Reviews of Books 149 a decidedly aristocratic context, but many of the identifiably later anecdotes are also clearly related to the life circumstances of the historical Yan Ying. For instance, Scott Cook has demonstrated that discussions of ministerial loyalty scattered in Yanzi chunqiu reflect the situation of a hereditary minister attached to the “altars of soil and grain” (sheji 社稷) of his home state rather than a Warring Statesperiod situation in which a counselor could flexibly shift his allegiance from one employer to another. Proper contextualization of the thought of Yanzi chunqiu therefore requires a nuanced understanding of the dating of individual anecdotes and the ongoing tension between the original aristocratic setting of Yan Ying’s life and the new meritocratic realities of the age during which most of the anecdotes appear to have been revised or composed. This brings me to the final observation concerning the nature of Yanzi chunqiu. This text epitomizes what David Schaberg has identified as a singularly important genre in pre-imperial literature: didactic anecdotes (“Chinese History and Philosophy,” in The Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol. I: Beginnings to AD 600, ed. Andrew Feldherr and Grant Hardy [Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011], 394–414; see also Rhetorical Uses of Anecdotes in Early China, ed. Paul Van Els and Sarah A. Queen [Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 2017]). The text of Yanzi Chunqiu in its current (Han) edition incorporates over two hundred anecdotes about Yan Ying. Some of these may be close to actual records of the historical Yan Ying’s activities; others are embellished or radically modified versions of earlier narratives; and many others were simply invented by anonymous Warring States-period (and later?) authors. Careful exploration of the anecdotes in Yanzi chunqiu, their filiations, possible evolution in their narrative form, the importance of the original historical context (or the lack thereof) for their authors, and so forth: all these may considerably advance our understanding of the anecdotal genre. It may be hoped that Milburn’s pioneering translation will encourage more students to study Yanzi chunqiu and restore its rightful place as an important locus of knowledge of pre-imperial Chinese literature, history, and thought. YURI PINES 尤銳 NANKAI UNIVERSITY, TIANJIN, and HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM The Gongyang Commentary on The Spring and Autumn Annals: A Full Translation. By HARRY MILLER. New York: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2015. Pp. viii + 311. $95. The Gongyang Commentary (Gōngyáng zhuàn 公羊傳) is one of three major early interpretive traditions associated with the Spring and Autumn (Chūnqiū 春秋). Gōngyáng in particular exerted a profound influence on the orthodox understanding of the Spring and Autumn, and a complete, scholarly translation of this important work is certainly needed. But this translation falls well short of adequately filling that need. The translator, Harry Miller, states that the translation is directed at the “general reader.” Yet this work is far more likely to be read by scholars, and even translations aimed at general readers should meet basic scholarly standards. This translation fails to meet such standards in three significant respects. First, it does not make sufficient use of traditional and contemporary scholarship on the Gōngyáng. Second, its format, with no Chinese characters, no bibliography, and scant historical contextualization, does not aid the reader in understanding the text. Third, it contains translation errors and inaccuracies and substantially misrepresents the style and form of Gōngyáng. The source text for the translation is a single, modern edition, Xīn yì Gōngyáng zhuàn 新譯公羊 傳, annotated and translated into modern Chinese by Xuě Kè 雪克, and edited by Zhōu Fèngwǔ 周鳳 五 (Taipei: Sānmín 三民, 2008). The Sānmín editions of classics such as Gōngyáng are indispensable for beginning students of Classical Chinese: the primary text is annotated with zhùyīn fúhào 注音符 號, and accompanied by notes and a modern Chinese paraphrase written at a level accessible to the average Chinese-speaking undergraduate. However, the Sānmín volumes are student editions, and as such are unsuitable as the basis for scholarly translation. (Incidentally, the translator misidentifies the source text for his translation as Xin shi Gongyang zhuan, apparently confusing yì 譯, ‘translate’ with shì 釋, ‘explain’; Introduction, p. 5.) 150 Journal of the American Oriental Society 138.1 (2018) Not only is the translation handicapped by the use of a student edition as a source text, it is further rendered unreliable by the translator’s failure to consult the wide range of existing Gōngyáng scholarship, contemporary and traditional. In the 1970s, Göran Malmqvist already translated most of the narrative passages in Gōngyáng and analyzed the grammar and lexicon (Malmqvist 1971, 1975, 1977). He also recently reviewed the edition on which this translation is based (Mǎ 2009). Yet the translator seems unaware of Malmqvist’s scholarship. Equally troubling is his failure to consult or even acknowledge the work of Joachim Gentz, the leading Gōngyáng scholar in the Western hemisphere, who has written a book and numerous articles on Gōngyáng. (Admittedly, Gentz’s magisterial volume, Das Gongyang zhuan, is not in English, but conveniently for those of us who do not read German, Gentz has revised and updated much of his work and made it available in his numerous English articles and book chapters.) In the footnotes to the translation (there is no bibliography), the three sources cited with most frequency are James Legge’s 1972 translation of the Chūnqiū and Zuǒ zhuàn 左傳 (but not his scholarly notes and frontmatter), Xuě and Zhōu’s edition of Gōngyáng, and Wikipedia. The author’s debt to the first two of these sources is acknowledged and full (if inaccurate) citations provided on the last page of the introduction. The authority of Wikipedia (both English and Chinese) is invoked no fewer than fifteen times. By contrast, the translator consults the commentary of Hé Xiū 何休 (129–182) only twice (the index lists five references to Hé Xiū, but three merely note that Xuě and Zhōu have cited him as an authority), and does not mention the subcommentary of Xú Yàn 徐彥 (Táng), nor the many contributions of Qīng philologists. The translation is heavily footnoted, but matters such as textual variants or debate over how certain passages should be understood are not treated. Many notes identify individuals mentioned in the text and the relationships among them, and others identify locations in relation to ancient Chinese states, but without reference to modern geography or contemporary place names. Sources for this information are typically not identified. Some notes contain serious errors. An egregious example occurs in reference to a Gōngyáng passage concerning dating of eclipse records; the note contains the startling assertion that “there seem to be far too many eclipses recorded in this book, and an improbably high proportion of them are said to occur on the first day of the month” (p. 13 n. 10). In fact, solar eclipses occur only at the new moon, i.e., the first day of the lunar month, and it is impossible for a solar eclipse to take place at any other time. Furthermore, the Spring and Autumn is known for the accuracy of its eclipse records: thirty-four of the thirty-seven eclipses recorded in the Spring and Autumn have been scientifically verified, and if every single eclipse visible from Lu had been recorded, we would find approximately sixty eclipse records. That is, there are not too many eclipses, but too few. (On the number of eclipses, see Yáng Bójùn 1991: 21–24; for a discussion of the surprising accuracy of the Spring and Autumn eclipse records, see Stephenson and Yau 1992: 31–51.) This and other errors could have been avoided by consulting the scholarly literature. The translation is preceded by an introduction of four and a half pages, which gives a short, uncritical overview of traditional views of Gōngyáng composition, and presents and defends certain translation choices. The introduction does not examine the historical or intellectual context in which Gōngyáng was composed, let alone discuss its later influence on Chinese thought. The translation includes both the Spring and Autumn and Gōngyáng. Gōngyáng is written in what is often described as a catechismal, question-and-answer form, and formatting is used to distinguish passages of different types. Thus, the Spring and Autumn records are printed in bold, the commentarial questions in roman, and the answers in italics. This is fairly consistent through the volume, but at times the typographical distinction between question and answer breaks down, whether because what is part of the answer and what is part of the subsequent