Meng Wentong蒙文通

Style & Daoist names

given name Erda, courtesy name Wentong

Period

Republican Era–Present

Dates

1894 — 1968

Role

HistorianClassicist (scholar of the Confucian classics)Daoist Scholars

Birthplace

Yanting (present-day Yanting, Sichuan)

Places of activity

Mount Qingcheng

Life

Meng Wentong, a native of Yanting in Sichuan, was a renowned modern historian and classicist, and a professor at Sichuan University. In his early years he studied under Liao Ping and Liu Shipei, and was versed in both the classics and history; from the 1940s he turned to the study of Daoist and Daoist-philosophical texts, associating with the Mount Qingcheng priest Yi Xinying, and compiled such Tang-dynasty Chongxuan (Twofold Mystery) texts as the Collated Edition of Cheng Xuanying's Subcommentary on the Daodejing, the Collated Edition of Li Rong's Commentary on the Laozi, and the Critical Edition of Cheng Xuanying's Commentary on the Laozi. He wrote papers such as A Study of the Three Branches of Immortality Daoism in the Late Zhou, Chen Bixu and the School of Chen Tuan, A Study of the Zuowang lun, and Miscellaneous Notes on Daoist History, producing pioneering research on the Chongxuan school, the school of Chen Tuan, and the origins of Daoist scriptures in Daoist history; later scholars compiled his work into Discerning the Subtle in Ancient Learning (Guxue zhenwei) and Ten Collated Daoist Texts (Daoshu jijiao shizhong). He was a forerunner of the twentieth-century Sichuan tradition of Daoist studies, later continued by scholars such as Qing Xitai.

Contributions & Influence

• Collated and edited Tang-dynasty Chongxuan works by Cheng Xuanying, Li Rong and others
• Investigated topics in Daoist history such as late Zhou immortality traditions and the school of Chen Tuan
• Collaborated with Yi Xinying, bridging academia and the Daoist clergy

Works

• Daoshu jijiao shizhong (道书辑校十种, Ten Collated Daoist Texts)
• Guxue zhenwei (古学甄微, Sifting the Subtleties of Ancient Learning)
• Wan Zhou xiandao fen sanpai kao (晚周仙道分三派考, A Study of the Three Branches of the Immortality Way in the Late Zhou)
• Chen Bixu yu Chen Tuan xuepai (陈碧虚与陈抟学派, Chen Bixu and the School of Chen Tuan)