Doubting Antiquity School

The Yigupai (Chinese: 疑古派; pinyin: Yígǔpài; Wade–Giles: Ikup'ai; literally "Doubting Antiquity School"[1][2]) refers to a group of scholars and writers who show doubts and uncertainty of antiquity in the Chinese academia starting during the New Culture Movement, (mid 1910s and 1920s). Most of their criticism concerns the authenticity of pre-Qin texts and deals with questions put forward by the past dynastic writers, as well as other subjects. Hu Shi (1891–1962) initiated the critical movement,[1] with his pupil Gu Jiegang and his friend Qian Xuantong continuing this school of thought.[3] Their writings also had influence on many western sinologists including Bernhard Karlgren and Samuel Griffith.

In a more specific way, DA School was represented by Gushibian 古史辨 (Discriminations on Ancient History) - the scholary movement led by Gu Jiegang, centered around the magazine of the same name. Seven issues of the magazine, 1926-1941, contain about 350 essays.

Contents

More Recent Evidence

Reliability of the Old Texts

Joseph Needham wrote in 1954 that many scholars doubted that Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian had contained accurate information about such distant history, including the thirty kings of the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600–c. 1050 BC). Many scholars argued that Sima couldn't possibly have had access to written materials which detailed history a millennium before his age. However, the discovery of oracle bones at an excavation of the Shang Dynasty capital at Anyang (Yinxu) matched twenty-three of the thirty Shang kings that Sima listed. Needham writes that this remarkable archaeological find proves that Sima Qian "did have fairly reliable materials at his disposal—a fact which underlines once more the deep historical-mindedness of the Chinese."[4]

List of early modern scholars

Prominent figures

Others

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Wilkinson, Endymion Porter (2000). Chinese History: A Manual. Harvard Univ Asia Center. ISBN 0674002490. Page 345, see: [1]
  2. ^ Loewe, Michael and Edward L. Shaughnessy (1999). The Cambridge History of Ancient China Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521470307. Page 72, see: [2]
  3. ^ De Bary, William Theodore (2001). Sources of Chinese Tradition: From 1600 Through the Twentieth Century. Published by Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231112718. Page 364, see: [3]
  4. ^ Needham, Joseph. (1972). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 1, Introductory Orientations. Richmond: Kingprint Ltd., reprinted by permission of the Cambridge University Press with first publication in 1954. ISBN 052105799X. Page 88, see: here.

Further reading