史家陳寅恪論學中的歷史地理

Chen Yin-ke’s Scholarship in Historical Geography as Revealed in his Scholarly Works

本文探討史家陳寅恪對歷史地理的運用以及其對歷史地理的基本觀點。陳寅恪的空間和時間觀點，主要是依從笛卡爾的直角坐標，標定時空和人物，從而聚焦論述。然而陳寅恪所以能成為史學大家，在於陳寅恪能夠廣面地駕御史料，就不相干的史料作出有機的結合，而能為曲折委蛇的辨析。因此，從天文分野、天候與植被、風向與水流、里程遠近、譯本異同、詩題、偽史料中有真史實、都城設計與種族文化、移民與文化傳承等，皆可從歷史地理的考索中推求歷史真相，還原歷史現場。堪稱傳統歷史地理學的高度運用。

This study deals with how Chen Yin-ke handled historical geography and his basic ideas about the subject. Chen’s spatial-temporal concepts, mainly based on the Cartesian vertical coordinates, are a means by which he captured space, time and historical characters and keep them in focus in his studies. Chen is distinguished from lesser historians by his distinctive ability to handle a wide range of historical materials, some of them ostensibly unrelated, and arrange them in organic combinations threaded together with clever analytical arguments. Chen was able to glean historical truths and reconstruct historical scenes on the basis of historical-geographical studies that cover such varied subject matters as meteorological variations, climate, natural vegetation, wind directions, water flow, distances, condition of sites of archaeological digs, textual differences between diffferent translated texts, poems, background writings, historical truths embedded in forged materials, city designs, ethnic cultures, immigration, cultural heritages, and so on. His was an ingenious application of historical-geographical scholarship.