According to Dworkin, who wrote a history of the Spanish lexicon, claimed in an encyclopedic article published by Oxford in 2021, that “Corriente (1999, 2008) continues to be the most complete and reliable register of Spanish Arabisms.” The 1999 book was in Spanish, and the later 2008 book is in English, called Dictionary of Arabic and allied loanwords: Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician and kindred dialects. This book has a selective preview in Google books, and it has a 10+ page of “Index of Romance Lexical Items” which has about 1,000 words listed, and it acts sort of like the table of contents for the dictionary.

I want to see for a student learning Spanish, how much of Arabic vocabulary would one encounter. So I use the alphabetical index of the most frequently contemporarily used 5,000 Spanish words, from A Frequency Dictionary of Spanish, 2^nd edition (2018, Routledge), which is available for download on archive.org. I manually compare the 5,000 words, and see if they have equivalents in Corriente’s index. And out of the 5,000 most frequently used Spanish words, I found it is related to Arabic on only 28 items, that is only a 0.56%.

So the conclusion is that while Arabic historically might have influenced the Spanish lexicon, but for the words commonly in use, Arabic has a really insignificant presence.

Let me give the words as shown in Routledge’s dictionary (as I don’t have Corriente’s full work, only the index). English gloss in quotes, the number at the end is the frequency rank. After colon is my comment.

1.       abismo “abyss, large gap” 4069: this is clearly cognate with English, so let’s check etymonline.com, which says the word ultimately comes from Greek. So this word may come to Spanish somehow through Arabic, but this is also a word with Greek/Latin source.

2.       aceite “oil” 2101

3.       ademán “gesture, expression” 3598

4.       adorar “to worship, adore” 3096: this again seems to be a Latin word, accordingly to https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=adore

5.       afilar “to sharpen” 4768: this is not directly in Corriente’s index, which has “afilate” instead. I am not sure “afilate” is a Spanish word, but I haven’t learnt Spanish or its morphology, so maybe it is just not a dictionary head word.

6.       ajedrez “chess” 4970

7.       albergar “to lodge, harbor” 3658: Corriente’s index has “albergate”.

8.       alcaide “mayor” 2011

9.       alcohol “alcohol” 2296: clearly an Arabism.

10.   aldea “small village” 4109

11.   algodón “cotton” 3611: from Arabic “qutn”, https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=cotton

12.   almacén “warehouse, store” 2980

13.   almacenar “to store, keep” 3489: this is not in Corriente’s index, but if almacén is from Arabic, this clearly related verb also has to be.

14.   almohada “pillow” 4267

15.   alquiler “rent, rental” 4454

16.   árabe “Arab” 2102: difficult to really count this as influence of the Arabic language.

17.   arroz “rice” 2882

18.   ataúd “coffin, casket” 4992

19.   barrio “neighborhood, district” 940

20.   cero “zero, naught, nil” 1731: for the English zero, etymonline.com says “from Arabic sifr "cipher," translation of Sanskrit sunya-m "empty place, desert, naught." You don’t need to know Arabic to know this though.

21.   dado “d. que: given that” 1501: I take this to mean that it is only frequently used as part of the phrase dado que. On its own, the word seems to mean dice, according to https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/spanish-english/dado

22.   eje “axis, shaft, crux” 2588

23.   guitarra “guitar” 2706: Etymonline says “Modern guitar also is directly from Spanish guitarra (14c.), which ultimately is from the Greek. The Arabic word is perhaps from Spanish or Greek, though often the relationship is said to be the reverse.” So this may be ultimately a Greek word instead.

24.   jinete “rider, horseman” 4927

25.   loco “crazy, insane” 846

26.   musulmán “Moslem, Muslim” 2781: just like árabe, hard to say this counts.

27.   ola “wave, billow” 2425

28./ paja “straw, thatching” 3875

Besides this, in Routledge, I saw ojalá “hopefully” 399 which many on the internet says comes from Arabic. The word is not in Corriente’s index though.

It is easy to see most of the Arabic words in Spanish starts with a-, related to the article al- in Arabic. And mostly nouns.

On a purist basis, and ordered by frequency of use, the list can look like:

1.       loco “crazy, insane” 846

2.       barrio “neighborhood, district” 940

3.       dado “d. que: given that” 1501

4.       alcaide “mayor” 2011

5.       aceite “oil” 2101

6.       alcohol “alcohol” 2296

7.       ola “wave, billow” 2425

8.       eje “axis, shaft, crux” 2588

9.       arroz “rice” 2882

10.   almacén “warehouse, store” 2980, also representing almacenar “to store, keep” 3489

11.   ademán “gesture, expression” 3598

12.   algodón “cotton” 3611

13.   paja “straw, thatching” 3875

14.   aldea “small village” 4109

15.   almohada “pillow” 4267

16.   alquiler “rent, rental” 4454

17.   Jinete “rider, horseman” 4927

18.   ajedrez “chess” 4970

19.   ataúd “coffin, casket” 4992

To summarize, knowing Arabic does not really gives you a real vocab advantage in learning Spanish. Though our lives really should not be without algodón or alcohol, ojalá!

References:

1. Dworkin, S. N. (2012). A history of the Spanish lexicon: A linguistic perspective. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

2. History of the Spanish Lexicon

https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.464
https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-464

3. Corriente, F. (1999). Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance. Madrid, Spain: Gredos.

4. Corriente, F. (2008). Dictionary of Arabic and allied loanwords: Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician and kindred dialects. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill.

5. https://archive.org/details/a-frequency-dictionary-of-spanish-core-vocabulary-for-learners-second-edition

6. https://www.etymonline.com/word/abyss

There is this new resource called IE-CoR

https://iecor.clld.org/

It is a cognate database for a basic word list similar to Swadesh-100 called 'Jena 170' - I didn't find any documentation of the list but it does not matter.

I have always wondered whether there are words that stay being cognates in the major Indo-European languages of the modern world. So with this resource, I did a little analysis.

The way I go about it is to go through all 170 "meanings," and look to see if the modern English, Hindi, and Spanish word for the same meaning are all cognates. English, Hindi, and Spanish are the most spoken Indo-European languages nowadays, and so I started there. My findings are below:

1. There are 19 meanings out of the Jena 170 list for which the English, Hindi, and Spanish words are cognates. (11%)They are:

A) one, two, three, four, five;

B) nail, nose, tongue, tooth, foot, eye;   

C) name, new;

D) sun, star, day;

E) full, sew, horn.

2. So at least from the criteria "cognate retention" in English, Hindi and Spanish, the major words that stay cognate are A) basic numbers; B) body parts, mostly on the face; the rest are mostly nouns, C) starts with "n" as the initial consonants; D) are vaguely a group.

3. Look at this 19 list from a different angle. Modern major Indo-European languages beyond English, Hindi, and Spanish -- based on Ethnologue (2023) from Wikipedia  on total L1+L2 speakers -- includes French, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, Urdu, German, Marathi, Persian, Italian. Can the above sets of words find cognates in the other 9 modern I-E languages? I have expected the Indo-Aryan, Romance and Germanic languages to work, so the real test is Russian, and maybe Persian. The results are:

- Cognates in all 12 modern I-E languages: one, two, three, four, five, nail, name, new, sun. Of this list, I also looked at whether cognates are in the ancient languages of Vedic Sanskrit, Pali, Latin and Greek (the real test is Greek), and only "one" does not have a cognate in Greek.

- Cognates in 11 modern I-E: foot, star, tooth (not cognate in Russian); nose (not cognate in Tehran Persian)

- Cognates in 10 modern I-E: full (not in Bengali, Marathi), day, sew (not in Persian, German); tongue (not in Urdu, Persian)

- Cognates in 9 modern I-E: horn (not in Russian, Persian)

- Cognates in 8 modern I-E: eye (not cognate in Russian, Persian, Bengali, Marathi)

To repeat, the true top winners are: two, three, four, five, nail, name, new, sun

High honorable mentions: one, nose, tooth, foot, star    

3. Now back to just for cognates among English, Hindi and Spanish, there are also 6 other words that may or may not be counted:

F) eat, flower, right

G) navel

H) give, smoke, snake. 

4. Eat, flower and right might are not ultimately cognates according to the I-E database, 

Eat is from PIE *h₁ed-, but Hindi khānā is from PIE *kʰād-. I don't know enough linguistics to know whether these two are irreconcilable, or whether they can be dialectic difference in PIE.

Flower is from PIE *bʰleh₃-, but Hindi phūla is from Sanskrit phulla-. Is the Sanskrit ultimately derivable from *bʰleh₃-? I can't tell, so this is also a "maybe"   

Right is from PIE *h₃reg̑-, Spanish is derecho; Hindi dāyām̐ is from PIE *dek̑s-. The PIE root looks pretty different, but it is just that both Spanish and Hindi starts with a d and is a bit confusing for me.

Note in all 3 cases, it is the Hindi word that is not cognate with English and Spanish.

5. Navel is a strange case. Navel is the English gloss for the meaning, but then the IE-CoR base uses "belly button" as the lexeme for that gloss in English. For me, this is the one most likely to join the group of 19 words above. It is also a body part, and also starts with an n. Navel is cognate in 10 modern I-E language, including English, but excluding Russian and Marathi.

6. Give is the gloss that gives Spanish dar which is ultimately from PIE *deh₃-. Give is not a cognate, but in English donate is cognate, with essentially the same (more specialized) meaning. But I can understand that donate is less fundamental than give.

Smoke is the gloss that gives Spanish humo, ultimately from PIE *dʰu̯eh₂-. English fume is a cognate.

Snake is the gloss that gives Spanish serpiente, and easy to see English serpent is cognate.

In these 3 cases, English has a non-Germanic word that is cognate with Hindi and Spanish, but the most basic words are not cognate    

7. Of the final list of 20 (including navel), they all have cognates in Latin, Sanskrit and Pali; but 6 do not have the same cognates in ancient Greek (day, eye, nose, one, sew, tongue).

The above takes a lot of time to generate. Below are easy to directly read from the database.

8. Let's look at the most "universal and stable" I-E words:

a. Same cognates in all 13 clades of I-E (the database counts the Indo-Iranian Nuristani as a 3rd clade of Indo-Iranian): two, three, name (but in Baltic only Old Prussian cognates, but Latvian, Latgalian and Lithuanian use another root)

b. Same cognates in 12 clades: four (different the earliest Anatolian clade), five (not in database, possibly not attested in Anatolian), nail, new (different in Albanian)

c. Same cognates in 9 clades: sun (different in Anatolian, Tocharian, Armenian, and Albanian)

9. So the final ranking:

Tied 1st: two, three - all lexemes in database from PIE *du̯o-, *du̯i-

Tied 3rd: five - all lexemes but lacking Anatolian; name 152 /161 from same I-E root, 13 clades;

5th: four - 156 /159 lexemes in database covering 12 clades except for Anatolian

6th: nail - 146 / 152

7th new - 139 / 158

8th: sun 

Literature Humanities:

Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Morrison, Song of Solomon
Rankine, Citizen (actually, 2014, 21st century)

Contemporary Civilization:

Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
Du Bois, “Of the Culture of White Folk” 

ANTICOLONIALISM
- Gandhi, “Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule” 
- Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Arendt, Crises of the Republic
Foucault, Discipline and Punish

RACE, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY
- Fields, “Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America” *
- Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement” 
- Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts” *
- Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother *

CLIMATE AND FUTURES
- Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses” *
- Whyte, “Is It Colonial Déjà Vu? Indigenous Peoples and Climate Injustice" *

This is very old - Time magazines selected Top 100 Persons of the Century

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,991227-1,00.html

The people within the scope as potential canonical authors are:

- Gandhi

- T.S. Eliot

- James Joyce

- Freud

- Keynes

- Wittgenstein

Time selected Albert Einstein as person of the century, and Gandhi and Roosevelt (FDR) as runner-ups.

First version of this site was from July 2011. Now it is April 2024. I have been reading some canonical works on  and off, but I haven't been looking at canonical text lists for some time.

Recently I was studying some college course catalogs. Most colleges academic year has 30 weeks - either semesters (each 15 weeks) or trimesters (each 10 weeks). So really for a year-long course a selection of a list of 24 works best - can do in chunks of 12 (for semesters) or chunks of 8 (for trimesters). For a year-long course of canonical texts, there needs to be weeks allowed for Intro - why study canonical texts; social process of how texts become canonical; and probably some closing reflections on take-aways from the year-long study. The last week of a term should also be finals / essay writing. So something like 24 works make sense.

With the benefits of time distance (of not looking at canonical text lists for some time), plus playing around with generative AI (ChatGPT), I come up with a new list that looks a little bit different from before.

As a I live more in the US, I guess my insistence on Western < half of world diminishes.

