徐梵澄先生《小学菁华》刍议

A Primary Study of Xu Fancheng’s Chinese Words

《小学菁华》是徐梵澄先生在20世纪60年代向西方介绍中国古代学术菁华之初步成果,旨在说明汉语学习之正途,即从文字学的门径引领初学者入其蹊隧.文字学亦称"语文学",古言"小学"."语文学"乃一民族之"纯粹的精神踪迹",尤其我们的"小学",更是指向"理解的精神".汉字以"形"为主,它的直观结构蕴含着一种价值观和世界观的模式,因此,我们的文字观也可以看作是人生观,即培育内"仁"而外"礼"的具有高等知觉性的君子(大人),而这正是儒家"文教"事业的理想.徐先生又将汉字比作"文化之舟",因为它给予中华民族无限的生命.从这一实践本体的意义上可以说,我们的汉字就是"道",就是"精神".

Written in the 1960s,Chinese Words served as Mr.Xu Fancheng’s first step to introduce the essence of ancient Chinese classics to the West.The immediate purpose of this Chinese-English dictionary was to help those beginners who learn Chinese as a foreign language through a philological approach.“Philology”,also known as“small learning”in ancient China,is usually recognized as the“pure spiritual trace”of a nation.This is particularly true with“small learning”,which aims to cultivate people’s“spirit of understanding”.Chinese characters give priority to form,and their intuitive structure contains a kind of values and world view.Therefore Chinese words can also be regarded as the outlook of life,namely to cultivate the internal“benevolence”and external“rites”of a gentleman in the higher consciousness.Mr.Xu compared the Chinese language to“a vehicle of culture”,which endowed our nation with infinite life.And it is in this practical and ontological sense that we say Chinese characters convey“Tao”and“spirit”.