Dai Zhen (19 January 1724 – 1 July 1777), courtesy name Dongyuan , also spelled Shenxiu , was a Qing Dynasty philosopher , thinker , scholar , and scribe of the Qing Dynasty.
Dai Zhen's father, Dai Ben, was a cloth merchant who did a small business in Nanfeng, Jiangxi Province, and could only make ends meet. Dai Zhen was intelligent and sensitive since childhood, and he read thousands of words every day when he was ten years old, and at the age of seventeen, he studied "Explanation of Words and Characters" and did his best.
Eighteen-year-old Dai Zhen lived with his father in Southwest Jiangxi, and taught children in Shaowu, Fujian Province. During this period, the same mileage inquiry was very important to him. In the seventh year of Qianlong (1742), dai Ben, in order to satisfy his son's desire for knowledge, took Dai Zhen to Jiangning to meet his fellow tribesman Dai Han. Dai Han is a shiwen author, not a teacher in Dai Zhen's mind. Soon after, Dai Zhen became acquainted with the phonologist Jiang Yong. At that time, Wang Wufeng, a businessman from Shexian County, founded the Uninvited Garden, widely stored books, and recruited scholars, dai Zhen, Zheng Mu, Wang Zhaolong, Cheng Jinfang, Jin Bang, and others from shexian County, and Jiang Yong all recited in it. Jiang Yong was proficient in the Three Rites, Bypass Astronomy, Geography, Arithmetic and Phonology, etc., and only Dai Zhen could master all of his knowledge.
Since then, Dai Zhen has made great academic progress, especially in the study of planning, famous things, and exegesis, and put forward many unprecedented theories. A few years later, Dai Zhen successively wrote "Calculation" (written in 1744), "Notes on the Notes on the Record of Examination Workers" (written in 1746), and "Records of Pythagorean Cutting Circles" (written in 1755), all of which are natural science works. He is also the author of The Treatise on the Six Books, Erya Script Examination (1747), Notes on Qu Yuan (1752), and Supplementary Biography of Poetry (1748).
In the nineteenth year of Qianlong (1754), he took refuge in Beijing. Entered Qin Huitianmu to compile the "Five Rites Tongkao", which became famous in the capital.
In the nineteenth year of Qianlong (1754), Haoqiang of the Dai clan invaded dai Zhenzu's tomb, and he had no choice but to sue, but Haoqiang bribed the county order and colluded from top to bottom to accuse Dai Zhen of guilt. In order to escape persecution, he took refuge in Beijing. With no food or clothing, Dai Zhen had to temporarily live in the Shexian Guild Hall in the capital. One day, Dai Zhen visited Qian Daxin, and on the topic of learning, Qian Daxin sighed: "It is really a genius in the world." At that time, Qin Huitian, a waiter in the ceremonial department, compiled the "Five Ritual Examinations" and wanted to find someone who was proficient in astronomical almanacs. Qian Daxin immediately recommended Dai Zhen. Qin Huitian immediately ordered him to visit him, and later invited him to the palace to teach the time. At that time, Ji Yun, Wang Chang, Wang Mingsheng, Zhu Yun and other celebrities heard of Dai Zhen's arrival and made friends with him one after another. At the same time, his "Record of Pythagorean Cutting Circles" was published in full by Qin Huitian, and the "Notes on the Notes on the Records of the Examiners" was engraved and printed by Ji Yun, and Dai Zhen was thus named After the earthquake in Beijing. In the twenty-first year of Qianlong (1756), Dai Zhen taught his son Wang Niansun at the home of the official Shangshu Wang Anguo. Wang Niansun and his successor Duan Yujie became two of Dai Zhen's most well-known students. In the twenty-second year of Qianlong (1757), Wang Anguo died, and Dai Zhen traveled south from Beijing to meet Hui Dong in Yangzhou Lianghuai Salt Transport envoy Lu Jian Zeng. Hui Dong is a master of the Wu School, and Dai Zhen is a master of the Anhui School, and the acquaintance of the two is of academic significance. After meeting Hui Dong, Dai Zhen began to attach importance to wu Pai's academic ideas and academic achievements, and expanded his academic horizons.
