Study on Yi-Xue of Cao Yuan-Bi
Summary
Cao Yuan-Bi (1867-1953)’s style name is ”Gu Sun”, and his pseudonym is “Shu Yan”, another his pseudonym later is “The Resurrectional Manner Elderly”, who is from Wu County, Jiang-Su Province in China. He is an important Chinese classical scholar, who has a lot of works, and is active between the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. He was awarded the title of "Hanlin Academy" by the Qing Dynasty with a book called ＜The Interpretation of Chinese Courtesy Study＞. He was a teacher at the Two Lakes College, Cungu School in Hu-Bei Province, and also the general tutoring teacher at Canggu School in Jiang-Su Province. After the Republic of China existed, he devoted himself to the Chinese classic studies. In the "Yi" study area, he has eight volumes of "Study of Zhou Yi", twenty-eight volumes of “Zhou Yi & Zheng's Notes", and seventeen volumes of "The Interpretation and supplement of Zhou Yi’s Total Study". Also he wrote forty poems entitled "Yi" in the book named "The Narrative Poems from Resurrectional Manner Hall". His major idea is from the famous scholar “Zheng Xuan”, who is the master of the classical study and integrates all of the Chinese classical scriptures.
Cao Yuan-Bi's method of governing the study "Yi" continued the Qing Dynasty's textual research and the style of learning. He summed up the examples of "Yi", and by studying the theory of Hui-Dong, Zhang Hui-Yan and Yao Pei-Zhong to get a glimpse of Zheng Xuan's "Yi" source. In his volumes of "Yi", the book "Study of Zhou Yi" is based on the ideas of Zhang Zhi-Dong's Book "Encouraging Learning". He thinks it is necessary to reserve the book for the classic study, and to use the clear examples, the keynotes, the charts, the communications, the solutions, the unraveling of doubts, and the defining of the streamlines to form the structures of the book, so he can use these items above to be the textbooks of the lectures. The book "Zhou Yi & Zheng's Notes" is the collection of the scholars’ quotes, which are from Han and Song dynasties, and to prove Zheng Xuan’s great work on the "Yi" area. "The Interpretation and Supplement of Zhou Yi’s Total Study" is that Cao Yuan-Bi feels that "Zhou Yi & Zheng's Notes" is too vast and numerous, which is not suitable for the beginners. Therefore, he took Li Ding-Zuo’s book “Zhou Yi’s Total Study” from the Tang Dynasty as the base, and adopted Sun Xing-Yan's theory of collecting the ideas from other scholars, and then added his own thoughts in this new book for the beginners to understand from the simplest to the most complicated.
This doctoral dissertation is based on Cao's "Yi" books and is written by the author from the understanding of Cao’s ideas. In the chapter arrangement, except for the introduction, the author first discusses the evolution of the "Yi" study in the Qing Dynasty, in order to explore the inheritance and the thread of Cao's "Yi" thoughts. Second, the author discusses the life and writings of Cao Yuan-Bi to reach the effect of better realization for people all over the world. The third part of discussion is the origin of Cao Yuan-Bi's "Yi" study to reach better understandings. The fourth part is the analysis of the method of Cao Yuan-Bi's solution to "Yi" and the macroscopic view of Han and Song Dynasty. On the fifth part, the author talks about the correspondence between "Yi" and the other groups of the classic studies, in order to show the core values of the Chinese classical scriptures. At the end of the dissertation, the author shows the characteristics of Cao's "Yi" study to highlight the value of Cao Yuan-Bi’s thoughts.