"spring And Autumn Annals" Research

Yanzi Annal is a masterpiece to record the words and deeds of Yanying, a cabinet minister of Qi in Sping and Autumn period. This book concerned of abounding thoughts, so it is not only a classic literature work with political flavour but also an important reference book to study history, literature, and philosophy in that period.It used to be considered as a work of the Confucianists writen by Yanying before Tang Dynasty. However, the arguments about the writer, the time of being and the school of Yanying went on when Liu Zongyuan of Tang presented his question. It was even overlooked as a pseudograph by many scholars since Song Dynasty.In April of 1972, the discovery of bamboo-slip edition of Yanzi Annal in a tomb of Han Dyansty in Yinque moutain of Shandong Province proved that this book is not a pseudograph but an early work. However, scholars couldn't make agreement on the time of being. After I reviewed the main viewpoints on when the book came into being and analysed their methodologies, I found the disadvantage of traditional methods couldn't solve the problem as they only took some special case into consideration. Therefore, we have to study in a holistic way from every aspects, such as politial views, language style, culture characters, thoughts and social events in order to find the answer. In my research, I tried some new approaches and refered to many masterpieces before Han Dynasty according to formal researches and my claim is that the book came into being before the middle period of War-Nation as early as or even earlier than the Mencius.There are four viewpoints on the qusetion of the tendency of Yanying's thought, in which some scholars categorized it into the Confucianists or the Mohists, or some thought both right but others agreed to neither of the two schools. The last view is predominate among most of the present scholars. Since the book came into being later than Yanying's life, the thoughts of the book was not Yanying's but the interpretation of the writer. We are not able to study Yanying's thoughts as few literatures left of Yanying but we can disccuss the thoghts of the book. Han Book and Seven Abstracts list it in the category of the Confucianists. Many scholars mistakened the image in Yanzi Annual as Yanying himself so that Yanying belonged neither the Confucianists nor the Mohists in their view. The present popuar view of either the Confucianists or the Mohists in fact underestimated the essence of the book. The thesis analyses the thought of the book from five aspects and made a conclusion that it is typical of th Confucianists.