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Qian Daxin
Qing scholar from Jiading whose Examination of Discrepancies in the Twenty-Two Histories and phonological studies set the standard for evidential research
In an archive hall, tall wooden shelves hold scrolls and bound books with small tags, and one person climbs a ladder with their back turned; a long table in front holds an unrolled river map, a bronze lamp and a copper jug, with a city wall seen through the window.
Also known as Xiao Zheng · Xin Mei
- Roles
- Historian
Qian Daxin, courtesy name Xiaozheng, literary names Xinmei and Zhuting, came from Jiading in Jiangsu; at the Qianlong emperor's southern tour of 1751 he passed a special examination and was made a secretary in the Grand Secretariat. He took the metropolitan degree in 1754, entered the Hanlin Academy, examined candidates in Shandong and Hunan, and rose to junior supervisor of the household of the heir and education commissioner of Guangdong. Mourning for his father took him home in 1775, and he never served again, teaching instead at the Zhongshan, Loudong and Ziyang academies. Skilled in calendrical mathematics, he reconstructed the Han Santong system, and he wrote the hundred-chapter Examination of Discrepancies in the Twenty-Two Histories (Nianershi kaoyi), the notebook Shijiazhai yangxin lu and other works, arguing in phonology that early Chinese had no labiodental initials. He died in 1804 at seventy-seven; the Draft History of Qing credits him with untangling disputed points in the classics back to their sources.
Life and times
Dates 1728 CE–1804 CE