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Book of Gods and Strange Things

ancient Chinese collection of fantastic stories about deities, supernatural beings, and immortals associated to geographical locations, traditionally attributed to Dongfang Shuo

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ15909038 ↗
Source-derived summary

Book of Gods and Strange Things or Shenyi Jing (Chinese: 神異經) is an ancient Chinese geography book. The original version was written by Dongfang Shuo during the Han dynasty. The modern versions were edited by Zhang Hua during the Jin dynasty and Zhu Mouhan during the Ming dynasty.

The claim that Dongfang Shuo wrote the Book of Gods and Strange Things was first recorded by Pei Songzhi in the Records of the Three Kingdoms in the footnotes.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Book of Gods and Strange Things” as ancient Chinese collection of fantastic stories about deities, supernatural beings, and immortals associated to geographical locations, traditionally attributed to Dongfang Shuo. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 77-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Book, Gods and Strange can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as ancient Chinese collection of fantastic stories about deities, supernatural beings, and immortals associated to geographical locations, traditionally attributed to Dongfang Shuo. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15909038. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Book of Gods and Strange Things”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Book of Gods and Strange Things primary sources, Book of Gods and Strange Things archive and Book research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Book of Gods and Strange Things”?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Book of Gods and Strange Things” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.