Inspection Of Duiwen In Exegetics

Thousands years have passed since Kong Yingda in Tang Dynasty explicitly presented the term "Duiwen" and put it into practice in Exegetics. However, during its practice, its connotation and usage are not standardized. This paper attempts to explore the manifestations and reasons that "Duiwen" interrelate other exegetic terminology such as Hu wen, Xiyan, Lianwen. etc. Furthermore, it puts forward some views on how to standardize the usage of "Duiwen", which exists in ancient literatures in large quantities and is a means frequently adopted by "Exegetic scholars". Duiwen, formally, is composed of "Coordinate couplet" and "Opposite couplet" and other forms; semantically, is characterized by relative, opposite, close, same, and correlative features. By making use of "Duiwen", the well-known Wang's father and son living in Gaoyou solved large number of knotty problems concerning exegetics and collation in their four academic works. For instance, they corrected mistaken note, judged the quality of old notes, rectified the mistakes, explained empty words, analyzed sentence elements or the part of speech and investigated Jia Jie and dug out the original words. In this sense, their achievements are great and have far-reaching impacts on later scholars. Their comprehension and application of "Duiwen" developed the traditional exegetics practice, which deserves our further research and reference. Nevertheless, certain conditions are required to guarantee the proper use o f "Duiwen" and it is unwise to apply it mechanically.