Brief comments on some of them:

• Plato - Complete Works (not just the Republic)
• Shakespeare - Hamlet in course, First Folio as the selected text
• Marx - Capital; other texts would be supplemental
• Samyutta Nikaya - Buddhism is the 3rd (but much smaller) global religion; textual tradition is dispersed; but this most likely contain the kernel of Buddha's initial teachings
• Augustine: Confessions or On the Trinity (hard to choose)
• al-Tabari: Histories (rather than Quranic commentaries); want to include a text at the foundation period of Islamic disciplines
• Tale of Genji: only female author selected; earliest novel (a global form) which also includes in the text short lyrical poetry in the East Asian tradition)
• Homer: I always have some bias towards Iliad over Odyssey
• Eusebius: he wrote the foundational history of early Christianity
• Kant: Critique of Pure Reason; Kant's value as the core modern western philosopher is truly a time-tested canon formation process, made clear in modern US academia in their course offerings
• Voltaire: Essays on Manner (his world history work); actually hard to select a French author - but French clearly had a critical role in post-1500 Western tradition
• al-Ghazzali: Revival of Religious Sciences
• Shankara: Commentaries on Brahma Sutra
• Rg Veda - foundational religious poetry, probably closest window into Indo-European "pagan" core
• Shijing / Classics of Odes - hard choice vs. Tang poetry which is more commonly read; but does show even earliest poetry texts do not need to be religious
• Wang Bi Ji - Wang Bi wrote the definitive commentaries on both Laozi (Dao De Jing) and Zhou Yi (Classics of Change) (plus he commented on the Analects which doesn't pass down except in very small fragments)
• Lastly, I personally find Zhiyi (founder of Tiantai Sect) probably the most accomplished thinker in the East Asian tradition (Tendai is also foundational in Japanese Buddhism). This is the only one that is clearly not currently a primary canonical text on the level of others selected in the list. But one I would advocate to be canonized even more. Also, the currently most canonical texts of him Commonly accepted as his main works are his commentaries on the Lotus Sutra (Fahua Xuanyi) and his system of mediation (translated by Swanson in 3 volumes not long ago as Clear Serenity, Quiet Insight). But these are notes probably severely edited by his disciple Guanding. His actual last major work was actually his Commentaries on Vimalakirtinirdesasutra. This text is what I am advocating to be in the list of canonical texts of 25. (Vimalakirtinirdesasutra is much more interesting than the Lotus Sutra anyways.) But clearly this is my personal quirk. In fact, every teacher of canonical texts probably have their personal favorite to add as the 25 text in a year-long course.

While this list does not go out of the way to include sub-traditions (e.g. Shiite Islam or Orthodox Christian etc.), it does give prominence to secondary languages of a tradition:

- Latin in Greco-Roman

- Persian in Islamic

- Pali in South Asian

- Japanese in East Asian

- Of course, English, German and French are all present in modern western; and Hebrew, Greek, Latin and even Italian in the Christian tradition. 

Now back to my first reading of Marx's Capital. 

Ok, actually, on the site I have done multiple version of lists like a ~25 text lists.

Let's see what are different.

First, vs. what is on the site as a derivative list of the main List of 150.

https://lawpark.jimdofree.com/list-of-150/derivative-lists/list-of-25/

Changes from the old list:

- Four Books Commentaries (Zhu Xi) - cut

- Wenxuan - replaced with Classics of Odes

- Tang poetry - replaced with Tale of Genji

- Ramanuja - cut

- Kalidasa - replaced with Rg Veda

- Ferdowsi - replaced with Hafez

- Amir Khusrau - cut

- Gibbon - replace with Voltaire

- Descartes - replace with Marx

The three cuts replaced with:

- Homer, Virgil, Eusebius

So shift is away from non-Western towards western classical / Christian. Eusebius is the suspect one. Maye Tang poetry shouldn't be out?

Second, in May 2014 (almost exactly a decade ago), in the series of "Rethinking Criteria", there was also implicitly a list of 25.

https://lawpark.jimdofree.com/2014/05/01/rethinking-criteria-of-list-coming-up-with-a-short-east-asian-reading-list/

https://lawpark.jimdofree.com/2014/05/02/rethinking-criteria-shorter-south-asian-reading-list/

https://lawpark.jimdofree.com/2014/05/02/rethinking-criteria-shorter-cwana-reading-list/

https://lawpark.jimdofree.com/2014/05/03/rethinking-criteria-shorter-western-list/

Changes from the old list:

- Four Books Commentaries (Zhu Xi) - cut

- Su Shi - replaced with Classics of Odes

- Kalidasa - cut

- Amir Khusrau - cut

- Shanama - replaced with Hafez

Added are:

- Virgil, Eusebius, Kant

Again, Eusebius is the suspicious one, maybe Su Shi shouldn't be out?

Third, in 2015 (Feb and Dec), I did a List of 28.

https://lawpark.jimdofree.com/2015/02/21/list-of-28-revised/

https://lawpark.jimdofree.com/2015/12/31/progressive-lists-of-6-16-28/

Changes from the old list:

- Cervantes - cut

- Tolstoy - cut

- Ferdowsi - replaced with Hafez

- Kalidasa - cut 

- Zhu Xi (Four Books Commentaries) - cut 

- Su Shi- cut

Added are:

- Eusebius, Zhiyi

Zhiyi is clearly a bit of personal choice. Eusebius is the other weak link in the current list - which I try to have a "history" for each tradition.

Among the texts deprioritized, 

- The East Asian / Chinese tradition I am partial, among Tang poetry, Su Shi and Zhu Xi, if I were to save a text it would be Su Shi, but his time (Song dynasty) is same as Tale of Genji.

- From the South Asian ones Kalidasa and Amir Khusrau. Amir Khusrau is easier to drop. Kalidasa is the prime kavya author, reason he gets drop is it seems like he was elevated as the British wants to compare him wtih Shakespeare (also drama / poetry author). At the current vintage point, even with the interest in getting modern Indian languages (Hindi/Urdu, Bengali) represented, somehow I am still more inclined to include Gandhi than Premchand or Tagore. Really doesn't matter what language Gandhi chose to write in.

- Cervantes, Tolstoy: both are novels but the priority went to Tale of Genji (early, female author)

So, if I need to edit the new list of 25, the only real tempting choice is to replace Eusebius with Gandhi.

But Eusebius was in many sense a foundational Christian scholar, and his historical projects are truly influential (and is the starting point of most later historians) in the Christian late antiquity and middle ages. 

Recently looked at viola repertoire by difficulty, and also pieces transcribed from cello by their difficulties as played on cellos. I am an "early advanced" player and so I focus on pieces in the intermediate and advanced difficulty ranges. I am interested mostly in Baroque to Romantic pieces, thus I ignore most 20th century works (like Bartok, Hindemith, Walton). (Note: After compiling, I found my old file summarizing Henry Barrett's repertoire, so I unsystematically slot some of the works shown there in the list already writen.)

Early Intermediate: ("Level 4")

- Core: Vivaldi sonatas

- Marcello (easiest) and Vivaldi (e.g. edited by Primrose) sonatas are good pieces for sight-reading practice

- If need to perform, the concertos of Telemann and Handoshkin can be considered

Intermediate: ("Level 5")

- Core: Bach Suite #1 & #2

- Suzuki volume 6 (with Brahms Hungarian Dance #5, Bach Double)

- Concertos: Vanhal, Benda, Zelter; probably Monn Cello Concerto in g minor if transcribed to viola 

- Other pieces: Mendelssohn Songs without Words Op.109 (but in Suzuki book 8), Elgar Salut d'Amour; Bruch Canzone op.55

Late Intermediate: ("Level 6)

- Core: Bach Suite #3, Casadesus / J.C. Bach concerto in C minor (in Suzuki 6/7)

- Pieces written for viola: Clarke Passacaglia on an Old English Tune, Vaughan Williams Suite; Schumann Marchenbilder, Lizst Romance Oubliee

- Concertos: J. Schubert; A. Stamitz Viola concerto #3 in G

- Concertante pieces transcribed from violin: Beethoven Romances #1/#2, Monti Czardas

- Small violin pieces: Kreisler Liebesleid/Liebesfreud; Corelli sonatas op.5 (excludes La Folia)

- Bruch Kol Nidre, probably Brahms Cello sonata op.38 

- I love Boccherini Cello Sonata in G major (transcription from imslp); Schubert Ave Maria (Suzuki 7) is also nice

- I have also transcribed Chopin Op.3 and play it on 5-string viola

Early Advanced: ("Level 7")

- Core: Bruch Romanze Op.85, Bach Suite #4, Hoffmeister Concerto #1 in D

- Suzuki: Casadesus/Handel concerto (Vol 7), Vol 8, Hummel sonata (vol 9)

- Most sonatas written for viola are at this level: Mozart duo K.423/424, C. Stamitz Viola Sonata in B flat; Mendelssohn sonata in c minor, Hummel Fantasie, Boccherini viola sonata in c minor, Vanhal

- Studies: Campagnoli caprices, Fuchs 15 Characteristic Studies   

- Transcriptions from violin: Telemann Solo Fantasias, Corelli La Folia, Dvorak Romance, Kreisler Praeludium & Allegro

- Bach: Brandenberg Concerto #6, 3 da Gamba sonatas

- Bruch Double Concerto Op.88 probably falls here

- Also popular with cellists: Schuman Adagio & Allegro Op.70, Boccherini cello Sonata in A

- Most orchestral excerpts (those published by IMC are either this or the prior level)

- If transcribed from cello to viola, CPE Bach Concerto in A minor and Saint-Saens cello concerto would probably fall near the ends of this broad level

Advanced: ("Level 8")

- Core: Bach Suite #5 & #6, Schubert Arpeggione Sonata, Stamitz Concerto in D, Mozart Sinfonia Concertante K.364

- Solo show pieces: Vieuxtempts' Cappricio, Rolla's Escerzio ed Arpeggio

- Other native or semi-native viola pieces: Glinka sonata, Beethoven Notturno op.42, Weber Andante e Rondo Ungarese, York Bowen concerto, Brahms Sonatas Op.120 (#1, #2)

- Some transcriptions from violin: Brahms sonata op.78, Vitali Chaccone, Biber Passacaglia

- I am starting to learn Beethoven Cello Sonata #3 Op.69; Brahms cello sonata #2 op.99, if transcribed, would be at this level

- Many interesting cello concertos, if transcribed, would fall in this level: Haydn Concerto in C (#1), Boccherini/Grutzmacher Concerto in B flat, CPE Bach concerto in A major, Lalo 

Very Advanced: ("Level 9")

- Viola concertos: Berlioz's Harold in Italy, Paganini's Sonata for Gran Viola (which is actually a concerto)

- Bach's solo violin sonatas and partitas (the most difficult ones like Chaconne are definitely this level)

- Paganini: Caprices and La Campanella 

- Vieuxtemps' Sonata in B flat, op.36
- Handel-Halvorsen's duos: Passacaglia and Sarabande

- Lilian Fuch's: Sonata Pastorale, probably her 12 Caprices and 16 Fantasy Studies

- Cello concertos: Brahms' Double, Haydn Concerto in D (#2), Dvorak; I am not sure if Schumann or Elgar concertos or Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations have been transcribed 

I have written about my summary of the PEW study on the now defunct Chinese Forum of Peking University. Essentially this is a research on estimated populations by religious affiliations by all countries of the World - adding up to a total of 6.9B in 2010. After classifying according to my geographical divisions, the results are:

East Asia - 1.6B (including 0.3B Buddhists)

South Asia - 1.6B (including 0.5B Muslims)

Europe and Americas -- 1.7B (including 1.4B Christians)

Middle East and North Africa - 0.6B Muslims

Sub-Sahara Africa -- 0.8B (of which 0.5B Christians, 0.3B Muslims)

Southeast Asia + Oceania -- 0.6B (0.2B each for Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists/Others)

So if I use Religious Affiliations crossed with regions to define the relative strength (population size) of different traditions as of 2010, I can get

Buddhists - 0.5B

East Asia - 1.3B (ex - Buddhists)

South Asia + Hindu - 1.35B (count half of South Asian Muslims)

CWANA + Muslims - 1.35B (1.1B in MENA, Sub-Saharan Africa and SE Asia, and count half of South Asian Muslims)

Western + Christians - 2.4B (1.7B in Europe and Americas, plus 0.7B in Sub-Saharan

African and SE Asia)

Say if I want a list with only 5 canonical texts - I divide 6.9B by 5, each set 1.38B gets one book to represent their tradition, then with rounding I have 1 book each for E. Asia, S. Asia, and CWANA/Mulism, and 2 for West/Christian. This List of 5 would be:

1. Bible

2. Quran

3. Mahabharata

4. Shiji (Historical Records)

5  Shakespeare

The last one I need a work that represents the modern West - and given English as the hegemonic western language, using Shakespeare as the representative seems more relevant than using a Classical Greek/Latin work or Marx. This list of 5 does not have any specific philosophical works. And this is just my List of 6 minus Plato.

Now for a List of 10 canonical texts, each 0.69B of population gets one book to represent their tradition. then with rounding I have:

1 Buddhist work - Samyutta Nikaya

2 East Asia - Shiji, Wang Bi works

2 South Asia -- Mahabharata, Samkara's Brahmasutrabhasya

2 CWANA/Islamicate -- Quran, al-Tabari's History

3 West/Christian -- Bible, Shakespeare, St. Augustine

St. Augustine instead of Plato because Christians are predominant, and having a Latin work (as source of Romance language) makes sense. Each half of the world (e.g. "South" with CWANA+South Asia+Buddhist and "North"; or "East" with E. Asia, South Asia plus Buddhist and "West") will have at least a book representing each of the 4 genre categories (Scriptures, History, Philosophy, Literature).

Using 2010 religious population I can finally get to a somewhat "stable" list of canonical works - though the weakness is obvious - that by 2020 or 2025 or 2050 the sense of porportions would need to be different again!

My recent "listing" interests have shifted to classical music composers and their works.

As with canonical texts, the first thing about starting a list is defining the scope. In the broad sense of classical music, my personal interest is actually quite narrow. I never really learnt or listened much classical music composed from 20th century onwards (I could argue that there isn't enough time to form a canonical opinion, but I wouldn't because in music some status of being "classic" seems to happen much faster than for canonical texts). I tried but never really got to the point that I truly appreciate vocal / choral music, opera included. I am also pretty basic, and am not that interested in digging up great works that ended up not being popular (my last try in here is C.P.E. Bach - but decided at the end that his works are not popular for a reason).

