A Discussion On Wang Yinglin's Achievements Of The Book Of Songs

As a classic Confucian works, The Book of Songs has attached great importance from it came forth in the world, and lots of experts have made many researches for it from all aspects. An immense number of books on the research of The Book of Songs have appeared in the past 2000 years, so all the books showed the historical characteristics. Though the Song Dynasty was full of turbulence and confusion in politics, it would not hold back the development and prospect of economy and culture. During the period, the research on The Book of Songs also showed the obvious character for the ages. On the one hand, Creative and susceptive spirit on academic and the idealist philosophy help the researches on The Book of Songs take on a revolutionary character and even there are many unconventional theories; on the other hand, the traditional researching methods were not been abandoned completely, and there are some excellent works made by the conventional researching methods. The two kinds of researching methods ebbed and flowed occasionally and syncretized finally, which helped the researches on The Book of Songs form many schools, such as sophisticating genre, abandoning convention genre, keeping convention genre, soul and nature genre and textual research. There were many Confucius masters in Song Dynasty, and Wang Yinglin was one of the leading masters. He read a mass of works, and made research inheriting from the methods from Han and Tang and Song dynasties. The works on the research of The Book of Songs included Textual research on the book of songs, Textual research of the geography on the book of songs, Yu Hai and Kun Xue Ji Shi. Some of them showed the creativity and some others made the summary for the former dynasties. His researching methods on The Book of Songs not only represented the characteristics of research on bibliography in Song dynasty, but also influenced the researches in later ages.