The Academization Of Confucianism And The Compilation Of Erya

Along with the social tranformation from the Spring and Autumn to the Warring States period, the development of Confucianism appeared some new features. Confucius was the founder of Confucianism who has been known as an educational reformer. But if compared with the nobel education in the Spring and Autumn period, Confucian education seemd, on a greater scale, to inherit most of content of noble education called Liu Yi which had a feature of high practicality. Until the Warring States period, the decrees and regulations of aristocratic society had lost its practical use and were spread in the form of text.It's the arise that Confucian schcolars started to research these texts in a mothed of exegetics and hermeneutics.In this thesis, the author try to use the word "academization " to summarize this phenomenon.To proceed the research, the author choosed the book Erya as a point of penetration. Erya,which is known as the Chinese earliest dictionary and encyclopedia, has a important status in the history of Chinses exegetics. Traditionally the researches on Erya is usually in the view of exegetics, but rarely in the view of history of thoughts. The arise of exegetical interpretation to Book of Songs which Erya represents is the turning point of the development of scholarship of Book of Songs,and also reflects the academical transformation of Confucianism. In aristocratic backgroud of Spring and Autumn period, reciting poem was an important diplomatic activity in which the capacity of quoting poems was deemed as factor which decides the destiny of a noble, or even his clan and homeland. The use of Book of Songs was usually out of context at that time, and this style was inherited and introduced into the poetic education by Confucius who hoped his disciples get political and diplomatic abilities from the study of Book of Songs. During the Warring States Period, as Book of Songs lost its political significance, Confusion scholars started to interpret Book of Songs in an exegetical way as was reflected in Erya. This way was inherited by scholars in Han dynasty who elucidated the moral significances in Book of Songs, and formed a sound system.Erya is also a book about naming theory. Xunzi's thought of name rectification is the core theory which conducted the compilating work.The compilation of Erya was a practice of Confucian nameing theory.