章太炎國故論說中的歷史民族

Abstract

晚清時期進入革命陣營的章太炎（1869-1936），經常分梳他所持的並非「革命」，而是「光復」的理念，其理由與其說是政治的，不如說是文化的。作為一位大學者，他投入巨大的精力從事「講學」，也是這個觀念的延伸，在於恢復「衣冠文物」，維繫「歷史民族」的文化命脈。章太炎的學術體系非常龐大，而漢語言文字是他的首要關注。在他看來，語言文字反映的是文化的盛衰。千年以來，漢語言文字都在衰落之中，而當下又面臨著與西方文化交流的問題。作為解決方案，他致力於方言的考察，並與死文字相對照，希望以此增加文字量。同時基於歷史的理由，提出獨特的漢語通用語的方案。這是為了完滿解決「文言合一」與「統一民言」的現實課題。同時，章太炎試圖為漢語言文字系統提供完整的理論，以維護其地位。這方面的工作集中在對「假借」和「轉注」的探討，十年之間不斷修改自己的看法，終於得出完美的解釋。在此基礎上，他寫作《文始》，為全體漢字建立體系。章太炎的「文學」觀是他的語言文字之學的延伸，本質上是基於漢字的特點，討論如何正確地運字成文的問題。而當時漢語拼音化的思潮，尤其是採用世界語的主張，都在於取消漢字，這是他的觀念死敵。基於「不齊而齊」的文化觀，他為漢字進行不遺餘力的辯護，認為「萬國新語」這種「齊其不齊」的思路正是文明霸權的產物。民族所可以立基的理由，來自於「言文歷史」的認同，他所有的關懷和工作都是服務於此。

Zhang Taiyan (章太炎, 1869-1936), who joined in the Late-Qing revolutionary camp, often declared that what he upheld was not ”revolution” but ”guangfu” (光復), the motive of which was rather cultural than political. As a great scholar, he invested an amount of energy in his prelection as the extension of this idea to restore the prosperous civilization and to sustain the artery of the culture. Zhang Taiyan`s academic structure is extremely extensive, but with the primary concern on Chinese language and Sinogram, which, from his perspective, reflected the wax and wane of the culture. Since thousands of years ago, Chinese language and Sinograms had been in decline, facing the problem of communicating with the Western culture. In order to provide the solution, he devoted to the investigation of the dialects as contrast to the dead Sinograms, hoping to increase the total of Sinograms. At the same time, he brought up the unique project of Chinese lingua franca based on historical accounts in order to find a perfect solution to the practical issue of matching the writing with the speaking system and the unification of populace languages. Meanwhile, Zhang Taiyan attempted to provide a complete theory for the Chinese language and Sinogram system to maintain its position, focusing on the incessant ten-year exploration of Zhuanzhu (轉注) and Jiajie (假借) to have reached the perfect explanation. On this basis, he composed ”Wenshi” (《文始》) to build up the system of whole Sinograms. Zhang Taiyan`s concept of ”wenxue” (文學) is the extension of his study of Chinese Language and Sinograms, the essence of which is to explore how to put Sinograms together to form a sentence according to which features. The contemporary trend of alphabetization of Chinese language, especially the notion to apply Esperanto, was his ideological foe in proscribing Sinograms. From the cultural viewpoint ”to see the equal in the unequal” (不齊而齊), he spared no effort to defend the Sinograms, for he viewed the train of thought ”to equalize the unequal” (齊其不齊) hidden in Esperanto as the product of cultural hegemony. The reason that the nation could lay its foundation was build on the identification of language and history, which was all his works and his care served.