caused his minister Li Show[1] to form the Chiu-chang.[2] Of the text of the original work we are not certain, for the reason that during the Ch’in dynasty (220—205 B. C.) the emperor Chi Hoang-ti decreed, in 213 B. C., that all the books in the empire should be burned. And while it is probable that the classics were all surreptitiously preserved, and while they could all have been repeated from memory, still the text may have been more or less corrupted during the reign of this oriental vandal. The text as it comes to us is that of Chang T’sang of the second century B. C., revised by Ching Ch’ou-ch’ang about a hundred years later.[3] Both of these writers lived in the Former Han[4] dynasty (202 B. C.—24 A. D.), a period corresponding in time and in fact with the Augustan age in Europe, and one in which great effort was made to restore the lost classics,[5] and both were ministers of the emperor.
This classical work had such an effect upon the mathematics of Japan that a summary of the contents of the books or chapters of which it is composed will not be out of place. The work contained 246 problems, and these are arranged in nine sections as follows:
(1) Fang-tien, surveying. This relates to the mensuration of various plane figures, including triangles, quadrilaterals, circles, circular segments and sectors, and the annulus. It also contains some treatment of fractions.
(2) Suh-pu (Shu-poo). This treats chiefly of commercial problems solved by the “rule of three”.
(3) Shwai-f’en (Shwae-fun, Shuai-fen). This deals with partnership.
- ↑ Or Li-shou.
- ↑ Wylie, A., Jottings of the Science of Chinese Arithmetic, North China Herald for 1852, Shanghai Almanac for 1853, Chinese Researches, Shanghai 1897, Part III, page 159; Biernatzki, Die Arithmetik der Chinesen, Crelle's Journal for 1856, vol. 52.
- ↑ For this information we are indebted to the testimony of Liu Hui, whose commentary was written in 263.
- ↑ Also known as the Western Han.
- ↑ Legge, J., The Chinese Classics. Oxford 1893, 2nd edition, vol. I, p. 4.
