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Overview
Key data
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Nature | A chapter of the Rites of Zhou on the hundred crafts |
| Composition | Perhaps an official book of Qi, added to the Rites of Zhou under the Han |
| Contents | Six classes of craft: wood, metal, leather, colouring, polishing, pottery |
| Relevant | Carriage-making, the gnomon, and the making of measures |
The classification of crafts
The chapter divides the crafts into six classes, giving the method and form of each.
Among the woodworkers are carriage-making and the gnomon; among the metalworkers, measures and weapons.
It is the earliest surviving Chinese text on craft technique, and its figures for the forms of objects are full.
Its link to astronomical instruments
The chapter records the making of the “earth gnomon”: using a gnomon and its shadow to fix direction and the solar terms.
This is among the earliest institutional records of shadow-measuring apparatus.
It also records the making of measures (as “the Li clan made measures”), and since weights, measures and the calendar went together from antiquity, the making of measures bears on calendrical learning.
Value
The technical figures it preserves are first-hand material for pre-Qin craft and measure.
For the history of astronomy its gnomon and measures can be read against the shadow-measuring methods of the Zhoubi Suanjing.
Full text
Simplified Chinese (TXT) ｜ Traditional Chinese (TXT)
The reader shows the text section by section, with the original tables preserved; the first few lines give source and licence. If scripts are disabled, use the TXT links above.
The title, date, summary and index structure compiled here are offered under CC BY 4.0 (attribution: Chujia Kuang · kuangchujia.com).
The full electronic text (about 65,874 characters) is taken from the Chinese Wikisource text of The Rites of Zhou — “Records of Trades”; that part is offered under CC BY-SA 4.0 (attribution — share alike); source: zh.wikisource.org.
The electronic text has not been collated by us; please check the original before citing.
Compiled and arranged by Chujia Kuang.