OFFICE OF THE GRAND SUPERVISOR OF AGRICULTURE (SI NONG SI 司農司).

<i>Nong sang ji yao</i> 農桑輯要 [<i>Fundamentals of Agriculture & Sericulture</i>].

98; 89 folding leaves. Two vols. 8vo, orig. printed wrappers, orig. stitching (a little loose). [China]: Zhong jiang que shu 中江榷署, 1895.

An important edition of the “earliest officially commissioned agricultural work to have survived to the present day.” The book is “essentially a practical handbook, full of information on crops both old and new, down-to-earth, realistic and accurate” (Francesca Bray, Agriculture, Science and Civilisation in China Vol. 6, Part II, pp. 49 & 72).

Nongsang jiyao was “issued in 1273 by the Office of the Grand Supervisor of Agriculture. It was compiled by a committee of Chinese officials who drew heavily on earlier manuals...to which they added a small amount of new data based on recent experience. For the most part the crops and techniques discussed were appropriate for agriculture in North China, not the as-yet-unconquered south. Intended as an official manual for distribution to the peasant communes (she) to increase productivity, the Nung-sang chi-yao [Nongsang jiyao] enjoyed considerable success, going through several Yuan and Ming editions” (Thomas T. Allsen, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia, pp. 118-19). The book was included in Yongle dadian 永樂大典 [Great Compendium (of the Reign of) Eternal Happiness], the voluminous encyclopedia produced at the Ming court in the early 15th century. The book might even have influenced Rashīd al-Dīn’s (1247-1318) important agricultural manual, written in Tabrīz in Iran in the late 13th century.

“This work is organized in seven untitled chapters (chuan) and ten sections (men) with the following headings:”

“Ch. I. 1. Words of wisdom

2. Plowing and reclaiming

Ch. II 3. Scattering seed (cereal crops)

Ch. III 4. Mulberries

Ch. IV 5. Silkworms

Ch. V 6. Vegetables

7. Fruit

Ch. VI 8. Bamboo and trees

9. Medicinal herbs

Ch. VII 10. Domesticated animals (including fish)” (Allsen, p. 119).

Section 3 in addition contains oil and fiber crops, and Section 10 also covers poultry raising and apiculture.

“The quotations are attributed and arranged in chronological order; not only is Nung Sang Chi Yao thus an important source for the text of many earlier works, but also it allows us to see various agricultural phenomena in a historical perspective. The original material in Nung Sang Chi Yao deals with new crops whose cultivation the government wished to encourage, for example ramie from South China and cotton from Central Asia, water melons and sugar-cane.” One important goal of the book was to spread sericulture in North China. The Mongol Yuan state needed silk to pay for tea imports from the Chinese south. The book “accordingly describes all the most advanced sericultural techniques...while...advocating the cultivation of alternative fibre crops like cotton or ramie which could substitute for silk within the Yuan empire. The government was largely successful in its campaign: not only did Northern Chinese silk production rise, but ramie and especially cotton soon acquired an important economic role in the North” (Bray, pp. 71-72).

The Office of the Grand Supervisor of Agriculture, which commissioned and issued the book, had been founded in 1270. Through several regional branches, “the office worked with local communes (she), nominally fifty peasant families, to improve agricultural techniques, introduce new seeds, and raise productivity” (Allsen, p. 115).

Our edition comes with the text Can shi yao lüe 蠶事要略 [Abridged Essentials of the Matters of Silkworms] in the appendix. This text was written by Zhang Xingfu 張行孚, who was a provincial graduate and scholar, in the Qing period.

Our edition was published in 1895 (Guangxu yiwei) in Jianxi cunshe congke 漸西村舍叢刻 [Collectanea of the Village Dwelling West of the Jian (River)]. This book series was published by Yuan Chang 袁昶 (1846-1900), a reformist official who was for several years intendant of the Circuit of Southern Anhui, during which time he paid great attention to agriculture. Yuan “encouraged agriculture by teaching the farmers better methods; and conserved their land by erecting a dike, fourteen li in length, along the Yangtze. To this enterprise, which employed some 67,500 workmen, he personally contributed more than 5,000 taels” (A. K. Ch’iu in Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, Vol. 2, p. 946). The reprinting of the book makes sense in light of Yuan’s concerns.

The basis for the reprint was the movable type (juzhen 聚珍) edition produced in connection with the Siku quanshu 四庫全書 [Complete Books of the Four Repositories] in the 1770s. The editors of the Siku quanshu, in turn, had recovered the text from Yongle dadian, of which a copy was available in the imperial library.

Very fine copy, preserved in a hantao.