Due to the development of academic thought and scientific progress, scholars in Qing dynasty also had scientific research methods, and they could make a special and comprehensive study of ancient books and annotations in a way of seeking meaning by sound and comprehensive comparison.
Under the guidance of naive historicism, we have noticed the differences between ancient and modern languages in exegetical work, and we can look at the problem from different angles when observing the form, sound and meaning of Chinese characters. Scholars seek truth from facts and do not stick to the old religion. Scholars not only oppose Song Confucianism's "empty talk against the ancient meaning", but also don't "stick to the old religion and seldom understand it" like Han people.
Basic concepts:
Exegetics is an interpretation of China's ancient books and a comprehensive applied discipline. The interpretation and reading of China's ancient books all begin with words, and the ultimate goal is to understand the will of words. Exegetics, a branch of linguistics and philology in China, is a comprehensive subject, which mainly explains the meaning of words according to their shapes and sounds.
The combination of "exegetics" was first seen in the Book of Songs annotated by Mao Heng, a native of Lu in the Spring and Autumn Period. This book is called Biography of Poetry. There are three ways to annotate ancient prose: ancient, exegetical and biographical. The combination of exegetics began with ancient books in Han Dynasty.
Wang Li, a linguist, put forward in New Exegetics 1947 that "to truly become a department of linguistic history, the new exegetics must break the old concept that primary schools are vassals of Confucian classics." Zhou Dapu also said in the Outline of Exegetics that "the research object of Exegetics is word meaning and word meaning system, and his primary task is to study the law of semantic development and evolution."