Pers-DB A knowledge base of Tang Persons
The Pers-DB is collecting information about persons, currently focusing on persons who lived at least a part of their lives under the Tang empire, that is between 618 and 907 A.D. in China.
Contents
At this moment (2012-05-16), there is information about 4636 persons. Naturally, the amount of information varies considerably; we have attempted to collect as much as possible about the following:
- Dates for birth and death where available, otherwise fluorit dates
- Alternated names
- Places of origin and other relevant places
- Related persons
- Exams
- Career of official postings
- Works
- Biographies or other references in the literature.
Methodology
In contrast to the Resources for Tang Studies, which has been built in a bottom-up way by marking names of persons in the text and then extracting this information, in Pers-DB information has been collected from existing reference works, anthologies like the Quan Tang shi 全唐詩 or the Quan Tang wen 全唐文, building on the series of reference works for Tang Studies Tang Civilization Reference Series 唐代研究のしおり compiled by HIRAOKA Takeo 平岡武夫 and his collaborators in the 1950s and early 1960s at our Institute, as well as more recent reference works like the Zhongguo wenxuejia dacidian 中国文学家大辞典(唐五代卷) compiled by Zhou Zu 周祖 and his team (Beijing, Zhonghua Shuju, 1992).
At the moment, only the most prominent persons have been included, with a focus on persons who left some kind of written record. It is planed to expand the scope and merge with the more extensive material collected as part of the Resources for Tang Studies.
Search interface
The search interface here is a revised and updated version of 唐代人物データベース , which has become instable recently.
In the search box at the top of this page searches on names of persons can be directly entered, you will then be presented with a list of results. There is also a form for Advanced Search, which allow to find persons by entering any or all of the following:
- Names [names:]
Any name that has been used for a person, including 字 or 諱 (Search for 樂天) - Places [places:]]
Places that are asociated with persons - Dates [dates:]
Either a range for the birthdate, like e.g.'700-800' or a single date, eg. '700', to return persons active at that date - Works [works:]
Title of a written record either of a person or mentioning a person, e.g. 全唐詩. - Office [office:]
Names of offices held by a person, e.g. 刺史.