Abstract:
There were three misinterpretations of the statement “Zhang Jian’s arrest just by an anonymous report” in Biographies of Party of Books of Latter Han after Li Zhi. Li Xian thought that the statement meant deleting the plaintiff’s name but Wang Youxue and his like believed that it meant inscribing or “delivering publicly”it. Cao Zhi, a contemporary scholar, the word in the original “KAN(publishing)” was a misspelling of the word “XING(arresting)”. However, the “standard interpretation” of the statement with reference to historical context, “Zhang Jian’s arrest just by an anonymous report” really meant cutting off the titles of Zhang Jian and his like and arrested them. As a result, the view based on “delivering publicly the notice” that “the stereotype printing was introduced in the East Han Dynasty” proves to be groundless.