With this frame, the number of composers that matter are really limited!  Especially if we exclude composers with really just one popular piece - like Pachebel, whose canon in D is pretty good music, but even the Gigue in the same piece is almost never played. And the current understanding of western classical history is pretty central European (German) biased (especially against southern Europe - Italy and Spain). So the list of instrumental composers that truly matter in the 18th and 19th century comes down to, in chronological order of great works composed:

1. J.S. Bach - I really never like Bach in any real sense, but any instruments I learn I can't bypass him - violin (Sonatas & Partitas), viola (Cello Suites), piano (Well-Tempered Clavier I&II). He is more fun to play, than to listen. And his music tends to be sad/negative rather than entertaining/uplifting - so out of his massive universe of works, the truly enjoyable ones I feel is only a very small percentage. Before Bach, it feels like pre-history - Corelli, Vivaldi, Purcell. Handel is mostly still in the concert repertoire for his Messiah Oratorio - since I am not into choral music, he is out too.

2. Mozart -- there is a generation of Bach's sons that is skipped. I can't find too many J.C.Bach's works to listen to, and C.P.E. Bach may have a bit of comeback these last decades, but I find most of his works not that interesting. The ones that I think have some potential is his cello concertos. Among this list, Mozart is the only instrumental master who also "made it" in the opera world. His Piano concertos I don't think have ever been really surpassed.

3. Haydn -- why does Haydn come after Mozart? Because Haydn's best / most well-known works nowadays almost all date from 1790's after Mozart's death. He is the father of string quartets and symphonies, but Haydn always feel like a little bit in need of "revival." He is solidly on my list because he is through and through entertaining, and most often uplifting.

4. Beethoven -- he is the central guy in the canon, but unfortunately I can't really seem to get myself to like most of his works, especially his late works that are supposed to be deep. When he wants to be charming though, he could be very charming - think Moonlight piano sonata, Spring violin sonata. My personal favorite is his Bagatelles Op.119.

5. Schubert -- I don't really listen to Lieder, so Schubert is handicapped from the get go on this list; and he is often sad and melancholic -- I give him a pass though as sometimes he is so beautifully sad (think the theme of Arpeggione Sonata). But just the instrumental works he finishes in the last years of his life are more than enough to place him solidly on this list.

6. Chopin -- he is one of the three non-Germanic composers on this list. He mostly only composed for piano, especially miniature piece. He knows rules of composition, but using those rules to create a completely different sound world. My only complain is that he tends to be on the melancholic side, that is why I always feel his prime are in the years of 1829~1834, to me his Preludes are already a hint too "dark" - but you got to give him credit - it is hard for anyone to not like Bach if the only Bach pieces one listens to are his Preludes from Well-Tempered Clavier Books.

7. Mendelssohn -- he may not be deep, but his music is charming. As a violin player, his Violin Concerto always hold a special place in my heart. (And not as sad as Bruch's!) 

8. Tchaikovsky -- yes, you read it right, I flew by Lizst, Berlioz, Schumann. Can't say there are no good Lizst works (his Paganini Etudes are quite nice), but the portion of enchanting music is so small compared to Chopin's. I never got to listen to Schumann's much. Every time I try somehow I am never impressed. Thus the jump directly to Tchaikovsky, his prime in my view are 1775-1880, a full generation after Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto of 1844. His most popular works, not so different from the last two on this list, are primarily symphonic, with some chamber music, and less solo (piano) music.

9. Brahms -- most of his works are too serious for me. But he revitalized symphony as a genre. I can't decide if his youthful works are better than his mature works, but in any case  the center and apex of his opus has to be his Symphony #4, which is in the late 1880's.

10. Dvorak -- The most popular works today of this Czech composers mostly originate in his late period from the late 1880's through right after his expatriate stint in the United States.

This is it, my list of 10 composers. 

I just realize this past couple of days that I have been a listmaniac for a long time by now.

Amazon.com used to have this "Listmania" function that I used - and the first one I did back in May 2001! Here are the four lists, all on the philosophy genre:

A. 20th Century Religious Philosophy from Different Traditions (May 2001)

- Kant (18th c.)

- Schleiermacher (19th c.)

- Karl Barth

- Paul Tillich

- Karl Rahner

- Hans Ur von Balthasar

- Solovyov (19th c.)

- Berdyaev

- Vladimir Lossky

- Heschel

- Sayyed Hossein Nasr

- Muhammad Iqbal

- Radhakrishnan

- Nishida Kitaro

- Tanabe Hajime

- Tu Wei-ming (because Mou Zong-san didn't have English translations yet then; I now found 2 on Amazon - 19 lectures and autobiography at 50, both published 2015) 

B. Top 10 Western Philosophers (Jun 2001)

- Plato

- Aristotle

- Plotinus

- Augustine

- Aquinas

- Kant

- Hegel

- Marx

- Heidegger

- Habermas

C. Top 10 Pre-modern Asian Philosophers (Apr 2002)

- Zhuangzi

- Nagarjuna

- Vasubandhu

- Buddhaghosa

- Zhiyi

- Kukai

- Sankara

- Zhuxi

- Tsong Kha Ba

- Wang Yangming

D. World Systematic Influential Philosophers Pre-1800 (Aug 2002)

- Plato

- Aristotle

- Mencius

- Zhuangzi

- Nagarjuna

- Vasubandhu

- Plotinus

- Augustine

- Zhiyi

- Zhuxi

- Sankara

- Ramanuja

- Ibn Sina

- Mulla Sadra

- Aquinas

- Gregory Palamas

- Kant

By mortalterror on online-literature.com

1.The Divine Comedy by Dante Alghieri
2.Hamlet by William Shakespeare
3.The Iliad by Homer
4.The Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
5.The Mahabharata by Vyasa
6.The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
7.The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
8.War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
9.The Aeneid by Virgil
10.Don Quixote by Cervantes

There only text that I didn't include in my revised list of 28 is #7, though from a modern perspectives with focus of longer prose like novels, I cannot disagree with mortal error's choice of the Red Chamber over Su Shi or The Odes. 

I have decided that a List of 10 is not stable. So I have went back to my list of 18, delete Homer and Amir Khusrau from that list to come to a list of 16, and then include the List of 28 which I am still happy with. Pretty sure this is my last thinking on the topic ... for 2015.

I have recently finished reading Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji (2015 English translation by Dennis Washburn, Kindle edition which I bought for a whopping $2.85), which is part of my "current" list of 28 that I have been quite happy with for most of 2015. I actually like the book given the fact that I had the patience to spend about half a year to finish reading it. But still I ask myself, does every college kid really need to read such a disturbing text?

I went back to the end of that post, and for instructions into 9 categories (Southern and Western Epics are actually just one original category, that I cut up because of the need to balance number of texts to be taught in one semester), and say for Literature as Entertainment a good "must read" list really should not include Tale of Genji. Nor the highly vulgar (at some points) Don Quixote. So maybe a good list really is just one text for these 9 categories. Original list is as follows: 

First Semester (14)

Foundational poetry (SE, E, W - 3): Rg Veda, Odes, Homer

Foundational world religious texts (SE, W, SW - 3) - Samyutta Nikaya, Bible, Quran

Foundational histories (W, E, SW - 3) - Herodotus, Shiji, al-Tabari

Plato and theology (W, W, SW - 3): Plato, Augustine, al-Ghazali

Southern Epics (SE, SW - 2): Mahabharata, Ferdowsi

Second Semester (14)

Western Epics after Homer (W, W - 2): Virgil, Dante

Religio-philosophical commentaries (E, SE, E - 3): Wang Bi, Shankara, Zhu Xi

Masters of genres (SE, E, W - 3) - Kalidasa, Su Shi, Voltaire

Literature as entertainment (E, W, W - 3) - Murasaki Shikibu, Shakespeare, Cervantes

Modern Prophets (W, W, W - 3) - Kant, Marx, Tolstoy

Going through the first 2 categories make me realize that foundational poetry really only has historical interests. Rg Veda is really a quite different religion as current Hinduism; Odes is so archaic that by middle ages Tang poetry became primary despite the authoritative "classic" status of the Odes. Homeric gods and Epic violence? Maybe we can do without the whole category. Instead, all 3 foundational world religious texts are still quite relevant even today. 

Further, referring back to the math done in my list of 6, My list of 10 now is the following:

1. Samyutta Nikaya (SE, foundational religious text)

2. Bible (W, foundational religious text)

3. Qur'an (SW, foundational religious text)

4. Shiji (E, foundational history)

5. Plato (W, Plato and theology - philosophy)

6. Mahabharata (SE, epic - literature)

7. Commentaries on the Four Books (E, philosophical commentary)

8. Su Shi (E, master of genres - literature)

9. Shakespeare (W, literature as entertainment)

10. Marx (W, modern prophets - philosophy)

Beyond list of 6, there is now Buddhist foundational text, Four Books, Su Shi, and Marx - arguably reflects my interest as Chinese.

Balance-wise:

- Genre, 3 in each of religion, philosophy and literature, 1 history

- Traditions: 4 West, 3 East Asia, 2 South Asia, 1 CWANA / Islamicate

- Language: 3 Chinese, 1.5 Greek, 1 each for Pali, Arabic, Sanskrit, English and German, 0.5 Hebrew

Not a bad list of 10, until I change my mind.

(This is the condensed version of the list of 100.)

《詩經》

1.《關雎》（《周南》）

2.《燕燕》（《邶風》）

3.《碩人》（《衛風》）

4.《氓》（《衛風》）

5.《君子于役》（《王風》）

6.《蒹葭》（《秦風》）

《文選》

7.屈原《離騷》

8.曹植《洛神賦》

9.淘潛《飲酒（五）》

《唐詩品匯》

10.王之渙《涼州詞》（七絕樂府）

11.崔顥《黃鶴樓》（七律）

12.王維《送元二使安西》（七絕樂府）

13.王維《终南山》（五律）

14.王維《鹿柴》（五絕）

15.李白《靜夜思》（五絕）

16.李白《蜀道難》（七古樂府）

17.李白《早發白帝城》（七絕）

18.杜甫《石壕吏》（五古）

19.杜甫《旅夜書懷》（五律）

20.杜甫《登高》（七律）

21.白居易《長恨歌》（七古）

《古文觀止》－唐宋文

22.韓愈《送李愿歸盤谷序》

23.韓愈《進學解》

24.歐陽修《醉翁亭記》

25.蘇軾《前赤壁賦》

26.蘇軾《後赤壁賦》

27.蘇軾《潮州韓文公碑》

《東坡全集》－ 蘇軾

28.蘇軾《飲湖上初晴後雨（其二）》（七絕）

29.蘇軾《寓居定惠院之東雜花滿山有海棠一株土人不知貴也》（七古）

30.蘇軾《六月二十日夜渡海》（七律）

《花庵詞選》

31.李煜《虞美人》（春花秋月何時了）

32.蘇軾《江城子》（十年生死兩茫茫）

33.蘇軾《水調歌頭》（明月幾時有）

34.蘇軾《念奴嬌》（大江東去）

35.李清照《聲聲慢》（尋尋覓覓）

36.岳飛《滿江紅》（怒髮衝冠）

I have done a list of 6 before, and I have not changed the list.

In the current world of ~7B population, the following has a scale of 1B or more:

Christians (~2.2B according to PEW)

Muslims (~1.6B according to PEW)

Chinese (~1.3B country-wise, and ~1B Chinese-language users according to most sources)

Indians (country-wise ~1.3B, but has maybe ~10% Muslims; Hindu population ~1B according to PEW; and high estimates of Hindi / Urdu users are ~900M, according to Linguasphere)

English L1/L2 users (this may have high overlaps with Christians; but high estimates (also Linguasphere) has it at ~1B L1/L2 speakers)

Adding the early Greeks, it gives the list of 6. The next biggest un-represented group is probably Buddhist, but we are talking the order of half or 1/3 of a billion there; and its textual tradition is more dispersed.

With the recent purchase of Bibek's Debroy's translation of The Mahabharata, I actually have all 6 texts that I can put on my bookshelf! (picture below)

篇名排列以字数顺序而定：

1。《桃源行》（“渔舟逐水爱山春”）7X32=224 （七古）

2。《夷门歌》（“七雄雄雌犹未分”）7X12=84（七古）

3。《宿郑州》（“朝与周人辞”）5X16=80（五古）

4。《陇头吟》（“长城少年游侠客”）7X10=70（七古）

5。《积雨辋川庄作》（“积雨空林烟火迟”）7X8=56（七律）

6。《奉和圣制从蓬莱向兴庆阁道中留春，雨中春望之作应制》（“渭水自萦秦塞曲”）7X8=56（七律）

7。《出塞作》（“居延城外猎天骄”）7X8=56（七律）

8。《渭川田家》（”斜光照墟落“）5X10＝50（五古）

9。《终南别业》（“中岁颇好道”）5X8=40（五律）

10。《观猎》（“风劲角弓鸣”）5X8=40（五律）

11。《送梓州李使君》（“万壑树参天”）5X8=40（五律）

12。《汉江临泛》（“楚塞三湘接”）5X8=40（五律）

13。《使至塞上》（“单车欲问边”）5X8=40（五律）

14。《过香积寺》（“不知香积寺”）5X8=40（五律）

15。《山居秋暝》（“空山新雨后”）5X8=40（五律）

16。《终南山》（“太乙近天都”）5X8=40（五律）

17。《辋川闲居赠裴秀才迪》（“寒山转苍翠”）5X8=40（五律）

18。《酬张少府》（“晚年惟好静”）5X8=40（五律）

19。《淇上别赵仙舟》（“相逢方一笑”）5X8=40（五律）

20。《送别》（“下马饮君酒“）5X6=30（五古）

21。《送元二使安西》7X4=28（“渭城朝雨浥轻尘”）（七绝）

22。《送沈子福归江东》7X4=28（“杨柳渡头行客稀”）（七绝）

23。《九月九日忆山东兄弟》（“独在异乡为异客”）7X4=28（七绝）

24。《少年行（其一）》（“新丰美酒斗十千”）7X4=28（七绝）

25。《田园乐（其四）》（“萋萋芳草春绿”）6X4=24（六绝）

26。《田园乐（其六）》（“桃红复含宿雨”）6X4=24（六绝）

27。《鹿柴》（“空山不见人”）5X4=20（五绝）

28。《木兰柴》（“秋山敛余照”）5X4=20（五绝）

29。《竹里馆》（“独坐幽篁里”）5X4=20（五绝）

30。《辛夷坞》（“木末芙蓉花”）5X4=20（五绝）

31。《鸟鸣磵》（“人闲桂花落”）5X4=20（五绝）

32。《山中》（“荆溪白石出”）5X4=20（五绝）

33。《杂诗（其二）》（“君自故乡来”）5X4=20（五绝）

34。《息夫人》（“莫以今时宠”）5X4=20（五绝）

35。《相思》（“红豆生南国”）5X4=20（五绝）

36。《山中送别》（“山中相送罢”）5X4=20（五绝）

I am not a literature expert. Recently just scanned through books I have on my shelf and came up with a top 100 list. Something for myself to read and re-read.

