In 1911, Ji Xianlin was born in the poorest village in Linqing County, the poorest county in western Shandong, and his family was the poorest in the village. When he was six years old, Ji Xianlin left his mother and went to Jinan to study with his uncle. His destiny began to change from then on. In 1930, Ji Xianlin was admitted to Peking University and Tsinghua University at the same time. He chose the Department of Western Literature at Tsinghua University, majoring in German. In Tsinghua, Ji Xianlin attended many masters' classes.
Mr. Zhu Guangqian’s “Literary Psychology” elective course and Mr. Chen Yinke’s “Buddhist Translation Literature” auditing course had a profound impact on his future development. He was most impressed by Mr. Wu Mi’s “Comparison of Chinese and Western Poetry” class and “British Romantic Poets” class. He also audited or eavesdropped on many classes of foreign departments, such as those of Zhu Ziqing, Yu Pingbo, Bing Xin, Zheng Zhenduo, etc. The most successful one was to attend the classes of Mr. Xidi, with whom he eventually became a lifelong friend.
A few years later, Ji Xianlin graduated from college with excellent grades in all four years. In 1935, he went to Germany to study as an exchange graduate student and began to study his passion for Sanskrit, Buddhism, and Indology.
“The path I want to take has finally been found,” he wrote in his diary at the time. “Chinese culture is greatly influenced by Indian culture. I want to conduct a thorough study on Sino-Indian cultural relations. Maybe he can invent something." Ji Xianlin studied under the famous Sanskrit scholar Professor Waldschmidt and became his only lecturer. After Professor Waldschmidt was drafted into the army, Professor Sick, who was already retired at the age of eighty, came to the podium again, and he was still teaching a Chinese student. Professor Sike soon told Ji Xianlin that he would teach him all the secret knowledge in his life, including "Rig Veda", "Dashu", "Ten Princes", and Tochara, which took 20 years to decipher. arts. Tocharian is an ancient Central Asian language that has disappeared. There are no more than thirty people in the world who understand this language.
In 1937, Japan's war of aggression against China broke out, and soon the Second World War broke out. Ji Xianlin, who had completed his studies and was about to return to China, was isolated in Germany. Studying and living conditions are getting worse and worse. "The plane was flying above his head, and the sound of the plane was rumbling. His stomach was thundering with hunger. He was never tired of it." Under such circumstances, Ji Xianlin stayed in Germany for ten years, and these ten years also became the spring of his academic career.
In October 1945, not long after the end of World War II, Ji Xianlin returned eastward via Switzerland. "It was like a spring dream that flew by in ten years."
After returning to China in 1946, Ji Xianlin was immediately hired as a professor at Peking University. He founded the Department of Oriental Languages ??and Literature in the School of Liberal Arts of Peking University and served as its director. At that time, he was only 35 years old. From then on, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to research. At around four o'clock in the morning, Ji Xianlin got up to write. The light in his home was the earliest light on at Peking University. The ancients once used the phrase "dance upon hearing a chicken" to describe a diligent and hard-working person, and Ji Xianlin fits it perfectly.
After ten years of catastrophe, Ji Xianlin was sent to the student dormitory to guard the door and keep the phone, becoming an "untouchable person." He pondered finding a "long-drawn-out but absolutely fruitless job to kill time." He thought of Ramayana, one of India's two great epics written in Sanskrit. He translated Sanskrit into Chinese prose at night, wrote it into a small note and put it in his pocket. During the day when he was guarding the building, he kept thinking and changed the prose into rhymed poetry.
After ten years of translation work, in 1983, the one-million-word "Ramayana" was finally published. China had its first Chinese version of "Ramayana". Ji Xianlin translated it in China It has written a strong mark in history and set up a monument in the history of cultural exchanges between China and India. Ji Xianlin later joked that without the "Cultural Revolution", the "Ramayana" with more than 20,000 verses and 8 volumes would never have been translated.
In 1983, Ji Xianlin obtained a fragment of an ancient manuscript unearthed in Xinjiang. Previously, people who had seen the codex could not read a single letter in the book. It was "The Meeting with Maitreya" written in Tocharian script. It is the most Tocharian document found in the world. Ji Xianlin, who is in his seventies, spent more than ten years by himself to complete the world's largest Tocharian research, wrote a monograph in Chinese and English, and raised the world's Tocharian research to a higher level.
In the 1990s, Mr. Ji Xianlin, who was in his eighties, was already suffering from illness. At that stage, his aunt, daughter, wife, and son-in-law left him one after another. He became more silent, and he devoted more time to the research and writing of "The History of Sugar."
Finally, Ji Xianlin completed the 800,000-word "History of Sugar". "Sugar History" makes full use of historical materials to clearly sort out the history of sugar cultural and technological exchanges between China and India; it also involves the exchange of sugar production technology and culture in six regions of forty countries around the world. "The History of Sugar" is a masterpiece in this research field. Ji Xianlin used this painstaking work to elaborate on the view that "cultural exchange is one of the driving forces for the progress of human society."
