A Chinese bestiary : strange creatures from the guideways through mountains and seas = 山海經 / edited and translated with commentary by Richard E. Strassberg.
"Philip E. Lilienthal Asian studies endowment."
Parallel title in Chinese characters.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-292) and index.

Illustrations; Preface; Editorial Notes; Introduction; Plates I to LXXVI from the Guideways through Mountains and Seas; Notes; Selected Bibliography; Glossary Index to Plates.

"A Chinese Bestiary presents a fascinating pageant of mythical creatures from a unique and enduring cosmography written in ancient China. The Guideways through Mountains and Seas, compiled between the fourth and first centuries, B.C.E., contains descriptions of hundreds of fantastic denizens of mountains, rivers, islands, and seas, along with minerals, flora, and medicine. The text also represents a wide range of beliefs held by the ancient Chinese. Richard Strassberg brings the Guideways to life for modern readers by weaving together translations from the work itself with information from other texts and recent archaeological finds to create a lavishly illustrated guide to the imaginative world of early China." "Unlike the bestiaries of the late medieval period in Europe, the Guideways was not interpreted allegorically; the strange creatures described in it were regarded as actual entities found throughout the landscape. The work was originally used as a sacred geography, as a guidebook for travelers, and as a book of omens. Today, it is regarded as the richest repository of ancient Chinese mythology and shamanistic wisdom. The Guideways may have been illustrated from the start, but the earliest surviving illustrations are woodblock engravings from a rare 1597 edition. All seventy-six of those plates are reproduced here for the first time, and they provide a fine example of the Chinese engraver's art during the late Ming dynasty."--Jacket.

Local access dig. pdf. [Strassberg-Bestiary.pdf]
Also in Djvu format.

" ... provides excellent source materials to mythologists and historians of science, geography, and society. Specialists in fiction find it important as the earliest record of such key story-cycles as sailing to the Milky Way and the capture of Sichuan women by monkey gods and as evidence of the development of ancient stories like those of the Buzhou Mountain and the diety Kuafu. It influenced the Soushen ji among other later fictional works.--Cf. Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, p. 215-216

Manuel des superstitions chinoises, ou, Petit indicateur des superstitions les plus communes en Chine / par le P.H. Doré, S.J.
Preface to first edition dated 1926.
Includes table of contents, index.
"Ex Libris Alphonse Maillet, Shanghai, 1941" [collection uniformly bound]
1926 edition (lacks Chinese characters) available online at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi Les classiques des sciences sociales.

Illustrated edition online at Chine ancienne.
Library has 2 copies, one in Maillet binding, the other in original cover (Rare Book Cabinet)

"...The chief literary sources of Chinese myths are the Lidai shenxian tongjian 歷代神仙通鑒, the Shenxian liezhuan 神仙列傳, the Fengshen yanyi 封神演義, and the Soushen ji 搜神記. In writing the following pages I have translated or paraphrased largely from these works ... and at times quoted from the....volumes on Chinese superstitions by Père Henri Doré....in Variétés Sinologiques.--Preface.
***Graphic resource