中國古代短篇文學作品選

《詩經》

1.《關雎》（《周南》）

2.《卷耳》（《周南》）

3.《芣苢》（《周南》）

4.《漢廣》（《周南》）

5.《燕燕》（《邶風》）

6.《碩人》（《衛風》）

7.《氓》（《衛風》）

8.《伯兮》（《衛風》）

9.《黍離》（《王風》）

10.《君子于役》（《王風》）

11.《女曰雞鳴》（《鄭風》）

12.《風雨》（《鄭風》）

13.《伐檀》（《魏風》）

14.《蒹葭》（《秦風》）

15.《月出》（《陳風》）

16.《七月》（《豳風》）

17.《東山》（《豳風》）

18.《采薇》（《小雅》）

19.《生民》（《大雅》）

20.《維天之命》（《周頌》）

《文選》－《楚辭》－屈原

21.《離騷》

22.《惜誦》（ 《九章》）

23.《涉江》（ 《九章》）

24.《哀郢》（ 《九章》）

25.《抽思 》（ 《九章》）

26.《懷沙 》（ 《九章》）

27.《思美人 》（ 《九章》）

28.《昔往日 》（ 《九章》）

29.《橘頌 》（ 《九章》）

30.《悲回風 》（ 《九章》）

《文選》

31.賈誼《過秦論（上）》

32.司馬相如《子虛賦》

33.《庭中有奇樹》(《古詩十九首》)

34.曹操《短歌行》

35.諸葛亮《（前）出師表》

36.曹丕《燕歌行》

37.曹植《贈白馬王彪》

38.曹植《洛神賦》

39.淘潛《飲酒（五）》

40.淘潛《歸去來辭并序》

《唐詩品匯》

41.王之渙《涼州詞》（七絕樂府）

42.崔顥《黃鶴樓》（七律）

43.王昌齡《出塞》（七絕樂府）

44.王維《九月九日憶山東兄弟》（七絕）

45.王維《桃園行》（七古樂府）

46.王維《觀獵》（五律）

47.王維《送元二使安西》（七絕樂府）

48.王維《山居秋暝》（五律）

49.王維《鹿柴》（五絕）

50.王維《終南別業》（五律）

51.孟浩然《過故人莊》（五律）

52.李白《蜀道難》（七古樂府）

53.李白《早發白帝城》（七絕）

54.李白《靜夜思》（五絕）

55.李白《黃鶴樓送孟浩然之廣陵》（七絕）

56.李白《夢遊天姥吟留別》（七古）

57.李白《將進酒》（七古樂府）

58.李白《秋登宣城謝朓北樓》（七古）

59.杜甫《登岳陽樓》（五律）

60.杜甫《登高》（七律）

61.杜甫《旅夜書懷》（五律）

62.杜甫《蜀相》（七律）

63.杜甫《望岳》（五古）

64.杜甫《春望》（五律）

65.杜甫《兵車行》（七古樂府）

66.劉禹錫《烏衣巷》（七絕）

67.白居易《長恨歌》（七古）

68.柳宗元《江雪》（五絕）

69.杜牧《山行》（七絕）

70.李商隱《錦瑟》（七律）

《古文觀止》－唐宋文

71.韓愈《送李愿歸盤谷序》

72.韓愈《原道》

73.歐陽修《醉翁亭記》

74.蘇洵《心術》

75.蘇軾《賈誼論》

76.蘇軾《方山子傳》

77.蘇軾《前赤壁賦》

78.蘇軾《後赤壁賦》

79.蘇軾《潮州韓文公碑》

80.蘇轍《黃州快哉亭記》

《東坡全集》－ 蘇軾

81.蘇軾《和子由澠池懷舊》（七律）

82.蘇軾《飲湖上初晴後雨（其二）》（七絕）

83.蘇軾《寓居定惠院之東雜花滿山有海棠一株土人不知貴也》（七古）

84.蘇軾《惠崇春江曉景》（七絕）

85.蘇軾《行瓊儋間肩輿坐睡夢中得句云千山動鱗甲萬谷酣笙鐘覺而遇清風急雨戲作此數句》（五古）

86.蘇軾《六月二十日夜渡海》（七律）

《劍南詩稿》－ 陸游

87.陸游《遊西山村》（七律）

88.陸游《書憤》（七律）

《花庵詞選》

89.李煜《虞美人》（春花秋月何時了）

90.蘇軾《江城子》（十年生死兩茫茫）

91.蘇軾《水調歌頭》（明月幾時有）

92.蘇軾《水龍吟》（似花還似非花）

93.蘇軾《念奴嬌》（大江東去）

94.蘇軾《定風波》（莫聽穿林打葉聲）

95.蘇軾《卜算子》（缺月掛疏桐）

96.蘇軾《臨江仙》（夜飲東坡醒復醉）

97.李清照《聲聲慢》（尋尋覓覓）

98.岳飛《滿江紅》（怒髮衝冠）

98.辛棄疾《青玉案》（東風夜放花千樹）

100.姜夔《揚州慢》（淮左名都）

In another moment of idleness, I was thinking if a list of 28 fits a year's worth of undergrad curriculum, then there could also be a way to build a "clean" list of 28, tapping into the concept of the 7 traditions that first started when I compiled my first List of 36. For every tradition, picking 4 texts - ideally one in each of the 4 genre category I have always been using, would yield another concept for a List of 28. Below is the trial:

Compared with the Revised List of 28 earlier:

This adds: Mahavamsha, Tsong Kha Ba (commentary on Nagarjuna), Zhi Yi (commentary on Vimalakirtinirdesasutra), Eusebius

And takes away: Kant, Tolstoy, Classic of Odes, and Tale of Genji

In summary - beefing up the history genre and the Buddhist tradition, while taking away from Literature and European and East Asian authors. 

This is based on my earlier blog post. I tend to like newer and more academic versions.

In a very dreary morning when I needed to wake up at 3:30am, I rethought the recent lists I have made.

- The concept of spending more time to read through 4 texts in details was an intriguing idea at first, but then I realized that the Qur'an was perhaps relatively too short for a detailed read-through vs. the likes of Plato, Mahabharata and Shiji.

- I was also intrigued by using such a detailed early course to read "conjugates" such as Aristotle and Ramayana, but it is not clear if Hanshu or hadith collections are really the right conjugates to be read vs. Shiji or the Qur'an.

- While those thoughts are on hold, I have reviewed the last list of 28, and found that on a canonical basis, it is harder to include Amir Khusraw (especially if we have Ferdowsi to represent Persian-language literature) and Zhiyi (if we really decide that Buddhism should not be over-represented, especially in the case that Nagarjuna is out).

- On Ferdowsi, I have been reading a book on Sadi, and the author said that the top 3 in Persian literature has always been Sadi, Rumi and Hafiz, with Sadi being overshadowed by Hafiz in the 20th century. Ferdowsi is sometimes a 4th, but his stars have been rising in conjunction with Iranian nationalism in the 20th century, and Nezami Ganjavi sometimes a 5th. To me, choice of Hafiz is tough as he was "last of the greats," so hard to justify from influence level. Sadi is hard to pick at this juncture of history, and so I have always been fluctuating between Rumi and Ferdowsi. Ferdowsi has the additional advantage of bringing a non-Islamic (but still Islamicate) aspect into the reading list; the problem is that it is another Epic. 

- With Zhiyi and Amir Khusraw out, then I worry about what 19th century work to include, and after looking through my recent post again, I found the inclusion of Marx and Tolstoy most compelling (especially as Freud's long-term canonicity I still have some doubts).  

- The results are the following revised list which is more skewed towards the West:

Greco-Roman (4): Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Virgil

Christian (3): Bible, Augustine, Dante

Modern Western (6): Shakespeare, Cervantes, Voltaire, Kant, Marx, Tolstoy

Islamicate (4): Quran, al-Tabari, al-Ghazali, Ferdowsi

South Asian (5): Rg Veda, Samyutta Nikaya, Mahabharata, Kalidasa, Shankara

East Asian (6): Odes, Historical Records, Wang Bi, Zhu Xi, Su Shi, Tale of Genji

I found that this list mitigates most of the problems in my list of 25, namely:

- That now I include back in Homer, Virgil, (Classical literature) and Rg Veda (Hindu Religious Classics).

- While continuing to leave Aristotle out (as in List of 50), this no longer includes Zhiyi but excludes Nagarjuna. And this list includes both Marx and Kant.

- Lastly, with Tale of Genji, I was able to include one female author in the list.

So Aristotle continues to be a problem.

This list of 28, also seemingly naturally, starts to repeat the problems identified in the analysis of the list of 36:

=============================

1. Secondary civilizational traditions not represented. Examples include: Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Southeast Asian, Turkish.

2. Secondary traditions within primary traditions not represented. Examples include: Jainism, Bhakti Hinduism, Shiite / Ismaili Islam, Orthodox / Protestant Christianity, Judaism.

3. Secondary modern traditions not represented. Examples include: French, Spanish, Russian, American.

4. Heavy weights given to epics within literature. 5 epics included (Iliad, Mahabharata, Aeneid, Shanameh, Commedia) in list of 36.

==============================

Except, that now Japanese is included, and French, Spanish, and Russian literature are all now represented. In this shorter list, the overweight of Epics is even worse.

So, with this revised list of 28, the problems as I continue to see, are:

1. Possibly too skewed towards the West

2. No Aristotle

3. With a list so short, secondary traditions like Jainism, Bhakti, Shiite Islam, etc. are not really represented

4. Overweight of Epics

Now, at this point, I am not too worried about 1), because West (13/28) < 50% of list, West + Islamicate (17/28) > 50%, South (Islamicate + South Asian) > East (9>6). Overall, the key aspects are still not too out of balanced vs. West:East:S Asian;CWANA of 9:6:6:4.

On 2, the old argument still prevails: Herodotus vs. Thucydides, Mahabharata vs. Ramayana, Shankara vs. Ramanuja, Virgil vs. Ovid, Homer vs. Hesiod, Dante vs. Petrarch, Augustine vs. Origen, there is just no good way to include all the later "runner-ups" in a short list.

On 3, this is just a fact of necessity if a short-list is to be maintained.

On 4, I do not feel so bad about it now either, as there are enough novels (Cervantes, Tolstoy, Tale of Genji), drama (Shakespeare, Kalidasa), and short poetry (Odes, Rg Veda, Su Shi), and even prose writers (Voltaire).

All in all, I do feel good about this list of 28.

*************************************************

Additional thoughts as to how an undergrad class can teach this in 2 semesters

First Semester (14)

Foundational poetry (SE, E, W - 3): Rg Veda, Odes, Homer

Foundational world religious texts (SE, W, SW - 3) - Samyutta Nikaya, Bible, Quran

Foundational histories (W, E, SW - 3) - Herodotus, Shiji, al-Tabari

Plato and theology (W, W, SW - 3): Plato, Augustine, al-Ghazali

Southern Epics (SE, SW - 2): Mahabharata, Ferdowsi

Second Semester (14)

Western Epics after Homer (W, W - 2): Virgil, Dante

Religio-philosophical commentaries (E, SE, E - 3): Wang Bi, Shankara, Zhu Xi

Masters of genres (SE, E, W - 3) - Kalidasa, Su Shi, Voltaire

Literature as entertainment (E, W, W - 3) - Murasaki Shikibu, Shakespeare, Cervantes

Modern Prophets (W, W, W - 3) - Kant, Marx, Tolstoy

After I did my List of 28 (for one-year undergrad instruction) that I find the need to limit to before 1800 (choosing Kant instead of Marx), I start to feel that an undergrad education that does not include the canonical texts of the 19th century defective. 

Now, because of my theory that it takes at least a century (3 generations) for canonization to solidify, and because of my sheer lack of systematic knowledge of post-1920 humanities (especially literatures), I limit myself to before 1920. But what ends up happening is that the last work chosen is Freud's 1900 Interpretation of Dream. For an undergraduate semester, this list is selected to include 14 texts. In the 19th century, the West definitely dominates - but I still try to make it such that the core areas of UK/France/Germany to account for not more than half of the texts chosen. Also tries to include both thinkers and literary works. (And added in a historian.)

Cannot say this is by any means representative, just a first try.

1. Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice, 1813) - beginning of sentimental novel, the main modern form of literary

2. Goethe (Faust, 1832) - top name in German literature

3. Mickiewicz (Pan Tadeuz, 1834) - revered work in several countries in  Eastern Europe (Poland, Lithuania, Belarus)

4. Sarimiento (Facundo, 1845) - a foundational work of modern Latin American Spanish literature

5. Burckhardt (The Civilization of Renaissance in Italy,1860) - modern history in German; work is foundation of art / cultural history

6. Hugo (Les Miserables, 1862) - Top French literary figure in the 19th century, novel better known outside France (viewed primarily as poet in France) - still basis of movies and broadway play

7. J.S. Mill (Utilitarianism, 1863) - most important Anglo-Saxon political philosopher in the 19th century

8. Ghalib (Diwan, 1869) - most important Urdu / Persian author before 20th c. (Iqbal)

9. Tolstoy (War and Peace, 1869) - representative Russian novel well-studied internationally

10. Fukuzawa (Bunmeiron no Gairyaku, 1875) - paradigmatic Japanese (and subsequently influenced other East Asian thinkers) thinker's response to Western civilization

11. Machado de Assis (The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, 1881) - Revered Brazilian Portguese author

12. Marx (Das Kapital, 1883) - philosopher, a founder of sociology, major contributor in economics, founder of Communism

13. Abduh (Risalat al-tawhid, 1897) - Paradigmatic response to the West from Islamic / Arabic Egypt

14. Freud (Interpretation of Dreams, 1900) - Founder of modern psychology

This list includes works in English (2), German (4), Polish, Spanish, French, Urdu, Russian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Arabic. Out of world's 12 most widespread languages, only Chinese (no truly paradigmatic works in this transitional period), Bengali (whose major figure Tagore, just like Gandhi and Iqbal, fit more with post-1920 world than before - even though his Gitajanli is pre-1920, but that will be just like Gandhi's Hind Swaraj is pre-1920) and Bahasa Indonesian (not sure what the canonical work there is here). 

=======================

Note on Jan 25, 2015: Just finished Mark Sedgwick's 2009 biography of Muhammad Abduh - and learnt that Abduh's Risalat al-tawhid, as translated, is the version edited / tone-changed by Rashid Rida, who was in his outlook much more conservative / fundamentalist than Abduh - was was more pro-European / liberal. Thus likely need to replace item 13 if / when I work on a new version of the list.

I was looking at: how many weeks of actual instructions do US undergrad programs have in an academic year. Turns out say in Harvard, there are 2 semesters and each has 16 weeks. But if you deduct a week for exam, and a week roughly of vacation days, then you end up with 14. At Stanford, there are three trimesters, with something like 11-10-9 weeks excluding exam weeks. If you minus ~2 weeks of days off, every year you also have about 28 weeks (=14x2). Assuming you can teach 1 text in a week (would be intensive reading, may need to meet 2-3 times for lectures and discussions), then in a year, to read through things fast, you can do 28 works. Now if you do intensive readings on the most important 4 works for half of the year, then for the remaining half of the year you can read 14 works - that gives an annual reading list of 18 - and for that purpose, I find my list of 18 to be serviceable.

Now for a list of 28 - I look at the list of 25 that I am not so keen on, and say if we have room for 28:

Greco-Roman (4): Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Virgil

Christian (3): Bible, Augustine, Dante

Modern Western (4): Shakespeare, Cervantes, Voltaire, Kant

Islamicate (4): Quran, al-Tabari, al-Ghazali, Ferdowsi

South Asian (6): Rg Veda, Samyutta Nikaya, Mahabharata, Kalidasa, Shankara, Amir Khusrau

East Asian (7): Odes, Historical Records, Wang Bi, Zhi Yi, Zhu Xi, Su Shi, Tale of Genji

Will need to think about if this is a good list. This limits author selection till 1800

I have flipped through my blog posts since I put up the List of 150 in April, 2012. Now that 2014 is coming to an end, I think it is a good time I summarize my notes in preparation for the next revision. In this revision, my end date is 1920.

To replace

- Akbarnama --> Babur

- Nietzsche --> Freud

- Jayadeva --> Tagore

- Calvin --> Luther

- Nezam-al-Molk, Rumi --> Nasir-al-Din Tusi, Nezami Ganjavi (?)

- Livy --> Polybius?

To eliminate:

- Bede

- Masudi

- Chaucer?

- Naima? (because Babur is in)

To consider adding:

- Furuzawa?

- Joaquim Maria Machado de Asis?

- Sor Juana or Sarimiento?

- Hikayat Indraputra?

Happy holidays!

So I decide that I do not yet like my attempt several days ago at a list of 10.

I have come up with a List of 18:

After I draw this up, I find that this is very similar to an old list I have done (see #48 of this page), with 3 changes. All these 3 changes I consider breakthrough of different sorts:

1. Take out Nagarjuna, and in fact, take out Buddhism as a major tradition. Compared with Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, Buddhism is actually much smaller demographically nowadays. But taking this out, I am able to replace with a-Tabari, that helps add the 3rd book to the History genre - which I think helps the genre representation better. 

2. Rethinking literature. Homer is the source of epic, there is no reason to put Virgil in just to represent the substantial but ultimately minor Latin literature. But Latin is an important language to express Christianity, and inclusion of Augustine takes care of that. Shakespeare has to be in. And Persianate culture just needs one representative, I like Amir Khusrau because he is both admired also in Iran, and also the dominant representative of the Persianate culture in South Asia.

3. The biggest breakthrough is to increase the numbers for the Western tradition. I find that while I have been hung up on the ratios across the 4 traditions, i.e. Western: S. Asian: E. Asian: Islamicate should be 54:36:36:24. Now, I figure that  if I think about this as percentages, in a list of 18 works the ratio of 7:4:4:3 (as it is above) the percentages are essentially the same (i.e. 36%:24%: 24%: 16% is virtually the same ratio as 39%: 22%: 22%: 17%). 

I am re-ordering my book shelves, thus this new thinking:

First, one from each of the 6 traditions (excluding Buddhism):

- Plato (West - Classical - Greek - Philosophy)

- Bible (West - Christianity - Hebrew / Greek - Religion)

- Shakespeare (West - Modern - English - Literature)

- Quran (CWANA - Islamicate - Arabic - Religion)

- Mahabharata (S. Asia - Hindu - Sanskrit - Literature)

- Records of the Grand Historian (E. Asia - Confucian / Daoist - Chinese - History)

(This was the List of 6)

Then

- Herodotus (West - Classical - Greek - History)

- Amir Khusrau (S. Asia - Islamicate - Persian - Literature) 

- Nagarjuna / Tsong Kha Ba (S. Asia / E. Asia - Buddhist - Sanskrit / Tibetan - Philosophy)

- Zhu Xi's Commentaries on 4 Books (E. Asia - Confucian - Chinese - Philosophy)

Analysis:

- Area-wise: West (40%), E. Asia (25%), S. Asia (25%), CWANA (10%)

- Tradition-wise: Classical (20%), Islamicate (20%), Confucian (15%), Buddhist (10%), Christian (10%), Hindu (10%), Modern (10%), Daoist (5%)

- Language-wise: Greek (25%), Chinese (20%), Sanskrit (15%), Arabic (10%), Persian (10%), English (10%), Hebrew (5%), Tibetan (5%)

- Genre-wise: Literature (30%), Philosophy (30%), Religion (20%), History (20%)

Ordering Chronologically:

I-1. Herodotus

I-2. Plato

I-3. Mahabharata

I-4. Records of the Grand Historian 

II-5. Bible 

III-6. Quran

V-7. Zhuxi

V-8. Amir Khusrau

V-9. Tsong Kha Ba

VI-10. Shakespeare

So the mix is reasonable by Ancient / Medieval / Modern broad categories (6+ / 3- /1)

Note after 4 days: Having no Latin work but include half a Tibetan work - this can't be balanced.  

Turns out that the revised criteria does not make it much easier to determine books to be represented in a shorter list. The fundamental issues that arise are:

1) Greek tradition to be so early that it could trump later texts to the extent that it is hardly balanced or representative

2) Specialization - there are not many texts or author that has broad "coverage" (across genres), with the clear exception of the Bible, and then Voltaire (he is both historian, thinker and literary author - though arguably he influenced his time more than his texts ended up being canonical), and maybe Cicero, Machiavelli and possibly Marx.

3) Polycentric nature of the "tradition" - you have these pairs like Herodotus vs. Thucydides, Plato vs. Aristotle, Augustine vs. Origen, Kant vs. Marx, Shakespeare vs. Cervantes -- that in a short list one has to just pick one and ignore the other.

The process I ended up trying to apply my criteria are convoluted, first do it by Greco-Roman, Christian, and modern Western separately; then do it by genres separately, and then list out the top ones no matter how one cuts it.

1. Bible - very easily stand out

2, 3. Plato, Herodotus - easy to pick out if one can accept that Thucydides and Aristotle can't be all be represented in a short-list

4. Augustine - also quite clear if there are more than just the Bible representing Christianity. Also the only clear Latin texts.

All these apparently does not cut into the modern Western tradition. In the "balance" of the scheme, in this go-around, I am still going for a 3-3-3 scheme for Greco-Roman, Christian and Modern Western "periods" What I end up having is:

5. Homer (instead of Virgil)

6. Dante (the 3rd texts of Christianity)

7. Shakespeare (English, 17th c.))

8. Marx (instead of Kant, German, 19th c.)

9. Voltaire (instead of Cervantes; it is in a way a choice between French or Spanish; and Voltaire is the only cross-genre polymath around - though any of his texts are likely to be less canonical than Cervantes, or Virgil, or Kant, or Thucydides or Aristotle, for that matter. This is a very hard choice; 18th c.)

I am sure the next time I play with this I will have a different list.

As I read through this pass of text of 25, I feel that many of the criticism I have for the list of 36 continues - for example the focus on Epics - and a main reason is the reputation of excellence that is built in to the current criteria - that makes a truly spreading out to more minor traditions and other types of literature more challenging.

Applying the revised critera (see here), the CWANA list becomes clear. The issues have always been whether it should be Ibn Sina or al-Ghazali, or whether it is Shahnama or Rumi. 

With the revised criteria, it is clear that al-Ghazali trumps Ibn Sina because of modern continued readership, and Shahnama trumps Rumi because it is at the root of the Persian literary tradition.

So the 4 texts are: Qur'an, al-Tabari, al-Ghazali, Shanama.

Continuing to try a slightly different instantiation of my "reading" list criteria listed in my last blog post, and try to apply to a select list of South Asian texts, I get the following results:

I. Mahabharata (1)

II. Ramayana, Kalidasa (2)

III. Rg Veda, Early Upanisads, Samyutta Nikaya, Nagarjuna, Amir Khusrau (5)

IV. Shankara, Patanjali, Umasvati (3)

Given the wish to avoid including texts of same category in the same period, Ramayana is out and so the initial list of the 7 are clear. Now early Upanisads are still in the Vedic series, and clearly Shankara needs to be included if a South Asian list includes any philosophical texts (Darsana), it is probably prudent to put it in the short list.

So the final list of 6 are: Mahabharata, Kalidasa, Rg Veda, Samyutta Nikaya, Amir Khusrau, Shankara.

Nagarjuna is hard to judge, it should be in if in the East Asian list Zhiyi is in; but having 3 texts out of a total of 25 (if each of East and South Asian has 6 texts, the total World list will have 25 texts, this is the general balance established in the List of 150) Buddhist feels high. So this is a maybe.

Recently I started thinking about - out of my list of canonical texts, which one should I really spend time to study before it is too late?

I started with the East Asian tradition (the Chinese portion), and found myself selecting texts based on criteria that are not necessarily just "influential", "representative", nor for the list to be "balanced" as laid out in this site's original Concept page.

I ended up thinking about 5 things, which may end up being a better instantiation of the original 3 of "influential", "representative" and "balanced."

1. Texts that are at the root of tradition(s) and/or genre(s)

2. Texts that are currently still very widely read by people in the tradition

3. (relatively less important for me) Texts that are historically influential / significant

Arguably, these are just some parameters of texts being "influential"

4. Excellence - some texts are influential, yet does not have a good reputation of being an excellent text. To me, as a reader now deciding what to read, this trumps "historical significance" considered above.

5. Coverage - this is a hard one to define, but I take it to mean that with one texts it can be considered to be representative of multiple traditions / genres / authors. It may be a "representative" criteria looked at from the perspectives of individual text but not considering the list in total.

I looked at the Chinese texts in my East Asian list, and come up with this ranked groups:

I. Historical Records (1)

II. Wang Bi's Commentaries on Book of Changes and Laozi; Zhu Xi's Commentaries on the Four Books (2)

III. Zhuang Zi's Commentaries by Guo Xiang and Sub-Commentaries by Cheng Xuanying; Correct Meanings of Mao Odes, Selected Literature, 300 Tang Poems, Su Shi (5)

(Notice that all the Buddhist works are outside of this short-list).

Then I pose myself the question, out of group III, if I need to select just 5-6 books from the Chinese tradition, how would I pick given I already has the first 3 - clearly Zhuang Zi is somewhat redundant wtih Wang Bi, so that is out. But among the 4 Literature works:

- Odes are old and Mao odes include layers of Commentaries on Classics, the Odes are classic but the Commentaries are mostly interesting because of historical significance

- Selected Literature is the first summary of the period when Literature became an independent field; its collections include among the more important authors Qu Yuan, the Cao's and Tao Qian. But as a selection it also has many poets no longer widely read or considered very important; while some selections of works before Sima Qian is selected in a limited manner in the Historical Records. But it includes many different genres which speaks to the factor of coverage

- 300 Tang poetry - this is not strong as the root of a tradition but can be considered to be a refounding of the poetic tradition, nor does it covers more than one genre (but it does include 3 main poets Du Fu, Li Bai, Wang Wei plus many more). But this is hugely popular, and Tang poetry are considered exemplary, and historically significant.

- Su Shi is very week as a source of tradition, but he spans many genres in Literature (and also has interesting philosophical, poetical and exegetic works), probably the most reputation author in the history of Chinese literature, still popular nowadays (though probably not so much as Tang poets), and is clearly important historically.

So my ultimate selections among group III?

300 Tang Poetry, and Su Shi. In this case, being at the root of tradition is just not as important to me as a reader. But these are broadly speaking, not texts that are very far apart in too many senses.