In the past few decades, Ji Xianlin has written more than 11 million words of academic monographs and more than 1 million words of literary prose. He has made outstanding achievements in the fields of Dunhuang studies, Indology, Buddhism, and cultural exchange research between China and India, and has made outstanding contributions in the fields of traditional Chinese culture, literary theory, linguistics, cultural studies, history, Chinese translation history, and comparative literature.
Sixty years ago, the Eastern world, especially China, was still a bullied place. Oriental studies was a field that no one even cared about in China. Under the leadership of Ji Lao, and with the long-term efforts of Oriental scholars for 60 years, Oriental studies have grown from scratch and have become a prominent school today, attracting attention not only in China, but also in the world. As the Institute of Oriental Studies said, Ji Lao's "major works have been spread all over the world; his moral articles are famous in China." It was Ji Lao who pioneered the subject of Orientalism in China, and Chinese Orientalism is linked to Ji Lao's name.
Mr. Ji is 96 years old today. “Although his ears are not very clear and his eyes are not very clear”, and he laughs at himself as a “four-and-a-half old man”, he still reads and writes, burns ointment and follows the sundial. In his poor years, Wu Wu seemed to have some force behind him that spurred him on, and he couldn't stop. It is precisely in order to pass on the fire of Chinese culture that he shoulders the important task of continuing the national culture.
Ji Lao worked diligently throughout his life and contributed to the prosperity of humanities and social sciences. He insisted that he would never write an article without new ideas. For us post-academics, he set an example. Mr. Zhang Zhongxing said during his lifetime that Mr. Ji "knows so many things, and they are both sophisticated and profound. It's like standing outside the wall. Naturally, I can't catch a glimpse of the gates of the ancestral temple and the wealth of hundreds of officials." Ji Lao advocated that the pursuit of truth is the most important thing in historical research, and distortion of facts and cutting off one's feet to fit the shoes are absolutely not allowed in order to obtain a "theory" suitable for some kind of dogmatism. Because of this view, some scholars have initially divided the contemporary Chinese philosophy research group into the "inheritance theory school", the "resource theory school" and the "interpretation theory school". Ji Lao has always opposed the ideological research method of "replacing history with theory" , and are classified as "cultural foundation theory" scholars who hold a relatively traditional and basic stance - the "inheritance theory school". Ji Lao noticed that in the past Chinese history, he only focused on writing about the Yellow River culture, believing that the Yellow River culture was the mainstream of Chinese culture and ignored other regional cultures. He believes that the Yellow River Basin is indeed the birthplace of Chinese culture, but by the Zhou Dynasty at the latest, Chu culture and southern culture had reached a very high level, at least on par with northern culture, and there were some exchanges with outside the region. Mr. Ji Xianlin noticed that recent archaeological excavations have discovered many new things in various parts of the south, which proves that the southern culture and the Yangtze River culture were quite high at that time. Chu culture and Yangtze River culture have a long history of development, so they can produce great writers like Qu Yuan. If northern culture, Yellow River culture and Yangtze River culture can be studied together, the history of ancient Chinese culture will be comprehensive.
The teacher believes that textual research is the only way to learn. For research, we need to use what Mr. Hu Shi said: make bold assumptions and verify carefully. "Bold" means not being bound by the old, daring to break through, daring to be unconventional, daring to use one's imagination, and daring to put forward hypotheses that no one has put forward before or dared to put forward. However, after hypotheses are put forward, they must be tested. Some hypotheses must be gradually revised to make them more perfect, and some hypotheses must be completely abandoned, reestablished, and tested by objective data again. This is called careful verification. The academic articles written by Mr. must put forward new opinions. In order to be rigorous, Mr. Wang was often forced to revise his assumptions, and sometimes he was even forced to give up completely. Sir, I solemnly declare: It is beyond my ability to imitate parrots, and it is beyond my wishes to follow the example of others. The purpose of research is nothing more than to seek the truth.
Mr. Ji was originally a scholar who liked textual research but disliked theory. After he was over 80 years old, he suddenly became crazy about theory in old age. In recent years, he has published many articles on ethics, and his views have caused great repercussions and debates in the academic community.
Specifically speaking about Eastern and Western cultures, he advocated "thirty years in Hedong and thirty years in Hexi". He believed that Western culture, which had been glorious for two to three hundred years, was at the end of its power, and the shortcomings it had produced would harm the world and affect human survival. Looking forward, the end of the 20th century may be a turning point from west to east. Mr. Li has published a number of articles on ethics and principles involving Chinese culture and Eastern culture. The main purpose of these articles is to put forward the idea that "it is not inferior to the West" under the background of "five thousand years up and down, one hundred thousand miles across". "Love the East", "Thirty years of Hedong, thirty years of Hexi", Eastern culture will reappear the glorious "Hedong and Hexi Theory".
