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Bu Tianshou
Schoolboy of Gaochang in Tang Xizhou whose copy of Zheng Xuan's Analects commentary, made at twelve in 710, was excavated at Astana
Before a thatched village house stands a stone well with a wooden bucket, beside a pole with plain cloth drying, smoke rising from a hearth inside and a dog sleeping at the left; a woman carries two buckets along a path by rice fields, with green hills beyond.
Also known as Charity-school pupil of Xizhou
- Roles
- Commoners
Bu Tianshou was a schoolboy of Ningchang township in Gaochang county, Tang Xizhou, who called himself a charity-school pupil and elsewhere a private pupil. In the third month of 710, aged twelve, he copied the Analects with Zheng Xuan's commentary in the Kong family recension, covering the books from Weizheng to Gongye Chang, and added a set of month songs and several five-character poems, complete with a child's slips and miswritings. The manuscript, excavated from Astana tomb 363 near Turfan, is a key witness to Zheng Xuan's long-lost Analects commentary and to elementary schooling on the Tang frontier.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; aged twelve in 710