And then I feel that if I have to pick between 300 Tang Poetry and Su Shi, I go for the latter as among 300 Tang Poems the only poet I feel is superior to Su Shi is Wang Wei, but the selection's maybe only 10% is with Wang Wei's works. And Wang Wei is less canonized in Tang poetry as Du Fu and Li Bai historically. So here personal taste start to matter, and the subjectively comes into play when considering "Excellence" - which ultimately is a mix of tastes and reputation.

So, if I were just reading for the sake of reading canonical Chinese texts, the 4 will be 1) Historical Records, 2) Commentaries on Four Books; 3) Wang Bi; 4) Su Shi.

This clearly takes out East Asian Buddhism, and no novel / non-Chinese East Asian works. So for "balance", in this round of thinking with a new criteria, and only bring back the view of "balance" at the very end the list of 6 works would add 2 more to the list:

5) Zhiyi (East Asian Buddhism)

6) Tale of Genji (Japanese literature - novel - much earlier than Story of the Stone - and by a female author)

I have been trying to focus on history and historiography in my readings and learnings this past while. Have bought a new edition of Sima Qian's Historical Records (or The Grand Historian) (in Chinese, published last year). At the same time, there is a Coursera course offered by Chinese University of HK where the class only do 4 simple sets of readings. All these for some reasons spur my interest to create a short list of 6.

1. Plato's Dialogues - Greco-Roman, Greek, Philosophy

2. Sima Qian's Historical Records - East Asian, Chinese, History

3. The Bible - Christian, Hebrew/Greek/(Latin), Religious Classics

4. Mahabharata - South Asian/Hindu, Sanskrit, Literature (Epic)

5. The Qur'an - Islamicate, Arabic, Religious Classics

6. Shakespeare's Plays (or First Folio) - Modern European, English, Literature (Drama)

As noted in this post, in thinking about a 2-semester undergrad "World Humanities" curriculum, I dislike the the original "List of 25" on the site.

I took the cue of what I personally like in the simplicity and symmetry of the "List of 16", and try to construct something "simpler," based on the still somewhat complex distribution scheme - 9 texts for Western, 6 texts for East Asian, 6 texts for South Asian, and 4 texts for CWANA - this preserve the ratio envisioned in the List of 150.

CWANA is already existing (based on List of 16): Quran, al-Tabari, Ibn Sina, Rumi. One for each genre, 1 Persian language work that also covers Sufism.

East Asian: I figure that my issue is that I am too "ingrained" in the Buddhist tradition, and thus made some text selection based more on personal preference than actual influence. The 6 texts I am thinking now are: Wang Bi, Sima Qian, Zhuxi, 300 Tang Poems, Jingde Chuandeng Lu, and Tale of Genji.

South Asian: this is tougher, again as there is too much to include - besides the Sanksrit mainstream, has to include something on Buddhism, Bhakti and Islam right? 5 of them is clear: Rg Veda, Samyutta Nikaya, Samkara's Brahmasutrabhasya, Mahabharata, Kalidasa. I am ok to not include Nagarjuna (but then the question is, is this "giving up" an objectively defensible choice based on influenc?); but couldn't decide among Adi Granth (Sikh scripture, but composed mostly of devotional hymn that is somewhat of a confluence of bhakti and Islamic piety, in general characteristics similar to Rg Veda though), or Akbarnama (history work, in Persian; this will give up bhakti, and as a work it is more exemplary, maybe representative of the historical tradition by Muslims in Persian, but clearly not as influential as Nagarjuna), or Amir Khusrau (emblematic of the beginning of a native South Asian Islamic tradition), or Gita Govinda (Vishnaivite bhakti poetry).

Western: with 9 works, the simple rule is to spread out 3-3-3 for Greco-Roman, Christian and modern European. (This is the key to break-out the 2-2-5 allocation in the original List of 25)

Greco-Roman: same as those selected in the List of 16: Herodotus, Plato, Virgil.

Christian: Bible, Augustine, Eusebius (the last represents history, probably less "in vogue" than Dante, but represents the Greek-side of early Christianity - the history is also foundational for western medieval historiography).

Modern European: Kant and Shakespeare are clear. The last one is harder to decide - I am thinking either Tolstoy or Dostoevsky (gives good balance, English, German, Russian all represented; also covered 17th, 18th and 19th century; plus it includes a novelist which is the most dominant literary form since the 19th century, and hailed from different strands of Christianity); or Victor Hugo (to represent French, but how about Voltaire?); but influence-wise can a Tolstoy or Dostoevsky or Hugo compares wtih Marx? 

Continuing ...

CLME G4227y The Islamic Context of the Arabian Nights since the Establishment of Baghdad 3 pts. Prerequisites: No prior knowledge of Arabic language is required. This course questions the popular assumption that the tales of the Thousand and One Nights lack any Islamic content and that their fantastic or erotic dimensions are the only dynamic narrative components behind the vogue. This collection is read against a number of contemporaneous writings (in English translation), including al-Hamadan's Manama, to discuss issues that relate to market inspectorships, economy, social order, marginal groups like the mad, the use of public space including the hammed, and the position on fate, destiny, time, afterlife, sex and love. The course takes its starting point from classical Arabic narratives, poetry and epistolary art and follows up the growth of this repository as it conveys, reveals, or debates Islamic tenets and jurists' stand. The course aspires to provide students with a solid and wide range of information and knowledge on Islamic culture since the emergence of the Islamic center in Baghdad (b. 762). Students are expected to develop a critical method and insightful analysis in dealing with the text, its contemporaneous works from among the belletristic tradition and popular lore, its adaptations, and use and misuse in Arabic culture since the ninth century.

MDES G4247x Islamicate Culture in its Islamic and Jewish Forms 3 pts. The historian Marshall Hodgson invented the term "Islamicate" to refer to cultural phenomena which do not pertain to the Islamic religion but which have been historically associated with places in which Muslims live. Thus a synagogue built in Egypt might exhibit Islamicate architecture but would have no formal association with Islam itself. In this course we will read some of the great works written by Muslims and Jews in the medieval Islamic world. We will examine what features of these works made them appealing across religious boundaries. We will explore what makes a work Islamicate and in what ways these features were considered by these authors to be separate from Islam itself. Thus, for example, we will investigate how the works of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides can be Islamicate, but not Islamic and how this made it possible for them to be read and enjoyed by Muslim audiences. All texts will be provided in English translation.

MDES G4623x India Before Colonialism: Culture, Society, Polity 3 pts.Not offered in 2013-2014. This course is designed as an introduction to core topics in the study of South Asia prior to 1800. The course is intended for MA and beginning PhD students as well as upper-level undergraduates who have already taken at least one course in South Asian Studies. It will expose students to the most important new scholarship on cultural, social and political dimensions of the subcontinent during the pre-colonial era. The course will explore three areas of inquiry. The first and most straightforward will look into what we are learning about the actual organization of knowledge in traditional India. The second is how do the readings help us measure, retrospectively, the transformation of knowledge acquisition introduced by European colonialism. The third area concerns questions of scholarship itself; how are objects of analysis identified, or created, in these texts; how is evidence deployed, arguments formulated and knowledge advanced?

My earliier post on Columbia may have sounded a bit critical. But that was just regarding how western bias the Core Curriculum is. Now if we look at it from the angle of having a major or minor that allows undergrad to know enough about "World Humanities," the question becomes a different one because the 4 semesters of on Western textual traditions is already quite well-covered, leaving the need to only introduce students to the 2(-3) text-based civilizations.

I looked briefly at the undergrad Major and Concentration (sounds like this is what Columbia is terming its Minor), and it does look like overall the course requirements are more prescription (more specific requirements), and more demanding in terms of language requirements. But that is for another post.

Here I want to capture the courses I find in Columbia, especially in the context of my earlier criticism of Harvard's offerings, which are:

1.Not studying canonical history texts

2. No surveys of global or regional historiographical traditions (except one optional seminar for History Majors)

3. No world-wide intellectual history survey course

4. Insufficient courses on specific non-Western authors/texts

5. Relative weakness in on South Asian tradition (vs. Harvard's other Departments)

Below are some of the courses I find in Columbia's College (undergraduate) Bulletin that speaks to the above:

HIST W2901y Historical Theories and Methods 3 pts.Not offered in 2013-2014. Designed to replace the History Lab and Historian's Craft, HIST W2901 "Historical Theories and Methods" (formerly titled "Introduction to History") offers a new approach to undergraduate introductory courses on historical practice and the history of history. The course combines an overarching lecture component consisting of one lecture per week of 75 minutes with a two-hour "laboratory" component that will meet weekly at first, then less often as the semester progresses. The course aims to introduce students to broad theoretical and historiographical themes while drawing on those themes in providing them skills in actual historical practice, in preparation for the writing of a senior thesis or extended research paper. It is required that juniors planning to write a senior thesis take this course in the spring semester in preparation for their projects. Students who plan on studying abroad during the spring term must take HIST W4900 The Historian's Craft in the fall term as a replacement. Field(s): METHODS

LACV C1020x Primary Texts of Latin American Civilization 4 pts. This course is part of the Global Core of Columbia College. It focuses on key texts from Latin America in their historical and intellectual context and seeks to understand their structure and the practical purposes they served using close reading and, when possible, translations. The course seeks to establish a counterpoint to the list of canonical texts of Contemporary Civilization. The selections are not intended to be compared directly to those in CC but to raise questions about the different contexts in which ideas are used, the critical exchanges and influences (within and beyond Latin America) that shaped ideas in the region, and the long-term intellectual, political, and cultural pursuits that have defined Latin American history. The active engagement of students toward these texts is the most important aspect of class work and assignments. Global Core.

HIST W4713x or y Orientalism and the Historiography of the Other 4 pts.Not offered in 2013-2014.This course will examine some of the problems inherent in Western historical writing on non-European cultures, as well as broad questions of what itmeans to write history across cultures. The course will touch on therelationship between knowledge and power, given that much of the knowledge we will be considering was produced at a time of the expansion of Western power over the rest of the world. By comparing some of the "others" which European historians constructed in the different non-western societies they depicted, and the ways other societies dealt with alterity and self, we may be able to derive a better sense of how the Western sense of self was constructed. Group(s): C Field(s): ME

HIST W4718x Theories of Islamic History 4 pts.Not offered in 2013-2014. Unlike European history, which divides into generally agreed upon eras and is structured around a clear narrative of religious and political events from Roman times down to the present, the broad sweep of Islamic and Middle Eastern history appears in quite different lights depending on who is wielding the broom. Theories of Islamic history can embody or conceal political, ethnic, or religious agendas; and no consensus has gained headway among the many writers who have given thought to the issue. The study of theories of Islamic history, therefore, provides a good opportunity for history majors to explore and critique broad conceptual approaches. A seminar devoted to such explorations should be a valuable capstone experience for studnets with a special interest in Islam and the Middle East. One or two works will be read by the entire class each week, and two students will be assigned to lead the discussions of the week's readings. Grades for the course will be based half on class participation and half on a 15-page term paper devoted to a topic approved by the instructor. Field(s): ME

HIST W4768x Writing Contemporary African History 4 pts.Not offered in 2013-2014. An exploration of the historiography of contemporary (post-1960) Africa, this course asks what African history is, what is unique about it, and what is at stake in its production. Field(s): AFR

HIST W4803y Subaltern Studies and Beyond: History and the Archive 4 pts.Not offered in 2013-2014. This is an advanced undergraduate seminar course that will retrace the history of the making of the Subaltern Studies problematic, considered a major intervention in both Indian nationalist history and the wider discipline of history itself, with a focus on the relationship between method, archives, and the craft of history writing. Group(s): A, CFields: *SA

HSEA W4890y Historiography of East Asia 3 pts. This course is designed primarily for majors in East Asian studies in their junior year; others may enroll with the instructor's permission. Major issues in the practice of history illustrated by critical reading of important historical works on East Asia. Group(s): A, CField(s): EA

I kept thinking about where South Asian Studies may be strong, and I recall Columbia where Sheldon Pollock (Sanskritist) and Fran Prichett (Urdu-ist) teach. I looked at Columbia when I wrote this post, but left this train of thought after confirming that East Asian Languages and Cultures is a full department while South Asian Studies is just part of "Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies." (MESAAS)

Now that I have thought through what preliminarily World Humanities may mean, and come back to the thought as to how the World Canonical Text List on this site maybe used to construct specific courses as undergrad curriculum, I found Columbia is thinking about this in a way that has some similarity to my current thinking.

1. First, in the famous (or notorious in some circles, but definitely NOT for me!) Core Curruculum, there are clearly less choices for students, and forces everyone to take 6 classes (Columbia is also 4-year 2-semester system, so each class here is just like a "half-course" in Harvard, though each class in Columbia is awarded different "points") focusing on Western civilization, 4 is text-based, and 1 each in western art and music. And then the non-Western-based departments are grouped in "East Asian" and "MESAAS", which is essentially how I think of global regions in terms of West, East, South (stated in this post).

2. Columbia's Reading List for the 4 Western canonical text classes can be found in these 2 pdf links ("Contemporary Civilization" and "Literature Humanities") Just in case it will change in the future, I will capture the texts read in these two courses:

As I am looking at school lists, I occurs to me that World Canonical Texts as a project, is very similar to part of "Area Studies" - which usually studies the language(s), literature(s), history, philosophies / religions, and possibly contemporary economic, political and other issues concerning the area or cultures or civilization, however defined. 

It seems that World Canonical Texts, is essentially a portion of the project to try to look at the World in the manner of Area Studies - with the only difference being that the area in question is bigger - in fact, the World.

