-Excerpted from Hanshan Academy.
To be honest, if you talk about this topic on the forum, it will only be ugly, but it is also your own superficial experience. Let's throw a brick to attract jade. I hope it will inspire beginners.
Learning ancient literature, in a sense, is to choose a lonely and difficult road. I don't need to say much about it. Therefore, if you really have a strong interest, you must endure loneliness and work hard. If you don't have much interest, give up as soon as possible.
Let me talk about what I think is the basis of studying ancient literature.
First of all, we should have the ability to read some ancient books and exegesis through the phonology of words. No one can say how well he has mastered it, but he still needs to know the basics, otherwise he can't go on. The way to learn is to read more books and watch more.
Specifically: 1, know some seal scripts. Oracle Bone Inscriptions or something. It's too professional. Forget it. But you have to know some seal scripts, because there are many seal scripts, such as book collection and printing. Methods: Read Shuo Wen Jie Zi. If you can't finish reading, you can read 540 radicals.
2. Know some cursive scripts. Many materials, such as manuscripts and bank notes, are written in cursive and cursive, and some of them are engraved, prefaces and postscripts, which are also running scripts. You can't read it without knowing some cursive scripts. Learning method: find a cursive script with thousands of words, or Sun's book score. Look more.
3. Know some common words. Dunhuang paper certainly has a lot of vulgar characters, and many secular materials also have vulgar characters. Banknotes and manuscripts also have vulgar characters, and many engraved books also have vulgar characters. Some books can't be read. Methods: Ganlu Zi Shu, Longkeng Hand Mirror, the new edition of tablet characters or Huang Zheng Dunhuang Folk Dictionary, etc.
Secondly, you should be able to look up reference books. You can look at the Literature and History Reference Book and introduce how to use it. You can not only learn, but also use it from time to time. It is necessary to know what reference books are available, what reference books can be checked under what circumstances and how to check them. Specifically, I don't need to say more. I often see some friends, ask people everywhere if they have any questions, and I can't understand them. In fact, as long as you know what reference books to look up, you can get them at once.
Third, we should know how to find materials. I need to know what problems I want to study and what information I need to look up, which requires some knowledge of bibliography. Then how to check, for example, the collection of the Qing dynasty, you can see the "general catalogue of other collections of the Qing dynasty", which lists the collections and can run around. Materials are divided into paper materials and electronic materials. Some materials, such as numbers, love is like life, including our Hanshan Academy, can be downloaded, thus avoiding running around.
There are many directions and differences in the specific study of ancient documents, but I think there are some foundations that should be mastered.
I suggest you spend six months to a year doing a case study, that is, studying a writer or scholar. Should not be too famous, second-rate and third-rate, mainly to exercise themselves, not to achieve much. We can do a lot of work: life test, family test, friendship test, writing test, version test of a certain work … and then try to sort out his works, involving version check, collation, punctuation and so on. Then you can make a chronicle of this person, including his lost articles, biographical materials, critical materials, exchange poems, etc ... After this round of attempts, you should have a general understanding of the collation of ancient books. After reading an article by others, I also know from which angles to evaluate it.
The specific research methods vary from person to person and from direction to direction.
I'm ashamed that I didn't learn a good way to be a teacher after studying in Nanjing Normal University for six years. I just hung around, but as far as I know, I'll give you three examples:
My tutor, Professor Zhao, studies Historical Records, Spring and Autumn Annals and Historical Records in volume 130. Add three notes, and you get about 2 million words. According to Teacher Zhao, he read it through dozens of times before and after, but it doesn't count as a sporadic search, so he can basically recite the original text when we ask questions in class, and the context is very clear. This requires a lot of work. But if we can do this, we will be good at it and many problems will be solved. Every time I read it again, I will find some new problems. Of course, you should not only read Historical Records, but also be familiar with related books such as Shangshu, Chunqiu, Mandarin, Warring States Policy and Hanshu. This is a road.
Professor Huang Zheng, studying Dunhuang language and writing is simply literacy, but please don't underestimate this skill. Many Dunhuang researchers, some of whom are famous Dunhuang documents and Dunhuang manuscripts, just lack this basic ability, so it is even more bizarre to misread the original work and study it on the wrong basis. This kind of situation was common in the past, and it is not uncommon now. Therefore, it seems simple to identify Dunhuang folk characters, but it is actually a university question. Teacher Huang Zheng raised this to theory and wrote a lot. I haven't tried the specific method. All I know is that I should read more original works (instead of going to France and Britain to read Dunhuang papers, I should refer to several sets published in ancient times, or Dunhuang treasures can make do) and record articles in comparison with others. It's best to collate Dunhuang Bianwen, check the original volume while reading, read one by one, and pay attention to collating, so that most of the books will be read and the common folk words will be known. If you can't find the original volume, you can read Mr. Huang's Dunhuang folk dictionary, but the effect is not as good as the original volume, and there is no intuitive impression. After a year of persistence, there will be a general idea. If we look at some scholars' research on Dunhuang studies, we will find that it is really "full of mistakes".
Professor Jiang and the Study of Literature and Four Studies in Qing Dynasty. Teacher Jiang can be said to be the most diligent teacher I have ever met. In recent years, "Chronicle of Life and Death of Figures in Qing Dynasty" and "Directory of Scholars in Qing Dynasty" have been unanimously affirmed by academic circles, which shows that Mr. Jiang has a solid style of study and superb skills. For example, the Chronicle of the Birth and Death of Figures in Qing Dynasty collected tens of thousands of people, who went to the library to find the original materials one by one and made detailed textual research. I read tens of thousands of documents back and forth. This attitude and method of learning is admirable and worth learning from all ancient documents.
It's a little confusing. I'll sort it out later. I hope everyone can talk more about their own experiences or the methods of familiar scholars.