錢穆賓四先生行誼述略

The Life of professor Ch'ien Mu

嚴耕望(YEN Keng Wang)

《新亞學報》 16卷(上) (1991/10) Pp. 115-132+ap5

並列摘要

Professor Ch'ien Mu was born in 1895 in Wu-hsi, Chiang-su Province. The Ch'iens of Chiang-su had once been a family of considerable importance, but continued decline reduced the family to poverty. Ch'ien's great grandfather was but a poor minor scholar and Ch'ien's own formal schooling was driven to a conclusion with the completion of his secondary education. A gifted scholar of exceptionally high calibre, Professor Ch'ien finished reading all the major classics in his youth. At the age of eighteen, he started to work as a school teacher and became a senior teacher of Chinese studies in Soochow Middle School in 1927. The same year saw the completion of his acclaimed investigation on the dates of pre-Ch'in thinkers, later published under the title of Chronological Studies of the Pre-Ch'in Thinkers. In less than three years' time, he found himself in the capital and began his university teaching career, first in Yenching, and subsequently in Peking University. Professor Ch'ien entered a period of arduous and anxious scholarship. Deeply learned and largely productive, he was soon widely recognised as an authority in Chinese history. With the outbreak of the Second-Japanese War in 1937, Professor Ch'ien moved southwesterly to K'un-ming, Yuen-nan Province with the University and resumed his teaching there. It was during this harsh and forbidding times that he produced the Outline History of the Nation, a comprehensive survey of Chinese history written with penetrating insight and stirring patriotism. Soon he joined the staff of the Institute of Chinese Studies in Ch'i-lu University in Cheng-tu. A staunch defender of traditional Chinese values, he was a frequent visitor of the wartime capital Chung-king, where he lectured on the national spirit, and on China's cultural past and its present relevance. These lectures, which earned Professor Ch'ien great popularity and respect, were aimed at boosting morale among his compatriots -- the civilians in general and those who served in the fighting forces in particular. When the war was ended, Professor Ch'ien stayed in Yuen-nan and taught in Wu-hua Institute and Yuen-nan University. This period witnessed a swift of teaching field for Professor Ch'ien. He began to major his attention on the history of Chinese thought. In 1947, a stomach illness brought him back to his home town of Wu-hsi, whereupon he joined the Chiang-nan University and finished an annotation of Chuang-tzu. The communist takeover of China in 1949 obliged Professor Ch'ien to move to Hong Kong. The following year Ch'ien the historian began to assume the role of educator. The New Asia Institute he founded became the lyceum by which mainland scholars stranded in Hong Kong were offered the task of educating the young who were forced by the same fate to leave their homeland. Fundings for New Asia were few and by no means reliable. Undaunted by these and other difficulties, New Asia, under the leadership of Professor Ch'ien, soon proved an academic institute of admirable distinction, strong in both research and in the production of a new generation of promising scholars. In 1953, the Yale Association in the U.S.A. approached New Asia and provided it with generous grants, with which development became possible. The Yale connection continued and in 1959 Professor Ch'ien was invited to deliver a series of lectures in Yale University. Hong Kong's second university, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was established in 1963, with New Asia as one of its three component colleges. At this stage, Professor Ch'ien found that he had completed his entire mission in regard to New Asia and he tendered his resignation as Master of the College the following summer. He spent a few more years in Hong Kong, fully applying himself in research. In 1967, Professor Ch'ien made Taipei his permanent abode, and was elected a Fellowship at the Academia Sinica the following year. He had also served as Presidential Advisor since 1968. The most important work of Professor Ch'ien's during his later years is an exhaustive and indeed monumental examination of Chu Hsi's philosophy. Professor Ch'ien defied his deteriorating health and loss of eyesight to carryon his academic pursuit with a vengeance. Since the Second Sino-Japanese War, Professor Ch'ien had always been on the move, wandering up and down the country. Life had seldom been peaceful for him. Since his marriage with Miss Hu Mei-chi in 1956, he began to lead a more regular and tranquil life and his health improved. Professor Ch'ien died a peaceful death on 30 August 1990 at the age of ninety-six. The richness and significance of Professor Ch'ien's works will remain a major influence to the pupil of Chinese culture for years and years to come.