英文摘要 |
When Fu Ssu-nien founded a new institute for Chinese studies in Academia Sinica in 1928, he named it “The Institute of History and Philology.” In his inaugural statement, Fu proposed to make China the center of “Dongfang Xue” (a peculiar reading of Oriental Studies). Philology and “Dongfang Xue” obviously were of great significance to Fu and his contemporaries. Philology as a discipline enjoyed great prosperity in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Fu, Chen Yinke, and some of the most-talented Chinese students studied it in Germany, the center of philological research at that time, and endeavored to apply it onto their own teaching and research upon their return to China. Historians who work on the scholarship of Fu and Chen, however, have so far only touched slightly on significance of philology and Dongfang Xue for Fu and Chen. To fill this gap, this article reviews the developments of philology in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that had impact for Chinese scholars, examines the implications and trajectory of Dunhuang Studies and Dongfang Xue, and analyzes Fu’s and Chen’s applications of their philological training and perspective to their work on ancient and medieval Chinese history that is often considered path-breaking. In the conclusion, this article explains why the interest in European philology did not continue in China or at the Institue of History and Philology, and why Fu’s institute has come to be understood as an Institute of History and Linguistics in the second half of the twentieth century. |