The literary giants of the late Ming Dynasty began by copying books

Wang Wenlong directly used Zhang Taiyan's term for the name of Linguistics, and his lecture notes basically intended to copy the "Methodology of Exegesis".

This is a book on exegesis published in the 1980s. The two authors are Lu Zongda and Wang Ning. Wang Ning is Lu Zongda’s student, while Lu Zongda was taught by the famous philologist Huang Kan.

This book was written in the modern era. Its content is a summary, arrangement and refinement of traditional hermeneutic theories, and basically explains all the previous methods.

The reason why Wang Wenlong chose this book is because although he wanted to copy books, he really has not read all the books on exegesis. For example, the only book on exegesis that Wang Wenlong can say he has systematically studied is this one, "Methodology of Exegesis" ——This book explains exegesis in a simple and easy-to-understand way, and provides a comprehensive summary of previous methods. It was the textbook used by Wang Wenlong’s teacher at university.

The content of textual criticism is too broad, and Wang Wenlong can only start with what he has learned. Now Dong Qichang and others are digging oracle bones in Anyang. The emergence of oracle bones must have triggered a wave of research on philology. Wang Wenlong felt that he would give lectures next It is naturally most convenient to start with philology. Among the three major contents of philology: morphology requires a lot of oracle and bronze inscriptions to be compared with antiques.

Wang Wenlong is not a famous antique collector. If he suddenly took out a lot of epigraphic rubbings and started talking about morphology, it would definitely arouse suspicion. There was no photography technology in this era, so where did all these rubbings of knowledge come from? Moreover, the oracle bone inscriptions had just been excavated at this time, and the relevant texts had not been studied clearly. It was impossible for many morphological contents to appear reasonably.

Although phonology can publish relevant works, seeing that the identification and research of oracle bone inscriptions is about to become an upsurge, the current research on oracle bone inscriptions is mainly about word meaning analysis and glyph identification. The relationship with phonology is obviously not as close as that of exegesis, so Wang Wenlong chose Exegesis related content.

Of course, the original "Methodology of Exegetical Studies" contains many parts that deal with the history of exegesis, and it quotes a large number of research contents on ancient exegesis after the Qing Dynasty. However, these contents cannot be called the history of exegetical studies in this era. In the lecture, Wang Wenlong intends to directly present the correct and relevant content as his own new point of view.

Wang Wenlong started to talk and said: "The ancient articles have been thousands of years ago. The spoken language at that time has long since died, and only written words are left as the key for us to understand the thoughts of the ancients. If a piece of ancient text is read, the grammar and semantics are no different from what people say today. , the content can be seen at a glance, and there is no need to bother to study. Most of the words we want to study are difficult to decipher, and we can only understand their meaning by making innuendoes. There are not many ways to make insinuations, and they are generally: use the form to get the meaning. , asking for meaning based on sound, and comparing and verifying each other.”

"We all know that the ancients used six scripts to create characters, three of which are pictograms, meanings, and meanings. Yes, with these three characters, we can use the method of interpreting form and meaning, and judge the meaning based on the image of the characters. "

"For example, the word 'hui' for 'turn around' is sometimes written like this in Zhou Wen." Wang Wenlong took up his pen and wrote a lollipop-like symbol on a large piece of white paper, raised it high to show everyone, and then Said: "Although we don't recognize it at first glance, the first look at its image means that it means returning to the circle. After analyzing the context, we can know that this is the word 'back'. Of course, we need to be sure, and we need to find more references from the era. The way to write the character 'Hui' is to list the evolution process of this character, so that it can be called accurate."

By the Wanli period, scholars had done very little research on the study of ancient bones. Many people only roughly knew what the study of ancient bones meant when they heard Wang Wenlong give a lecture. Many people were surprised to see Wang Wenlong take out ancient texts and analyze them with everyone. Thinking that this course is specifically designed to teach everyone the ability to identify ancient texts, many people have become very interested in it.

But there are also many students who came to listen to the lecture today who have done research on ancient learning. At this point in Wang Wenlong’s lecture, someone raised their hands:

"Sir, the training and research of using shapes to find meanings is a commonly used method in Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jiezi" of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Students have also studied it on their own, but they have never heard of the two methods of seeking meaning through sound and comparison and mutual verification. ?”

Yes, I have also read "Shuowen Jiezi".

Wang Wenlong explained: "If you study some ancient characters solely by using the method of meaning, you will inevitably make a big taboo, that is, it is easy to use the written glyphs to interpret the meaning of the word at will. Look at what the character looks like, and then interpret it. What word does it recognize? This is called 'looking at the shape to produce training', and it will cause big problems."

