The Robert Van Gulik Collection: Introduction

The Robert van Gulik Collection: Introduction

In 1977 the Sinological institute in Leiden was very fortunate to acquire the Chinese (and Japanese) library of Robert van Gulik from his heirs. Since Van Gulik’s death in 1967, several university libraries had shown interest in buying it, but the Van Gulik family finally decided to sell the library to the Leiden Sinological Institute, on the condition that it would be kept intact. Van Gulik had already begun collecting in Japan and China in 1935. In 1941 he sent most of this collection for safety to Batavia in the Netherlands Indies. Very unfortunately, the building in which the collection was kept in the harbor of Tandjoeng Priok was one of the few places that were bombed by the Japanese during the short battle against the Dutch in 1942, and the whole collection was lost. The present library is mostly based on Van Gulik’s collecting when stationed in Chungking (Chongqing) in 1944-46, in Japan (1935-1942; 1948- 1951; 1965-1967), and Malaysia (1959-1962). In October 1976 the library was brought to the Sinological Institute for inspection by the librarian John T. Ma. He counted more than 2800 titles in about 10,000 volumes and wrote in his report: “In addition to many basic reference works and ts’ung-shu [congshu] (collections of reprints), the collection is particularly strong on literature, fine arts, and music. Among the books of Chinese literature, there are many very rare folk novels. Some of them have been published during the Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644. Some of them are hand-copied. Many are banned books in China. … A total of 45 rare books had already been found in this collection.”

Cataloguing history of the Van Gulik Collection Van Gulik had made card catalogues, kept together in small booklets, for a large part of his library. The largest one is for his congshu, containing 33 volumes. The most important are those of books on literature in general (2 volumes; entitled: Mulu ), novels (Xiaoshuo, 1 vol.) and Music (Yinyue, 1 vol.). All these catalogues are arranged according to the Wade-Giles transcription of the titles. Not all items described in Van Gulik’s catalogues came to Leiden; some had been given away or had disappeared. Van Gulik stamped all his books and manuscripts with one or more of his personal seals. Imprints of many of his seals are collected in Gao Luopei yinpu (2010). He also wrote the titles of traditional Chinese books on red or white paper slips which he inserted in the books lying (not standing) on the shelves. After the library was acquired, John Ma started checking the books with the catalogues and numbered them. These numbers he added in pencil in the catalogues, divided into six sections. He also added titles to the Music catalogue and created a new one for books on fine arts (1 vol., 200 titles) and compiled a list of other titles numbered 201-352. John Ma divided the library in the following sections: A Classics; B Literature in general [many items in Van Gulik’s Mulu]; C Novels (and other fiction) [the items in Van Gulik’s Xiaoshuo catalogue]; D Music [the items in the Yinyue catalogue, with additions]; E Fine arts [some are mentioned in Mulu, but were not numbered B by John Ma]; T Ts’ung-shu (in Wade-Giles transcription; in pinyin: Congshu). Most items in Van Gulik’s Mulu were now classed in B, but some were (including B 74) transferred to E; novels and other kinds of fiction were classed in C, and Music in D. John Ma numbered all extant books on slips of paper stuck into the books and added the numbers preceded by one of the six letters in Van Gulik’s catalogues with a pencil. For books of section E not appearing in any of the catalogues, he made a new similar paper catalogue 1 booklet for items numbered 1-200 and a list for the nos. 201-352. General reference works and other books were numbered 353-464. In the fall of 1980, when IDC company (now part of Brill) was to make microfiches of a selection of rare books and manuscripts, mostly in the C and E sections, the present author was charged with making descriptions on large grey cards of section E (E 1 – 464). All items selected obtained a new call number consisting of the letter C or E followed by the first character and the first letters of the next two characters of the title in Wade-Giles transcription, for instance “Van Gulik C T’ien SC” for Tianshu ji . John Ma slightly revised the descriptions on the grey cards, had library cards made by the assistant-librarian H.W. Chan and published these in a short catalogue accompanying the microfiches. In this way he and later Joyce Wu published the following catalogues:

Van Gulik Collection. Chinese books on microfiches. Part 1, Folk novels (117 items; pages 1-16) (c. 1983); Part 2, Literature and fine arts (132 items; pages 17-32) (c. 1985); Part 3, Music scores and music books (53 items; pages 33-38) (1992).

Part 3 was compiled by Joyce Wu, who had succeeded John Ma in 1986. The items in this volume were numbered and shelved according to the Harvard-Yenching system, preceded by “van Gulik”, for instance “van Gulik 6771.23” Songfengge qinpu . In 1981, the library of the Sinological Institute was moved to the Arsenaal building, close to the Central Library and other sections of the faculty of Humanities. In that building a special room was created for the Van Gulik Collection, the Van Gulik Room (Van Gulik Kamer). Other Chinese special collections were also kept in that room. Some congshu and other large items are kept in wooden boxes, namely SINOL. Gulik 502, 504 (; 1 box each) and SINOL. Gulik T 15, 16 (, 8 boxes; , 15 boxes). In 2013-15, it was very fortunate that assistance could be obtained from dr. Wang Yi of the Institute of History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to make a full digital description in Excell of the Van Gulik Collection. Books without any number were added to the E section from E 465 to E 505. Unfortunately, books from Japan could only be summarily described. Moreover, since most of them are written in Chinese, the titles are transcribed in pinyin obscuring their Japanese origin. In 2016 this description was entered into the Leiden online catalogue, amounting to 937 items in total. The structure of the whole collection is as follows: subject note Call numbers Items A Classics SINOL. Gulik A 1 – 32 32 B Literature in general (Mulu) SINOL. Gulik B 1 – 161 160 C Novels (Xiaoshuo) IDC SINOL. Gulik C Ch’an CHS – C 117 Yün WP D Music (Yinyue) IDC SINOL. Gulik 6730.11 – 6773.8 53 E Fine arts (and literature) IDC SINOL. Gulik E Bei AS – E Yüeh 132 HK App. 1 SINOL. Gulik E 99 - 352 231 App. 2 SINOL. Gulik E 353 - 505 152 T congshu (Ts’ung-shu) SINOL. Gulik T 1 - 16 13 A number of Van Gulik’s works and a few of his (uncatalogued) Western books are also kept with the collection.

The Leiden University Library does not have any of Robert van Gulik’s correspondence or manuscripts. Parts of his correspondence can be found in the Letterkundig Museum (The Hague) and the Needham Collection (Cambridge), and some materials remained with his family. Van Gulik donated his manuscripts to Boston University Library. A list is available in Bibliography of dr. R.H. van Gulik (D.Litt.) : compiled for the benefit of the Boston University libraries, Mugar Memorial Library, Robert van Gulik collection (c. 1968).

In July 2016, the whole Van Gulik Collection (and other Chinese Special Collections) will be moved to the central library. There they will be kept in the closed stacks of the Special Collections Department. For economizing on space within the Special Collections Department (kluis), a number of items were given call numbers SINOL. 9100.163 Gulik etc., but it seems most of these will after all be shelved together with the rest of the collection.

Below is a simple list of all items in the Van Gulik Collection, with call numbers. More information about each item can be found in the Leiden University online catalogue, John Ma and Joyce Wu’s IDC catalogues and in Van Gulik’s own card catalogues.

Leiden, July 2016 dr. Koos Kuiper