V.B. INDEXES TO COMPREHENSIVE BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Note that there is a digital version of this edition included in Scripta Sinica (see VI.F). It can browsed and searched full-text.

Emendations to the Sung-jen chuan-chi tzu-liao so-yin have also been published:

This draws on material not included in the Taiwan index, including recently discovered tomb inscriptions and museum collections. There are more than 14,000 new name entries and supplements to over 6,000 established entries. The arrangement of the contents is similar to that in the Taiwan index. There is an index to secondary names.

Supplementary to the above two reference works are the following two sets of indexes:

The first name index is based on 302 local gazetteers in four gazetteer collections: 1) Song Yuan fangzhi congkan 宋元方志丛刊 (41 titles); 2) Tianyige cang Mingdai fangzhi xuankan 天一閣藏明代方志選刊 (107 titles); 3) Tianyige cang Mingdai fangzhi xuankan xubian 天一閣藏明代方志選刊續編 (109 titles); 4) Riben cang Zhongguo hanjian difangzhi congkan 日本藏中国罕见地方志丛刊 (45 titles)). The names were drawn from not only the biography sections but a wide variety of chapters. The entries are arranged according to the four-corner classification system. Appendices include pinyin and stroke order indexes, as well as an index of alternate names of the subjects included in the main body of the index.

The sequel covers Song personal names in 19 provincial gazetteers in three other gazetteer collections: 1) Zhongguo shengzhi huibian 中國省志彙編 (16 titles); 2) Zhongguo bianjiang congshu 中國邊疆叢書 (2 titles); 3) Changbai congshu chuji 長白叢書-初集 (1). This title's layout and editorial policies are identical to the first installment.

The above works supersede:

but does not index Ming- and Ch'ing-period gazetteers, many of which include information from lost Sung-period works. The Ssu-ch'uan ta-hsueh index does do this.

Missing from the Sung-jen index also are references to funerary biographical inscriptions for monks. In addition to the supplements mentioned above reseachers at Sichuan University published an index to biographical information on Song monks.

This is a biographical index of over 6100 Song monks, indexed by Buddhist names. The compiler culled information from Buddhist texts as well as collected writings by Song and Yuan Dynasty authors, historical materials, local gazetteers, and biji.
The layout is similar to Chang Bide's index and its supplements. The main index is arranged by the four corners system. There is a name index by stroke order, and there are also indices for variant names.

For an earlier list of biographical inscriptions in the Buddhist canon, see:

For bibliographical information on tomb inscriptions, see Dieter Kuhn and Helga Stahl's Annotated Bibliography to the Shike shiliao xinbianin III.C. In addition note the listing of recently unearthed funerary biographies:

This also indexes places of publication, authors of inscriptions, and subjects.

Finally, a great deal of biographical information can be garnered from the personal-name indexes listed in Section VI below.

There are indexes to biographical materials for the periods before and after Sung: