戴震と皖派の學術

Abstract

The scholars of the Wan school, which represents Qing dynasty classical studies (jingxue 經學) with the Wu 吳 school, can largely be divided into two groups: those who pursued their studies in Huizhou fu 徽州府 of Anhui 安徽 province, and those who were followers of Dai Zhen after he left Anhui and went to the capital. What in fact was the background to Dai Zhen's academic character such that he was able to found the latter group, generally known to be the Wan school? That is the subject of this essay. On this subject, I examined Dai Zhen's personal academic history in which, according to his own testimony, he first encountered classical texts only in the middle of his teens. From this point l broadened the inquiry to include the academic background of other scholars. I found that, in the society of that time, there was a big discrepancy in the conditions of primary education, depending on the background of each scholar, that determined the relation between an individual and the classical texts. Within this general discrepancy, Dai Zhen encountered the classics in a unique way, and from this experience, he entered into classical studies. Because of this, he was able to formulate a new type of scholarship that was different from that of people who had memorized the classics from an early age.