The Research On The Inscriptive Writings Of The Song Dynasty

Inscriptions are a very special prose style in the ancient China.As regards of their origin,although there are many different opinions,it has been acknowledged that it is in the Song Dynasty that the inscription are formally stereotyped and generated in a large number.Being numerous in the quantity,wide in the subject matter,rich in the expression,flexible in the style,and full in the fun,inscriptions are the most distinctive part of the prose in the Song Dynasty and play an important role in showing the colorful spiritual world of the scholars in the Song Dynasty.This thesis takes the inscriptions in the Song dynasty as the research object.On the basis of summarizing the research of predecessors and current scholars,this thesis makes a stylistic definition of the inscriptions,and comprehensively sorts out the quantity and type of the inscriptions in the two Song dynasties.And on top of this,the thesis also makes a research on the phenomenon of citing poetry into the inscriptions in order to show a full picture of the inscription style of the Song Dynasty.The thesis is composed of the following chapters.The first chapter is the preface which discusses the basis and significance of the topic selection of the thesis,reviews the basic research on the inscriptions of the Song Dynasty from five aspects,summarizes the research results of the predecessors,and puts forward the author's own research prospects.Also in this chapter,the author clarifies the specific ideas and research methods used in the study of the inscriptions of the Song Dynasty.The second chapter mainly discusses the several problems concerning inscription style which lay the foundation for the study of the inscriptions in the Song Dynasty.At present,the interpretation and understanding of the concept of inscriptions in the academic circles are mostly cut from the perspective of exegesis and textual research.The methods and the materials used for inscription study are almost the same.Each school of scholars only expresses their own opinions and retells them again and again.To be frank,in the absence of new materials,there is almost no need to repeat them.From the perspective of stylistics,the author makes a new interpretation of the concept of inscriptions,and explores the logical relationship and evolution between the occurrence and naming of the style.The author also summarizes several viewpoints that the academic circles hold on the tracing back to the origin of inscriptions,and comments one by one,and then confirms the views that are more agreeable.After that,the author compares and analyzes the selection of the inscriptions in the Selected Works of the past dynasties,and based on this,further compares and analyzes the inscriptions of the Song,Yuan and Ming dynasties from the perspective of the selections,the naming features and the content of inscriptions to verify the development of the connotation and extension of the concept of inscriptions.The last part of this chapter mainly discusses the difference and relationship among the inscriptions,the post-script,the dedication(word)and the autograph all of which are in the similar from one to another in style.The third chapter is about the collection and quantity of the inscriptions of the Song Dynasty.The author makes an accurate calculation and review on the inscriptions collected in the Jin Dai Secrets by Mao Jin in the Ming Dynasty,and those recently collected in the Complete Collections of the Essays of the Song Dynasty,the Classification Index to the Scholars' Essays of the Song Dynasty and the Complete Collection of the Preface of Song Dynasty in order to have a quantitative understanding of the inscriptions in the Song Dynasty.The fourth and fifth chapters,based on the sorting out of the predecessors' inscriptions and the reference to the nine categories of the Classification Index to the Scholars' Essays of the Song Dynasty,the author,by splitting and merging classifies the inscriptions into to seven categories,namely the book inscriptions,article inscriptions,poem and verse inscriptions,handwriting inscriptions,and gold and stone ware inscriptions,painting inscriptions and others.The reason for the reclassification is that in the Classification Index,the number of the inscriptions under “calligraphy” category is too large and the number of the inscriptions under “landscape,” “wares,” “architecture,” and “people” categories is too small.Per the reclassification,separate gold and stone inscriptions from calligraphy and merge with ware inscriptions into gold and stone ware inscriptions and the original category is changed into “handwriting” category.The three categories of “landscape”,“architecture” and “people” are merged into “other categories”.After the reclassification,the number of the inscriptions covered in each new category is close to each other,truly reflecting the meaning of classification.Afterwards,based on the new classification,the author summarizes the contents of each category of inscriptions and the characteristics they bear in order to have a comprehensive understanding of the contents of the inscriptions of the Song Dynasty.The sixth chapter examines the situation in which the inscriptions cite the poetry and verses of the Song Dynasty into them.There are more than one thousand inscriptions that are dedicated to the poems and verses.In these inscriptions,a large number of poems and verses are cited which enable us to find that the phenomenon of the inscriptions quoting poems and verses does not only appear in poem and verse inscriptions,but also in other inscription categories,such as articles,books,paintings and handwriting,etc.The author has compiled all the poems quoted in the inscriptions of the Song Dynasty and listed them in the form of appendix.In the analysis of the quoted poems,the author finds that although there are random components in citing,the basic rules are still traceable.The author summarizes the four rules of citing poetry and uses the poetry and verses cited to make a supplementary to the Completed Collections of the Poetry of the Song Dynasty.Nearly 30 poems with 120 poem sentences are supplemented.On top of this,the author also uses the cited poetry and verses to collate the handed down poems in order to verify the great value of citing the poetry into inscriptions of the Song Dynasty.Appendix: There are three tables in the appendix of the thesis.Table 1 is a list of the poems and verses cited in the inscriptions of the Song Dynasty which is very important for the discussion in the fifth chapter on citing rules,supplementing to the Completed Collections of the Poetry of the Song Dynasty and collating ancient poems.Table 2 is a list of inscriptions selected into the Completed Collection of the Poetry of the Song Dynasty.Table 3 is a list of inscriptions selected into the completed Collection of the Poems of the Song and King Dynasty.These two tables are mainly to verify the importance of the inscriptions of the Song Dynasty.