Abstract:

During the period of 1920s1930s, China witnessed an upsurge of index compiling and index theory research, referred as ‘Index Movement’,which attracting many great scholars at the time like Hu Shi, Gu Jiegang, Hong Ye and so on and influencing academic field circles. Why did index, as a research tool, draw so much attention that formed a movement? It appeared clearly after combing the occurrence and development of index movement, that the passion that scholars showing to index at that time was coincidental with the urgent need of scientific method to reorganizing national heritage since late Qing Dynasty, and that Index as an efficient tool in academy played an important role in leading academic current. The practice of indexing work and the building of index theory got prominent achievement. Analysis in subjects and contents of research results between 1917 and 1953 leads to the conclusion: Index Movement could be divided into two parts as beginning stage, before 1928, and deepgoing stage, after 1928,by the article ‘Index and Sequence’. The former emphasized the introduction and propaganda of index, also the preliminary research of index theory. The latter emphasized the development of practice, the building of research organization and the formal establishment of index theory, which still has significant guiding value in today’s index working.

Keywords: Index movement, Index theory, Reorganizing national heritage, Index and sequence, Index, Index series