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'''Ruan Yuan''' a Chinese scholar, official and patron of learning of the Qing dynasty (1764-1849) who ranks among the greatest polymaths of the late imperial period. An official of the highest rank and a prolific author, he made lasting contributions to classical scholarship, epigraphy, mathematics, astronomy and the history of Chinese literature, and he trained and supported a generation of scholars.

== Early Life and Rise in Office ==
Ruan Yuan was born in 1764 in Yizheng, in the province of Jiangsu, into a family of scholars and officials. He received an excellent classical education and passed the highest imperial examinations at a young age, entering the Hanlin Academy and the service of the throne. His abilities were recognised early, and he advanced rapidly through the ranks of the bureaucracy.

He held a long series of important posts, serving as governor and governor-general in several provinces, as a minister in the capital and as an examiner and patron of the examination system. He was one of the most trusted and influential officials of his generation, and he used his position to promote learning and to support scholars throughout the empire.

His official career was marked by a commitment to good administration and to the moral improvement of society. He concerned himself with education, with famine relief, with the reform of local government and with the suppression of disorder, and he combined the practical duties of office with an extraordinary output of scholarship and writing.

== Classical Scholarship and Epigraphy ==
Ruan Yuan was a central figure in the movement of Qing scholarship known as evidential learning, which sought to establish the true meaning of the ancient texts through careful philological and historical research. He edited and published a great many classical works, and his prefaces and compilations guided the research of a whole generation of scholars.

He was especially devoted to epigraphy, the study of the inscriptions on ancient bronzes and stone steles. He collected rubbings and monuments on a great scale and issued catalogues and studies of them, and he used the epigraphic evidence to illuminate the history, language and institutions of antiquity. His collections remain fundamental to the field.

His own age was one of antiquarian enthusiasm, and Ruan Yuan stood at its centre. He encouraged the study of the ancient seals and inscriptions, and he helped to make epigraphy a respectable and rigorous branch of scholarship, with methods that would later influence the study of the classics and of history throughout China.

== Science, Mathematics and Astronomy ==
Ruan Yuan took a serious interest in the exact sciences and in their history in China. He compiled a biographical and bibliographical survey of Chinese astronomers and mathematicians, giving accounts of their lives and their works and preserving knowledge of achievements that might otherwise have been forgotten. This work became a standard reference for the history of Chinese science.

He studied the classical mathematical texts and the methods of calculation that had grown out of them, and he took part in the debate over the merits of Chinese and Western astronomy that engaged scholars of his time. He respected the achievements of the Jesuits and their successors while insisting that the Chinese tradition possessed its own scientific resources of great value.

His interest in astronomy and mathematics was part of a broader concern with the practical and technical knowledge that supported good government. He sponsored the compilation of works on calendrical calculation, on the measurement of time and on related subjects, and he supported the scholars who worked on these questions. His patronage was one of the forces that sustained scientific study in the late Qing.

== Patronage and Scholarship as an Official ==
Ruan Yuan used his great wealth and authority to found and support institutions of learning. He established academies in several provinces, endowed scholarly projects and brought together teams of collaborators to work on large editorial and compilation projects, providing the resources that individual scholars could not command on their own.

He employed and encouraged a remarkable number of talented men, and his patronage shaped the careers of many of the leading scholars of the day. The academies he founded, especially in Guangdong and Zhejiang, became centres of research and training whose influence lasted long after his death, and the projects he directed produced works of lasting value.

His model of the scholar-official who uses the resources of office to advance learning was widely admired and imitated. He showed that the great official could be at the same time a serious scholar, and the combination of power and scholarship made him one of the most effective promoters of learning in the whole imperial period.

== Writings and Legacy ==
Ruan Yuan wrote, edited and sponsored an enormous range of works, including editions of the classics, biographical dictionaries, catalogues of inscriptions, collections of poetry and essays on government and education. The breadth of his output, covering philology, history, science and literature, has been compared to the encyclopedic productions of the great scholars of other ages.

He died in 1849, near the end of his long life, honoured as one of the most distinguished servants and scholars of the empire. His students and collaborators carried on his projects, and the institutions he founded continued to train scholars, so that his influence was felt through the whole of the later nineteenth century.

He is remembered as the greatest patron of scholarship of the Qing dynasty and as a symbol of the union of learning and public service. In an age of growing crisis for the imperial order, he represented with unusual completeness the ideals of the Confucian scholar-official, and his name remains attached to some of the most important scholarly enterprises of his time.

== See also ==
* Evidential learning
* Epigraphy in China
* Four Treasuries
* Qing dynasty

== References ==

<ref name="r1">Benjamin Elman, From Philosophy to Philology, Harvard University Press, 1984.</ref>
<ref name="r2">R. Kent Guy, The Emperor's Four Treasuries, Harvard University Press, 1987.</ref>
<ref name="r3">Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China, W. W. Norton, 1990.</ref>
<ref name="r4">Willard J. Peterson, The Cambridge History of China, Volume 9, Cambridge University Press, 2002.</ref>

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[[Category:History]]
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Qing dynasty]]

Ruan Yuan - Revision history

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