A study of Qu Wanli's annotations and translation of the Book of documents = Qu Wanli "Shang shu" zhu yi yan jiu

Abstract

Qu Wanli 屈萬里(1907-1979), a famous scholar in contemporary Taiwan, has remarkable achievements and significant contributions in various fields including Confucian Classics, Chinese Paleography and Chinese Documentology etc., especially the study of the Book of Documents《尚書》. During his entire career, he published 5 books and 11 journal articles related to the Book of Documents. This study focuses on three books by Qu and they are namely An Annotations of the Book of Documents《尚書釋義》published in 1954, A Modern Annotations and Translation of the Book of Documents《尚書今注今譯》published in 1969, and A Collected Annotations of the Book of Documents《尚書集釋》published in 1983.

This study aims at reviewing the significant contributions of Qu and the modifications of the annotations inside the books, as well as discussing some problematic annotations and translation.

This study are divided into six parts. Chapter one briefly introduces the background information of Qu Wanli and this study. Chapter two focuses on the key characteristics of the annotations of the three books mentioned. Chapter three is a comprehensive study of the history of modern translation of the Book of Documents, also the distinguishing features and shortcomings of the modern translation by Qu. Chapter four mainly investigates the modifications made by Qu among three books. Chapter five discusses some problematic annotations inside the books and corrections are attempted to make. Finally chapter six concludes the finding of the research.