Seeking truth from facts is the common banner and life belief of Ganjia scholars. Duan Yucai is a big disciple of Dai Zhen. Although he failed to write a series of philosophical works like a teacher, he basically followed the academic style of Huizhou School initiated by Dai Zhen in academic ideals and academic routes, and made unique contributions, especially his pursuit of true knowledge in the study of China classical literature, which was similar to Dai Zhen's. He said: "Anyone who writes a book will only strive for what it is, and will not seek fame by striving to surpass the superiority of his predecessors. If we want to be famous because we are better than our predecessors, we won't believe it, but it is unreasonable for future generations to believe it. Although I don't want to be famous, I don't want to be better than others. My book should be credible. "
From a philosophical point of view, Duan Yucai also inherited Dai Zhen's anti-Song Confucianism, insisted on "transforming Yin and Yang into Tao" and "seeking truth from facts", and opposed "holding opinions as reason". He said in the article "Ten Classics Zhai Ji": "When I was a child, I read four books and annotated Chinese. I'm afraid I'm unfaithful, which means I'm suspicious. After reading the words of the Six Classics and Confucius and Mencius, we can know that their words are very different from those of the Six Classics and Confucius and Mencius in terms of heart, reason, nature and way of speaking. The debate of the Six Classics lies in things, and Song Confucianism advocates that reason lies in the heart, and nature is reason; The Six Classics say that it is Yin and Yang, as Song said, Yin and Yang are not Tao, and giving birth to Yin and Yang is reason, which is Tao. The more refined the text, the more difficult it is to follow, which makes people hold opinions and think it is reasonable, which is blocked by political affairs. " However, Dai Zhen repeatedly criticized Song Ru's viewpoint of reasoning out the nature and having a heart in mind in his book A Brief Proof of Mencius's Word Meaning, and thought that Song Ru's insistence on his own opinion would bring disaster to the country and the people, and even lead to the evil result of "killing people by reasoning".
Supported by the academic idea of "seeking truth", Duan Yucai criticized the writing methods of Sleeping Notes and Gu Rizhilu. He thinks that this writing method has two shortcomings: one is beneficial to different opinions, and the other is that it is useless to say the same thing and only invite names. Both Gu and He are famous for their erudition, and Gu's Five Tones once introduced Duan Yucai into classical linguistics. However, influenced by Dai Zhen, Duan Yucai believes that understanding is the true meaning of learning. He no longer learns to brag, but takes the pursuit of true knowledge and ten opinions as his life belief. He said: "I heard that Dong Yuan's teacher said: Knowing ten is not true knowledge, and not knowing one is true knowledge. Through the whole story, dissecting its right and wrong, there is no obstacle to the examination of books. On the contrary, the heart is attached to it, and every word is safe. It is also the status of heaven and the weather of everything. If you can speak for a long time, you will gain all the true knowledge. So, you can entertain your relatives alone, or you can entertain others far away. It will be relaxed and straightened out, which will undoubtedly be passed down from generation to generation. "
Not only that, Duan Yucai also believes that through the pursuit of true knowledge, we can make friends with the ancients in the world, and we can also make friends with future generations, so that people's lives can go beyond the time limit and enter the eternal realm: "If my wife has experience and surpasses the ancients, she will hate the ancients for not seeing me, and she will think that the ancients have words and deeds. She will never forget that there will be people who are good to me here, and she will never hate those who are invisible." Seeking the eternal meaning of short life in the pursuit of true knowledge shows that the academic activities of Gan scholars are not only the result of external political oppression, but also find spiritual sustenance in textual research.
