The disciplinary origin of China's classical philology.

The word "Wen" was first seen in The Analects of Confucius: "Confucius said:' Li Xia, what I can say is not enough to prove it; Li Yin, what I can say is not enough in the Song Dynasty. Lack of literature. That's enough, then we can collect it. Zheng Xuan and Zhu interpreted "Wen" as "articles (classics)" and "dedication" as "sages" or "talents". Ma Duanlin, a historian in the early Yuan Dynasty, wrote a general examination of documents, with the word "document" as the title. In the preface of this book, he said: "All narratives are based only on history, referring to books of past dynasties and hundreds of biographies. Those who believe and have traces will follow, and those who are good and strange will not remember them. The so-called literature also; When talking about things, first take the notes of officials at that time, then take the comments of modern Confucianism, and even talk about celebrities' faces and official records. Say a word, you can set the gains and losses of allusions. If you prove the truth of history, you will take it away and record it. The so-called support is also. "Later, Yang Weihui, a great poet in Yuan Dynasty, wrote Japanese Poems to Send Monks:" If you want to visit East China literature, return to China ",and the" literature "referred to seems to refer to books and materials in particular.

This understanding was initiated by Liu Xiang and Liu Xin at the end of the Western Han Dynasty. Liu and his son sorted out the group of books, collected books extensively, collated different books of the same book, wrote relatively complete books, wrote narratives at the same time, that is, wrote abstracts, and then catalogued all the books to reveal their academic origins and provide reference for research. The work done by Liu and his son is the most basic research work of classical philology. Later generations explain the learning created by Liu and his son in a broad sense, that is, all the contents, versions and proofreading are stuffed into the big pocket of "proofreading", which has almost become another name for classical philology.

China's classical philology can be divided into broad sense and narrow sense, while the narrow sense of ancient philology is catalogue, edition and collation. Philology in a broad sense includes discrimination, compilation, textual research, primary school and so on. The teaching of classical philology in China began in the late 1950s and was initiated by Wei, Zhang Shunhui and other old philologists from Peking University. China's classical philology, as the foundation of Chinese studies, even has a direct family relationship with Chinese studies. With the rise of Chinese studies, classical philology has also received people's attention.