Research On "Tan Gan Collection" By Xu Chengyao

The academic circles had a lot of research on Xu Chengyao’s achievement in the area of poetry, education, and chorography. As a great collector and connoisseur in recent period, he also accomplished such a great achievement in collection and got a lot of people’s attention in recent years. Xu Chengyao’s collection enjoys high reputation in the scale, quality and features. However, the academia doesn’t do much research into the spread and ownership of his collections fully and systematically at present.The author has consulted Xu Chengyao’s poetry, notes, diaries, correspondence, his posterity’s memoirs and related academic papers and investigated his hometown Shexian County and Anhui Museum, then gained valuable first-hand information. So the author tried to make a comprehensive interpretation to "Tan Gan Collection".In the paper, the first part mainly involves Xu Chengyao’s life and the origin of the "Tan Gan Collection". The second part focuses on source, spread and current preservation situation of calligraphy and painting collection form "Tan Gan Collection". The third part investigates Dunhuang documents form Xu’s collection, mainly for the supplement to Anhui Museum’s related collection. In the fourth part the author does some research for a few important ancient books in Xu’s collection. The fifth part mainly discusses the significant value of "Tan Gan Collection" and Xu Chengyao’s important role in modern Huizhou.