Duan Yucai did not simply repeat the teacher's point of view, but developed Dai Zhen's theory on the issue of "seeking truth". He believes that "the pursuit of truth" is a historical process. In principle, future generations are superior to predecessors, and they should be different from predecessors through research, which is caused by the general law of pursuing truth and is not intended to embarrass predecessors. He said: "The author of the book is lucky to believe in the descendants of the world, not the descendants of the world." Zuo Jia doesn't like rams and Du Jia doesn't like people, but Zhu Yes, today, he is very lucky to criticize a person. Dont Ask For Help's letter: "Gentlemen seek credibility." . Seek truth, but dare not be true. This is really the reason why the sun rises. Compared with Dai Zhen's confidence in the "ten-point view", Duan Yucai understands that "truth" is hard-won, and with the development of the times and the deepening of academic research, "truth" is constantly developing.
Confucian classics research
In the aspect of Confucian classics, Duan Yucai didn't write systematic philosophical works, but he expounded his political and ethical thoughts by analyzing the specific meanings and sentences in classic texts such as Spring and Autumn Annals, Zuo Zhuan and Da Xue, especially the systematic study of the succession of Emperor Shizong of Ming Dynasty, and put forward some ideas to break through the traditional Confucian classics. In his later years, when Duan Yucai wrote The Collection of Ten Classics, he was deeply impressed by the physics of exegesis, famous things, system and people's feelings, and claimed that he "dared not relax with his later years". Duan Yucai's research on famous things, exegesis and system mainly shows the spirit of seeking truth, while his concern for the physics of people's feelings expresses the ideal of seeking Tao.
Duan's extensive and profound primary school is the methodological support of Duan Jing Xue. In the early Qing Dynasty, when Gu answered the question of what is Confucian classics, he once said: "Neo-Confucianism is also Confucian classics." That is, "there is no Neo-Confucianism without Confucian classics". Similarly, we can also say that there would be no Confucian classics without primary schools. Duan's primary school serves to interpret classics, and primary school is a tool for learning classics. Duan's primary school is magnificent, and his achievements in Confucian classics are thus enriched. In Duan Yucai's view, the history of Confucian classics is indeed a history of logical application of practical tools around the group classics, and the history of Confucian classics is a history of Confucian classics interpretation.
Reading Classical Language Logic in Zhou Lihan Reading Test (1794). Duan Yucai's most important contribution to Zhou Lihan's reading experiment is that, in order to understand Zhou Li, he put forward the style of annotating Zhou Li in the Han Dynasty: The Preface to Reading Experiment put forward three forms of "Chinese annotation is correct reading". Duan said: "Chinese is a note, and there are three examples: one is to read if, the other is to read if;" Second, read as, read as; Three times. " This passage, also found under the word "read" by Zhu Duan in Shuowen, can be regarded as a speech in which ancient independent philology turned to Confucian classics as an example. Read like, read like: "Imitate its sound" is used to imitate homophones and homophones. Read as: mainly used to express the change of meaning. When: Duan said: "A word mistake or a sound mistake is called when."
Merit in the field of history. In the early Qing Dynasty, it was enlightening to denounce the fake ancient prose Shangshu, and Liang Qichao's academic introduction in the Qing Dynasty called it "one of the great liberation of sincere ideological circles". Shangshu is one of the thirteen classics, which is the orthodox guiding ideology of feudal society. Exposing the falsification of Shangshu is, of course, an impact on the feudal ruling ideology. During the Qianlong period, Duan Yucai's textual research on the ancient prose Shangshu was of great significance to expose the aftermath of Mei's pseudograph.
Natural science and reading classics. Duan Yucai attached great importance to introducing natural science into Confucian classics. Zhang's Scholars once said that Duan Yucai has fewer thirteen classics, so it is advisable to add Dai Dai, Mandarin, Historical Records, Zi Jian, Shuo Wen Jie Zi, Zhou Bian and Nine Chapters Arithmetic.