"In order to solve this problem, we must find more ways to study exegesis. Chinese characters have long had a tendency to represent phonetics. Although they have always remained ideographic characters, the connection between glyphs and semantics is also direct and close. From this, we have found a second way to study ancient characters, which is to deduce the meaning of the words based on the phonetics of the characters. Of course, this also requires learning some phonology knowledge."

"Despite these two methods, Chinese characters are very rich in meaning. Even if we know the characters of some words, we may not be able to deduce their meanings. For example, the word 'fan' originally means 'everything' in ancient texts. meaning, but in Zhong Ding's text, 'fan' often means plate. The reason may be that the pronunciations of the two characters 'fan' and 'pan' were similar at that time. If you can figure out this meaning without comparing, see Zhong Ding's text. If you write about putting meat in a 'fan', many gentlemen will scratch their heads."

This example was a common example in later exegetical studies, but it was still very novel in the Ming Dynasty. Many people had never heard of it, and everyone laughed when they heard it.

The student also nodded repeatedly and asked curiously: "I don't know which ancient book you read these two research methods of asking for meaning and comparing and mutual confirmation?" Wang Wenlong smiled and said: "I probably proposed it first."

Seeking justice based on sound is an exegesis method developed by scholars of the Qianjia School, and the research method of mutual confirmation was not proposed until the Republic of China. If Wang Wenlong did not attribute the credit to himself, this lesson would be impossible to teach.

Everyone was surprised when they heard this. Wang Wenlong was actually telling everyone about a research method on ancient learning that had never been proposed by anyone before. Moreover, there was only one research method used by predecessors, and there were two new methods proposed by Wang Wenlong.

"These two new research methods can solve many old problems in the past. If you are interested, you can try to use these two methods to solve the difficult exegetical problems in the past after learning these contents."

Wang Wenlong continued: "For example, "The Songs of Chu·Shejiang" has: 'Qi Wu Bang is to defeat.'" Zhu Zi's "Annotations to the Songs of Chu" explains this sentence: "Wu means the country of Wu. Bang, also known as Piao." .' It is thought that Wu Bang is a kind of ship from the State of Wu. According to this statement, this sentence means 'use the Wu Bang ship of the State of Wu to hit the water'. However, before the Song Dynasty, no one had ever seen anyone writing about a ship called 'Wu Bang' 'Yes, the word 'Bang' did not mean ship in the pre-Qin Dynasty, so the origin of this name is really strange."

"However, if analyzed based on phonology, Li Zhou's "Qie Yun" in the Tang Dynasty wrote: "Bang" reads "Beimeng Qie", which means: to make the ship move forward. Chen Pengnian's "Guang Yun" in the Song Dynasty also recorded "阘", " "駧" has the same pronunciation and is commonly used. It is a name for a plowshare, and it also means inserting a plowshare. Therefore, the ancients often called the action of inserting something into "駧", and "Wu" and "阘" are often used interchangeably. Therefore, it is strange to explain the meaning of 'Wubang' bluntly as a kind of boat, but it is explained as: insert the oars to make the boat move forward. This sentence makes sense."

Wang Wenlong said: "If we don't look up "Qie Yun" and "Guang Yun" and study the meaning of the words from the sound aspect, the word 'Wubang' cannot be understood..."

Why do we need to study exegesis when researching ancient books? Because many words in ancient books cannot be explained clearly without exegesis, and the contents of ancient books cannot be explained clearly, the power of interpretation of ancient texts will be controlled by big shots.

Just like a great scholar like Zhu Xi, when he sees a word in "Chu Ci" that he doesn't know the meaning of, he will just tell people nonsense, and because Zhu Xi's influence is too great, many future generations will follow his mistakes.

After the word "Wu Bang" was interpreted by Zhu Xi as "Wu's ships", many people really became arty. Since the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, many people called Wu's ships "Wu Bang" in their articles to show their erudition. , even "bang" in later ancient Chinese dictionaries also added the meaning of ship. It was not until the study of ancient antiquity reached a certain level that it was discovered that this was a complete joke.

With the development of exegesis research, people will gradually realize that the great scholar Zhu Xi made more than one or two such mistakes.

Even the explanation of ancient texts in Neo-Confucianism is full of nonsense in many places...

After Wang Wenlong finished speaking, many people present were stunned: Zhu Xi would still make mistakes? Still such an imprecise mistake.

Someone immediately asked in shock: "How is this possible?"

"Mr. Jianyang, are you kidding me?"

"This is no joke!"

(End of this chapter)