A Study On Miao Quansun's Historical Philology

Miao Quansun (1844-1919) is a well-known scholar during the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. He devoted all his life to ancient books and literature collation and traditional Chinese learning, leaving behind him a great deal of academic achievements. In terms of "material" outcomes, his achievements can be divided into three parts: collection of books and rubbings, block-printed books and writings. He had ever collected books up to more than 200 thousand volumes and rubbings up to more than twelve thousand copies. He collected books by buying as well as copying. Many of the rubbings were from real site copy. His block-printed books collection came from the official bookstores, printing or helping print books for private owners and printing completely by himself. The books he wrote or participated in compiling were up to more than two hundred volumes, most of which belonged to the field of historical philology.Among Miao Quansun's academic thoughts in historical philology, books collection, books printing, catalog study and epigraphy are the most outstanding contributions. The overall characteristic of his thoughts in books collection was collection for use. Therefore, he paid attention to the academic value and circulation or privately collected books, actively proposed the public libraries purchase privately collected books and attach importance to the catalogue of collected books. For block-printed books, Miao Quansun's focus was series books. The series books were printed from carefully chosen original copies and had been well collated. From the long-time experiences of block-printing books, he left some study of the printing history and book-printing experiences summary. He suggested the Chinese private catalogue study could be divided into to schools: edition-oriented and origin-oriented. The ideal catalogue study should combine the two. He carefully collected and compiled the catalogues of collected books, which represented these two characteristics. He neatly used appropriate methods to compile the catalogues according to the goals. In the field of epigraphy, he paid attention to copy in real site. What he cared was the literature value of the rubbings, not the value for art-appreciation. He used the rubbings for history study. He followed the methods of scholars in Qing Dynasty for compiling and made some achievements.Miao Quansun's studies and practices in the branches and fields in philology are not separated. There is an internal and spontaneous connection among them. The achievements in these fields distinguish him in the history of philology.