GULIK, Robert van. Tang-Yin-Pi-Shih: “Parallel Cases from Under the Pear-Tree”: a 13th Century Manual of Jurisprudence and Detection Translated from the Original Chinese with an Introduction and Notes. Leiden: E. J. Brill. 1956.
8vo. Publisher’s red cloth lettered in gilt to upper board and spine, with typographic dust jacket; pp. [2 (blank)], xiv, 198, [1 (errata)], [1 (blank)], with one photographic plate and further in-text illustrations; dust jacket lightly soiled with spotting visible to verso and along wrapper folds; light white marks to cloth, light spotting to top edge of text block, toning to endpapers, pencil markings to pp. 52-60; otherwise near fine.
First edition of Van Gulik’s authoritative translation of the Tang-Yin-Pi-Shih.
The Tang-Yin-Pi-Shih is a thirteenth-century Chinese casebook compiled by the magistrate Kuei Wan-Jung, recording 114 legal cases ranging from petty theft to murder. Intended as a practical manual for officials, it offers a rare insight into the administration of justice and investigative methods in medieval China.
Van Gulik’s translation and extensive commentary exemplify the scholarly rigour underpinning his later detective fiction, his engagement with historical Chinese jurisprudence directly informing the structure, themes, and procedural realism of the Judge Dee novels for which he is best remembered.
Evers, p. 18.
SKU: 2122745