Author ｜
Hsiang Jieh, Chen Li-hua, Tu Hsieh-chang, Chung Chia-hsuan
Abstract ｜
This paper presents an approach of digital humanities to analyze and compare leishu, a unique genre of reference books in ancient China. We have studied and analyzed Yiwenleju and Taipinyulan, two large scale leishu from early Tang (624CE) and early Song (984CE) respectively, and have built two systems to compare the knowledge structures and to provide full-text search. The systems allow us to analyze the sources that each leishu selected, under what categories and subjects were they used, the differences of citations and weighting of each category and subject, and the differences of the overall knowledge structures of the two tomes. To illustrate how the systems are utilized, we provide several examples that show how, through the comparison of the two leishu, one might observe the change of the world view among the Chinese elites during those 350 years.
keywords ｜
Digital humanities, knowledge structure, leishu, textual analysis, full-text datadase