The “Preface to Seven Catalogues” and Ruan Xiaoxu’s World of Knowledge and Thought

Abstract: During the Southern Dynasties, the spread of paper made it easier to acquire knowledge than in the days when bamboo slips were used. In this context, private book collections flourished and it was not uncommon for a family to accumulate a good library and hold thousands of books. In short, “knowledge popularization” became a trend. Therefore, words with “博” in them, such as “profound and comprehensive”, were often used to describe the intellectuals of that time. Ruan Xiaoxu was an astonishingly well read, and was known as “a man of great erudition”. The “Preface to Seven Catalogues” (《七录序》) preserved in the Guang Hongming Collection (《广弘明集》) recorded the reading process and knowledge composition of Ruan Xiaoxu. From the “Preface to the Seven Catalogues”, it can be seen that the general catalogue of books, Seven Catalogues (《七录》), because of its nature of being the “secret record of the last books of the world”, to a certain extent, reflects the scale of the book collection of the entire Southern Dynasties before the second year of Datong (536) of Emperor Wu of Liang. From the perspective of private reading, the Seven Catalogues was a summary of Ruan Xiaoxu’s personal reading history and book search history, which contained the outline of his own knowledge. Furthermore, Ruan Xiaoxu was very knowledgeable about books, and his “reading field” involved almost every academic discipline at that time. Therefore, it is of greater significance to discuss the history of Ruan Xiaoxu’s private reading and the composition of the catalogue of Seven Catalogues. Ruan Xiaoxu’s personal reading history and the course of spiritual advancement is also the epitome of the changes of the entire Southern academic culture and spiritual world.