Rem.: Bao Shuyun conceived the idea of compiling a systematic collection of leading cases after he joined the Board of Punishments in 1823 and could see the unorganized accumulation of cases from the successive years, forming a mass “as vast as an ocean” (浩如淵海). He was not able to do it, however, but after he had returned to Yangzhou for the mourning period after the death of his mother he met Zhu Qingqi, a specialist in law, who showed to him his own compilation of cases, and the two set to work together to produce a “complete set” (quanzhi 全帙) based on their shared ideas. The three main sources of cases are (1) the memoranda (shuotie 說帖) exposing the opinions of the Bureau of the Code (Lüliguan 律例館) concerning difficult or doubtful cases, in existence since 1784, which represent about one half of the contents; (2) leading cases (cheng’an 成案), excluding those which were turned into substatutes (about one quarter of the contents); (3) general circulars (tongxing 通行), i.e. leading cases or imperial edicts inspired by cases that were circulated among the bureaucracy; some published sources, including the Peking Gazette, were also utilized. In general the authors chose to retain the cases which posed special problems because of the lack of a specific substatute. The detailed table of contents, set in a separate fascicle in some editions, lists the captions (anyou 案由) of each one of the ca. 5,600 cases under the statute to which they belong primarily, the statutes being set in the order of the code; the list of cases is repeated at the head of each juan, and indicated in the upper margin at the beginning of each case. There is also a table of the statutes in the code (lümu 律目), specifying those for which cases are introduced in the work (you an 有案). The title of the statute under which the cases are classified is indicated in the lower central margin to facilitate browsing. J. shou is devoted to imperial amnesties and their exceptions (shekuan zhangcheng 赦款章程). The entries in j. mo are about the regulations of the Board of Punishments (xingbu shiyi 刑部事宜), and include cases left over (shiyi beikao 拾遺備考) in which similar circumstances led to different judgements (qingtong yiyi 情同議異). The Xuzeng of 1840 (with ca. 1,670 cases) and Xinzeng of 1886 (with a little less than 300 cases) follow exactly the same format. The materials for the Xuzeng were collected and edited by Zhu Qingqi in Peking and published by Bao after Zhu’s death; leading cases (cheng’an) represent about three quarters of the contents, Board memoranda (shuotie) about one tenth. The materials for the Xinzeng were assembled in a mere three months by Pan Wenfang 潘文舫 and Xu Jianquan 徐諫荃. The preface and fanli of the Xinzeng insist that the original work has been hailed as a guide and a compass by judges ever since its publication, but that it is very cumbersome; therefore the new installment has been printed in a small-size edition. It may be noted that a Xing’an huilan sanbian (q.v.) in 124 j. was compiled by the famous late-Qing jurist, Shen Jiaben 沈家本, as a follow-up to Bao Shuyun’s two works (Shen does not seem to have heard of the Xinzeng); however, due to the Boxer troubles and Shen’s later work in revising the Penal Code it was never published. [phtc. préf. et fanli]