Shen Jian Annotation

ShenJian is a political work, was written in Jian-ten years(AD205).The authorXunYue wrote this book aiming at summing up historical experience for monarchreference. This paper includes XunYue’s life and his writings, the introduction of versionsof ShenJian, the political thoughts reflected in that book and the collation of ShenJian.During the last years of Eastern Han dynasty, relatives of king, eunuchs and landlordstook turns to dictatorship, they fight each other for power, made social darkness anddeteriorated. XunYue deeply felt the crisis of the society, disclosing and criticizing allkinds of social drawbacks, proposing a series of administering measures and solutions. Soas a monarch’s closer official, XunYue wrote ShenJian five volumes, in an attempt to givethe monarch some reference of country governing, intending to revive Han dynasty. Butthe eastern han dynasty dynasty already dying, his thoughts won’t be adopted by the rulers,eventually the eastern han dynasty towards the inevitable decline.XunYue discussed systematically his political thoughts and governing strategies inShenJian, did the concrete analysis of the feudal political system in many ways. Heevolved a new theory on basis of traditional Confucian thoughts and made it furtherdevelopment. On the subject of “human nature”, he has formed a new theory. According tothe division of human nature of good or evil, he was more in favor of the viewpoint “goodand evil are mixed”, which LiuXiang advocated, and on the basis of that, he formed theunique concept of "method of law teaching". Aimed at all sorts of the divinationsprevailing in society at that time, he differentiated and analyzed, trying to represent thematerialism in his thoughts. From the perspective of reality, XunYue constructed a systemof political thought which provides the materials of a comprehensive understanding of theeastern han dynasty society as well as ancient political thought for us.The versions of ShenJian are various, its ideological content has been gained greatattention. Huang Shengceng had made collations for ShenJian in Ming dynasty, it is themost common and the most widely spread version.In the modern age, there are two works and one paper about ShenJian’s collation. InOctober1991, Bashu publishing house published selected translations of ShenJian. Thebook selects some chapters, and paraphrased by zhang Tao and Fu Genqing. In September2012, zhong Hua Press published Proofreading of ShenJian, the author correct what iswrong in huang’s book and make lots of supplements.This article makes collation not only to the words, historical allusions, things and their names, office, also in combination with different versions of ShenJian. In the process ofcollation, try to make content detailed and meaning appropriate.