Miao Ch'üan-sun (1844-22 December 1919), the foremost Chinese bibliographic scholar of his day and the founder of several excellent libraries.

Chiangyin, Kiangsu, was the birthplace of Miao Ch'üan-sun. He was a sixth-generation descendent of Miao Sui (d. 1716), whose rule as magistrate of Tinghai, Chekiang, from 1695 until his death was so benevolent that the local inhabitants erected a sheng-tz'u [living shrine] in his honor. Miao Ch'üan-sun's grandfather was Miao T'ing-huai, a chin-shih of 1805 who became magistrate of the P'ingliang district in Kansu; and his father was Miao Huan-chang, a chu-jen of 1837 who served in the military headquarters of Chang Kuo-liang. In 1855 Miao Ch'üan-sun's mother, nee Chu, died of malaria; his father soon remarried. In September 1860, a few months after Miao Ch'üan-sun passed the examinations for the sheng-yuan degree, the Taiping rebels took Chiangyin. Soon afterwards, he and his stepmother fled to Huaian, Kiangsu, where he studied at the Licheng Academy. He and his stepmother later joined his father at Huayang, Szechwan. In 1867 Miao passed the examinations given in Szechwan for the chü-jen degree, but he was not awarded the degree because he was not a permanent resident of Szechwan. About this time, Miao came to know the leading Kwangtung bibliophile Li Wen-t'ien (ECCP, I, 494-95), who encouraged him in his pursuit of a scholarly career. A chance to utilize his bibliographic knowledge presented itself to Miao Ch'üan-sun in 1874, when Chang Chih-tung (ECCP, I, 27-32), then the minister of education in Szechwan, invited him to participate in the compilation of the Shu-mu ta-wen [questions answered on bibliography], which appeared in 1875. At the time of the invitation, Miao was teaching at the Tsunching Academy, of which Chang was the founder and the principal. The two men soon became friends.

In 1876 Miao Ch'uan-sun achieved the chin-shih degree and became a compiler in the Hanlin Academy. In the meantime, Chang Chih-tung had returned to Peking to serve as the editor in chief of the gazetteer of the Peking metropolitan area, then known as the Shun-Cien fu-chih. General principles of compilation were laid down by Chang, but the editorial work apparently was entrusted to Miao, who also wrote the treatises on topography, temples, economics, officials, literature, and stoneinscriptions. The gazetteer was completed in 1884 and published in 1886.

Except for a brief period during which he served as an examiner for the Peking metropolitan area, Miao Ch'üan-sun served the Hanlin Academy primarily by compiling a biographical dictionary of prominent Chinese of the Ch'ing period, under the supervision of P'an Tsu-yin (ECCP, II, 608-9) and later of Hsu T'ung. For a short time, T'an Chung-chim (1846-1888) served as co-compiler. After his departure from the project, Miao and Hsu T'ung came into conflict over the nature of the contribution to classical scholarship made by Chi Ta-k'uei (1746-1825), who had written a treatise on the I-ching {Book of Changes) which had less to do with textual criticism than with possible applications of this classic to divination. Miao maintained that Chi should be classified as a practitioner of fortune telling, not as a scholar.

After Miao's stepmother died in 1888, he withdrew from government service and went home to observe the traditional mourning period. He taught classics and literature at the Nanching Academy, which was headed by Wang Hsien-ch'ien (q.v.). At the end of the mourning period he went back to Peking, but he soon had to leave again because of his father's death in 1890. During this second period of mourning, he was chief lecturer at the Loyuan Academy in Shanghai. He then returned to Peking, where, as a compiler of the Hanlin Academy, he received an excellent rating from his superiors, who ranked him at the top of the third grade. However, the board that later reviewed these rankings demoted him more than 100 places at the insistence of Hsu T'ung. Miao responded by resigning from his post. At the invitation of Chang Chih-tung, then the governor general of Hupeh and Hunan, he went to Wuchang to compile a provincial gazetteer for Hupeh. During Chang Chih-tung's brief tenure of office as acting governor general at Nanking, Miao was asked to become chief lecturer at the Chung-shan Academy. He held that post from 1896 to 1901.

