The Study On Shitong In Qing Dynasty

The study of Shi Tong, the first masterpiece dedicated to the historiography theory around the globe, as the name suggests, comprises the research of the author Liu Zhiji and his brainchild—the book of Shi Tong. The study is composed of two sections regarding its contents—the exploration of the text, which encompasses multiple achievements of emendation, annotation, verification, comments and supplementation; and the elaboration of relevant theoretical issues involved. Pursuant to this principle, the so-called "Shi Tong Studies in Qing Dynasty" refers to a series of academic activities launched by scholars and academics from the first year of Shunzhi(1644) to the third year of Xuantong(1911) concerning the text of Shi Tong and historical theories it implies. Therefore, proceeding from this perspective, this project constitutes at least two sections. One is the study of the literature and monograph written in Qing Dynasty, that is, the accomplishments made by scholars in emending, annotating, commenting on the text of Shi Tong. Shi Tong Xun Gu Bu written by Huang Shulin, Interpretation of Shi Tong by Pu Qilong, Extracts of Shi Tong by Lu Wenchao, Lite Shi Tong by Ji Jun and Refutation of Shi Tong by Xu Guilin are books of this kind, while other scholars such as He Chao, Feng Shu, He Tang, Chen Zhan, Wu Zhuoxin, Gu Guangqi, Ji Xixhou, Zhou Xinyi, Lu Xinyuan, Xu Chengli, Tang Hanti, Weng Tonghe, Yang Shoujing and other more academics, made their annotations on Shi Tong. The other is the study of historiography theory established by academics in Qing Dynasty. Despite the remarkable and splendid results yielded in verification, at which academics in Qing Dynasty were excellently adept, conventional historiography theory made significant stride in Qing Dynasty, like the theory concerning the relationship of classic and historical books, historical genres, historical events, cultivation of historians and so on. Among these academics, there are both outstanding historians such as Zhang Xuecheng who were skilled at expounding theories, and verification-oriented historians who cherished incisive opinions in historiography theory issues. Moreover, various issues on historiography theories put forward by Qing academics are related with the scopes which Shi Tong covered, either the further elaboration or refutation elicited from Liu's points. Thus, a discussion of theoretical achievements from Shi Tong comprises the key points of Shi Tong studies in Qing Dynasty. The concept "Studies of Shi Tong in Qing Dynasty" was proposed carrying the purpose to convert it from a academic discussion to public cognition of the whole society so that the academic circles can further its understanding of general situations of Shi Tong in Qing dynasty. A research on "Studies of Shi Tong in Qing Dynasty" is meant to clarify the overall situation, comb its development rout, summarize the accomplishments on literature, probe the historiography theory issues contained in it and assure its academic value and significance so as to provide novel reference for present historical literature study and research. On account of this, the present writer drew on precedent achievements and conducted a relatively symmetrical investigation on "Studies of Shi Tong in Qing Dynasty" by adopting scientific approaches and reviewing large amounts of documents. The whole article is composed of eight parts as follows.Introduction. In this section, I put forward the concept "Studies of Shi Tong in Qing Dynasty", tracked the evolutional route, based on which I expounded the researching content of "Studies of Shi Tong in Qing Dynasty". Through the review of the of prior academic history, I tried to point out the necessity and meaningfulness of the topic in this article as a result of a lack of research on this matter. A comprehensive clarification can extend the historical materials for current research, summarize the theoretical accomplishments in Qing dynasty and promote a further development in historiography theory of Qing dynasty.Chapter One:Studies of Shi Tong prior to Qing dynasty. I will clarify the versions of Shi Tong with details and its popularization before Qing dynasty and combine it with that of Song and Ming dynasty to conclude its merits and shortcomings. The majority of scholars always belittled the Shi Tong before Song dynasty since it, without book versions enjoyed few complements. After the middle period of Ming dynasty, Lu Shen amended Shi Tong and composed "Shi Tong Hui Yao", followed by a rush to study Shi Tong. For example, multiple versions of emendation and annotation arose, such as block-printed editions by Zhang Zhixiang, Zhang Dingsi, Annotation of Shi Tong written by Guo Kongyan, Explanation of Shi Tong written by Wang Weijian and other works. Concomitant with the textual annotation, research on historical ideology also caught thorough and wide attentions of scholars. Transition of Shi Tong's circulating fate can't be severed with the evolution of historical ideological trend, particularly with the vicissitudes of historiography of argumentation and textual criticism. The study of Shi Tong laid profound foundations for the scholars with the pioneering effects in spite of its inevitable pitiful shortcomings.Chapter Two:A comprehensive elaboration of studies of Shi Tong in Qing dynasty. Focus will be put on to expound the academic reasons for its origin and prosperity, the prevailing versions and directions in which academics made their survey. Under the circumstances of prosperous culture, scholars clarified and compiled the traditional literature, which made great progress in studies of emendation. Meanwhile, with a renewal in understanding of the relationship between classic and historical books, the status of historiography was once again attached importance, offering a desirable academic atmosphere for the rise of studies of Shi Tong. Furthermore, Historiography policies in imperial examinations facilitated tremendously the popularization and research of it, in which environment the studies of Shi Tong in Qing dynasty reached its zenith in conventional society with populous people