On this point, the summary provided by Xiaolu Wang and Dongdong Shi in "Explanation and Utterance Mode of Chinese Literature in Western
Sinology" is enlightening.
In one place he enumerates the following failings of contemporary European
Sinology: "die unfruchtbaren Spekulationen der Conrady-Schule, die neue Ergebnisse vortauschenden Studien Otto des GroBen, die monotonen bibliographischen For-schungen der Franzosen, die schlechten Ubersetzungen der Besten unter uns von Texten, die eine Ubersetzung gar nicht verdienen" (p.
Confluences in Scottish Nonconformism, Chinese Missionary Scholarship, Victorian
Sinology, and Chinese Protestantism.
Professor Peter Kien, a scholar specialized in
Sinology, tall and lean, laconic and unsociable, of reserved temperament, taciturn and devoid of all vanity possesses one of the largest private collections in the city, approximately twenty-five thousand volumes.
On June 1, 1878, Hans Georg Conon von der Gabelentz (1840-1893) was appointed Supernumerary Professor of East Asian Languages at the University of Leipzig, marking the beginning of professional
Sinology in the German-speaking realm.
to date) is the work he is best known for and which has already firmly secured his place in the history of
Sinology, he has published over the years a steady stream of articles in journals, symposium volumes, and Festschriften.
Here he taught and lectured in missiology, church history, mission history, and
sinology and conducted advanced tutorial classes.
(46) Indeed, that the etymology of this most important word anciently used to denote the high god at the apex of the supernatural pantheon remains obscure seems a bit of an embarrassment to
sinology. (47) Let me suggest that the character di is representational in much the same way as depictions of certain constellations are, albeit in this case with a twist.
In 1933 Bodde published his first contribution to
Sinology, "A Perplexing Passage in the Confucian Analects," which appeared in the pages of the JAOS.
The collection has been largely ignored, particularly as a literary text, in both Western and Chinese
Sinology. One reason for this is that in large part scholars have treated the collection as a repository of information useful to the social scientist or historian, (2) and another is that critics have attempted to come to an unambiguous understanding of it by relegating it to one or another literary category.
Whether strictly for comparative purposes or to clarify actual historical interactions, or merely out of intellectual curiosity, it is my hope that the future of
Sinology will include consideration of relevant material that derives from peoples, cultures, and places that lie beyond the current political boundaries of the Chinese state.
Raising the issue of philology (and
sinology as a branch of philology) versus disciplinary studies also seems to me to be a rather perverse attempt to reawaken controversies that were fought out during the period of rapid expansion of Chinese studies that took place after the end of the Second World War.
