A Study Of Qian Mu’s New Annotation On The Analects Of Confucius

As one of the most important classical works of Confucianism, the Analects ofConfucius, which recorded the words and deeds of Confucius and his disciples, isknown as the “Oriental Bible”. Under the current background of traditional Sinologyfever, the public are eager to read classics of traditional Sinology, especially for TheAnalects of Confucius. Due to the limits of written language, common folks havesome difficulties in reading ancient annotations on The Analects of Confucius.Therefore, a variety of modern versions (annotation, anthology and modernvernacular Chinese) of The Analects of Confucius flourished driven by the strongmarket demand. However, it’s not easy to find one to help the public fully andcorrectly learn and understand Confucius as well as Confucianism. They are eithereye-catching by distorting and vulgarizing The Analects of Confucius or compliactedby “digging” and “extending” in the academic way. Professor Yang Bojun’sAnnotation on The Analects of Confucius has reached a very high level in theexplaination and translation of The Analects of Confucius. However, there are stillsome errors omissions, particularly the lack of explaination of moral principles makesit impossibile foe people to accurately understand the thinking of Confucius and hisdisciples.New annotation on The Analects of Confucius, written by Qian Mu, thewell-known cultural and historical scholar and great master of Chinese culture, isvalued as the model among the modern annotations of The Analects of Confucius dueto its excellence in the annotation of words and translation of sentences and articles.However, Qian Mu’s works were not allowed to be published because of somepolitical reasons. Not until the late1980s that some works of Qian had the chance tobe published. As a result of this, the spread and study of Qian’s works are relativelybackward. And New annotation on The Analects of Confucius has not gotten as muchattention as it should among the public.The core of Qian Mu’s research spirit is the integration of textual research,argumentation and art of writing. Under the background of new times, Qiandevelopped and turned the three aspects from a kind of writing discipline into aacademic research method, giving a different connotations and meanings from thetheory of Tongcheng in ancient works. In Talking New annotation on The Analects ofConfucius, Qian Mu said,“Though New annotation on The Analects of Confucius iswritten with the consideration of textual research, argumentation and art of writing, it focuses on the textual research.” This article attempts to make a systemic study ofNew annotation on The Analects of Confucius from the three aspects: textual research,argumentation and art of writing. Besides, the articles also invloves some disscussionof Qian’s study of The Analects of Confucius and Confucianism, the annotationcharacteristics and deficiency of New annotation on The Analects of Confucius, aswell as the status of the book in the study field of The Analects of Confucius.