Commentaries upon commentaries: the translation of the Jiu zhang suan shu by Karine Chemla and Guo Shuchun (Q973456)

The present essay review is at the same time a display of easy erudition (i.e. of subjects readily available elsewhere) and a sort of potpourri composed of disconnected notes which are sometimes interesting and sometimes less so (such as the question of the difference between the modern Chinese and Japanese pronunciation of Chinese characters, a question readily available in textbooks of these languages -- in this respect it would certainly have been more pertinent to have raised the difficult but fundamental question of the ancient pronunciation of Chinese characters found in the Nine Chapters). By contrast, instead of mostly repeating what is already known, one would have rather expected the author to examine broader issues, for example the question of the anachronism inherent in K. Chemla's analysis of the Jiuzhang suanshu in terms of D. Knuth's theory of algorithms.