What is exegetics?

What is exegetics? Studying the meaning of ancient Chinese is a traditional subject in China and a branch of traditional literature in China-elementary school.

The definition of exegetics:

Exegetics is an interpretation of China's ancient books and a comprehensive applied discipline. The interpretation and reading of China's ancient books all begin with words, and the ultimate goal is to understand the will of words. Exegetics, a branch of linguistics and philology in China, is a comprehensive subject, which mainly explains the meaning of words according to their shapes and sounds.

It emphasizes the study of ancient word meaning, especially the study of Chinese phenomena such as word meaning, grammar and rhetoric in ancient books before Han and Wei Dynasties, but it does not mean semantics and semantics. The so-called "exegesis" is also called "exegesis", "old exegesis" and "ancient exegesis", which explains the meaning of words in popular language and is called "exegesis".

Explaining ancient languages in contemporary terms is called "Yi". The combination of "exegetics" was first seen in the Book of Songs annotated by Mao Heng, a native of Lu in the Western Han Dynasty. The book is called Exegetics. Exegetics and Biography are three ways to annotate ancient Chinese prose. The combination of exegetics began with ancient books in Han Dynasty.

Historical development:

Exegetics began in the pre-Qin period. Erya at the end of the Warring States Period is regarded as the earliest exegetical work. The traditional exegetical concept was formed in Confucius in the Tang Dynasty, and Huang Kan, a master of Chinese studies, founded the modern exegetical concept. In 1947, the linguist Wang Li put forward that "the old idea that primary schools are vassals of Confucian classics must be broken."

Then the new exegetics really became a department of language history. Zhou Dapu also said in the Outline of Exegetics that "the research object of Exegetics is word meaning and word meaning system, and his primary task is to study the law of semantic development and evolution." The new exegetics is relative to the old exegetics.

Main categories:

Exegetics can be divided into broad sense and narrow sense. In a broad sense, exegetics includes phonology and philology, while in a narrow sense, exegetics is only a discipline opposite to phonology and writing in primary school.

Some people also divide exegetics into old and new. Wang Li, a linguist, put forward in New Exegetics 1947 that "to truly become a department of linguistic history, the new exegetics must break the old concept that primary schools are vassals of Confucian classics."