<Articles>The Chief Causes of the Appearance of the Collective Commentaries on the Four Books during the Southern Song : The Transmission of Teachings and Publishing Culture (Special Issue : Networks of Learning)

TANAKA Hideki

doi:10.14989/shirin_101_44

This article discusses factors concerning the question of why the Collective Commentaries on the Four Books 四書疏釈書 appeared during the Southern Song. These commentaries provided further explanations of Zhu Xi's commentaries on the Four Books, the Sishu zhangju jizhu 四書章句集注. Collective Commentaries were published one after another, influencing not only Chinese but all East Asian, Confucian cultures both academically and ideologically. The first section focuses on understanding the characteristics of the Collective Commentaries in the context of annotation history in the Song dynasty. As is widely recognized, commentaries on the Classics during this period put more emphasis on understanding the overall message (yili 義理) rather than providing a word-by-word interpretation (xungu 訓詁), and these were also called yili xue 義理学. As they took the discursive forms such as treatises (lunwen 論文), letters (shuxin 書信), analects (yulu 語録), lectures (jiangyi 講義), they were also called discussion (yilun 議論) studies. These are chiefly records in a colloquial form of dialogues between masters and disciples and the contents of lectures, and many were commentaries intended to refute the arguments of opponents. The contents depended on coincidental factors associated with venue of the dialogue or lecture such as the academic needs of the disciples or the identities of those in the audience. Their contents were often debates regarding the value of the Mengzi or political disputes over the thought of Wang Anshi 王安石. The interpretation of the Classics itself was still secondary as the purpose was to refute political enemies or opponents in debate. A common characteristic of these Song "discussion studies" was the deft utilization of many words to logically persuade readers so they would thoroughly understand the author's arguments. In contrast, what Zhu Xi was particularly concerned in the Sishu zhangju jizhu with emphasis on word-by-word interpretation (xungu) in order that readers would comprehend the meanings of the classics for themselves. Therefore, Zhu Xi reduced the number of the words in his commentaries as much as possible and taught his disciples to peruse the classics carefully because he was afraid that his commentaries would become "annotations for annotations".

<Articles>The Chief Causes of the Appearance of the Collective Commentaries on the Four Books during the Southern Song : The Transmission of Teachings and Publishing Culture (Special Issue : Networks of Learning)

Bibliographic Information

Search this article

Description

Journal

Keywords

Details 詳細情報について

Export

Report a problem