JULIEN, Stanislaus Aignan.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

San-Tsze-King. First edition, scarce and with a pleasing provenance, presenting the original text of China's most famous educational primer with Julien's translation into English. Though not marked as such, this copy is from the extensive collection of Western printed books on China assembled by Björn Löwendahl and Christer von der Burg.The Three Character Classic, commonly attributed to the polymath Wang Yinglin (1223-1296), is collection of 356 three-character sayings used by generations of children to learn the Chinese language. Its opening two lines, rendered here as "the nature of man, at his birth, is fundamentally good", are universally recognizable to Chinese speakers.Stanislaus Julien (1797-1873, also known as Stanislas Julien) was one of the great sinologists of the 19th century and the translator of many important Chinese texts. A Chinese-Latin version of the present work was also published in Paris the same year.

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