皮锡瑞

Pi Xirui was a modern scholar of classical Chinese learning; public information about him is limited, and details of his birth and death, native place, and life are not available. Judging from the four works held in the collection, his writings focus on the study of the classics: General Remarks on Classical Learning and its unannotated edition set out the essential doctrines of the classics, A History of Classical Learning traces the origins and development of classical scholarship, and Subcommentary on Zheng Xuan's Commentary on the Classic of Filial Piety explains Zheng Xuan's commentary. These works show his familiarity with successive generations of classical interpretation and his attention to the Zheng Xuan tradition; his writing is devoted to clarifying the meaning of the classics and distinguishing their textual and scholarly lineages, combining general surveys with annotation and subcommentary. His books are often classified under history, classic works, and Eastern philosophy, and can serve readers studying the history of Chinese classical scholarship.