The Study Of Quotations From The Book Of History In Han,Wei,Jin And Southern And Northern Dynasties' Stone Inscription

As an important Confucian classic,The Book of History recording words and deeds,decrees and regulations,institutions,thoughts and so on,has a tremendous impact on later generations.Being appreciated heavily by numerous literati and scholars of different epochs,it has been cited frequently in literature.Literature handed down and excavated documents also adduce cases from The Book of History.Compared with other literature,inscription literature has its particularities.Most of documents handed down through generations have been rewritten by later generations and corruption occurs in the course of spreading.Being untouched,real and specific,inscriptions are regarded as the direct materials inherited from each era,so inscription citations can be valuable data available for us,from where,we can also investigate the spread and application condition of the contemporary and the classical editions of The Book of History.Scholars have been expressing little concern on citing classics in inscription literature,excepting scholars of Qing Dynasty who only compiled and researched the inscription citations in Han Density.In recent years,scholars have begun to study the citation from The Book of Songs in inscriptions,but research on that of The Book of History is still blank.This paper,taking the inscriptions of Han,Wei,Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties with citations from The Book of History as the object of study,conducted research by contrasting the original version of The Book of History with the aid of the platform,"Stone Inscription Corpus for Wei,Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties",which is developed by the Chinese Characters Research and Application Center of East China Normal University.On the basis of the original corpus,the inscriptions of Eastern Han Dynasty are added to reconcile the corpus and the corresponding research contents.Besides,the function of database retrieval contributes to collecting and sorting inscriptions of this period with citations from this book.Finally,the establishment of "The Corpus for inscriptions of Han,Wei,Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties with citations from The Book of History is taken as the research base.This thesis is divided into four chapters:Chapter One:IntroductionThis part describes the origin and significance of this research,clarifies the source of materials,and indicates research objectives and research methods.It also reviews the research status from four perspectives,namely,the relevant study of The Book of History;research on the citation of The Book of History in handed-down documents;research on the citation of The Book of History in unearthed literature;the study of related inscription writing.Being aware of the research status from the above four parts will contribute to the completion of this thesis.Chapter Two:A general survey of citations from The Book of History inHan,Wei,Jin and Southern and Northern DynastiesThis chapter collects data about citations from each chapter of The Book of Historyand analyzes the citation properties.The statistics and analysis demonstrate that citations from each chapter of The Book of History distribute quite unevenly.For instance,the Chronology of Emperor Yao,The Chronology of Emperor Shun,and Strategies of Gao Yao are heavily cited,which indicates each individual chapter of The Book of History presents different influence and significance.Furthermore,citations show various changes with abundant alternative editions and plenty of variants.For some memorial inscriptions,tombs for male owners are more likely to cite The Book of History and the citations are usually praising language.Chapter Three:Research on inscription citations from the contemporary and the classical editions of The Book of History in Han,Wei,Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties.This chapter investigates 141 items of inscription citations in total with a view to analyzing their diction and definitions.Through comprehensive literature review of previous writings and reference to the diction in Stone Classics of Han Dynasty,Words and Expressions,Stone Classics of Wei Dynasty,which are chapters in The Book of History,the status about the citations from the contemporary and the classical editions can be identified,of which 45 items are from the contemporary edition,accounting for 32%while 34 items are cited from the classical edition,taking up 24%.There are 48 items of identical diction in citations from the two editions,occupying 34%.11 items take the definitions of the contemporary edition and 5 ones use the classical edition.Seen from the overall status of inscription citation,the contemporary edition has been quoted slightly more frequently.Since the appearance of the classical edition,they have been undergoing parallel development in society and even affect each other.Chapter Four:Research on the allusions of The Book of History in inscription literature of Han,Wei,Jin and Southern and Northern DynastiesThis chapter focuses on allusions used in the inscription literature and originating from The Book of History.Those allusions take on three forms,namely,allusive sentences,allusive expressions,and allusive words,which is given priority to.The case analysis of the inscription literature conduces to improving the definitions in Chinese Dictionary of Allusions,as well as adding some allusions which had not been included before and allusion variants.Allusions for inscriptions are mostly familiar ones,presenting a great deal of variants and encomiastic content.