Sinology
 Gallery of Philologists

Chinese tradition has long been a part of world culture, and the study of China is an internatioanl affair, shared by many Chinese and Western investigators. As in the other fields with which we are here concerned, there are the well-known names, but on the historical-critical side of the ledger, not very many. This list of precursors is thus drawn neither from Chinese nor Western Sinology, but from the larger world of Philology as such, both Western and Chinese. These are some of the people who know how to solve the problems to which texts, both in their formation and during their subsequent corruption in transmssion, are universally subject. These pages are merely a sample; included here to give beginners a sense of reality, and a feeling of companionship across the ages.

These profiles may be read for their human interest, but also for the sample solved problems on which many of them focus. Our suggestion for a systematic approach to unsolved problems of the same kind is provided in the Philology section proper. Here, as a complement, is the past tense of our subject. The domain of what has been done by others, and we can watch them doing it.

Western Tradition

Chinese Tradition

Readings

Benjamin A Elman. From Philosophy to Philology. 1984.
Bruce M Metzger. The Text of the New Testament. 4ed 2005
Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. Geschichte der Philologie (1921); tr History of Classical Scholarship (1982)

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