Equally noteworthy is Duan Yucai's tolerant attitude towards modern classics. Duan Yucai once asked Gong Zizhen, his grandson, to learn from Cheng, an ancient classical scholar in China. Later, Gong Zizhen, a Confucian classic scholar, wrote four articles about Liang Ming, exposing the corruption of bureaucratic politics in the Qing Dynasty. When Duan Yucai was 80 years old, he read this article and praised it as "to the point" and "outstanding"! I still see this now, so I don't hate (regret) it. "
Linguistic philology
Duan Yucai mainly inherited, deepened and refined Dai Zhen's linguistic research, and made outstanding achievements in classical philology, such as the relationship between sound and meaning, the textual research of the word "Ben" in classics, and the invention of the principle of annotation of classics by Han people.
Duan Yucai's most important academic achievement in his life was in philology, and his main achievement was concentrated in the book "Notes on Explaining Chinese Characters". Annotation is an important genre of ancient Chinese characters. If Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi in the Eastern Han Dynasty focused on revealing the original meaning of Chinese characters through glyphs, then Duan Yucai in the Qing Dynasty focused on revealing the extended meaning of Chinese characters through handed down documents. Today we are talking about the contribution of paragraph notes to semantics and lexicology, which is mainly based on the extension of paragraph notes. Zhu Duan connects ancient and modern glyphs, pronunciations and meanings, which makes it more thoughtful.
Another important contribution of Zhu Duan is to put more than 9,000 Chinese characters into the new ancient phonology, and the rhyme of each character is marked one by one. The Phonological Table attached to Duan Zhuben is a position system of more than 9,000 words, that is, an ancient rhyme system. Duan Yucai's achievements in ancient phonology can be summarized in two aspects: First, he put forward a series of principles of ancient phonology, became a master of ancient phonology, and especially opened up a new way and method system to study the division of ancient phonology from the perspective of homophonic radicals. Second, it is divided into six categories and seventeen parts, which surpass predecessors and enlighten future generations. Duan Yucai and Dai Zhen talked about rhyme for fifteen years, which became a much-told story in academic history. After discussion, the two sides reached an understanding on the three rhymes of "Zhi, Zhi and Zhi" in ancient times. However, Dai never accepted Duan's idea of separating ancient truth from literature. Today, the distinction between ancient truth and literature has become a final conclusion, and Duan is correct.
Another important contribution of Zhu Duan is that, in addition to pointing out the meaning relationship between the related Chinese characters in the radical of Shuowen, Shuowen by Xu Shen has become methodical, "like a text", and it has constantly checked and explained the words related to the meaning in the whole book, making them combined and classified.
Among Duan Yucai's great-grandfather disciples, Changzhou Xu Xiang, Jiaxing, son-in-law Ren He and Gong (the father of Gong Zizhen) are quite famous, and Changzhou is even more famous for its true talents and practical learning. Text annotation
Duan Yucai is well-read and rich in writings, and manages primary schools by learning Confucian classics. In the primary school, we also use phonology to rule the exegesis of words. Solid and profound foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Book of Songs Primary School, Essays on China Ancient Books, Zhou Lihan Reading Test, Yi Reading Test, Ge Shuo Wen Ding, Shuo Wen Jie Zi Zhu and Jing Yun. Liu Shu Phonetic Rhyme Table is an epoch-making ancient rhyme book, which is divided into 17 books on the basis of five phonological books and Jiang Yong's (168 1 ~ 1762) ancient rhyme standard. Zhou Zumo, a contemporary linguist in China, thinks this book is "an epoch-making ancient rhyme work".
After more than 30 years of skill, Shuo Wen Jie Zi Zhu is unprecedented in its physical and mental size. He first wrote "A Reader for Explaining Words", and under each word, he quoted a group of books to explain the source in detail. In his later years, he deleted the complexity and simplified it, and compiled the Notes on Explaining Words. In the twentieth year of Jiaqing (18 15), the book was engraved in May, which was very popular and praised by scholars, and the research on Shuowen flourished.
