Commentary on the Water Classic
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A commentary that swallows its original describes more than a thousand rivers with their courses, cities, ruins and local histories, becoming the foundational work of Chinese historical geography.
- geography organised by river course rather than by administrative unit
- topography joined to history, inscription and legend at each place
- hundreds of lost works preserved by quotation
- the limits of documentary compilation visible in the southern sections
The Water Classic it annotates was a short text listing about one hundred and thirty rivers. Li Daoyuan expanded it forty-fold, following each watercourse from source to mouth and recording the settlements, monuments, inscriptions, legends and battles along its banks. He quotes hundreds of works now lost, which makes the commentary a repository as well as a geography. He worked largely from documents rather than travel for the southern rivers, and errors follow from that, but the northern descriptions are detailed and often verifiable.
Commentary
Readers' notes on this work. No account needed - be scholarly, or at least civil.
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