question is uncertain (e.g., on p. 29), or perhaps because of typesetting errors (e.g., p. 97, in which a part of an answer appears in roman). Completely absent from the volume, including introduction, notes, and index, are any Chinese characters, a decision which the translator defends by asserting that “nothing seems to turn off the general reader more than all those parenthetical insertions of Chinese characters” (p. 4). A confusing aspect of the translation, connected to the absence of characters, is the failure to distinguish homophones. For example, most instances of “Duke of Zhou” correspond to 周公, but “Duke of Zhou” may also Reviews of Books 151 refer to 州公 (Huán 5, p. 33). Some such instances are footnoted, but given the decision to exclude Chinese characters, one wishes that the translator had used an orthographic device within the text to indicate distinctions consistently. Another example is that of the states of Xú 徐 and Xǔ 許 (which are not homophonous, having different tones); see, e.g., pp. 87 and 99. In the case of tonal contrasts, a common practice is to double the vowel of a third-tone word (thus Xu and Xuu), a device borrowed from the Gwoyeu Romatzyh Romanization system, as in the conventional spellings for the modern provinces Shanxi (Shānxī) and Shaanxi (Shǎnxī). Also perplexing is the rendering of sexagenary cycle date notations, which are simply Romanized without discussion beyond associating them with the unexplained “‘stems and branches’ system” mentioned in the introduction (p. 4). Given the translator’s strong preference for avoiding foreign words, one wonders why he did not convert these references to “day 1,” “day 15,” and so on. Of far greater concern than the preceding (though in part a consequence of failure to engage with Gōngyáng scholarship) are the many serious translation errors. Translation does not merely refer to converting a source text to its semantic equivalent in the target language; it also entails conveying (as much as possible) the basic stylistic features of a text. Gōngyáng exegesis employs formulaic patterns to analyze the Spring and Autumn entries, frequently repeating the same word, phrase, or sentence pattern. This formulaic repetition is one of two defining stylistic features of Gōngyáng, the other being the use of question-and-answer format. This translation’s most serious defect arises from the decision, apparently deliberate, to depart from the basic style of Gōngyáng by varying language and phrasing where the original uses exactly the same words. By introducing variation where none exists in the source text, the translation has eliminated one of the Gōngyáng commentary’s primary features, and has rendered opaque to the reader many instances in which the same pattern is used and the same principle applied. Examples are too numerous to list; below are a few representative cases. One example of inconsistency occurs in translations of the four passages containing the sentence nèi dà è huì 內大惡諱, which may be translated, “With respect to the domestic, major faults are avoided.” No two instances of these four identical passages are translated the same way in this volume: The subject of evil actions on the part of the state of Lu is generally taboo. (Yǐn 10, p. 25) Ordinarily, in the treatment of the affairs of the state of Lu, greatly reprehensible actions are taboo. (Huán 2, p. 29) The usage is in the nature of an “official story,” designed to avoid mention of a great evil. (Zhāo 4, p. 220) Because of the concurrent need to avoid mentioning the dishonorable deeds of the state of Lu. (Āi 7, p. 269) The unnecessary variation completely obscures the fact that all four passages use identical phrasing to express the same principle. A similar example is the case of the following sequence, which occurs four times, varying only the toponym and date: 取 [Place]. (Spring and Autumn) [Place]者何？邾婁之邑也.曷為不繫乎邾婁？