that the characters following them are the courtesy names (Tzŭ 字) and the literary names (Hao 號) respectively of the person in question. It is not to be assumed, however, that these distinctions are absolute, for Chinese sources sometimes use one and sometimes the other in reference to the same set of characters. The word ming 名 refers to the personal or given name which, in normal Chinese usage, and in these sketches, always follows the family name.
Place names are indicated by romanization only—there being other sources, such as G. M. H. Playfair's The Cities and Towns of China (1910), in which the Chinese equivalents can be found. Nevertheless, for places which are small and not easily identified the characters have been added
For certain descriptive terms, chiefly bibliographical, which recur frequently in these sketches, there are no exact equivalents in the English language. It was thought best, in such cases, to make use of the words which the Chinese themselves employ. The terms chüan 卷 and p'ien 篇 refer to the sections or chapters into which books were until recently divided—the former pointing back to a time when books were in the form of scrolls, the latter to a yet earlier period when books were inscribed on slips of wood. The word ts'ê 冊 might have been translated "volume" throughout, were it not for the fact that several ts'ê are often brought together in the same portfolio. For similar reasons use has been made of the term nien-p'u 年譜. Though the nien-p'u is a biography, it is hardly so in the Western sense, for in it the facts are brought together in strict chronological order under each year of the person's career—with no embellishment, and without emotive suggestions. Such works when available, were highly useful in the preparation of these sketches, and for that reason the term nien-p'u appears often in the bibliographies. Explanations of other terms may be found by consulting the Index.
In the sketches dealing with the Taiping Rebellion and its leaders the day of the month on which a given event took place may differ by one day or so from that reported in other sources. There was a discrepancy between the Imperialist and the Taiping calendars, and writers of the time referred sometimes to the one and sometimes to the other, without indicating in each instance which calendar was used.
For the convenience of readers who prefer to consult the names in their historical sequence, rather than in alphabetical order, a separate index will be found at the close of Volume II.
Numbers, like 1/2/3a, which appear in the bibliographies, refer to the sources used in compiling the Index to Thirty-three Collections of Ch'ing Dynasty Biographies, prepared by Tu Lien-chê and Fang Chao-ying, and published in 1932 as Index No. 9 of the Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series. The first number indicates the source to which reference is being made; the second, the chüan, the third, the page. A list of these thirty-three works, and the numbers, assigned to them, will be found after the indexes in Volume II. One source not included in this series, namely the 八旗通志 Pa-ch'i t'ung-chi (ed. of 1799), is referred to as No. 34.
When the letter M. is prefixed to a numeral it refers to the sources used in compiling the Index to Eighty-nine Collections of Ming Dynasty Biographies, prepared by T'ien Chi-tsung, and published in 1935 as No. 24 of the Harvard-Yenching Index Series.
The letters L. T. C. L. H. M. refer to the 歷代著录畫目 Li-tai chu-lu hua-mu
