周禮
The rites of Zhou

The rites of Zhou (Zhou Li) is one of three books of rites, known as the three Li (San Li), which together form one of the thirteen Confucian classics. Zhou Li sets the rules of administrative, political and social organization of society in China. It lists and describes 376 official positions for the six ministries of the imperial administration, and is thus divided into six chapters : Ministry of Heaven (general governance), of Earth (taxation and division of land), of Spring (education, social and religious institutions), of Summer (the army), of Autumn (justice), of Winter (population, territory, agriculture). It first appeared in the second century BCE. Comments by scholars were added later; the four main ones are from the first, second, eighth and twelfth centuries. Zhou Li greatly influenced the development of the Confucian philosophy which dominated traditional Chinese thoughts over the centuries.

This book is not a copy of the original Zhou Li. It is rather an illustrated introduction and summary of Zhou Li. The first two parts are presumably commentaries by Korean scholars. The third part is the table of contents of Zhou Li; it lists 376 positions, without any description. The last part is illustrations and comments, not of the positions, but of the tools that go with the positions. The last folio explains the origin and early transmission of Zhou Li.

This book was probably published in Korea; however there is no indication of date or publisher, and nothing written in Korean script (except perhaps for gugyeol characters in the table of contents). The sociopolitical system of the Korean Choson dynasty, the longest-ruling Confucian dynasty, was inspired by Zhou Li. It produced its own literature describing its royal rituals and ceremonies, a large collection of books known as Uigwe, which can be loosely translated as book of state rites. Nevertheless, Zhou Li seems to have remained in favor (perhaps did it cover more fields than Uigwe?), because books like the present one can be found in Korean libraries and on Korean auction websites. I found many comments of the illustrations on Korean websites. Finally, the previous owner of this book told me he bought it in Seoul.

The digitized book is accessible by clicking on the cover below:

This book is only the first volume of a series of seven, and the six others (which I do not have) contain the actual text of Zhou Li (comments), one volume per ministry. The seven volumes have been digitized and made available online by the Jangseogak Archives. They can be accessed through links given at the bottom of the folling webpage: https://jsg.aks.ac.kr/dir/view?catePath=&dataId=JSG_K1-98

The seven links are also given below:

Note that the present copy of the introductory volume is of poorer printing quality and has been digitized at a lower resolution than that of the Jangseogak Archives. Their page mentions that the publication date is 1706. Our copy is probably a later re-edition, from already much used woodblocks.

The Chinese text of Zhou Li (without comments) is also available online at https://ctext.org/rites-of-zhou

Zhou Li has not been translated into English (as far as I know). James Legge (1815-1897) translated most of the 13 classics, but not Zhou Li. A translation of Zhou Li (including comments) into French by Edouard Biot was published in 1851; I used it to translate the table of contents. Biot's book (two volumes, in PDF format) is available at this url:
http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/chine_ancienne/B_livres_canoniques_Petits_Kings/B_21_tcheou_li/tcheou_li.html

The comments in the volumes of the Jangseogak Archives (dated 1706) might not be identical to those translated by Biot, because he used a copy edited by emperor Qianlong 乾隆 (1735–1796).

Interestingly, many of the illustrations of this book can be found in a Japanese book, The illustgated encyclopedia of China (Morokoshi Kinmo Zui), published in the middle of the Edo period, and of which I have volumes 7 and 8.