Research On Zhao Wanli’s Bibliology And Textual Criticism

Zhao Wanli is a famous philologist in Modern China. He devoted his life to ancient books cataloging and literature arrangement and had abundant works. He has written more than one hundred academic articles which were published in many major newspapers and other publications. He owned so many works, represented by The Catalog of Chinese Antique Engraving; Booklist of Rare Books in Beiping Library; Booklist of Rare Books in Beijing Library; Collation, Annotations and Compilations On Poetry of Song, Jin and Yuan Dynasties; Geography of China in the Yuan Dynasty; The Explanation Sections of Epigraphs in the Han, Wei, Northern and Southern Dynasties(202BC-589AD).This paper studies the Zhao’s achievements in philology from the perspectives of bibliology and textual criticism. In the first part, it introduces Zhao’s life and major works. In the second part, it introduces the books Zhao visited and his collation of ancient books. There is an extremely large collection of rare books in the Beijing Library, owing a lot to Zhao Wanli’s hunting. Besides, he compiled the Yongle Canon, repaired Tripitaka in the Jin Dynasty, and put forward the concept of restoration of ancient books as “repair the old like it is”. He also paid much attention to the cultivation of talents. The third part discusses Zhao’s achievements in bibliology. He was good at identifying versions and he could identify ancient books with comprehensive application of fonts, published work, taboos, formats, papers and ink, etc. He cleared the historical origin of engraved block printing and told systematically about the evolution of engraving. He wrote The Catalog of Chinese Antique Engraving which reflected achievements of Chinese engraved block printing and was regarded as the milestone of research on bibliology. He wrote Booklist of Rare Books in Beiping Library which collected abundant books and served as a general list of rare books to some extent, contributing a lot to academic acknowledgement to bibliology at that time. What’s more, Booklist of Rare Books in Beijing Library in 1959 culminated in the research on bibliology. The forth part mainly deals with Zhao’s achievements in textual criticism. His collation in ancient books covered a wide range and he collated Song Poems and local records with the same method as classics and history. He maintained a natural attitude towards collation and paid much attention to various versions. He adopted duijiao and lijiao and tried his best during his collation. The last part concludes Zhao’s achievements in bibliology and textual criticism.All in all, on the basis of comprehensive induction of his achievements and his academic practices, this paper makes an objective evaluation of his position in the literature field.