Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period/Ch'ien Ta-chao
CH'IEN Ta-chao 錢大昭 (T. 晦之, 宏嗣, H. 可廬, 竹廬), 1744–1813, scholar, native of Chia-ting, Kiangsu, was a brother of Ch'ien Ta-hsin [q. v.] who was eighteen years his senior. For a time Ch'ien Ta-chao joined his older brother in Peking and accompanied him to Kwangtung in 1774 when the latter was appointed director of education. On the recommendation of local authorities, the honorary title of Hsiao-lien fang-chêng 孝廉方正, and the button of the sixth rank, were conferred upon him (1796). In 1801 he undertook, together with his older brother, to compile the local history of Ch'ang-hsing (see under Ch'ien Ta-hsin). He died in 1813 in Sung-yang, Chekiang, where his eldest son was then magistrate.
Ch'ien Ta-chao possessed a broad knowledge of the Classics and history, but concentrated primarily on the Han period (206 B.C.–220 A.D.) as the following titles of his works show: 漢書辨疑 Han-shu pien-i, 22 chüan; Hou (後) Han-shu pien-i, 11 chüan; Hsü (續) Han-shu pien-i, 9 chüan; San-kuo chih (三國志) pien-i, 3 chüan; Hou Han-shu pu-piao (補表), 8 chüan; Hou Han-shu chün-kuo ling-chang k'ao (郡國令長考), 1 chüan; and 補續漢書藝文志 Pu hsü Han-shu i-wên chih, 2 chüan. All the above are critical disquisitions, annotations, or supplementary notes on the two Han Histories and the History of the Three Kingdoms, and all are reproduced in the Kuang-ya ts'ung-shu (see under Chang Chih-tung). In the field of the Classics he wrote: on the Book of Odes, a work entitled 詩古訓 Shih ku-hsün, in 12 chüan; on the Êr-ya, a work known as 爾雅釋文補 Êr-ya shih-wên pu, in 3 chüan; and on the Shuo-wên, a work known as 說文統釋 Shuo-wên t'ung-shih, in 60 chüan.
Ch'ien Ta-chao had three sons who, because of their accomplishments in the field of scholarship, were known as the "Three Phoenixes of the Ch'ien Family" (錢氏三鳳). The eldest, Ch'ien Tung-yüan 錢東垣 (T. 既勤, H. 亦軒, d. 1824), was a chü-jên of 1798. His best known work, entitled 崇文總目輯釋 Ch'ung-wên tsung-mu chi-shih, 6 chüan, written in collaboration with his brothers and others, is an attempt to reconstruct from various sources the ancient catalogue, Ch'ung-wên tsung-mu, which was compiled by imperial order during the years 1034–42, but is now mostly lost. The second son, Ch'ien I 錢繹 (T. 以誠, H. 小廬, original ming 東墉), produced a work, entitled 方言箋疏 Fang-yen chien-shu, in 13 chüan, on the Fang-yen, a dictionary of dialects in northern and central China, compiled during the first century A.D. The preface to the Fang-yen chien-shu is dated 1851. The third son, Ch'ien T'ung 錢侗 (T. 同人, H. 趙堂, 1778–1815), was a chü-jên of 1810 who took part in the compilation of Ch'ien Ta-hsin's Ssŭ-shih shuo-jun k'ao, and assisted Wang Ch'ang [q. v.] in the compilation of the latter's Chin-shih tsui-pien. Ch'ien T'ung's own work, 九經補韻考證 Chiu-ching pu-yun k'ao-chêng, a brief treatise on phonetics, supplementary to an earlier one of the Sung period, was first printed in 1799 and later incorporated in various ts'ung-shu.
[1/487/41b; 2/68/44a, 45a, b; 3/420/58a; 6/40/21a; Chia-ting hsien-chih (1880) 16/59b, 19/32b; T'oung Pao, VI, pp. 426–28 for notes on Ch'ung-wên tsung-mu.]
Tu Lien-chê