The Comparison And Research Of The Documents Of Martyrs Of Later Ming Dynasty And Martyrs Of Four Dynasties Of Ming

The late Ming and early Qing Dynasty is called by many historians as "giant earthquakes and landslides" era.Accompanied by the surging peasant uprising and the Qing government's entry,there were a very large number of committing suicide during this period.The number of people committed suicide is much larger than the previous dynasties.At that time,people had been concerned about that phenomenon,and there were some books been written.Such as The Documents of Martyrs of Later Ming Dynasty,Martyrs of Four Dynasties of Ming,Records of Righteousness of Xuejiao Pavilion,Records of Pages of History and so on.The Documents of Martyrs of Later Ming Dynasty,Martyrs of Four Dynasties of Ming are excellent in these works,and they have high historical values.Martyrs of Four Dynasties of Ming has some records only can be found in it.But so far the special research on the two books are very small.Though the tow books' contents and styles are similar,the two authors of the books have a big difference:the author of The Documents of Martyrs of Later Ming Dynasty Xu Bingyi was a scholar that cooperated with the Qing government actively,the author of Martyrs of Four Dynasties of Ming Qu Dajun was a scholar that had a firm attitude to overturn Qing Dynasty.A comparative study of these two scholars and their similar works will help us to analyze the two kinds of scholars'mentality in the early Qing Dynasty while excavating the values of the two books.The paper consists six parts:The preface introduces the paper's purpose and significance,current research status of Xu Bingyi,The Documents of Martyrs of Later Ming Dynasty,Qu Dajun,Martyrs of Four Dynasties of Ming,and the research methods and ideas.Chapter one explains the background when the two books were written,mainly introduces the situation of righteousness concept and its formation in later Ming Dynasty,as well as the evolution of Huayi Concept from Ming Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty,and analyzes the effect of these two kinds of ideas to the late Ming and early Qing Dynasty' martyrdom.Chapter two introduces the lives and thoughts of the two authors:Xu Bingyi and Qu Dajun.Xu Bingyi' active cooperation with Qing Dynasty had a great relationship with early Qing government's policy,Qu Dajun's attitude to Qing Dynasty,was influenced by his family a lot.As supporters of Confucianism,Xu Bingyi and Qu Dajun had high consistency in Confucianism,such as " people-oriented "thoughts.Chapter three focuses on the process and purpose of the compilation of the two books.The authors had made great efforts in the collection and examination of the historical materials.The main purpose of writing The Documents of Martyrs of Later Ming Dynasty was praising martyrs and supplementing for the history books,and the main purpose of writing Martyrs of Four Dynasties of Ming was Qu Dajun's guilt for the martyrs and distrust of the Qing government.Chapter four is a introduction and comparison of the two books,mainly from volume divisions,character statistics and the descriptions of martyrs.I select The Biography of Zuo Maodi as a representative to analyze.Chapter five summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of the two books.The two books both preserve a great amount of historical materials.Their advantages and disadvantages both have something in common and difference,due to the authors'standpoint.In a word,The Documents of Martyrs of Later Ming Dynasty and Martyrs of Four Dynasties of Ming are a good reflection of the two authors' lives and thoughts.The two books were written seriously and cost great efforts of the two authors,The Documents of Martyrs of Later Ming Dynasty and Martyrs of Four Dynasties of Ming were very important works of their authors' lives.