogel had gone after leaving Columbia. Unfortunately, at

696-444: The observance of eclipses. But the breadth of his education and interests combined with a fertile mind to lead him into curious directions. One was his development of an idiosyncratic system of romanization in which the Chinese characters were replaced by a system of letters and numbers that indicated the pronunciation, tone and constituent elements of the original Chinese graph. Thus, Qian Han shu (Wade Giles Ch'ien Han shu ) 前漢書

725-423: The periods where they overlapped, Ban Gu adopted nearly verbatim much of Sima Qian's material, though in some cases he also expanded it. He also incorporated at least some of what his father had written, though it is difficult to know how much. The completed work ran to a total of 100 fascicles 卷, and included essays on law , science , geography , and literature . Ban Gu's younger sister Ban Zhao finished writing

754-640: The subject as the child of missionary parents in China. Born in Deerfield, Illinois , he spent his childhood in Hunan Province . He studied briefly at Oberlin College and then graduated from Yale University (1914) with a major in philosophy. Subsequently, he earned an A.M. in philosophy at Columbia University and a B.D. at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York . He returned to China as

783-461: Was dissatisfied with what his father had completed, and he began a new history that started with the beginning of the Han dynasty. This distinguished it from Sima Qian's history, which had begun with China's earliest legendary rulers. In this way, Ban Gu initiated the Jizhuanti ( 紀傳體，纪传体 ) format for dynastic histories that was to remain the model for the official histories until modern times. For

812-437: Was rendered Ts'ien2R Han4SU-shu1WE. Although he represented his system as a variation on the widely used Wade Giles romanization, the field declined to adopt his "Wade-Dubs" system. Indeed, it was his insistence on using the system for the remaining volumes of History of the Former Han Dynasty that prevented them from being published. Another direction Dubs' interests took him was the pursuit of contacts between Han China and

841-529: Was the first in this annals-biography form to cover a single dynasty. It is the best source, sometimes the only one, for many topics such as literature in this period. The Book of Han is also called the Book of the Former Han ( 前漢書 ; Qián Hàn shū ) to distinguish it from the Book of the Later Han ( 後漢書 ; Hòu Hàn shū ) which covers the Eastern Han period (25–220 CE), and was composed in

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