Shi families and learning: Why intellectual culture flourished in Sichuan Song China (960--1279).

摘要

Culture in the Song Dynasty was highly developed while the Song's territory was much smaller and its power was weaker compared with the Han and Tang dynasties. How to explain the phenomenon? Scholars have produced quite a few very broad and general studies on the subject but specific and regional studies of the cultural domain are weak. This writer has chosen to study the reasons for the flourishing of intellectual culture in Sichuan as a case in point for the Song Dynasty.; The dissertation focuses on the immigrants from the North during the period of the middle Tang and the Five Dynasties. In the second chapter, the writer first explores the historical sources pertaining to the immigrants, and then analyzes the pattern of their distribution and their academic status in Sichuan. The relationship between the civil service examinations and the revival of the immigrants and how the examinations stimulated the development of intellectual culture are discussed in the third chapter. The influences upon the Shi (+/-)'s education and learning were various. The three factors, family learning (including education), private teachers (xiang-xian-sheng) and the private collections of books, are discussed in the fourth chapter. In the fifth chapter, the writer discusses how the Shi formed specific academic circles (or networks) and their significance.; The conclusions of the dissertation are as follows: First, the chaos of war caused the northern people to move to the South of China on a large-scale from the middle Tang to the Five Dynasties. Many families of the Shi immigrated into the Sichuan area. Some of them revived in the Song and made a great contribution to the academic development of Sichuan. Second, the civil service examination system in the Song was an important driving force behind the flourishing of intellectual culture. Third, the tradition of family learning still had a great influence upon the Shi's education and learning. The families that had the tradition were the main actors in the process of academic development. Fourth, private education was not provided mainly by private academies (schools) but by private teachers in Sichuan. The effects of private academies in the Song were exaggerated by scholars while the importance of private teachers was ignored. Fifth, the great increase of private collections of books is one of the reasons for the flourishing of intellectual culture in the Song and private collections of books are one of the important criteria to judge the level of academic development in an area. Sixth, there were various academic circles of the Shi in the developed areas that had a great influence on the intellectual atmosphere, academic development and the formation of schools. We can not ignore the academic circles when we try to grasp the academic condition of either a region or the entirety of the Song.