Research On Sun Zuoyun’ Shistorical Thoughts

Sun Zuoyun is a famous Chinese historian, specialist in Chu-Ci and expert on folklore inthe modern and contemporary age. His studies mainly focused on the Book of Songs, theSongs of Chu, ancient Chinese myths and legends, Chinese artistic archaeology and ancientfolk-customs, which made great contributions to the history and culture researches of ancientChina.Sun’s historical thoughts were mostly represented in his conception of history andhistorical methodology. His conception of history experienced a development frommulti-view on history to materialist conception of history. At the beginning, Sun learned fromWen Yiduo about the studies of ancient Chinese history. After his digesting the westernfolklore, mythology and sexual culture theory, Sun Zuoyun started to employ newarchaeology materials, totemism theory and image mythology. Finally, he set imagemythology as his theoretical guidance. Thus, Sun synthesized his research methods andbroadened his view on historical cognition. Sun Zuoyun is generally regarded as aself-pursing scholar with enterprising spirit who can advancewiththetimes. In order to avoidthe drawbacks of traditional historian, he was actively seeking for new theories based on thetraditional honestly recording historical facts. This is the key point why he asked for thesupport of new western theories to achieve his research aims. Besides, owing to hismulti-view studies, poetic attitude and continuously mining materials, he was expert indivergent thinking.Multi-view on history helped broaden Sun’s researches and dig deeper into historicalmaterials. But the findings of new historical materials asked for the guidance of advancedtheories. Materialist conception of history refreshed to Chinese academia and renewed Sun’sacademic studies. In Sun’s opinion, history is a record or reflection of ancients lives. Heclaimed that the studies of history should view historical movements on peoples’ stand,analyze historical events from materialist conception of history. And he also held that humanhistorical movement should be seen as a continuous process from an advanced view of history.In addition, he advocated developing history education, popularizing history knowledge andfully making use of the social function of history. He also promoted to connect history studieswith other subject studies to carry out the multidisciplinary comprehensive researches. In terms of methodology, Sun Zuoyun employed integrated multidisciplinary researchmethod in his original study and then came to historicism method. When Sun made textualcriticisms and explanations, he used many modern theories for mutual support andcorroboration, which achieved the perfect combination of traditional and modern methods.Sun utilized folklore, mythology and archaeology to enlarge historical facts. Therefore, he gotthe true essence of the ancient history with the mutual corroboration of material andnonmaterial, tangible and intangible ancient relics. What’s more, Sun researched the mythorigin of ancient Chinese history and the development from clan society to class society.These studies exposed the figure of man in myths of ancient China, which to some extentrehabilitated Chinese primitive society history.Sun Zuoyun was accomplished in concrete research of ancient Chinese culture. Bymultiply comparing historical evidence, he achieved some correct historical facts. Forexample, in the study of the Book of Songs, he found the mysteries of23poems, whichpointed out a clear way for further interpreting this book. Moreover, he payed great attentionto the relationship between lingo and ritual by means of folklore. His textual research on thepoems about land exploitations in Western Zhou Dynasty helped him conclude that kainsystem had started since Xuanwu period. After studies of The Songs of Chu, he pointed outover30wrong rhythms, and modified one third orders of Tian Wen. By researching Li Sao,Great Requiem and Zhao Hun, Sun demonstrated the Warring States Period customs such asdances, rites, furniture, diet, which enriched documents for further researches of material andspiritual culture in Warring States Period. In ancient Chinese myth researches, Sun proposedto study art images on medieval artifacts finding in Chinese tombs from the perspective ofmythology. He also highlighted the set of academic ideas behind the myth images. That is,combining the ancient superstition with customs, he took totem worship seriously andexcavated inside information of myths and legends in ancient China to demonstrate that“three generations” in ancient China is made up of three local clans’ expansion rather thanimmigration. In the researches of MawangduiHanDynastyTomb, Sun combinedarchaeological digs with theories of myth and knowledge of Chu culture, and he explored thatthe main superstitions in Han Dynasty were being deity and Shoot-Free. This presentedChinese supernatural concepts from the origin of primitive beliefs and reset the essence ofghosts in ancient China. Furthermore, in the researches of folk customs like Nuo Opera, Puppet Drama and folk games, Sun’s new ideas provided references for the modernresearches of folk culture and customs.