Qing scholar from Jiading whose Examination of Discrepancies in the Twenty-Two Histories and phonological studies set the standard for evidential research
Mural guide
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.
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.
Qian Daxin joins court compilations and writes the Ershi'er shi kaoyi
Qing dynasty
While in office, Qian Daxin often took part in compiling the Yinyun shuwei, the Continued Wenxian tongkao, the Continued Tongzhi, the Yitong zhi and the Tianqiu tu. He also wrote the Ershi'er shi kaoyi in one hundred chapters, along with a table of the Tang History's court historians, a table of clans for the Yuan History, a bibliographic treatise for the Yuan History, and the Sanshi shiyi and Zhushi shiyi.
Qing