This is a "trade" style  encyclpedia published in 2000 - essentially covering the same topic as the Oxford Guide I just posted about. Below are the number of entries under each language, ordered from the most represented language down:

1. French (106)

2. German (65)

3. Spanish (45)

4. Russian (40)

5. Italian (38)

6. Greek (33 - 24 Ancient, 9 Modern)

7. Latin (29); Chinese (29)

9. Arabic (23)

10. Japanese (17)

11. Dutch (11)

12. Portuguese (10)

13. Czech (9); Persian (9); Polish (9)

16. Hungarian (8)

17. Danish (5), Norwegian (5), Sanskrit (5, Kalidasa, Mahabharata, Ramayana), Serbo-Croat (5)

21. Swedish (4)

22. Bengali (3, Tagore), Hindi (3, Kabir, Tulsidas)

24. Catalan (2, Ramon Llull), Gaelic (2), Hebrew (2 - Ancient and Modern, Bible), Korean (2), Urdu (2, Ghalib - also listed under Persian)

29. Akadian (1), Albanian (1), English (1, Beowulf), Estonian (1), Finnish (1), Latvian (1), Old Norse (1, Egil's Saga), Slovak (1), Turkish (1), Welsh (1), African Languages (1) 

French is 20% of the world's total of 532!

Looking at the Table of Contents, on the top level (within each group in order of number of sub-sections in a chapter)

- The Bible (the only one that is not referring to languages)

- Single Language: French, German, Italian, Greek, Latin, Russian, Arabic

- Small-area language groups: Central and East European Languages, Northern European Languages,Celtic Languages, Hebrew and Yiddish

- Big-area language groups: Hispanic Languages, East Asian Languages, African Languages, Indian Languages, West Asian Languages

Roughly, this is a hierarchy being centered in Western Europe - (Bible - probably the author does not want to classify it as a Latin, or Greek or Hebrew work), French, German, Ialian, groups of European languages (the name of Hispanic Languages is curious - first time I saw people refer to Portuguese as a Hispanic language), classical European languages, Russian, Arabic, and then East Asian, African, Indian (also curious that Indian is so low in the hierarchy for a British work), and West Asian.

It is clear that for the least important languages, they would not even have their own independent sections; more important ones have one section of their own, then some will have split into periods, then into genres; then into genre-periods; and then there will be mention of individual authors and works.

On a sub-section basis, one can give the following hierarchy:

French > German = Italian > Greek = Latin > Spanish > Russian > Arabic > Chinese = Japanese > Portuguese = Polish > Gaelic > Welsh = Norwegian = Swedish = Persian > Sanskrit = Tamil > Afrikaans = Armenian = Bulgarian = Georgian = Hungarian = Romanian = Serbo-Croat = Ukrainian = Korean = Hebrew = Yiddish = Catalan (but no Basque!) = Old English = Old Norse / Icelandic = Danish = Dutch = Icelandic = Turkish > Czech = Slovak = Finnish = Finland-Swedish > East African = West African = South African = Modern Indian = Ancient Mesopotamian

On a genre-basis, it recognizes:

Poetry (Epics [and Romances], Lyrics, Pastoral, Epigram, Satire, 

Devotional Writing), Prose (History, Biography, "Thinkers", Philosophy, Oratory), Fiction (Picareque Novels), Drama

And lastly, just looking at the table of contents, one can pick out the following works / authors (altogether 48):

Bible > The Koran = The Mu'allaqat = The Muqaddimah = The Thousand and One Nights = Naguib Mahfouz = La Fontaine = Baudelaire = Proust = Beckett = Goethe = Heine = Marx = Nietzsche = Freud = Rilke = Aeschylus = Sophocles = Euripides = Aristophanes = Cervantes = Camoes = Dante = Boccacio = Aristo = Tasso = Leopardi = Pirandello = Lucretius = Virgil = Horace = Ovid = Kalevala = Ibsen = Strindberg = Pushkin = Tolstoy = Dostoevsky = Chekhov > Rabelais = Montaigne = Kant = Hegel  = Pulci = Boiardo > Hugo = Homer = Goldini

Found this book in the library - found this interesting again from a World Canon perspectives. For a somewhat "limited" version of a World Canon (e.g. a List of 150), one may feel that if an author/work has not been translated into English, it most likely should not be in the list to start with. Now, for a work like this (edited in Britain, in 2000), there is clearly a British / English slant to the selection. Below is the Table of Contents for Part II:

a. African Langauges

1. Introduction 2. East African Languages 3. West African Languages 4. Languages of South Africa 5. Afrikaans

b. Arabic

1. Introduction 2. The Koran 3. The Mu'allaqat 4. The Muqaddimah 5. The Thousand and One Nights 6. Modern Literature 7. Naguib Mahfouz

c. The Bible

1. The Bible in English 2. The Authorized Version and English Literature

d. Celtic Languages

1. Introduction 2. Early Irish / Gaelic 3. Medieval Welsh 4.Scottish Gaelic 5. Modern Irish (Gaelic) 6. Modern Welsh

e. Central and East European Languages

1. Armenian 2. Bulgarian 3. Czech and Slovak 4. Georgian 5. Hungarian 6. Polish Poetry 7. Polish Fiction 8. Polish Drama 9. Romanian 10. Serbo-Croat 11. Ukrainian

f. East Asian Languages

1. Chinese: Introduction 2. Chinese Poetry 3. Chinese Prose 4. Chinese Fiction 5. Japanese: Introduction 6. Japanese Poetry 7. Japanese Fiction 8. Japanese Drama 9. Korean

g. French

1. Introduction 2. Troubadours and Trouveres 3. Medieval Literature 4. Poetry 1450-1620 5. Renaissance Prose: Rabelais and Montaigne 6. Classical Drama 7. La Fontaine 8. Thinkers 1630-1780 9. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 10. Poetry since Hugo 11. Baudelaire 12. Twentieth-Century Fiction 13. Proust 14. Beckett 15. Twentieth-Century Thinkers 16. Francophone Writing outside France

h. German

1. Introduction 2. Medieval Literature 3. Poetry 1750-1850 4. Drama 1770-1850 5. Goethe 6. Heine 7. Kant, Hegel, and Romantic Philosophy 8. Marx 9. Nietzsche 10. Freud 11. Fiction: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century 12. Drama since 1880 13. Poetry since 1850 14. Rilke

i. Greek

1. Introduction 2. Homer and Other Epics 3. Aeschylus 4. Sophocles 5. Euripides 6. Aristophanes 7. Lyric, Pastoral, and Epigram 8. Classical Philosophy 9. Attic Oratory 10. History 11. Biography, Fiction, and Other Prose 12. Modern Greek

j. Hebrew and Yiddish

1. Hebrew 2. Yiddish

k. Hispanic Languages

1. Introduction 2. Medieval Spanish Literature 3. Spanish Poetry. Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century 4. Spanish Golden Age Drama  5. Cervantes 6. Picaresque Novels 7. Spanish Poetry: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century 8. Spanish Prose: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century 9. Twentieth-Century Spanish Drama 10. Latin American Poetry in Spanish 11. Latin American Fiction in Spanish 12. Catalan Literature 13. Camoes 14. Modern Portuguese Literature 15. Brazilian Literature

l. Indian Languages

1. Introduction 2. Sanskrit 3. Classical Tamil 4. Medieval Devotional Writing 5. Modern Indian Languages

m. Italian

1. Introduction 2. Dante 3. Boccacio 4. Early Lyric Poetry 5. Epic and Romance: Pulci and Boiardo 6. Epic and Romance: Ariosto 7. Epic and Romance: Tasso 8. Renaissance Prose 9. Drama since Goldini 10. Leopardi 11. Nineteenth-Century Prose 12. Pirandello 13. Twentieth-Century Poetry 14. Twentieth-Century Prose

n. Latin

1. Introduction 2. Lucretius 3. Virgil 4. Lyric Poetry 5. Horace 6. Ovid 7. Satire and Epigram 8. Silver Epic 9. Drama 10. History 11. Prose Authors 12. Late Latin and Postclassical Latin

o. Northern European Languages

1. Old English 2. Old Norse / Icelandic 3. The Kalevala 4. Danish 5. Dutch 6. Finnish and Finland-Swedish 7. Icelandic 8. Norwegian 9. Ibsen 10. Swedish 11. Strindberg

p. Russian

1. Introduction 2. Pushkin 3. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 4. Tolstoy 5. Dostoevsky 6. Chekhov 7. Twentieth-Century Poetry 8. Twentieth-Century Fiction

q. West Asian Languages

1. Ancient Mesopotamian Literature 2. Classical Persian 3. Modern Persian 4. Turkish

Today, I very belatedly discover this tool:

http://books.google.com/ngrams

Here are some of the tests I did, based on English-language books from 1900-2000:

1.Tolstoy >> Pushkin ~Dostoevsky >> Mickiewicz > Solovyov

2.Dante > Hugo >> Voltaire > Montaigne > Petrarch; Dante was vastly more mentioned than Hugo in 1900, but in 2000 it is just slightly above Hugo. Voltaire also shifted from between Dante and Hugo between 1900, to just a little above Montaigne in 2000

3. Shakespeare > Milton > Chaucer

4. Among English romantic poets, Wordsworth and Byron are very closed together

5. Charles Dickens > Jane Austen in 1900; Jane Austen > Charles Dickens in 2000

6. Mark Twain >> Walt Whitman > Emily Dickinson

7. William James > John Dewey > Charles Peirce

8. William James > John Locke > David Hume > J.S. Mill (the last one is not so easy to search, so I wouldn't trust the data. For William James, it could be American-centric sampling issue

9. In 1900: Kant > Descartes > Marx > Nietzsche ; In 2000: Marx > Kant > Nietzsche > Descartes

10. Shakespeare >> Dante ~ Goethe ~ Hugo > Tolstoy > Cervantes

11. Jane Austen > William Shakespeare > John Milton > William Wordsworth

12. Shakespeare > Marx. The lead in 1900 was strong, lead in 2000 weak. Marx overtook Shakespeare around 1971 - 1993

13. Gibbon > Burckhardt > Ranke (position of last 2 switched around the middle of the century)

14. Luther >~ Augustine >> Calvin > Aquinas

15. Augustine >> Origen >~ Eusebius 

16. (This is surprising!) Horace > Cicero > Virgil > Ovid > Tacitus ~ Livy (Tacitus stronger than Livy in 1900, but now about the same)

17. Herodotus > Thucydides > Xenophon (Herodotus' lead vs. Thucydides is clearer than what I would have thought)

18. Plato > Aristotle between 1900-1956; Aristotle > Plato in 1956-2000

19. Euripides > Sophocles > Aristophanes > Aeschylus

20. Homer >> Euripides ~ Sophocles ~ Sappho (Sappho came up strongly during the century

21. Aristotle > Plato > Homer > Herodotus

22. Horace > Homer before 1956; Homer > Horace (mostly after 1956)

23. Bible > > Shakespeare > Aristotle. For about 50 years between 1920s to 1970s, Shakespeare often surpassed Bible

24. 1900: Luther > Kant > Marx; 2000: Marx > Kant > Luther

25. Aristotle > Marx; but Marx > Aristotle between 1966-1996

26. Herodotus >~ Gibbon > Tacitus >s Eusebiu (only slight lead in 1900; almost the same in 2000)

So at least in English language representation, things seem to come down to:

Bible > Shakespeare > Aristotle (but not always vs. Plato or Marx) >> Herodotus (and Gibbon)

I chanced upon this reference work published in 2003. It is supposed to include works in World Literature that are not in English. Took some quick look at it, and came to the conclusion that it is just a "trade" work that is not really not of solid academic quality in terms of its editing.

As someone interested in author / work list - I checked out 3 lists they have:

1. Chronological List of Writers

2. Chronological List of Works

3. Language Index

Problems that I saw through a quick scan:

- The list of writers don't have any non-Greek / Latin works until Tao Qian and Kalidasa

- The list of works  have the City of God of 5th century A.D. placed as 5th century B.C. between Sappho and Pindar - a pretty basic mistake

- In the list of authors have Herodotus, but it is not in the list of works - probably because the work is so structured that authors mostly have one main work is treated on one entry only. But if this is the case there really should be a combined list say using authors as the basis, and then merge with anonymous works, as they do with the Language Index

- In the language index, they treated Farsi as different from Persian (questionable); Chinese for Tao Qian treated as the same as Chinese for Mo Yan, while distinguishing Greek into ancient and modern (consistency?); classify The Bible as a Hebrew work (anachronism); and most serious, "Indian" is tagged as a language (!)

- In terms of balance, blatantly "market-driven", mostly western works. Among non-Western writers/works the mix by language is:

>Japanese (27)

>Chinese (20)

> Indian (14)

> Persian (7)

> Arabic (7) 

> Egyptian (4) (Egyptian Arabic?)

> Farsi (1)

> Kreol (1) (I have not heard of this language)

> Kurdish (1)

> Sumerian (1)

> Thai (1)

- Within each entry, there is some good general coverage about an author's works and basic biographic details. I looked at the entry for Adam Mickiewicz and the one for Pan Tadeusz, I find the bibliographical data useful (e.g. when translation into English happened). Not sure how accurate they are - it said Pan Tadeusz was written in Paris, but my recollection was that it was written in Rome (?). Well, it may be right, but given the quality of the indices, I would not bet on it.

- Oh, there is no entry for Gogol.

Enough said.

Current religious population data could be useful in assessing influence and balance in text lists. I just found PEW religious population data for 2010 (published in Dec-2011 and Dec-2012):

http://www.pewforum.org/global-religious-landscape.aspx

http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Global-Christianity-worlds-christian-population.aspx

Data in the table are my analysis mostly in the form of regional definition. Most of this should be straight forward, except for North Africa I excludes Sudan and West Sahara. I classify Afghanistan as Central Asia. SEAO means Southeast Asia and Oceania. Regarding this regional classification, the more I look at this the more I think it might make sense to group North and south America together.

The table does not really show up right in the blog. Oh well ...

P.S. I was looking at this the weekend right before the Pope announced his resignation.

List of 50 and List of 25, added to site, under List of 150 > Derivative Lists.

Intent is to also add List of 100 at some point - however the organizational principle will needs to be thought through.

