652 literature: Asia and the Pacific anthology of poetry from the time of Confucius and includes some 305 separate poems Four of the longer ones, about 400 lines each, go over historical events None of the poems is very long, suggesting that there was no epic poetry tradition as there was in India and elsewhere in the ancient world The Li chi covers many court rites, along with anecdotes, and the last book, the Ch’un-ch’iu, is a history of the feudal kingdom of Lu, which included the town where Confucius was born During the Qin Dynasty, Qin Shi Huang ensured that his own accomplishments were recorded in detail By this time printing was being used in a limited way; the earliest fully printed book was not produced until 868 b.c.e Printing obviously made it easier to produce many copies of works As the Chinese language did not suit movable type, books were produced from a carved wooden block of an entire page Printing methods became more effective during the Han Dynasty, and the Huai-nan-tzu (The Master of Huai-nan) was written in about 140 b.c.e The next major work was the fi rst detailed history of China Written from about 85 b.c.e., the Shih-chi (Historical Records) took 18 years to complete and ran to 520,000 words, in 130 chapters, covering the 2,000 years of Chinese history In some ways it is similar to the Histories of the Greek writer Herodotus (ca 484–between 430 and 420 b.c.e.), who sought to write down everything he knew about history However, the Shih-chi is a far more serious work, lacking the idiosyncrasies of Herodotus’s text, though it is lively and does tell anecdotes about some of the characters The work seems to have inspired the poet and historian Pan Piao, who put together the Han shu (Han Documents), which relate in 800,000 words the history of the Han Dynasty The aim of the book is to draw from previous texts, and the Shih-chi includes a “catalogue” of works consulted A large number of the texts listed in this bibliography have not survived In 26 b.c.e one of the emperors of the Han Dynasty, Cheng Di (r 32–7 b.c.e.), tried to undo some of the damage done during the destruction of the books by Qin Shi Huang, ordering that copies of all literary works be assembled in his capital, with a view to copying them and augmenting the imperial collection He was also keen on ensuring that the “correct” manuscripts were being kept The works were all copied onto silken scrolls, helping to preserve many works that might otherwise have been lost The poetry of the Qin Dynasty and especially that of the Han Dynasty often led to long poems reflecting the glory of the Chinese Empire, its wealth, and its structure, and also starting to include information about everyday life The Yüeh Fu (Music Bureau) was reestablished in 125 b.c.e., and it started to gather earlier songs and music that were collected together centrally, possibly for the first time on an organized scale The ballads collected include some early poems, such as Lo-fu hsing or Mo-shang sang (The Song of Lo-fu or Roadside Mulberry Tree), in which a government commissioner gives a ride in his carriage to a young lady he meets in his travels The collapse of the Han Dynasty and the subsequent wars resulted in the period known as the Six Dynasties (220–589 c.e.) In northern China warlike tribes invaded and gradually came to adopt Chinese ways, including literary traditions In the south Chinese culture prevailed, with poems with a romantic theme being more popular than the military epics of the north These differences became accentuated for several centuries, though the unity of the later Sui Dynasty and Tang Dynasty did result in a fusion of the two concepts The relative peace of the Tang Dynasty also allowed for more literary works from earlier periods to be written down and reinterpreted VIETNAM AND KOREA In Vietnam, occupied by China for more than a thousand years, from 111 b.c.e to 939 c.e., the Chinese literary tradition took over from the previous folk ballads, and the Vietnamese came to adopt the Chinese script Classical Chinese was used for official proclamations as well as for inscriptions on a number of early Vietnamese stelae that survive from this period The variations in language tended to come from the recording of legends and Vietnamese mythical heroes as well as from stories that sought to portray Vietnamese as different from Chinese, such as the early accounts of the Trung sisters, who led the Vietnamese against the Chinese for three years (39–42 c.e.) Although the main account of their lives was from a chronicle written in 1272 c.e., the amount of detail in it shows that it must have come from an ancient text At the same time, Chinese merchants came to settle in other parts of Asia and proved to be a major influence on early literature in Korea, which also used Chinese characters before adopting its own national alphabet Ancient Korean poems tend to follow Chinese themes and styles, using a system known as Hyangga poetry, in which Korean and Chinese words are used, with some characters taken from one language and other concepts expressed in characters from the other This system continued until medieval times, with the first changes coming about in the seventh century c.e Many of these Korean poems survive, as other early literary works that include texts on Confucian ideas, Buddhism, and also Daoism JAPAN Japanese literature also traces its origins from Chinese literary styles, and the Japanese originally used the Chinese script to record their thoughts The oldest-known Japanese inscription, on a sword from 440 c.e., clearly shows the use of Chinese characters to cover Japanese names and expressions Gradually the Japanese came to use their own characters, but not until the eighth century c.e Indeed, the term “ancient” Japanese literature often refers to the works of the eighth century c.e POLYNESIA Although there is no written literature from the Pacific during this period, there are legends and stories that may have originated from ancient times Many of them concern great