Donggong Xuan Yaolan: the 1926 edition and uncertain authorship

Revised 2026-10-24: began with a locatable 1926 edition and removed unsupported author identification and an invented generic chapter outline.

*Donggong Xuan Yaolan* (董公選要覽) is an almanac concerning the selection of auspicious dates. A surviving edition and the broader label “Donggong date selection” are not identical bodies of evidence.

A dated library witness

The Taiwan eBook database records an edition held and digitized by the National Taiwan Library: Qin Shenan as collator, “Wenming” as publisher, 1926, 78 pages, accession 31111003623665. This dates that publication, not the first composition of the work; collation does not establish original authorship.

The description of a National Library of China scan attributes another witness to “Dong Qian of the Ming” and names Wenming Shuju, 1926; it states that the book has no table of contents. The two records emphasize different responsibilities. Combining their names does not produce a verified author biography.

Who was “Donggong”?

“Donggong” is an honorific. Our earlier reference to Dong Dezhang did not provide evidence sufficient to establish his relationship to Dong Qian and this surviving work. That identification is no longer presented as settled fact.

Printed attribution, catalogue description and modern tradition should be distinguished. Establishing the original author, date or relationship between names would require earlier catalogues, prefaces or biographical evidence. This revision does not claim to have completed that research.

The catalogue identifies a work on divination and choosing auspicious times. Detailed claims about its monthly arrangement, day categories or particular spirits require checking the chosen edition's pages. A witness described as lacking a contents page should not be supplied with an invented “standard” chapter list borrowed from other almanacs.

Record the page, conditions and activity for each passage, and retain disagreements with other date-selection books. Such texts document historical auspiciousness beliefs; they do not guarantee outcomes. LamjinLab's date-selection tool is a related study resource, and its page defines its actual coverage.

Sources checked

• Taiwan eBook database, NTL-9900007903: Qin Shenan collation and 1926 publication.
• National Library of China scan mirrored on Commons: Dong Qian attribution, publisher and absence of contents. The original NLC catalogue timed out during this check; its direct verification is not claimed.