Form-time Character And Value Of The 《Biography Of MuTianZi》

Biography of Mu TianZi, a fine work of Xian Qin Dynasty, including six volumes recording Zhou Mu Wang's travels, was unearthed during the second year of Emperor JingWu's reign(281 A.D). Among the sis volumes, the first one majors in narrating the preparation of travel including rites, accompanies, and imperial horses; volume two, three, and four major in Mu Wang's travels to the west; volume five majors in Mu Wang's travel to the east; and volume six majors in the death of Mu Wang's princess, which was formerly recorded in Nineteen Essays, and was compiled in it later. The work supplies plenty raw material for our researching on the history, geography, and literature of Xian Qin Dynasty.After Biography of MuTianZi was unearthed, XunXu and ShuXi arranged and compiled the work. Many people have conducted plenty of textual research and have got some achievements in the production time, the characteristic, and the value of the work. But till now, the understanding of many problems about it still is different. Based on the preceding studies and emphasized on the domesticate evidences, the thesis tries to analyze objectively the production time of the book, its nature, and its values. Besides the introduction and conclusion, the thesis concludes four other parts.The introduction aims to illustrate the significance of and choosing the topic and such studies.Part one is the literature review of Biography of MuTianZi, which is a general review of the methods and achievements of the relevant researches.Part two studies the time of the production of Biography of Mu TianZi. Regarding Kun Lun and Xi WangMu's evolution as clues that can be mutual confirmation to each other, the thesis deducts that the time of the production of Biography of MuTianZi must be around Spring and Autumn. This is the main part of the thesis that serves as base of the following discussion.Part three introduces the nature of Biography of MuTianZi that finally proves to be non-historic.Part four presents the values of Biography of MuTianZi which has a high value of historic documents as it not only keeps the historic materials of Zhou Muwang's travels, but also the historic records of the communications between Zhou nationality and minorities in Northern China. Though the names of the places and the geographical appearances can't be well proved by historical knowledge, yet its value of geographical documents can never be ignored. In the perspective of literature, it serves as pioneer in biographical literature and itself has the strong nature of literary works.Conclusion...