He believed that religion would adapt to the development of society and productivity and transform and change itself at any time. Religion, no matter what form it exists in, can satisfy people's needs for religion on the one hand and does not hinder the development of productive forces on the other. Therefore, it can remain vital in society. Religion is a need of life. Religious needs have many meanings: real needs, illusory needs, and even narcotic needs all fall under the category of needs. The elimination of religion is a very long process. It can even be said that countries and classes are eliminated first, followed by religion. Even after mankind enters communism, within a certain period of time, religion or religious-like ideas will still be eliminated in a certain way. forms exist. For any religion, on the one hand, it cannot be promoted, and on the other hand, there is no need to deliberately eliminate it. If religious forces rear their head somewhere, don't panic or worry.
He advocated that the origins of civilization are diverse and not unidimensional. We cannot say that the world’s culture was created by one nation, and we cannot say that culture originated in one place. Denying cultural monism does not mean denying the existence of cultural systems. A cultural system is a culture that has the three basic conditions of “distinctiveness, independence, and great influence.” He believes that world culture can be divided into four major cultural systems: Chinese culture, Indian culture, Islamic Arab culture, and Greek and Roman European and American culture. It is difficult for Hebrew culture to form a system. It is either a precursor of Islamic culture and is included in Islamic culture, or it is combined with Greek culture, so it is not an independent cultural system. Each of these four cultural circles has a dominant and influential culture. At the same time, the countries and nationalities in each cultural circle learn from each other, and there is also a mutual learning relationship between the major cultural circles. There is no contradiction between acknowledging that culture is diverse and acknowledging that there is a cultural system. Ji Laofa made a profound point before his predecessors: Cultural exchange is one of the important driving forces for the advancement of human society. Without cultural exchange, it is impossible to imagine what today's society would be like. The scope of cultural exchanges is vast, including both material and spiritual exchanges. Since the pre-Qin era, China has been constantly communicating with its surroundings, both internally and externally. Internally, the exchanges are between various ethnic groups, and externally, they are exchanges with neighboring countries. The cultural systems in the world include Eastern culture, which consists of Chinese culture, Indian culture, and Islamic Arab culture, and Western culture, which consists of Greek, Roman, and even European and American cultures. Continuous cultural exchanges have formed the splendid world today, with various styles and specialties. And interconnected cultures have brought great happiness and prosperity to all mankind. Cultural exchanges are two-way. Chinese culture was at its peak during the Han and Tang dynasties. It not only absorbed foreign culture, but also gave its own excellent culture to other countries in the East and West without reservation. The compass, gunpowder, papermaking, and printing spread throughout the world. The Chinese and foreign "History of Sugar" with more than 800,000 words is his masterpiece of cultural exchanges.
These new views have been widely recognized by academic circles at home and abroad, and their influence is growing. As for Ji Lao's professional field of Indology, almost every paper he published contained new ideas and was constantly cited. In the field of Buddhist history, Mr. Wang is one of the few Buddhist scholars and linguists at home and abroad who can truly make use of original Buddhist scriptures for research. In the field of Tocharian language research, his contributions have filled the gaps at home and abroad. In terms of the history of Sino-Indian cultural exchanges, as a representative work of this research, he presided over the completion of "Records of the Western Regions in the Tang Dynasty" and "Modern Translation of the Records of the Western Regions in the Tang Dynasty", which received high honors. His contribution to translation work in various foreign languages ??is equally outstanding. Mr. Ramayana, one of India's two major epics, was translated by him. After its publication, it aroused great repercussions in the academic world and won the first prize in my country's first-ever National Excellent Book Award.
He has made many contributions to comparative literature and is unique. He believes that in the field of comparative literature research, the French school focuses on direct influence, and the American school focuses on parallel development, and they are the two schools with the greatest influence.
However, both schools have shortcomings. They only study those who directly influenced the study, and the study is too narrow. They specialize in the study of parallel developments, and the study is too broad. Moreover, both schools despise Eastern literature, and their comparisons are limited to the same cultural system. To carry out, this is a close comparison, comparing back and forth, there is no difference in comparison, so both groups are at a loss. The teacher advocates that we should correct the shortcomings of the two schools, integrate the strengths of the two, get rid of their biases, and find a new path for us. The teacher emphasized that we must first do some solid work, starting from studying the direct impact, and trying to carefully search for materials. Between Western countries, between Eastern countries, especially between the East and the West, from the private Literature has been searching for evidence of direct influence in the personal works of literati. It must be well-founded and well-founded, and it must not be based on rumors, and then on this basis, laws can be drawn. These things can be used to understand the past and learn from the present, and we hope that they can contribute to our own literary and artistic creation. In this way, it will be possible to establish a Chinese school of comparative literature. It should be realized that without the participation of Eastern literature, comparative literature is incomplete comparative literature.