Today, I saw de Bary's book Finding Wisdom in East Asian Classics in a bookstore. (The Amazon's link is here.) In compiling my East Asian list, I have consulted his Sources of the Japanese Tradition I found in my local library. He is an old Columbia University professor who clearly believed in Great Books education, and in the Finding Wisdom book's first chapter, he gave a list:

  "Having come to this point, it may be in order for me to suggest what are the classics I would consider essential to a basic reading program-- a list that could be defined as what might be appropriate for an introductory, one-year course. A more generous selection is found in what follows, which gives the teacher or discussion leader more to choose from in meeting the needs of particular groups or to draw upon for somewhat more leisurely reading and a less pressured learning situation. In this light, what I propose here is not necessarily ideal, nor on the other hand does it represent the bare minimum, but rather something more like a Mean. As an introduction to the major Asian traditions, one could hope that it would not misrepresent them but rather provide enough pleasure in the reading and enough stimulus for discussion that most participants would emerge from the experience with an appetite for more and the wherewithal to pursue its satisfaction.

  "Here then is my list , with a brief comment on each work for the benefit of those to whom the title alone might be meaningless:"

Then the list starts with The Islamic Tradition (Quran, al-Hariri, al-Ghazali, Rumi, Attar, Ibn Khaldun, with Muallaqat, Thousand and One Nights, other Arab philosophers including Averroes and Ibn Arabi, other Sufi poets such as Hafiz, etc. as optional, followed by the South Asian (or Indian? from this point on Amazon does not show the three pages, and I forgot the exact label) and the Chinese tradition, with the Japanese tradition at the end.

"The foregoing lists give, I hope, a fair representation of the different preferences and shared values among the great traditions of Asia. They include works that have withstood the test of time not only in their own traditions but in at least sixty years of reading and discussion with American students of all ages. ..."

As the Islamic list shows, it has 6 main texts selected, with 5 more names mentioned. Compared his Islamic list with my CWANA list, he included Attar, Thousand and One Nights, and Averroes that my list of 24 does not include. 

The only real criticism I have with his list is that his Japanese tradition list is longer than the Islamic list, which is hardly "balanced" if you consider the relative importance of the Islamic vs. Japanese tradition, both historically and currently. I may also add that what was taught in the last sixty years to American students, really should not matter that much.

After putting up the List of 150 texts on this site, I started to try to trim it down to a List of 100. In theory, it is just picking 2 books out of 3. And as I mentioned in a blog post before named "Numerology", the relative size of conventional traditions would just be reduced to East Asian (36->24), South Asian (36->24), CWANA (24->16), Western (54->36).

I try this. And in fact I try to make sure that the 2/3 rule is followed as accurately as possible to represent the right proportion of each sub-tradition, and by genres, for each of the conventional traditions. (So say if a sub-tradition has 22 texts originally, after selecting 2/3, I will select 15 [round up from 14.7] texts. Given this rule, if a group has 2 texts, I will keep 1 text; if a group has only 1 text to start with, that text will remain). Of course this proportion keeping cannot be perfectly done. Furthermore, I also try to make sure language proportion remains. I also can't do this perfectly, but I only need to slightly overselect Arabic and Greek (one each) at the expense of Avestan (1->0) and French (4->2). I also need to change the selection of texts very slightly, 1) Change Zhuangzi Zhu to Zhuangzi Zhushu (thus adding Cheng Xuanying's sub-commentary to reflect Daoist religious commentary); 2) Use Luther's Three Treatises of 1520 to replace Calvin and Schleirmacher (this helps reduce number of Latin texts and the Protestant sub-tradition from 2->1 text); 3) Use Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov to replace Tolstoy and Solovyov (combining 2 Russian texts to 1).

So what are not selected after this procedure? Big categories below:

1. Sappho (1 of the 3 female-authored work needs to come out)

2. Hellenistic philosophies (Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, Plotinus)

3. Yogacara Buddhsim (Yogacarabhumi, Xuanzhuang)

4. Many less important religious texts of Period 1-3 (Early Upanisads, Buddhaghosa, Zhenggao, al-Shafii, Bhagavata Purana)

5. All Western works in Period 3 (Bede, John of Damascus)

6. Many later Sanskrit literature (Bhartrhari, Bana, Somadeva, Hemacandra, Kaviraja)

7. All tantric texts (Kukai, Abhinavagupta)

8. Derivatives of Yi Jing [Classics of Change] other than Wang Bi's commentary (Shao Yong, Zhouyi Cantongqi Fahui)

9. Several Persian prose works (Nizamulmulk, Sadi, Abul Fazl)

10. Most later East Asian literature (Xixiangji, Shuihuzhuan, Matsuo Basho)

11. Qing scholarship (Gu Yanwu, Xu Zizhi Tongjian)

12. All USA works (Whitman, William James)

I guess other than losing all Hellenistic philsophies, (together with Arthurian Romances, Petrarch and Hume, not mentinoed above), I do not have too much regret about this list of 100. I guess I feel pretty good about the List of 100. Maybe I should publish that some day.

Also looked at the list of 150 by language, results below:

Chinese - 34

Sanskrit - 24

Arabic - 16

Greek - 15

English -11

Latin, Persian - 9 each

German - 6

French - 4

Pali, Italian - 3 each

Japanese, Spanish, Turkish, Russian - 2 each

Avestan, Prakrit, Tamil, Tibetan, Portuguese, Proto-Hindi / Punjabi, Polish, Urdu - 1 each

I looked at the list of 150 texts based on putative date (trying to be timing of text "completion" but of course in many case, especially for early text, it would have been lucky if the right century is actually represented). Based on the distribution of the dates, I am able to "periodize" the history of canonical text formation - and the results are very surprising to me!

Period 1: 1000B.C. to 14A.D.; duration 1014 years; 22 texts; starts with Rg Veda ending with Livy's History of Rome; average years lapsed between texts in this period is 48 years; 76 years before next period starts

Period 2: 90A.D. to 531A.D.; duration 441 years; 26 texts; starts with Asvaghosa's Buddhacarita ending with Xiao Tong's Wenxuan; average years lapsed between texts in this period is 18 years; 70 years before next period starts (2 generations' lapse when the average is half a generation!)

Period 3: 601A.D. to 850A.D.; duration 249 years; 16 texts; starts with Zhiyi's/Guanding's Fahua Xuanyi ending with Bhagavata Purana; average years lapsed between texts in this period is 17 years; 50 years before next period starts

Period 4: 900A.D. to 1122A.D.; duration 222 years; 18 texts; starts with Manikkavachakar's Tiruvacakam ending with Maqamat al-Hariri; average years lapsed between texts in this period is 13 years; 48 years before next period starts

Period 5: 1170A.D. to 1408A.D.; duration 238 years; 27 texts; starts with Chongyang Quanzhen Ji ending with Tsong Kha Ba's Ocean of Reasoning Commentary on Mulamadhyamakakarika; average years lapsed between texts in this period is 9 years; 105 years before next period starts (3 generations' lapse!!)

Period 6: 1513A.D. to 1706A.D.; duration 193 years; 19 texts; starts with Machiavelli's The Prince ending with Matsuo Basho; average years lapsed between texts in this period is 11 years; 42 years before next period starts

Period 7: 1748A.D. to 1907A.D.; duration 159 years; 22 texts; starts with Hume's Essay Concerning Human Understanding ending with William James' Pragmatism; average years lapsed between texts in this period is 8 years

As one can see, this periodization makes general sense as each period has a similar number of texts (between 16-27), and as one can expect the later the period the duration and average years lapsed between texts trend down (with an exception between Period 5 and 6.) The "blank period" duration is always at least 1+ generations before the next period starts, with the most conspicuous blank durations between Periods 2 & 3 and between Periods 5 & 6.

So, what is surprising about this periodization? Well, I started the text selection by considering only influence and "balance" of the list in terms of representativeness, but when I do periodization based on the dates presented by the 150 texts, I came to a periodization that is mostly aligned with typical periodization in world (and European) history!!! (maybe that is not so surprising as Western texts occupy slightly over 1/3 of the list; but nevertheless quite surprising!) In more common language, these periods are:

Period 1: Classical Antiquity (1000B.C. to ~50A.D.)

(marker is end of classical civilization and beginning of christianity)

Period 2: Late Antiquity (~50A.D. to ~550A.D.) 

(2 generations' lapse; marker is end of "antiquity" in the West, end of Gupta in South Asia, beginning of Islam, and beginning of Sui/Tang "second empire" in China)

Period 3: Early Medieval (~550A.D. to ~850A.D.)

(marker is less clear as the two texts the bookend this blank period are Indian texts of obscure dating, but more or less Tang-Song transition and decline of Abbasids which marked the golden age of Islamicate canon formation) 

Period 4: Central Medieval (~850A.D. to ~1150A.D.)

(marker is end of Northen Song, and beginning of Mongolian phase of world history)

Period 5: Late Medieval (~1150A.D. to ~1450A.D.)

(3 generation's lapse; marker is medieval / modern transition, whether you put it at end of Byzantine Empire or discovery of Americas)

Period 6: Early Modern (~1450A.D. to ~1750A.D.)

(marker is Enlightenment and beginning of industrialization)

Period 7: Modern (~1750 to now) 

By now, I have put up canonical text lists of 4 "traditions" making up a big list of 150 texts:

Western: 54 texts

CWANA: 24 texts

South Asian: 36 texts

East Asian: 36 texts

If we are truly honest (and clear) about using "traditions", then arguably the 5 Islamicate texts included in the South Asian list should go towards "CWANA" - which should proably be named "Islamicate" instead of CWANA (the latter more of a geographical concept), or

Western: 54

Islamicate (include Zoroastrian): 29

South Asian: 31

EAst Asian: 36

If for tradition we want to make it more religiously, we can say

Paganite - Christianite: 54

Zoroastrianite - Islamicate: 29

Hindu - Jain - Sikh: 25

Buddhist - Japanese: 15

Confucian - Daoist: 28 

If we make the analysis on pure geography:

Europe: 45 (= 54 - 2 - 7 works completed in Turkey, Syria, Israel / Palestine, Egypt and Algeria)

U.S.A.: 2

CWANA: 31

South Asian: 35 (=36 minus Tsong Kha Bha)

East Asian: 37

If we look at this list of 150 by genre, we have:

Foundational / Religious Classics: 12

History: 26

Philosophy (this includes political thoughts, theology, mystical works, etc.): 57

Literature: 55 

I came across this site on Ghalib's Ghazals from a booko comment on Amazon:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ghalib/

Looks like a pretty good site!

For the "longer list" I have been working on, it is coming to be a list of 150 texts:

Western: 54

CWANA: 24

South Asian: 36

East Asian: 36

I just realize that using a similar proportion, I can easily turn into a list of 100, since every sub-component is divisable by 3 -- making the component looks like:

Western: 36

CWANA: 16

South Asian: 24

East Asian: 24

Stumbled upon a site today:

www.librarything.com

I have put up a initial catalogue of books I own there (max allowed is 200, I added names of 100 - turns out it does not support Chinese, so it remains an English catalogue).

Looks like an interesting site!

I have suspected UNESCO would have an equivalent of a "world canon" list somewhere ... today I finally found it: called UNESCO Catalogue of Representative Works - works funded by UNESCO to get translated. Program started from 1948 till 2005 I've read. I have not studied the list yet (>1000 titles), but here is the url:

http://www.unesco.org/culture/lit/rep/index.php?lng=en_GB#ultTop

Blank search will give the full list - for now, I would go through country by country (e.g. India or China) and see how the list maps with what I know.

http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail-contents.aspx?ID=4607

Wasn't able to find the preface / introduction or criteria of selection. Anyone happen to have a version?

On Litnet forums, I have been engaging in some discussions with other readers regarding world canon. One (maybe obvious) that came across is that ultimately world canon is linked to how people write "history of world literature" (or by extension, how people write "world intellectual history").

With this thought in mind, I have just come across this to-be-published book by Routledge:

The Routledge Concise History of World Literature

Table of Content:

1. Introduction: the (Re)Turn of "World Literature"

2. Goethe’s "Weltliteratur" and the "Humanist" Ideal

3. World Literature and Comparative Literature

4. World Literature as an American Pedagogical Construct

5. World Literature and the Literatures of the World

6. World Literature in the Literary Marketplace

7. World Literature and Translation

8. World Literature, (Post)Modernism and (Post)Colonialism

9. Conclusion: The Struggle for World Literature?

Looks like it is focused on the 20th century, but a promisingly interesting title. To be published in Oct / Nov!

From left to right:

Top: MU Zongsan, Marshall Hodgson, Clive Ponting, JIN Yong

Middle: Jurgen Habermas, QIAN Mu, Mikhail Gorbachev, Colin McEvedy

Bottom: Karl Potter (right), Randall Collins, Immanuel Wallerstein, Yinshun

I was checking out The Literature Network Forums, and found and old thread that asks for 10 most influential books, so I gave a shot in replying.

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1056638#post1056638

Content pasted below:

1) There is roughly 6B people around 1999-2000; now approaching 7B; given modern population explosion, what is widely read now definitely has some weight of being influential. 2) But influential also has an aspect of being early, thus being able to influence many other readers AND AUTHORS of later times. 3) Lastly, usually shorter and lighter (i.e. easier to read) books get read most (thus easier to be influential).

What would be on the scale of ~1B? Chinese, Indians, English speakers, Christians, Muslims
What would be on slightly smaller magnitue? Buddhists, Spanish, Communist
What would be early? Greeks

So, roughly, the list probably look something like: (not in order)
1. Confucius' Analects
2. Three Hundred Tang Poems
3. Bhagavadgita
4. Shakespeare's Hamlet
5. Bible
6. Quran
7. Buddha's Samyutta Nikaya (and its corresponding northern recension)
8. Cervante's Don Quixote
9. Marx's Communist Manisfesto
10. Illiad