古书成书和流传情况研究的进展与古史史料学概念——为纪念《古史辨》第一册出版八十周年而作

顾颉刚先生所编《古史辨》第一册出版,对于中国近代学术,包括近代意义上的中国古史研究的形成和发展具有积极的历史影响。从某种意义上来看,《古史辨》所从事和倡导的“疑古”工作的主要目标和内容,是试图为建立近代意义上的中国古史研究寻求合格的史料学基础。但主要由于客观历史条件的限制,“古史辨”学者们当年对古书成书和流传情况的复杂性尚不能有充分的了解,因而在对古书真伪、成书年代、作者,乃至其中某些特定内容的史料价值以及各宗古书资料之间关系等问题的研究中存在着简单化的缺陷。在近年来学者们对中国古史史料学基础问题的研究中,最值得重视的领域之一,是对于新出土文献的研究。在大量新出土文献资料研究的基础上,我们将有可能获得某些较之以往更合理的古史史料学概念,建立现代古史史料学概念的整个工作也才会有实质性的进展。

Advancement in the study of the evolvement and circulation of ancient books, also on the concept of ancient historical materials: For the 80th anniversary of the first volume of Gushibian

The publishing of the first volume of Gushibian (Debates on Ancient History) edited by Gu Jiegang may be called one of the most important steps in the formation and development of modern Chinese academic research, including the studies of ancient Chinese history. The most outstanding characteristic of the “Gushibian” School is the “historical skepticism”, whose main goal and content, in a sense, is the effort to explore a qualified foundation of the historical materials for the purpose of establishing the studies of ancient Chinese history in the modern sense. Yet restricted by objective conditions, these scholars failed to realize the whole complexity of the evolvement and circulation of ancient books, resulting in some simplism on such problems as the authenticity, era of evolvement andship of ancient books, the historical value of specific sections, as well as the relations among different texts. In recent years, the most remarkable field in the studies of the fundamental problems in ancient historical materials should be the newly excavated texts. Only by basing on the vast amount of studies of them could we obtain a more reasonable concept of ancient historical materials, and make substantial progress in constructing the concepts of modern studies of ancient historical materials.