A Study of Four Ancient Quoting Methods

When ancient scholars quoted,they sometimes put words from different articles(volumes or chapters) in same book or section of yue in his book.There are lots of problems in abridged quotations in ancient books,some of which are rather serious.When ancient scholars claimed that they quoted something within an unknown author,it was not necessarily case that he could not locate author of text.When ancient scholars said the words are unique and are not found in any of today's books,it may just reveal fact that words are not exactly same as original.The six-thousand-character-long Chen Zheng Shi Shu by Ban Gu is actually such a case,an article padded up from many quotationsfrom many Shu(Memorandum to Emperor) by Jia Yi while Ban Gu was writing The Biography of Jia Yi.A study of how our ancient scholars quoted while writing is still of great significance for us in conducting research work.