The origin of the word "history"

The word "history" in Chinese is considered by academic circles to be imported from Japanese in the late Qing Dynasty, but it can't be found in China ancient books. The reason is that the words of the ancients should be as concise and clear as possible, and those who can use single words should try not to use double words. Therefore, nouns in China ancient books are mostly single words, and the word "history" is rarely seen in ancient Chinese. There is no word "history" in the large authoritative reference book "Ci Yuan", and its status as "imported" seems to have been concluded. Actually, it is not. As far as I know, the word "history" appears in more than one place in China ancient books, and its meaning is very close to or even equivalent to today's vocabulary. There are countless ancient books in China, with various kinds and names. Especially in the pre-Qin period, the names of historical books were not preceded by the word "history". It is said that there were four very famous historical books in China in early summer, named Three Graves, Five Classics, Eight Categories and Nine Hills. In the twelfth year of Zuo Zhao Zhuan Gong, King Chu Ling praised Zuo Shi Yi Xiang: "It is a good history, and you can read three graves, five classics, eight articles and nine hills." It can be seen that as early as 2,500 years ago, Zuo's family in Chu was famous for its ability to learn ancient masterpieces, but unfortunately, Zuo Zhuan did not explain the contents and forms of the above four ancient masterpieces. It is said that there is a cloud in the Preface to Shangshu written by Confucius: "The books of Fuxi (xi), Shennong and Huangdi are called' Three Graves', which is also the Tao; The books of Zhuan Xu, (Qi), Tang (Yao) and Yu (Shun) are collectively called the Five Classics. As for the books of Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, although neither fish nor fowl, elegant and noble, they are palm-sized, are treasures of past dynasties, and are regarded as great teachings. Gossip is called "eight categories", seeking its meaning; The ambition of Kyushu is called Jiuqiu. Autumn, gathering together, means that all Kyushu, land and gas are suitable, all of which are gathered in this book. " Considering that "history" in a broad sense is a record of all human activities, from this perspective, "grave", "canon", "suo" and "Qiu" can be regarded as the earliest names of historical books in China. Since then, chronicles are generally called "chronicles", such as Xia Zhi, Shang Zhi, Zhou Zhi, etc., that is, the history of three generations in ancient China; During the Spring and Autumn Period, Confucius wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals, which was the first chronological history book in ancient times and had far-reaching influence. Later, Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals, New Spring and Autumn Annals, New Spring and Autumn Annals and other fruitful works appeared, and Spring and Autumn Annals became the name of history books. In the Han Dynasty, Sima Qian wrote Historical Records and Ban Gu wrote Hanshu, so both Historical Records and Shu can be called historical books. Later, some people called history books calendars, such as Wu Li and Li Jing. For a period of time, several names, such as Ji and Shu, were used together. For example, the first four histories include Historical Records, History of Han, History of Later Han and History of the Three Kingdoms. In the official history, in addition to historical records, those who take "history" as their name began with "History of the South" and "History of the North" and were written in the early years of the Tang Dynasty. Combining calendar and history into one, saying "history" began with the book Wu Shu, in which there is a sentence: "(Zhao) said: Floating on the river, there are millions of ships, and its wisdom can also be achieved. Although he has spare time, he reads widely, spreads history and adopts defamiliarization, which is not effective for all students to find chapters and sentences. There is also a saying in Biography of the Seventeenth King of Wu and Biography of Xiangzi in the Southern Qi Dynasty that "the main idea is to add prosperity, and the substitute is beautiful, and history is not dependent on clouds". However, compared with the frequent appearance of the word "history", the word "history" is rare and it is difficult to find its trace in ancient books. In the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, Yuan Lefan wrote an Outline of History, with the word "history" as the title, which had a great influence. Around the end of the Ming Dynasty, if the Japanese got the treasure, they would take it to Japan. After the Japanese academic community reprinted the book, it spread widely. When Japan updated its academic system, educational institutions chose the word "history" as the subject name, and its name began to flourish. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, China's academic pioneers were mostly influenced by the Japanese, such as Pi, Zhang and Xia Cengyou, who wrote books and debated and spread new knowledge. When it comes to historiography, they like to use the word "history". Influenced by China people, the word "history" is familiar. In fact, "history", that is, "history of past dynasties", can be used equally with the general meaning of the word "history"; Compared with "historiography", "historiography" is really difficult to distinguish its reference except that it consumes one more word of pen and ink and looks bloated and lengthy. It can be seen that the word history is by no means imported, but also "exported to the domestic market".