anthology of poetry from the time of Confucius and includes
some 305 separate poems. Four of the longer ones, about 400
lines each, go over historical events. None of the poems is
very long, suggesting that there was no epic poetry tradition
as there was in India and elsewhere in the ancient world. Th e
Li chi covers many court rites, along with anecdotes, and the
last book, the Ch’un-ch’iu, is a history of the feudal kingdom
of Lu, which included the town where Confucius was born.
During the Qin Dynasty, Qin Shi Huang ensured that his
own accomplishments were recorded in detail. By this time
printing was being used in a limited way; the earliest fully
printed book was not produced until 868 b.c.e. Printing obvi-
ously made it easier to produce many copies of works. As the
Chinese language did not suit movable type, books were pro-
duced from a car ved wooden block of an entire page. Printing
methods became more eff ective during the Han Dynasty, and
the Huai-nan-tzu (Th e Master of Huai-nan) was written in
about 140 b.c.e.
Th e next major work was the fi rst detailed history of
China. Written from about 85 b.c.e., the Shih-chi (Histori-
cal Records) took 18 years to complete and ran to 520,000
words, in 130 chapters, covering the 2,000 years of Chi-
nese history. In some ways it is similar to the Histories of
the Greek writer Herodotus (ca. 484–between 430 and 420
b.c.e.), who sought to write down every thing he knew about
history. However, the Shih-chi is a far more serious work,
lacking the idiosyncrasies of Herodotus’s text, though it is
lively and does tell anecdotes about some of the characters.
Th e work seems to have inspired the poet and historian
Pan Piao, who put together the Han shu (Han Documents),
which relate in 800,000 words the history of the Han Dy-
nasty. Th e aim of the book is to draw from previous texts,
and the Shih-chi includes a “catalogue” of works consulted.
A large number of the texts listed in this bibliography have
not survived.
In 26 b.c.e. one of the emperors of the Han Dynasty,
Cheng Di (r. 32–7 b.c.e.), tried to undo some of the damage
done during the destruction of the books by Qin Shi Huang,
ordering that copies of all literary works be assembled in his
capital, with a view to copying them and augmenting the
imperial collection. He was also keen on ensuring that the
“correct” manuscripts were being kept. Th e works were all
copied onto silken scrolls, helping to preserve many works
that might otherwise have been lost.
Th e poetry of the Qin Dynasty and especially that of the
Han Dynasty oft en led to long poems refl ecting the glory of
the Chinese Empire, its wealth, and its structure, and also
starting to include information about everyday life. Th e Yüeh
Fu (Music Bureau) was reestablished in 125 b.c.e., and it
started to gather earlier songs and music that were collected
together centrally, possibly for the fi rst time on an organized
scale. Th e ballads collected include some early poems, such as
Lo-fu hsing or Mo-shang sang (Th e Song of Lo-fu or Roadside
Mulberry Tree), in which a government commissioner gives a
ride in his carriage to a young lady he meets in his travels.
Th e collapse of the Han Dynasty and the subsequent wars
resulted in the period known as the Six Dynasties (220–589
c.e.). In northern China warlike tribes invaded and gradually
came to adopt Chinese ways, including literary traditions. In
the south Chinese culture prevailed, with poems with a ro-
mantic theme being more popular than the military epics of
the north. Th ese diff erences became accentuated for several
centuries, though the unity of the later Sui Dynasty and Tang
Dynasty did result in a fusion of the two concepts. Th e relative
peace of the Tang Dynasty also allowed for more literary works
from earlier periods to be written down and reinterpreted.VIETNAM AND KOREA
In Vietnam, occupied by China for more than a thousand
years, from 111 b.c.e. to 939 c.e., the Chinese literary tradi-
tion took over from the previous folk ballads, and the Viet-
namese came to adopt the Chinese script. Classical Chinese
was used for offi cial proclamations as well as for inscriptions
on a number of early Vietnamese stelae that survive from this
period. Th e variations in language tended to come from the
recording of legends and Vietnamese mythical heroes as well
as from stories that sought to portray Vietnamese as diff erent
from Chinese, such as the early accounts of the Trung sisters,
who led the Vietnamese against the Chinese for three years
(39–42 c.e.). Although the main account of their lives was
from a chronicle written in 1272 c.e., the amount of detail in
it shows that it must have come from an ancient text.
At the same time, Chinese merchants came to settle in
other parts of Asia and proved to be a major infl uence on
early literature in Korea, which also used Chinese characters
before adopting its own national alphabet. Ancient Korean
poems tend to follow Chinese themes and styles, using a sys-
tem known as Hyangga poetry, in which Korean and Chi-
nese words are used, with some characters taken from one
language and other concepts expressed in characters from
the other. Th is system continued until medieval times, with
the fi rst changes coming about in the seventh century c.e.
Many of these Korean poems survive, as do other early liter-
ary works that include texts on Confucian ideas, Buddhism,
and also Daoism.JAPAN
Japanese literature also traces its origins from Chinese literary
styles, and the Japanese originally used the Chinese script to
record their thoughts. Th e oldest-known Japanese inscription,
on a sword from 440 c.e., clearly shows the use of Chinese
characters to cover Japanese names and expressions. Gradu-
ally the Japanese came to use their own characters, but not un-
til the eighth century c.e. Indeed, the term “ancient” Japanese
literature oft en refers to the works of the eighth century c.e.POLYNESIA
Although there is no written literature from the Pacifi c dur-
ing this period, there are legends and stories that may have
originated from ancient times. Many of them concern great652 literature: Asia and the Pacific