In 1901 Chang Chih-tung called a conference of prominent Chinese scholars in Wuchang to discuss ways and means of modernizing China. One result of that conference was the establishment at Nanking of the Chiang-ch'u pien-ishuchü [Kiangsu-Hupeh compilation and translation bureau], with Miao Ch'uan-sun as its director. Miao headed this organization until its dissolution in 1910, and it published his biographical work Hsu pei-chuan chi, which he had begun compiling in 1881.

Miao Ch'uan-sun became known as China's leading authority on bibliography, and two of his country's best libraries were founded and developed under his guidance. These were the Chiang-nan t'u-shu-kuan (later known as the Nan-ching kuo-hsueh t'u-shu-kuan and the Chiang-su sheng-li kuo-hsueh t'u-shu-kuan) and the Ching-shih t'u-shu-kuan (later known as the Kuo-li Pei-p'ing t'u-shu-kuan). In 1906, soon after he founded the Chiang-nan t'u-shu-kuan, Tuan-fang (ECCP, II, 780-82), then the governor general of Liang-Kiang, learned that the descendents of Ting Ping (1832-1889) were about to sell his fine collection of rare books, the Pa-ch'ien-chuan lou. He ordered Miao to buy it for the new library so that this collection would not suffer the fate of the rarities collected by Lu Hsin-yuan (ECCP, I, 545-47), which had been sold a short while earlier to Baron Iwasaki Yanosuke of Japan. The Ching-shih t'u-shu-kuan was established as a result of recommendations made to the Ch'ing court in 1909 by Chang Chih-tung, then the chairman of the Board of Education in Peking. Miao published some of the rarities he found at Peking, including books from the court library of the Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1279) at Hangchow which had been moved to Peking by the Mongols and forgotten. He enriched the holdings of the Ching-shih t'u-shu-kuan by buying the private collection of Yao Chin-yuan. Miao prepared a catalogue of rare books, the Ch'ing hsueh-pu t'u-shu-kuan shan-pen shu-mu, and a catalogue of local gazetteers, the Ch'ing hsueh-pu Cu shu-kuan fang-chih-mu. These works later were published in the Ku-hsueh hui-k'an. After the republic was established in 1911, Miao Ch'üan-sun lived in Shanghai and devoted most of his time to bibliographic studies. In 1914 he was invited to take part in the compilation of a history of the Ch'ing dynasty (see Chao Erh-sun). During a two-year stay in Peking, he rewrote many of the biographies he had prepared some thirty years before and wrote treatises on the T'u-ssu [aborigines] and the Ming i-ch'en [Ming officials who survived under the Ch'ing]. Miao then helped complete the treatise on inscriptions for a provincial gazetteer of Kiangsu and supervised the compilation of the local gazetteer of Chiangyin. On 22 December 1919 he died. He was survived by his second wife, nee Hsia, and by two sons and two daughters.

Miao Ch'üan-sun was the author of many books as well as the compiler and editor of major collections. The phrase "I-feng-t'ang" [hall of literary breeze] appears in the title of several collections of his own works. As a poet, he was known as the embodiment of the Sung style, characterized less by literary splendor than by depth of feeling. His contributions as a historian include chronological tables of highranking officials of the Nan-pei period (420-589) and a treatise on the literature of the Liao dynasty (907-1125). Miao edited a number of ts'ung-shu, including the Tui-yü-lou ts'ung-shu of 1905 and the Shih-yuan ts'ung-shu of 1914. He is best remembered, however, for his bibliographic contributions, including the I-feng-t'ang tu-shu-chi [record of books read in the hall of literary breeze]. Because of his enthusiastic efforts and obvious success in this field, the collation of texts and the publication of ancient and rare books became fashionable enterprises in twentieth-century China.