The Chinese sovereign was the ruler of a particular monarchical regime in the historical periods of ancient China and imperial China. Sovereigns ruling the same regime,and descended from the same paternal line,constituted a dynasty. Several titles and naming schemes have been used throughout Chinese history.
Huangdi,translated into English as Emperor,was the superlative title held by monarchs of China who ruled various imperial regimes in Chinese history. In traditional Chinese political theory,the emperor was considered the Son of Heaven and the autocrat of all under Heaven. Under the Han dynasty,Confucianism replaced Legalism as the official political theory and succession in most cases theoretically followed agnatic primogeniture. The lineage of emperors descended from a paternal family line constituted a dynasty.
Zizhi Tongjian is a pioneering reference work in Chinese historiography,published in 1084 AD during the Northern Song dynasty in the form of a chronicle recording Chinese history from 403 BC to 959 AD,covering 16 dynasties and spanning almost 1400 years. The main text is arranged into 294 scrolls totaling about 3 million Chinese characters.
The Erya or Erh-ya is the first surviving Chinese dictionary. Bernhard Karlgren (1931:49) concluded that "the major part of its glosses must reasonably date from the 3rd century BC."
Mathematics in China emerged independently by the 11th century BCE. The Chinese independently developed a real number system that includes significantly large and negative numbers,more than one numeral system,algebra,geometry,number theory and trigonometry.
Huangdi Neijing,literally the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor or Esoteric Scripture of the Yellow Emperor,is an ancient Chinese medical text or group of texts that has been treated as a fundamental doctrinal source for Chinese medicine for more than two millennia. The work comprises two texts—each of eighty-one chapters or treatises in a question-and-answer format between the mythical Yellow Emperor and six of his equally legendary ministers.
The Heirloom Seal of the Realm,also known in English as the Imperial Seal of China,was a Chinese jade seal carved out of Heshibi,a sacred piece of jade.
The Taiping Yulan,translated as the Imperial Reader or Readings of the Taiping Era,is a massive Chinese leishu encyclopedia compiled by a team of scholars from 977 to 983. It was commissioned by the imperial court of the Song dynasty during the first era of the reign of Emperor Taizong. It is divided into 1,000 volumes and 55 sections,which consisted of about 4.7 million Chinese characters. It included citations from about 2,579 different kinds of documents spanning from books,poetry,odes,proverbs,steles to miscellaneous works. After its completion,the Emperor Taizong is said to have finished reading it within a year,going through 3 volumes per day. It is considered one of the Four Great Books of Song.
Cefu Yuangui (冊府元龜) is the largest leishu (encyclopedia) compiled during the Chinese Song Dynasty (AD 960–1279). It was the last of the Four Great Books of Song,the previous three having been published in the 10th century.
The leishu is a genre of reference books historically compiled in China and other East Asian countries. The term is generally translated as "encyclopedia",although the leishu are quite different from the modern notion of encyclopedia.
The Liexian Zhuan,sometimes translated as Biographies of Immortals,is the oldest extant Chinese hagiography of Daoist xian "transcendents;immortals;saints;alchemists". The text,which compiles the life stories of about 70 mythological and historical xian,was traditionally attributed to the Western Han dynasty editor and imperial librarian Liu Xiang,but internal evidence dates it to the 2nd century CE during the Eastern Han period. The Liexian Zhuan became a model for later authors,such as Ge Hong's 4th century CE Shenxian zhuan.
The ranks of imperial consorts have varied over the course of Chinese history but remained important throughout owing to its importance in management of the inner court and in imperial succession,which ranked heirs according to the prominence of their mothers in addition to their strict birth order. Regardless of the age,however,it is common in English translation to simplify these hierarchy into the three ranks of Empress,consorts,and concubines. It is also common to use the term "harem",an Arabic loan word used in recent times to refer to imperial women's forbidden quarters in many countries. In later Chinese dynasties,these quarters were known as the back palace. In Chinese,the system is called the Rear Palace System.
This is a family tree of Chinese monarchs from the foundation of the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE until the end of the Sixteen Kingdoms period.
Chinese encyclopedias comprise both Chinese-language encyclopedias and foreign-language ones about China or Chinese topics. There is a type of native Chinese reference work called leishu that is sometimes translated as "encyclopedia",but although these collections of quotations from classic texts are expansively "encyclopedic",a leishu is more accurately described as a "compendium" or "anthology". The long history of Chinese encyclopedias began with the Huanglanleishu and continues with online encyclopedias such as the Baike Encyclopedia.
Huang–Lao or Huanglao was the most influential Chinese school of thought in the early 2nd-century BCE Han dynasty,having its origins in a broader political-philosophical drive looking for solutions to strengthen the feudal order as depicted in Zhou propaganda. Not systematically explained by historiographer Sima Qian,it is generally interpreted as a school of syncretism,developing into a major religion,the beginnings of religious Taoism.
Bowuzhi by Zhang Hua was a compendium of Chinese stories about natural wonders and marvelous phenomena. It quotes from many early Chinese classics,and diversely includes subject matter from Chinese mythology,history,geography,and folklore. The Bowuzhi,which is one of the first works in the literary genre of zhiguai "tales of anomalies;supernatural stories",records the earliest versions of several myths,such as the white yenü 野女"wild women" living south of China in a society without men. Scholars have described the Bowuzhi as "a miscellany of scientific interest" and "an important minor classic".
The Cangjiepian,also known as the Three Chapters,was a c. 220 BCE Chinese primer and a prototype for Chinese dictionaries. Li Si,Chancellor of the Qin dynasty,compiled it for the purpose of reforming written Chinese into the new orthographic standard Small Seal Script. Beginning in the Han dynasty,many scholars and lexicographers expanded and annotated the Cangjiepian. By the end of the Tang dynasty (618–907),it had become a lost work,but in 1977,archeologists discovered a cache of texts written on bamboo strips,including fragments of the Cangjiepian.
The Jijiupian is a Chinese character primer that was compiled by the Han dynasty scholar Shi You around 40 BCE. Similar to an abecedarium,it contains a series of orthographic word lists,categorized according to character radical,and briefly explained in rhymed lines. In the Qin and Han dynasties,several similar othographic primers were in circulation,such as Cangjiepian,but the Jijiupian is the only one that survived for two millennia.
The Shiben or Book of Origins was an early Chinese encyclopedia which recorded imperial genealogies from the mythical Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors down to the late Spring and Autumn period,explanations of the origin of clan names,and records of legendary and historical Chinese inventors. It was written during the 2nd century BC at the time of the Han dynasty.
Shilin Guangji is an encyclopedia written by Chen Yuanjing (陈元靓) during the Yuan dynasty and Mongol Empire. The book contains text written in Chinese characters,Mongolian script,and the ʼPhags-pa script. Chen Yuanjing was a native of Chong'an (崇安) in Fujian and was born during the later years of the Southern Song before it was annexed by the Yuan dynasty. The encyclopedia contains a wealth of info on the daily life during the Mongol Empire and Yuan dynasty,including illustrations,maps and cartography. Among historical texts,it was easy to understand and popular even after the Yuan. Chen's book was used by scholars during the Ming and Qing to compile their own encyclopedias.
