Reading The Essentials of Governance Digitally

In 2021 the translation of a key text in East Asian political culture, The Essentials of Governance, edited by Hilde De Weerdt, Glen Dudbridge and Gabe van Beijeren was published in the “Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought” series. We designed a reading platform to provide digital access to several editions of the Chinese text, Zhenguan zhengyao 貞觀政要.
In the first edition of the reading platform (2020) we added a range of annotations to the digital text and provided a sense of how the sequence of entries differed across editions. In this updated edition (2022) readers can also bring into view textual differences between the different editions.

Editions used

The sequence of passages can be compared across the following four editions: a modern edition, the Ge Zhi 戈直 edition (1333, Ming reprint 1465) that became a reference point for subsequent Chinese and East Asian editions, and two early Japanese manuscript traditions, currently known as the Nanke/Nanjia text 南家本 (1275) and the Kanke/Jianjia text 菅家本 (1296). According to Harada Taneshige and Xie Baocheng, these manuscripts can be traced back to 1177 and 1216 respectively (Harada Taneshige 原田種成, Jōgan seiyō no kenkyū 貞観政要の研究, Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1965, pp. 21–24; Xie Baocheng 謝保成, ed., Wu Jing 吳兢, comp., Zhenguan zhengyao jijiao 貞觀政要集校, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2012; 2nd ed., pp. 33–34).
 
The reader can pick any of these four editions as the main text for comparison.

We used the following sources to compile the digital editions:

Modern edition

This is a modern critical edition. The sequence and text of this modern edition are based on Xie Baocheng 謝保成, ed., Wu Jing 吳兢, comp., Zhenguan zhengyao jijiao 貞觀政要集校 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2012; 2nd ed.). The digital text of the modern edition is annotated; readers can activate the markup from the top menu bar and click on highlighted text to show time references converted to western dates, and basic information about personal and place names. More detailed information can be called up by following the links included in the popup. If you spot any mistakes, please contact Gabe van Beijeren. The annotated MARKUS file can be downloaded here. The English translation edited by De Weerdt, Dudbridge, and van Beijeren is based on this edition. De Weerdt and McMullen include a critical discussion of this edition and the textual history of The Essentials in their introduction to the translation.

Ge Zhi edition

The sequence of entries is based on Wu Jing 吳兢, comp., Zhenguan zhengyao 貞觀政要 (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1968). The digital text is based on the Ming reprint of Ge Zhi’s Collected Discussions on The Essentials of Governance (Ge Zhi 戈直, comp., Zhenguan zhengyao jilun 貞觀政要集論) and contains variant characters when compared to the modern edition. The Ge Zhi text used in the reading platform was edited by Hu Jing. The annotated MARKUS file can be downloaded here.

Nanke/Nanjia text 南家本

We reconstructed the sequence of the entries in the Japanese manuscripts on the basis of Xie Baocheng, ed., and Wu Jing, comp., Zhenguan zhengyao jijiao. The digital text is reverse-engineered on the basis of Xie Baocheng’s edition by Hu Jing; no firm conclusions should thus be drawn about the text itself. The annotated MARKUS file can be downloaded here.

Kanke/Jianjia text 菅家本

We reconstructed the sequence of the entries in the Japanese manuscripts on the basis of Xie Baocheng, ed., and Wu Jing, comp., Zhenguan zhengyao jijiao. The digital text is reverse-engineered on the basis of Xie Baocheng’s edition by Hu Jing; no firm conclusions should thus be drawn about the text itself. The annotated MARKUS file can be downloaded here.

Annotations

All editions include annotations and hyperlinks for personal names, place names, time references, and book titles. These annotations were added in the MARKUS platform designed by Hilde De Weerdt and Brent Ho. You can download the MARKUS files for all editions and upload them to the MARKUS platform to take advantage of the full MARKUS functionality.

How to Compare Two or Three Editions

We recommend that you start by comparing the modern edition as the main edition on the left with the Ge Zhi edition and one of the manuscript editions.

You can also work with only two editions by picking the same edition in the last two columns.

Passages are by default shown by entry number in collapsed form. Click on the passage to show the full passage. Click on collapse to return to the overview. Any number of passages can be expanded at the same time.

To view more information about annotated people, dates, or places, hover over the text to view more information.

To view textual differences between editions, click on [≠ Difference].

Hovering over a difference shows the corresponding passage highlighted in grey in the focused edition. When you focus an edition, that edition will become the standard for comparison. Only differences in the editions that are not the focused edition are shown. If the focused edition differs from all other editions or is missing characters, then the difference is also highlighted in the focused edition. The minimal length of a difference is one character; differences in punctuation (e.g. ，。、「」『』《》⋯⋯【】——) are ignored.

Should you wish to adjust the settings to detect differences in these texts or any other texts, you can use Parallells designed by Hilde De Weerdt and Mees Gelein on the basis of the “Reading the Essentials of Governance Digitally” Project.

Troubleshooting

Should any functionality not work as expected, refresh the page. You may also need to clear your browser cache.

Should hovering over differences in three editions malfunction, we recommend that you compare passages in two editions. This especially makes larger numbers of differences across longer passages more legible.

Searching

All editions can be searched:

Citing individual passages

You can generate a citation for the project as a whole or for the selected passage(s) by clicking on “how to cite us”; all fully expanded passages will be included in the citation.

Hu Jing
Gabe van Beijeren
Hilde De Weerdt
Mees Gelein

March 1, 2020
Updated May 20, 2022