Mr. is not only an academic leader, but also a litterateur and a writer. His prose creations are among the best in the contemporary literary world. He has absorbed and absorbed different writing styles in the history of Chinese literature, such as the vigorousness of "Historical Records", the richness of the Six Dynasties, the simplicity of Tao Yuanming and Wang Wei, the gorgeousness of Xu (摛) and Yu (Xin), and the melancholy and frustrated of Du Fu. , Li Bai's fluency and agility, the delicacy of "A Dream of Red Mansions", and the conciseness of "The Scholars", Mr. Li noticed that they were all good at winning, but he did not imitate these excellent literary styles. Rather, it forms its own unique style based on inheriting the style of its ancestors. "Spring Blooms in the Swallow Garden", "Famen Temple", "Lotus Rhyme in Qingtang", etc. are all famous works that are widely read and read hundreds of times.
In addition, Ji Xianlin as an intellectual and Ji Xianlin as a writer are already well known to people, but Ji Xianlin as a scholar and calligrapher is rarely known. Mr. Ji devoted his life to academics, and calligraphy did not seem to play a very important role in his academic career. However, this does not mean that Mr. Ji does not have his own unique aesthetic feelings and academic standards for calligraphy. Mr. Ji has a rather novel understanding of scholar's calligraphy: "Scholar's calligraphy has its own history, at least there was Liang Qichao in Tsinghua University, Shen Yinmo in Peking University, etc. Scholar's calligraphy not only emphasizes the elegance and purity of calligraphy, but also requires calligraphy to have profound cultural meaning. Scholar calligraphy is not only art, but also culture. It is also the beautification and culturalization of Chinese culture by scholars. From the works of scholar calligraphy, we can see that good calligraphy brings both spiritual and physical benefits to people. The benefits make scholars physically and mentally healthy. Watching Huai Su's wild calligraphy makes people's hearts full of joy. Watching Deng Shiru's calligraphy is thrilling. Watching Wu Changshuo's ink makes both the mind and body vibrate!" The standard for a calligrapher is not whether he has joined the Calligraphers Association. , but lies in the depth of his thinking and promotion of Chinese calligraphy, as well as the intensity of innovation and inheritance. In the running script "Extremely Gao Ming and the Doctrine of the Mean" given to me by Ji Laoti, I feel the balance between "gao Ming" and "keeping the middle" - the writing is tepid, lawless and legal. Similarly, in the Forest of Steles in Lanzhou, he wrote a long and exquisite inscription explaining the historical significance of the Silk Road and the value of exchanges between the East and the West: "The Silk Road has a long history and is the basis for the exchange of Eastern and Western cultures..." The historical depth and His academic vision is completely different from that of ordinary literati. The "Huanxisha" written by Renwu when he was ill is smooth and vivid, with exquisite lines and natural structure. It has become a popular style and does not look like it was written by a 91-year-old man. It can be said that beside the big ideological and academic tree, willows are planted unintentionally!
Ji Xianlin has been studying for more than half a century and has learned both Chinese and Western knowledge. He is such a world-renowned scholar, but he never considers himself a famous scholar. He always wears an old Chinese tunic suit and a pair of cloth shoes, which he has done for decades. Because of his attire, he is often mistaken for a school janitor. Once, a freshman student asked him to look after his luggage as a school janitor, and he readily agreed. When Ji Xianlin took the stage to speak at the opening ceremony, the college student woke up from a dream.
Ji Xianlin once said that the person he likes is like this: simple, honest, sincere, and approachable; hard-boned, soft-hearted; sincere and truthful; not flattering, not talking behind his back; not in front of others. One side, another side behind others; no intention of sensationalism, but a pragmatic heart; it is not that you do not consider personal interests at all, but you think more about others; the key is to be a "true" Yu, a person with a good temperament.
“True feelings, truthfulness, authenticity” are Ji Xianlin’s principles of life. In his lifelong exploration of Chinese studies, Mr. Ji adheres to the following: Only by treating each other with true feelings can we be honest with each other; only by being truthful can we be honest. Only then can one be successful in the world; only by truly dealing with the world can one be broad-minded and magnanimous. What comes out of the "Three Truths" is Ji Xianlin's broad mind and deep patriotism.
Mr. Feng Youlan has a poem: "The mountains of wisdom and the sea of ??wisdom are real fires, and I am willing to follow the fire of the past." Human civilization is a real fire, and those who have contributed to human civilization throughout the ages are all vomit. It took all my heart and brains to pass on this true fire from generation to generation. We must pass on the business started by Mr. Ji from generation to generation