諱亟也. (Gōngyáng) This reviewer would render this pattern as follows: We took [Place]. What was [Place]? It was a Zhūlóu settlement. For what reason did they not explicitly link it to Zhūlóu? It was to avoid recording the excess. This translation of Gōngyáng contains the following four renderings (typographical distinctions of the translation are retained, but characters for toponyms have been added): In the autumn, Genmou 根牟 was occupied. What was Genmou? It was a town in the state of Zhu Lou. Why is no reference made to Zhu Lou here? To avoid the shame of this excess. (Xuan 9, p. 153) 152 Journal of the American Oriental Society 138.1 (2018) Zhuan 鄟 was occupied. What was Zhuan? Zhuan was a town in the state of Zhu Lou. Why is it not associated with Zhu Lou in the record? In order to avoid dwelling on this example of unseemly haste. (Cheng 6, p. 171) In the summer, Shi 詩 was taken. What was Shi? It was a town in the state of Zhu Lou. Why doesn’t the record identify it as belonging to Zhu Lou? To avoid the shame of recording such a rash action. (Xiang 13, p. 198) Kan 闞 was taken. What was Kan? It was a town in the state of Zhu Lou. Why isn’t it so identified in the record? To avoid creating the impression of continuous aggression of the part of Lu. (Zhao 32, p. 244) Each of these translations is reasonably accurate; what is problematic is that, in the aggregate, they fail to reflect the fact that all four represent precisely the same pattern in the original text. The translation is rife with similar examples; elsewhere, the phrase cháng shì bù shū, cǐ hé yǐ shū 常事不書，此何以書 (“Regular services are not recorded. Why is this recorded?”) is translated three different ways (pp. 31, 36, and 41). A common pattern, wèi X huì 為X諱 (“avoid [recording] for the sake of X”) is rendered in well over a dozen different ways, and the phrase nèi cí yě 內辭也 (“it is interior terminology” or “it is phrasing used for the domestic side,” i.e., Lǔ) occurs over a dozen times in Gōngyáng, but is not translated the same way twice. Another similar group of examples are the renderings of the repeated phrase huì yǔ dàfū méng yě 諱與大夫盟也, “it was to avoid recording covenants with grand officers,” which vary conspicuously (pp. 56, 65, and 124). Yet a footnote (p. 65 n. 7) contains a cross-reference linking two of these passages, demonstrating that the translator was not unaware that these are repeated phrases and suggesting that the choice to vary the language was a conscious one. Other renderings are simply mistakes. In some places the translator misunderstands the text; thus huì fá sāng yě 諱伐喪也 is translated “it was taboo to attack a state that had just lost its ruler” (Xiāng 2, p. 189). In fact, this refers not to a prohibition on the attack itself, but seeks to explain the absence of a record of said attack, and means “they avoided recording an attack on a state that was in mourning.” Many translations are marred by a combination of inconsistency and inaccuracy. Thus jué 絕, used in reference to a ruler being “cut off’ or deposed from his position, is variously rendered “forfeit his formal position” (p. 33); “deserved to be deposed” (p. 44); “it would have been better to abolish his title” (p. 53); “mark him for repudiation” (p. 109); none of these translations reflects that each of these commentarial passages refers to a ruler who had already lost his position and that each is concerned with how the record indicated this. Elsewhere, bù rěn yán yě 不忍言也 is translated “because it is so horrifying” (Wén 18, p. 143); a direct translation would have been “they could not bear to say it,” and what the translator has given us is an interpretive paraphrase suggesting why (in his view) they could not bear to say it. Similar instances of interpretive paraphrase abound. The translator has made a number of unconventional choices that he leaves unexplained. For example, the difficult and somewhat obscure sentence sì dà shěng 肆大省 is translated “there was unrestrained, great austerity” (Zhuāng 22, p. 65); this is more conventionally understood to mean “pardoned major offenses” in reference to a general amnesty. Similarly, the term kè 刻 is translated “inscribe characters” (Zhuāng 24, p. 67). Consulting parallel texts would have been helpful, since commentaries understand this to refer to decorative carving, and according to Gǔliáng, whether rafters of an ancestral temple were carved or plain was a marker of relative rank, a reading that also makes more sense in the context of Gōngyáng. The term dì 禘, an ancestral sacrifice, is rendered “the auspicious clothes ceremony” (p. 78, p. 126); one wonders if dì 禘 has been confused with the graphically similar tì 褅, which is indeed related to clothing, but is not a sacrifice. Throughout, tiānxià 天下, literally, ‘under heaven’ or simply ‘the world’, is translated with the anachronistic political term “empire.” These and similar errors are symptomatic of a larger problem, the translator’s apparent lack of familiarity with religious and cultural practices in pre-imperial China. At times superfluous