gems, jade, Fischer-Chinese

The Huainanzi [淮南子; Masters/Philosophers of Huainan] is a wide-ranging philosophical and encyclopedic work compiled at the court of Liu An, King of Huainan, and presented to the Han imperial court in 139 BCE. Its 21 surviving chapters synthesize Daoist, Confucian, Legalist, cosmological, and other strands of early Chinese thought and discuss subjects including cosmology, geography, astronomy, natural phenomena, government, ethics, warfare, and human conduct. Of particular interest to historians of gemology are its references to jade and other valued natural substances, which occur both in descriptions of the physical world and as metaphors for rarity, purity, virtue, and value. The text also preserves early Chinese ideas concerning the geographical occurrence and transformation of minerals and other materials, making it a useful source for investigating Han-period concepts of jade, precious substances, and the natural world.