Knowledge,Documents,Academic History:Studies On Textual Criticism In Southern Sung China

Southern Sung dynasty is an significant period in China history,not only because a number of famous heroes in anti-Jin war such as Yue-fei 岳飞,Wen Tian-xiang 文天祥,and famous scholars such as Zhu-xi 朱熹,Lv Zu-qian 吕祖谦,Zhang-shih 张栻,Ye-shih 叶适,who were important to the Neo-Confucianism progress,have appeared,but also because the academic in Yuan,Ming and Qing had been influenced greatly by the sophisticate Southern Sung academic.However the academic constructed by the later history of academic,ideas or philosophy,are always simplified and preconceived.Although it seems that all are logical and rational in the hindsight historic narrative,the detail and complication of the history are always concealed.The textual criticism which was of cause not the mainstream in the Southern Sung academic cycle,can lead us into the brilliant world outside the mainstream discourse as well as the Daoxue道学 world in a new sight.The first two chapters have described the development of textual criticism of Southern Sung in different periods,different academic and political situations.There are five main stages including times before Qingli 庆历 Renzong 仁宗,times before Yuanyou 元佑 Zhezong 哲宗,and periods from late stage of Zhezong to Gaozong 高宗,from Xiaozong 孝宗 to Jiading 嘉定 of Ningzong 宁宗,and the rest of Sung.Among these,the political environment of Hui-zong 徽宗 and Qin-zong 钦宗periods were often depicted by such words as corruption,vanity,or shallowness,for textual criticism,they were oppositely flourish eras besides Gao-zong.Daoxue developed rapidly with the politics introversion in Xiao-zong and Guangzong 光宗periods;The political and academic conflictions between Neo-Confucianism and Non-Confucianism were so severely that Daoxue had to improve them both in thinking and expression manner.Textual criticism was just one of the means the improvement,by which Daoxue became the mainstream after Li-zong 理宗.Accompanied by its officialized progress,textual criticism was used once again to make the Confucian metaphysics academic.On the other hand,traditional scholarship had paid more attention to collate,arrange and print books and to research historical,social and empirical learning by the forces of civil examination,education and printing culture.These entire requirements had pushed forward the textual criticism in Southern Sung,and consisted of the diversity of it too.The form of the textual criticism in Southern Sung manifested as collation,bibliography summary,miscellany,historical data correction;and the first two closely related to the printing culture obviously:the more request of exact character in book printing,the more demand of the collation,for which textual criticism developed.This is the main topic of the third chapter.Miscellany that is an important aspect of textual criticism includes a great number of specialized works about it.It had involved into a kind of academic miscellany or reading notes about textual criticism like similar works in Qing dynasty,as a result of the reading and erudite fashion in Sung dynasty.Actually,these miscellanies were the bridge between textual criticism in Sung and the one in Qing.That is the main issue of chapter four.More attention was paid to the compilation of large literatures in Sung,which had improved the knowledge of the philology and textual criticism in Southern Sung.So the last chapter has discussed the commentary of historical records,which became more and more objective and rigorous,and the encyclopedias,of which only Yuhai玉海 had been collated textually before compilation.The textual criticism is not only a kind of academic method and principal,but also the academic history and thinking history per se.The purpose of this research is sharply to investigate the uniqueness of the academic ideas in Sung dynasty,by the reflection on the method,concept and the value of the textual criticism in Southern Sung.