Carved Posts Writings Study

History since the Dynasty of Song has witnessed the never-ending and ever-increasingly enriched development of books of rubbings from stone inscriptions, which not only have provided the world with typical calligraphy models, but, in their protean technical forms to good advantage, have played a very important role in the post-Song calligraphy study and practice. Meanwhile, calligraphers and scholars have paid extensive attention to multiple problems out of those books of rubbings, which experience different ways of textual commentary and research and various kinds of appreciations or criticisms. When research fruits have been put into the written language, comments on books of rubbings come into being. This dissertation aims to provide a well-rounded and systematic analysis of the comments.To begin with, an all-round introduction is given to all the post-Song ages of comments on books of rubbings, including all the possible research results of the Republic of China (1912-1949) and of the post-liberation China, from the overall development of the comments of each age to specific authors and backgrounds, contents and features, bibliography and popularity for every school of the comments. In the first chapter, the production of the comments and their history of development have been presented in logic details.Content analyses of all the comments, for a second, focus upon such a close examination of calligraphies, contents, pedigrees, bibliographies and evaluations of the comments as to give a full display to the typical modes of textual commentary and research, including previous research achievements and methodologies. Upon this basis, further summary and analysis may go to the discussion of their sources, goals, rubbing effects and the protection of the comments, delineating the enhanced progress of human ideology concerning such problems. Thereby this chapter may promote the better understanding of the comments as a cultural phenomenon to warn us about how to best preserve and utilize this kind of historical heritage.The final analysis is devoted to specific ideas and values embodied in the comments on books of rubbings, which, due to the critiques of books of rubbings as historical antiques by most comments, have acknowledged the consistent searches for historicity, antiquity and rarity. With an aim turned to the analysis of calligraphy models study, however, the choice of outstanding original texts and exquisite inscriptions may become the very value focus. The final chapter is also devoted to the value appraisals of the comments in terms of calligraphy study and textual historiography, elucidating their functions on enriching research methods of calligraphy history study, assisting the historical textual research, reflecting life fashions of bygone ages and editing ancient literary texts. To crown it all, based on the above understanding and analysis about the comments, rubbing reading, contents making and bibliography editing are proposed to be the very primary tasks to further the studies in comments on books of rubbings in the time to come.