In the twenty-seventh year of Qianlong (1762), he was a man who was raised in the middle and repeatedly participated in the meeting to fail the first. In the thirtieth year of Qianlong (1765), after Dai Zhenhui failed the test, he went to Ruizhou, Jiangxi (present-day Gao'an County, Jiangxi), where he wrote the "Monument to Fengyi Academy" and put forward the theory of the practical application of the scriptures. In the thirty-third year of Qianlong (1768), Dai Zhen was hired by Fang Guancheng, the governor of Zhili, to Baoding, Hebei Province, to compile the Book of Zhili River Canals, and Hou Guancheng died, and Yang Tingzhang, a university scholar who succeeded him, could not honor Dai Zhen, so Dai Zhen left Baoding. After Zhou Yuanli became the governor of Zhizhi, the manuscript was collected by him. In the thirty-fourth year of Qianlong (1769), Dai Zhenhui failed the trial and went to Zhu Jue, an envoy to Shanxi, and was hired to revise the "Fenzhou FuZhi". In the thirty-sixth year of Qianlong (1771), Dai Zhen was not the first, and revised the "Fenyang County Chronicle" in Shanxi. In the thirty-seventh year of Qianlong (1772), Dai Zhen entered Beijing from Fenyang, but he failed to pass the test and went to Zhejiang East to teach Jinhua Academy. In the same year, he wrote the first draft of Mencius's "Introduction to the Evidence of the Meaning of Mencius". In the autumn of the thirty-eighth year of Qianlong (1773), Yu Minzhong, the chief president of the Siku Quanshuguan, listened to the opinions of the chief official Ji Yun and the Punishment Department Shangshu Qiu Rixiu and recommended Dai Zhen to the Qianlong Emperor. Therefore, the Qianlong Emperor specially ordered Dai Zhen to enter The Capital as a repair official of the Sikuguan. In the same year, Dai Zhen's sixth meeting test was not the first. Because of his prestige, Dai Zhen was able to take the temple examination the following year, and was given the title of Tongjinshi (同進士) as a Shujishi of the Hanlin Temple.
In the thirty-eighth year of Qianlong (1773), he was summoned as a reviser of the Siku Quanshu. In the forty years of Qianlong (1775), due to his remarkable academic achievements, he was specially ordered to participate in the temple examination and was given the same jinshi birth. During the revision of the Siku Quanshu Library, Dai Zhen was mainly responsible for the collation of astronomical and geographical arithmetic books and language and writing books. He took advantage of the conditions of the book collection, carefully studied and devoted himself to it. From the Yongle Canon, he compiled three volumes of the "Rites and Rites" and divided the "Interpretation of the Rituals" into thirty volumes. The Nine Chapters of Arithmetic, the Island Arithmetic, the Sun Tzu Arithmetic, the Five Cao Arithmetic, the Xiahou Yang Arithmetic, etc. are scattered in the yongle canon, and are compiled by Dai Zhen to be included in the four libraries of the whole book, each adding a case language, and writing it into a summary. When Dai Zhen was proofreading the Notes on the Water Classics, he summarized three principles, and made canonical and notes. The school was praised by the Qianlong Emperor.
In the forty-first year of Qianlong (1776), Dai Zhen composed the book "Mencius Zi Yi Yi Shu Zhi Zhi His friends Weng Fanggang and Cheng Jinfang wrote "Theory" and "Theory of Orthodox Learning" to criticize him, respectively, and Peng Shaosheng wrote a long letter of more than 2,000 words to refute his views.
On May 27, 1777 ( July 1 , 1777 ) of qianlong , Dai Zhen died at the age of fifty-five in the West Fan's Ying Garden in Chongwenmen , Beijing. After Dai Zhen's death, his primary school was passed down by Wang Niansun and Duan Yujie; the study of arithmetic was passed on by Kong Guangsen; the study of canons was passed on by Ren Dachun; and Dai Xue was carried forward.
Dai Zhenzhi has a wide range of achievements in astronomy, mathematics, history, geography, phonology, writing, exegesis, etc., and is one of the representative figures of the "Qianjia School" and the integrator of Anhui Studies while promoting the development of the study of evidence and at the same time pioneering the field of modern science.
He expounded the rational principle with the materialist rational view, and attacked the theoreticians for saying that "to remove human desires and save heavenly reason". His "Mencius Zi Yi Shu Zhen" strongly criticized Cheng Zhu Lixue, which had a profound impact on the subsequent academic trend of thought. Its progressive ethical ideas have an enlightening guiding role for modern capitalist thinkers such as Liang Qichao and Zhang Taiyan. His works include "Mao Zhengshi Examination", "Mencius Character Meaning Neglect Evidence", "Sound Rhyme Examination", "Dai's Water Classic", "Examination Diagram", "Pythagorean Cutting Circle" and so on. Later generations edited his work into the Dai Testament.