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Meng Wentong (1894~1968), Ming Erda, a native of Shiniumiao Township, Yanting County, Sichuan Province, was an outstanding historian and educator in modern China, whose main works include "Zhen Wei of Ancient History", "Notes on Li Rong Laozi of Ji School", "Compilation of Schools into Xuanying Laozi Yishu", "Studies of Ethnic Minorities in Zhou Qin", "Classics and Learning of the Plains" and so on.
Born in October 1894 (the 20th year of the Qing Dynasty), Meng Wentong entered a private school at the age of 5, and most of the Four Books and Five Classics and the Texts of the Sons he read could be recited in less than two years. His uncle was a layman, enthusiastic about local education, and advocated new schools. In 1906, Meng Zhicheng was appointed professor of Chengdu Fuxue, and Meng Wentong also came to Chengdu. Soon after, he entered the Sichuan Provincial City Higher School with a middle school, and his classmates included Guo Kaizhen (Mo Ruo), Wang Guangqi, Li Jieren, zhou Taixuan and so on. During his time in school, Meng Wentong read books such as "Xuan Xuan Language", "Bibliographic Answers", "Outline of the General Bibliography of the Four Libraries", and "Explanation of Characters".
In 1911, Meng Wentong was selected to enter the Sichuan Cungu School (later renamed Sichuan Guoxue School, with Xie Wuliang, Liu Shipei, Liao Ping, and Song Yuren successively serving as principals). Meng Wentong was in school, taught by the masters of the classics and history, and improved his studies, and his thesis "Ancient Texts of Kong", which was published in the "Compilation of Guoxue Hui". This text distinguishes between the old history and the Six Classics, thus exploring the source of the present and ancient texts, which is the precursor to the publication of the later special books "Introduction to Classics" and "Classics and Selecting Sources".
After 1918, Meng Wentong returned to his hometown of Yanting from Chengdu and ran a school in his hometown of Jindingchang, recruiting the children of relatives and friends in the neighborhood, teaching the history of reading the Scriptures, and cultivating a group of talents with expertise for his hometown.
In 1921, Meng Wentong was invited by his uncle Meng Zhicheng, who was then the principal of Chongqing Lianzhong, to teach in Chongqing Lianzhong and the Provincial Chongqing Second Female Division. During this period, I saw Qian Mu's article "On Etiquette and Law in the Pre-Qin Sects", and I was shocked by its grand purpose, so I sent a book to Qian Mu on academics.
In 1923, the domestic academic community launched a fierce debate over the dispute between modern and ancient texts. In view of this, Meng Wentong left Chongqing and went east to Jiangsu and Zhejiang to visit Shi Xian, hoping to discuss the flow of classical learning since Tong and Guang. After arriving in Nanjing, he paid homage to Zhang Taiyan. Later, the buddhist master Ouyang Jingwu inquired about the study of the Dharma of Wisdom, and deeply felt the importance of using the method of governing the scriptures to study the Buddhist scriptures, so he entered the "Indochina Academy" run by Ouyang in Nanjing and immersed himself in studying Buddhist philosophy. In the courtyard, he got along with his friends Tang Yongtong, Xiong Shili, Lü Li, Wang Enyang, etc., talking about the past and the present, and complementing each other perfectly.
The papers written by Meng Wentong, "The Examination of Zen Studies in China" and "The Study of Wisdom in Silla Studies", were deeply appreciated by Ouyang Jingwu, and the "Examination of Zen Studies in China" was published in the inaugural issue of the journal "Neixue".
In 1927, Meng Wentong wrote "Ancient History Zhen Wei", which was first published in 1929. This book is the most famous work of Mon venthong. Although he tried to break the system of three emperors and five emperors in the book, he did not abandon all the legends of Nuwa, Furen, Fuxi, Shennong, Gonggong, and Zhu Rong, and then used them to explore the truth of ancient history. In the same year, Meng Wentong returned to Sichuan for a time and taught at Chengdu University and Chengdu Normal University. In 1929, he returned to Nanjing and studied at the Central University. He returned to Sichuan the following year and was still employed at Chengdu University.
In 1931, due to opposition to the forced merger of the three major universities (National Chengdu University, National Chengdu Normal University, and public Sichuan University) into the National Sichuan University, he left Chengdu in anger and went to Kaifeng, Henan Province, to teach at Henan University. During this period, it is often written to expound the changes in the academic thinking of the Zhou and Qin dynasties. He also wrote "Heavenly Questioning Skills", which explores the origin of Zoulu, Sanjin, and Jingchu cultures.
