520 alexei volkov
the other is the Xiahou Yang suan jing authored by one Han Yan whose
lifetime has been a matter of controversy. Th e hypothesis advanced by Qian
Baocong and adopted by other modern authors states that the received
book is dated of the eighth century ( SJSSb : 25–7), yet the extant version
contains three juan unlike the treatises listed in the Xin Tang shu , both con-
taining only one juan.Th e examination procedure
Th ere were two kinds of examinations held in the Mathematical College:
(1) the regular tests conducted every ten days, and (2) the examinations
at the end of the year. Th e regular tests included three questions: two on
memorization of a 2000-word excerpt and one on the ‘general meaning’
( da yi ) of the excerpt. Th e examination at the end of each year was
held orally; students were asked ten questions on the ‘general meaning’. It
seems that there was no graduation examination at the end of the entire
course. 29
Th ose who successfully graduated from the College were allowed to take
the examination for the doctoral degree ming suan 30 together with
some other categories of candidates. 31 Th e examination included two parts.
Th e task for the fi rst part was to write an essay answering ten questions
related to one of the two programmes, ‘regular’ or ‘advanced’. Th e second
part of the examination in both cases consisted of a test on the memori-
zation of the treatises San deng shu and Shu shu ji yi held in the form of
‘examination by quotation’ (literally, ‘strip reading’ tie du or ‘strip
[reading] of classics’ tie jing ).^32 Th e Xin Tang shu provides the follow-
ing description of the examination procedure of the fi rst part:29 S e e XTS 44: 2a; for translation see des Rotours 1932 : 141–2, for a discussion of the procedure
see Siu and Volkov 1999.
30 Literally, ‘[He Who] Understood Computations’ (or ‘Learned in Mathematics’, as Lee 2000 :
138 suggests); the ‘he’ in the translation is imposed by the historical setting in which only men
were admissible to the state examinations. Th e appellation of the degree (and of the related
examination) was thus similar to the other titles referring to the degrees and examinations on
the Confucian classics ( ming jing , lit. ‘[He Who] Understood the Classics’), law ( ming fa
, lit. ‘[He Who] Understood the [Juridical] Norms’), calligraphy and writing ( ming zi
, lit. ‘[He Who] Understood the [Chinese] Characters’); see des Rotours 1932 : 128.
31 See des Rotours 1932 : 128, n. 1 for a detailed description of the candidates.
32 On the procedure of the ‘examination by quotation’ see des Rotours 1932 : 30–31, 141, n. 2 ; Siu
and Volkov 1999 : 91, n. 41 ; see also Lee 2000 : 142.