Commentary On Yang Chun's Classical Studies

Yang Chun was a famous historian and scholar of Confucian classics in the early Qing Dynasty.He came from a famous imperial examination family – the Qian Huang Yang family,which was the academic master in Wujin area in the Qing Dynasty.His good family learning tradition laid a solid academic foundation for his later study of Confucian classics.According to the existing information,his life experience can be roughly divided into family,young loss of dependable;formally trained,studious self-reliance;Jinshi and the first,in the historiographers compiling;recalled again to revise history books,in the capital endowment into four stages.It can be seen from Meng Lintang Literary notes that Yang Chun paid more attention to the study of the classics,and paid more attention to the Book of Shangshu and the Book of Songs.Influenced by the textual style of study at that time,his scholarship was characterized by emphasis on textual research.In the study of the Book of History,Yang Chun put forward his own viewpoint on the number of Fu Shu chapters,and made a textual research on the words “jin wen”(modern characters)appearing in the Chronicles of the Han Dynasty: Biography of Confucian Scholars and whether Fu Shu chapters were dictated.In order to prove that the book presented by Me Ze was a fake book,he put forward six new evidences to deny that these Confucian books were collected in sandwiched walls,and he believed that the Confucian scholars in the Han Dynasty must have seen the authentic Confucian Book of History.He also studied the preface of Pan Geng and the authenticity of the current version of Tai Shi.In the study of The Book of Songs,he argued that the word “nan”(south)in the “er nan” was actually the name of a musical piece,and refuted Zheng Xuan's naming the poems “bin” only for farming purpose.He made a textual research on the authors of the Ode to Commerce.He also made a textual research on the themes of Guan Ju and Magpie's Nest,and believed that they were all poems written by ancient emperors expressing their desires to seek talents.He revealed that the purpose of Qin Feng: No Clothes was to record the historical fact that Duke Ai of Qin decided to send troops to fight against Wu at the request of Shen Baoxu.He opposed the theory of deleting poems,put forward the view that poetry and music were an integral whole,and took a negative attitude towards the theory of “excluding poems”.In addition to his detailed and extensive study of the Book of History and Book of Songs,Yang Chun also made a thorough study of some questions in classics,such as Spring and Autumn,the Book of changes,the Three Rituals,the Classic of Filial Piety and the Analects of Confucius,and put forward many valuable viewpoints.Yang Chun lived in an era when textual studies were on the rise and ancient classics were prevalent.At this stage,most scholars took the Han school of classical philology as their academic basis and gradually formed a textual study style of “pursuing the study of classics for its own sake”.Yang Chun's grasp of Confucian classics not only had the characteristics of the times,but also had its own unique characteristics,which clearly defended the position of Confucianism of “han note”,discussed extensively its origin and development,obviously defended the position of Zhu Zi and criticized Zheng's theory.His reflective and innovative academic tendency made him an important scholar who sought truth from the past with a rational spirit that surpassed his times.