In 1933, at the invitation of Tang Yongtong, Meng Wentong went to Beijing and taught with Qian Mutong in the Department of History of Peking University. He has successively written various articles such as "Inuyasha Invasion Examination", "Qin Wei Rong Nationality Examination", "ChiDi Eastern Invasion Examination", and "Ancient Ethnic Migration Examination" (later compiled and compiled into "Zhou Qin Ethnic Minority Studies" published in 1958). In 1935, Meng Wentong moved to Tianjin and taught at Hebei Women's Normal College. From time to time, there are scum in the academic circles who vigorously advocate "Sino-Japanese promotion", and many times they have sought out Meng Wentong and promised a lot of money, with the intention of enticing Meng Wei to write such articles. At that time, Meng Wentong and his family of 7 were very economically strapped, but they had already examined their intentions and sternly refused to invite such people. After the outbreak of the Lugou Bridge Incident in 1937, Beijing and Tianjin fell, and in order to avoid the persecution of Japanese and pseudo-entanglement, the Meng went to the south by Tanggu on an outer ship.
After Returning to Sichuan, in addition to teaching at Sichuan University, He also taught at Chengdu West China Union University and Three Northeastern Universities until the liberation of the whole country. In 1940, he was invited by Guo Youshou, director of the Sichuan Provincial Department of Education, to serve as the director of the Sichuan Provincial Library. During this period, Meng Wentong successively completed monographs and papers such as "History of the Zhou and Qin Nationalities", "History of Chinese Historiography", "Zhen Wei of Ancient Land", "Five Theories of Confucianism", "Commerce of the Zhou Dynasty", "Society of Qin", "Economic Policy of the Han Dynasty" and so on. The Five Treatises on Confucianism is the crystallization of his study of Confucianism, of which the Development of Confucian Political Thought is particularly important. He conducted a historical investigation of Confucianism from the perspective of a historian, jumping out of the previous scholar's discussion of scripture. Meng Wentong also had a deep study of Taoist thought, deep in the channel, and had edited the "Lao Tzu" notes with colleagues in the provincial library, which were counted before and after: Yan Junping's "Moral Return", Wang Bi's "Notes on Lao Tzu", Cheng Xuanying's "Lao Tzu YiShu", Li Rong's "Notes on Lao Tzu" and more than 10 kinds of hundreds of thousands of words.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Meng Wentong taught at West China University in Chengdu. After the reorganization of the faculties in 1952, he taught at Sichuan University and served as a researcher and member of the Academic Committee of the Institute of History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has served as a deputy to the Chengdu Municipal People's Congress, a member of the Chengdu Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and a member of the Chengdu Municipal Committee of the China Democratic League and the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee. During this period, he wrote a lot of works, and successively completed a number of papers with high academic value, such as "China's Feudal Land Rent", "The Expansion of Agricultural Output in China in Successive Dynasties and the Evolution of The Enlistment System and Academic Thought", "On the Xifeng Change Law", and "Commercial Taxation in the Song Dynasty". He is particularly devoted to the discussion and writing of the ancient ethnic and local history of the southwest region, and the "Treatise on the Ancient History of Bashu" has been unscripted. From 1964 onwards, he devoted himself to writing the "Yue Shi Cong Kao". Soon after, the "Cultural Revolution" began, Meng Wentong was persecuted, the writing was extremely difficult, the first draft of the book was drafted, and it was not yet time to revise the final draft, so that he died of illness in June 1968. "Yue Shi Cong Kao" became his masterpiece.
Compiled by his son Meng Mo, Yue Shi Cong Kao was published by the People's Publishing House in 1983 and won the first prize for outstanding scientific research achievements in philosophy and social sciences in Sichuan Province. The book has attracted much attention from the academic community, and the commentary believes that "this is the first work after liberation that specifically examines the history of Yue, and conducts a meticulous examination and in-depth discussion of important issues such as the ethnic origin, distribution, type, change, conquest and social development of the Yue people" "Not only comprehensively and systematically discusses and expounds the history of the Baiyue nation, but also focuses on the general theory, always aiming at the hypothesis of the entire area south of the Yangtze River, the ancient residence of the Tao Weiying Yue people" "Is a very valuable academic monograph." Its publication marks a new level in the study of the ancient history of our country."