detail that departs from the original is added. Thus the phrase bù jí shí ér rì 不及時而日 . . . is translated “If an interment is noted to have taken place before the elapse of five months since the lord’s decease, and the day is given . . .” (Yǐn 3, p. 15; emphasis mine). Literally, this means “If it had not reached the proper time, [the burial record] is dated . . .” In a footnote, the translator cites Xuě and Zhōu as the source of this rendering, but neither the translator nor his source offers any support for it, and the translator himself observes that “five months” conflicts with Reviews of Books 153 statements elsewhere in Gōngyáng. One wonders why the passage was not rendered directly and accurately as “proper time.” This volume also includes a translation of the Spring and Autumn. This translation is generally more consistent than that of Gōngyáng, but is marred by the translator’s decision to use passive voice in Spring and Autumn entries where Lǔ is the subject (noted on Yǐn 5, p. 19 n. 1). Consequently, entries stating that “we conducted the rain-seeking sacrifice” become “there was a great sacrifice for rain” (Zhuāng 5, p. 32), and we find such awkward constructions as “battle was joined with the army of the state of Qi” rather than “we joined in battle with the Qi army” (Zhuāng 9, p. 57). The Spring and Autumn is a self-referential work written from Lǔ’s perspective. By employing passive voice to translate these entries, the translator has transformed it into a work written in third-person perspective, and in so doing has severely distorted its sense and tone. The translator offers no reasons for this change and, indeed, does not seem to be aware of the significance of what he has done. A final concern is the cover, which features the words bāo biǎn 褒貶, ‘praise and blame’. Despite its lengthy association with Spring and Autumn exegesis, this pair appears nowhere in Gōngyáng, and the word bāo 褒, ‘praise’, occurs only once. Unfortunately, the cover thus continues to perpetuate the misconception that Gōngyáng is primarily concerned with praise and blame. The editors at Palgrave Macmillan must share blame in this matter. Proper vetting of this translation during the publication process would have revealed many of these problems, but apparently this did not occur. This translation should not have been published in its present form. Its many substantial errors and misrepresentation of the style of Gōngyáng render it not only unhelpful to scholars but highly misleading to the general readers at whom it is aimed. NEWELL ANN VAN AUKEN UNIVERSITY OF IOWA REFERENCES Chūnqiū Gōngyáng zhuàn Hé shì jiě gǔ 春秋公羊傳何氏解詁. 1992. Edited by Hé Xiū 何休 (129– 182) and Lù Démíng 陸德明 (556–627), Sìbù beìyào 四部備要. Chūnqiū Gōngyáng zhuàn zhùshū 春秋公羊傳注疏. 1980. Edited by Hé Xiū 何休 (129–182) and Xú Yàn 徐彥 (Táng). 2 vols. Sìbù bèiyào. Gentz, Joachim. 2001. Das Gongyang zhuan: Auslegung und Kanonisierung der Frühlings- und Herbstannalen (Chunqiu). Opera sinologica, vol. 12. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Mǎ Yuèrán 馬悅然 (Göran Malmqvist). 2009. Mǎ Yuèrán lùn Xīn yì Gōngyáng zhuàn èrsān shì 馬悅 然論《新譯公羊傳》二三事 (Göran Malmqvist’s Jottings on Xin Yi Gōngyáng zhuàn). Hànxué yánjiū tōngxùn 漢學研究通訊 28.1: 31–32. Malmqvist, Göran. 1971, 1975, 1977. Studies on the Gongyang and Guuliang Commentaries, parts 1–3. Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 43: 67–222; 47: 19–69; 49: 33–215. Stephenson, F. Richard, and Kevin K. C. Yau. 1992. Astronomical Records in the Ch’un-ch’iu Chronicle. Journal for the History of Astronomy 23: 31–51. Xuě Kè 雪克, comm. and modern Chinese trans., and Zhōu Fèngwǔ 周鳳五, ed. 1998. Xīn yì Gōngyáng zhuàn 新譯公羊傳. Taipei: Sānmín 三民. Yáng Bójùn 楊伯峻. [1981] 1991. Foreword (Qiányán 前言). Chūnqiū Zuǒ zhuàn zhù 春秋左傳注. Taipei: Fùwén. Sogdians in China: Archaeological and Art Historical Analyses of Tombs and Texts from the 3rd to the 10th Century AD. By PATRICK WERTMANN. Archäologie in China / Archaeology in China and East Asia, vol. 5. Darmstadt: PHILIPP VON ZABERN, 2015. Pp. iv + 336, 116 plates. €86. As indicated in its title, the purpose of this volume is to cover in detail the archaeological material related to the Sogdian presence in China from the third to the tenth centuries. There is a short introduction, a somewhat longer Part II (pp. 9–28) sketching out the history of the Sogdians from earliest time to their settlements in China and some elements of their activities there, followed by Part III,