and prominent achievements. Not only varieties of Shi Tong Xun Gu Bu, Interpretation of Shi Tong, Extracts of Shi Tong came into public, but also the researching routes became diversified, with verification and supplementation in addition to emendation and comments.Chapter Three: Shi Tong and official historiography in the Qing Dynasty. Based on the study of the History of Ming and Imperial Catalog of the Four Treasuries, this paper inspects the theoretical references on Shi Tong from official historiography in the Qing Dynasty and then analyzes the benign interaction between official historiography in the Qing Dynasty and private historiography. As for the History of Ming, the official historians once quoted Liu Zixuan's opinions frequently in the process of editing to deal with some compilation issues. They also drew on the experience of the theories relative to Shi Tong in the study of historical archives operation, historical materials selection and historical books'style. For Imperial Catalog of the Four Treasuries, its historical archives once cited Liu Zixuan's relate arguments as the evidence of textual criticism and as the criteria of judging historical problems.Chapter four and chapter five: Literature research on Shi Tong in the Qing Dynasty (there are two volumes). Exegesis documents on Shi Tong refer to a series of academic achievements, including emendation, annotation, comments and postil from scholars in the Qing Dynasty. These two chapters mainly make an analysis on Shi Tong Xun Gu Bu written by Huang Shulin, Shi Tong Tong Zhu written by Pu Qilong and Shi Tong Xue Fan written by Ji Jun in a perspective of philology. And the content is consisted of process of compilation, publication of versions, methods of emendation, features of annotation, analysis of comments, etc. Shi Tong Bo Yi written by Xu Guilin is regarded as the first Jianji genre. This book firstly cited several sections from the original text of Shi Tong; then presented only some comments from Xu below the sections with ten pieces of specialized criticism. Due to the small number of volumes and the anti-popularization in the educational circles, Xu adopted the Jianji style of this book and then made certain comments. Furthermore, endorsement achievements on Shi Tong from scholars in the Qing Dynasty are an essential part of exegesis documents. This paper makes a comprehensive arrangement of endorsement results made by those scholars and also picks up six persons' research findings (Feng Shu, He Chao, Wang Jun, Gu Guangqi, Chen Zhan, Zhou Xingyi) and then makes relative comments on them.Chapter six: The study of Shi Tong in the sight of textual criticism. The textual research method ran through the whole Qing Dynasty, which can be considered as a distinct feature of academy in the Qing Dynasty. Especially during the dynasties of Emperors Qianlong and Jiaqing, scholars made a study on history in a down-to-earth learning method leading to the form of historical literary criticism with brilliant achievements. This chapter mainly studies the research of textual researching scholars on Shi Tong, and analyses the research approach based on certain case analysis of Lu Wenchao, Qian Daxin and Yao Zhenyu, for Lu collated the version of Shi Tong, Qian elucidated theoretical topics of historiography and Yao made good use of Shi Tong as the evidence of textual criticism. The reason why these scholars praised Shi Tong highly is that the idea of "writing with factual record" is accord with the concept of "seeking truth from facts" from textual criticism school. The former is used for compilation of history books while the latter is for historical textual research. Although there are some differences, they have the same principal of being faithful to historical appearance.Chapter seven:The development of Shi Tong and theories of historiography in the Qing Dynasty. Scholars in the Qing Dynasty paid highly attention to the book-Shi Tong-for they not only focused on the study of collating scripts and noting allusions, but also emphasized on the traditional historical issues contained in the book and even made a further research on them. This chapter mainly studies the research of these scholars'traditional historical issues connected with Shi Tong. And the research can be divided into two parts:one is that scholars in the Qing Dynasty broke the shallow understanding of six body classification in coexistence and proved the historical developing course of changes in historiography genres by criticizing the theory of "six schools of historical books'classification and two bodies on classification of historiography genres". In this way, the domination of biographic styles and annalistic styles was broken up and the independent domination status of "chronicle ins and outs" was established. The other is that those scholars put forward the theory of "Historian's Morality" on the basis of "Shi Cai San Chang Theory" from Liu Zhiji. The developed theory distinguished the relationships between the subject and the object in historiography and deepened the theory of qualities of the subject in historiography.Postscript: the circumstance of "ancient doubting" and "suspicion of classics" in the Qing Dynasty in a perspective of ideological history. About these two passages of "ancient doubting" and "suspicion of classics", scholars in the Qing Dynasty put forward some new explanations such as Pu Qilong's theory-"narrating anecdotes of the past in alluding to the present", Qian Daxin's theory-"avoiding misfortunes in terms of historiography", Cui Shu's theory-"To promote its meaning", etc. These theories failed to get rid of constrains from the statue of the Confucianism although they aimed to help Shi Tong break away from the burden of heresy and to make it popular. The Six Classics were still regarded as the criteria of these theories which failed to adopt the standard of "veritable records" to deal with all historical materials equally. This not only restricted the deeper development of the research of Shi Tong in the Qing Dynasty, but also became the largest obstacle of historiography's transformation from a traditional way to a modern way.