The Research On Collation Value Of Letters In Yiwenleiju

Yiwenleiju,edited by Ouyang Xun and others,written in the seventh year of Wude(624),Tang Dynasty,is one of the earliest and most complete encyclopedias in China.It has a wide range of contents and strict classification,and has created a format of combining allusions with literary works,which makes it get the functions of encyclopedia and poetry collection.It has preserved an extremely rich literature before the Tang Dynasty and has a far-reaching impact on future generations.Whether it is to collect the lost ancient books or to collate the ancient editions with popular versions,scholars have long paid attention to Yiwenleiju.In terms of lost collection,books such as The Lost Collection Books of Yuhanshanfang and The Whole Texts of Three Dynasties in Ancient Times,Qin,Han,Three Kingdoms and Six Dynasties have fully explored the value of Yiwenleiju,now there are many papers to examine and identify the books cited in Yiwenleiju,too.However,in the aspect of collation,although people fully affirm the function of Yiwenleiju,they often just regard it as a reference book.There is still a lack of special and theoretical discussion on its collation value.The letter is an important practical style.Among the 51 styles of literary genres in Yiwenleiju,there is also a special category of letters,which contains 171 articles.This number is in the forefront of various styles in Yiwenleiju,many letters are protected from loss because of the collection of this book.These letters are also of great significance in ancient literature,stylistics and collation.Recently,many people have paid attention to the role of the collection and the value of stylistics in Yiwenleiju,however,there is also no in-depth study on letters of the book.This thesis takes letters in Yiwenleiju as the research object.After statistical analysis of them,45 of these letters are selected for systematic collation,and the collation examples are selected to make a detailed discussion on the collation value of letters in Yiwenleiju.In addition to the introduction explaining the research theme,research status and research methods,this thesis includes five chapters.The specific chapters are arranged as follows:The first chapter introduces the formation process,basic style and document function of Yiwenleiju.This chapter agrees with the previous conjecture that Yiwenleiju is closely related to Prince Li Jiancheng,affirms the collation value of Wang Yuanzhen’s printed edition of Yiwenleiju in the Ming Dynasty and the Siku Quanshu Edition in the Qing Dynasty in combination with the writer’s own collation practice.It also lists the achievements of predecessors in compiling and collating books by using Yiwenleiju,summarizes that the utilization of Yiwenleiju by the compilation of encyclopedias has experienced three stages:absorbing content,adopting styles and integrating the whole book,and points out that the collation by scholars with Yiwenleiju in the Qing Dynasty has three characteristics:many application objects,many presentation forms of collation results and clear purpose of collation.Moreover,the chapter shows that defects of the version of Yiwenleiju and the inherent deficiencies of the encyclopedia style are the two major problems that should be paid attention to when using Yiwenleiju for collation.The second chapter is a brief introduction to the 171 letters in Yiwenleiju,pointing out that the number of letters in the "Human Department" is the largest and the highest achievement.Among the letters,the author and number of letters of Liang in the Southern Dynasty are the largest,and a total of 117 letters survived because of the collection of Yiwenleiju.Although most of these letters have been abridged,they also make up for the shortcomings of Wenxuan and Wenxin Diaolong.This chapter also determines the collation object of this thesis as 45 letters.The third,fourth and fifth chapters are the specific explanation of the collation value of letters in Yiwenleiju.These chapters refer to the modes of Peng Shuxia’s Discrimination of Wenyuanyinghua and Chen Yuan’s Examples of Collation,and divides the collation value of Yiwenleiju into three aspects:"Correcting mistakes","Preserving differences" and "Helping textual research".The third chapter"Correcting mistakes" includes four sections:"Correcting redundant words","Correcting mistakenly deleted words","Correcting wrong words" and "Correcting disorderly words".The fourth chapter "Preserving differences" includes three sections:"Providing different titles","Providing different names of characters" and "Providing alternative texts".The fifth chapter "Helping textual research" includes four sections:"Investigating the causes of mistakes in Yiwenleiju","Investigating the evolution of ancient and modern glyphs","Identifying the changes of taboo words" and"Exploring the form of ancient manuscripts".Each section is further divided into sub categories according to the actual content.Each sub category lists the records of the collation of Yiwenleiju with the classics before the Southern Song Dynasty and large poetry and prose collections such as Wenji,The Collection of 72 Famous Writers,The Collection of 103 Famous Writers in the Han,Wei and Six Dynasties,and The Whole Texts of Three Dynasties in Ancient Times,Qin,Han,Three Kingdoms and Six Dynasties.The beginning of the third chapter "Correcting mistakes" is attached with"General examples" and "Comparison table of names and versions of quoted ancient books",which explains the abbreviations and sorting methods of quoted ancient books.The three chapters contain a total of 303 collation notes,which not only intuitively present the collation function of letters in Yiwenleiju,but also tries to correct the errors of Yiwenleiju and other ancient books.