Study On Li Jiang's Commenting On Issues

Li Jiang, his style name Shenzhi, was a prominent statesman during mid-Tang Dynasty and one of the important figures in prosperous Tang known as "Yuan He Zhong Xing". The collating and annotating of Li Jiang's anthology has a great significance to the research on Chinese literary history and Tang literature."During Li Jiang's lifetime, he composed of more than 400 poems and essays divided into 20 volumes", recorded in the article Foreword to collected works of Duke Li in Tang Dynasty compiled by Liu Yuxi. The collected works of Li Jiang have been recorded in many catalogue books of Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty, but majority of them have been lost in the history and we hardly know the real truth. The scholars began to collect Li Jiang's works until Ming and Qing Dynasties. Today we can see ten handwritten copies of Li Jiang's writings, with one of Ming Dynasty, four of Qing Dynasty and five of General Collection. These handwritten copies mostly have six volumes, carrying 62 articles, while some copies have another separate volume named Supplement.However, many of Li Jiang's collected works have been lost and the article lists are incomplete. Besides, the handwritten copies are different and complicated. Therefore, it is meaningful to collect and collate a more complete and sophisticated version to be used for academic research purpose.The main tasks of this thesis include:collecting ten handwritten copies of Li Jiang's writings; Compiling another eleven lost articles based on Historical Books of Tang Dynasty, Renewed Historical Books of Tang Dynasty, A General Reflection for Political Administration, Poems of Tang and so on to sort out a more complete collected works of Li Jiang; collating and annotating Li Jiang's commenting on issues thoroughly by ascertaining The Si Ku Quan Shu the original manuscript and proofreading other handwritten copies as well as referencing to some historical books and general cyclopedia; studying on different handwritten copies and identifying their source and relations. This thesis is composed of two parts. The first part includes three chapters. Chapter one generally introduces Li Jiang's lifetime and the content of Li Jiang's commenting on issues; chapter two describes the spreading of Li Jiang's commenting on issues, introduces the various handwritten copies in different dynasties and identifies their source and relations; chapter three is about the historical data on Li Jiang's commenting on issues, it presents clearly the sequence of important events recorded in Li Jiang's commenting on issues based on the historical background. The second part is collating and annotating of Li Jiang's commenting on issues.