Beiping miao yu tong jian 北平廟宇通檢 [Comprehensive Inventory of Temples in Beiping]

Two vols. 8vo, orig. printed wrappers, orig. stitching. Beijing: Guo li Beiping yan jiu yuan 國立北平研究院, 1936.




First edition of this work on Beijing’s temples. In 1930, the Historiographical Research Group of the National Research Academy of Beiping, as Beijing was then called, decided that “in preparation for producing a gazetteer for Beijing, the Buddhist temples, altars, Confucian temples, shrines, and halls will be surveyed by district and rubbings taken of stone inscriptions, for use in the [gazetteer’s] treatises on temples and epigraphy. Personnel will be dispatched to survey, compile, photograph, draw a layout of each temple, trace stone inscriptions, as well as collect historical sources.” Our book was one of the results.


This work is focused on mentions of temples in earlier literature, complemented with the editors’ notes on the history of the temples. They note changes in the names of temples, as well as in their functions. The literature used include the major works on the history of Beijing, such as Zhu Yizun’s 朱彝尊 (1629-1709) Rixia jiuwen 日下舊聞 [Ancient Accounts Heard in the Precincts of the Throne] from 1688, Zhen-jun’s 震鈞 (1857-1918/20) Tian zhi ou wen 天咫偶聞 [Things Heard on Occasion in the Imperial Capital] from 1903, and Chen Zongfan’s 陳宗蕃 (1879-1954) Yan du cong kao 燕都叢考 [Examinations of the Metropolis of Yan] — which had been recently published in 1930-31.


Fine and fresh set, preserved in a hantao.