The main features of paragraph annotations in Shuowen are as follows: ① Compared with the two versions of Xu (Xu Xuan and Xu Kai), the publication and engraving are fallacious. ② Explain the style of Xu Shu's works. (3) Quote ancient classics, explain Xu Shuo and infer the origin of Xu Shuo. ④ Besides Xu Shen's explanation, explain the extension and change of the meaning of words; It is pointed out that words have ancient and modern meanings. ⑤ Explain the relationship between sound and meaning, and explain the principle of sound and meaning communication according to homophonic phonetic symbols. At the same time, scholars Gui Fu, Zhu and Wang Yun are also known as the four masters of Shuowen.
Duan Yucai's annotation of Shuowen has made great achievements. He not only runs through the whole book and annotates it in detail, but also expounds the real value of Shuowen in textual research, pronunciation and exegetics, and creates many methods to study the meaning of words, which opens up new contents and new ways for the development of exegetics in China. Although there are inevitably some paranoia and arbitrariness in the book, the essence is indispensable.
File arrangement
Duan Yucai not only made immortal achievements in the practice of sorting out documents, but also summed up his own practical experience and put forward many outstanding opinions, such as "changing words", correcting mistakes, distinguishing the right and wrong of authors and notebooks, etc. It has been praised by scholars so far. On the issue of "changing words", generally speaking, he advocates "being brave in changing words", thinking that if you change words, you will change them, but if you know your mistakes, you will leave consequences. However, he also opposes reckless change, because reckless change and reckless change will cause worse or even irreparable consequences. Bitterness and harvest are thought-provoking! Duan Yucai's school books are not superstitious about ancient books, and advocate relying on their own knowledge to make good judgments. He analyzed that the Confucian classics "Book" and "Jing Zhu" were originally dividing lines, and the "Jing Zhu" and "Book Annotation" kept by each family were given different instructions. Many people have quarreled with each other in their words. Since the publication of Thirteen Classics, few scholars have been able to determine their origins and similarities. In such a complicated situation, it is no longer possible to solve the problem by sorting out classic texts only by ancient books. In the end, we have to rely on our own knowledge to make a choice. "Preface to Notes on Thirteen Classics" points out: "Since the Tang Dynasty, it has been confined to the Song version and suppressed at the end." It can be seen that Duan Yucai not only despised vulgar books for lack of evidence, but also thought that he was good at the Song version, and he also went to its mistakes and explored its meaning to determine right and wrong, which was probably beyond the reach of ordinary people. He believes that proofreaders must have profound academic knowledge and solid basic skills. Many excellent examples of collating in Duan Yucai have been confirmed by Dunhuang manuscripts and Fuyang Han bamboo slips found in contemporary times, which can't help but make people gasp in admiration. There are a lot of errors in the current edition of Shangshu Guwen. There was no other version to refer to at that time. Just by proofreading, now I write my school's proofreading in Dunhuang, and each book is combined. According to the description of Dunhuang ancient books, there are two examples of the remnant versions of Shangshu, Yiji and Yugong, which are "opposite to Duan's Chuanyi". Among them, Duan's words are "from meat" and "from grass", etc. "Write a book according to this, as Duan Jun said. Another example is Duan Yucai's judgment of "Bad Husband" and the "Message" error in "The Book of Songs". The "tomb door" is a "prophecy", and the bamboo slips of the Book of Songs unearthed from the Han tomb in Fuyang, Anhui Province are "expressing aspirations with songs", which proves that his judgment is completely correct. Well-known scholars and bibliophiles at the same time as Duan Yucai, such as Gu Guangqi, Lu, Zangyong and Gu Zhikui, all have records of collecting books and proofreading books. There are collections such as Late Cuixuan and Jingyunlou, and the books are printed with Yu Zhuo Correction, Late Cuixuan Collection in Pingjiang Section and Jingyunlou. His works are rich, including more than 30 kinds and more than 700 volumes, such as Shangshu Shi Mao Primary School Ancient Poems, Zhou Lihan Reading Test, Ji Gu Ge Shuo Wen Ding, Liu Shuyin Yun Biao and Jingyun Lou Ji.