From Stone Canal to Orchid Terrace: Libraries and Archives in the Two Han Capitals

Abstract

Recent scholarship has advanced our understanding of the Han dynasty’s most important textual repositories, including the distinctions between libraries and archives and the roles they played in early manuscript culture. There is no comprehensive survey in English, however, of the main facilities where different manuscripts were stored in the two Han capitals, Chang’an and Luoyang. This article seeks answers to key questions: Where were these facilities located? Who worked there and how was one appointed? What kinds of activities took place in them? I confirm the findings of scholars who have shown that there is scant evidence for editing or scholastic activity in the main textual repositories before late Western Han, and that even after Emperor Cheng’s reign, textual production, curation, and instruction were distributed between multiple centers that were often in competition with one another.