The Study Of Zhu Xi's Confucian Classics Collation

As the most famous scholar of the Song Dynasty Confucianism, Zhu Xi takes it as a responsibility to annotate the Confucian classics. In the process of annotation, Zhu Xi attaches great importance to the collation of classical texts, and discusses a lot on it. The research materials are from Zhu Xi's writings on Confucian classics, like Concourse of Commentaries on the Four Books, Poetry Commentaries and so on. The study aims at discovering the results, methods, achievements and shortcomings of Zhu Xi's Confucian classics collation, and made a comprehensive and objective evaluation of Zhu's academic position.This thesis is composed of five parts.The first part is an introduction, describing the reasons and value of the selected topic and the key issues. This part also states the materials and methods used in this thesis, clarifying the scope of this study.The first chapter briefly discusses Zhu Xi's activities and results of Confucian classics collation, and taking Concourse of Commentaries on the Four Books as an example to describe the process of collation.The second chapter discusses Zhu Xi's thoughts and ideas of Confucian classics collation.There are three points:Firstly, collation can help find the original meaning of Scripture; Secondly, it's need to refine and correct textual errors of Scripture; Thirdly, it has to take a prudential attitude and don't change the original text rashly.The third chapter is the focus of this writing to describe the methods of Zhu Xi's Confucian classics collation. It can be roughly summarized as six methods:Collecting different versions as possible; Investigating the similarities and differences between the different versions; Collation through doctrine of Scripture; Collation through the context; Collation through the phonological knowledge; Collation through text verifiable by other books; Collation repeated.The forth chapter is the characteristics of Zhu Xi's Confucian Classics collation and analysis of achievements and shortcomings. The collated characteristics can be summarized into four:Firstly, Zhu's collation is attached to the exegesis of Confucian Classics, in the form of collating with the annotation; Secondly, Zhu Xi emphasizes on Collecting different versions as possible, but don't have blind faith in the ancient and stone versions;Thirdy, Zhu Xi emphasizes on collation through doctrine of Scripture and the context; Fourthly, Zhu Xi's Confucian Classics collation is very comprehensive, involving variants, hiatus, text wrong, superfluous texts and chapter. The last is to evaluate the collation of Zhu Xi's Confucian Classics collation from both achievements and shortcomings.