I am very happy, and I have read the Water Classics many times
Li Daoyuan, as we know it now, actually knows that he wrote the book "Notes on the Water Classics", and the others are not very good, and even many people do not know what era he is.
Mr. Hu Shi, a master of traditional Chinese studies, later specialized in the study of the "Notes on the Water Classics", but because he seemed to be playing gongs everywhere and had him in eight places, there was no one who could do it too well, so some people said that the main reason why he studied the "Notes on the Water Classics" was that it was too unpopular and no one went to get it, so as soon as he went to study, he could do it in an instant, of course, this is also a kind of metaphor for Master Hu.
The "Notes on the Water Classics" can be seen from the name, this is a note for the "Water Classics", such as Pei Songzhi, who wrote for the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", the "Water Classics" was probably written in the Three Kingdoms period, the author is unknown, the rivers recorded are only more than a hundred, very brief, and the text is only more than 10,000, so Li Daoyuan spent a lot of effort to annotate this book, thus becoming a great work that is both a scientific geography monograph and a pioneer in the history of landscape travels.
Li Daoyuan (郦道元), courtesy name Shanchang, was a native of Zhuozhou, Fanyang, and a geographer of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Both he and his father belonged to the officials of the Northern Wei regime at that time, and when they were young, they accompanied their father to visit the waterways, read the Qishu, and later became an official, and then became an official, and the officials were promoted to the posts of Qingzhou Assassin History, Luyang Taishou, and were given the title of Yongningbo; later killed by traitors, posthumously presented to the official Shangshu.
It is also a little inconceivable to think that the Southern Dynasty during the Southern and Northern Dynasties period was still relatively stable and civilized, and in this Northern Dynasty, the Wuhu Chaohua was killed one by one, the Han people were almost exterminated, and the Northern Wei was a regime established by the Xianbei ethnic group, although it has been working hard to sinicize, but from the root point of view, it is still a foreign nationality, and in terms of concept and consciousness, there is still a big difference with the Han nationality.
Li Daoyuan was the second generation of officials, his father was Qingzhou Thorn History, at that time the concept of door valves was very strong, Li Daoyuan naturally entered the career path, in the local or central government for the official, but he has a label is very unknown, known as "cool official".
The word "cool official" is completely incompatible with the "famous geographer of the Southern and Northern Dynasties" Li Daoyuan in our impression, so why was he given such a title? This is to find the answer from the main history.
The account of Li Daoyuan is mainly in the "Book of Wei", which is very brief, only three hundred words, and it is not listed separately, but it is placed in the "Biography of Cool Officials", mixed with a bunch of cool officials with a very bad reputation, which is very surprising.
This is actually closely related to the era and environment in which Li Daoyuan lived, and the Northern Wei regime established by his imperial court for ethnic minorities, as a Han Li Daoyuan, if he wanted to gain a foothold, he had to deal with these foreign bureaucratic aristocrats, and these nobles took up their special status, did whatever they wanted at the local level, and arbitrarily tyrannically, which made Li Daoyuan, who had been deeply immersed in Confucianism for many years, very angry.
Li Daoyuan also did not come from the grassroots level, as the second generation of officials, he also looked down on these uncultured, so his upright and resolute personality also brought him a lot of displeasure, especially after his father's death, he was sent to a remote area as an official, where he intersected with Rouran, where Hu and Han lived together, and whoever went there to become an official was a troublesome matter.
Li Daoyuan was also young at that time, the so-called "newborn calves are not afraid of tigers", he is just like Cao Cao when he served as a lieutenant in the north of Luoyang to make a five-colored stick hanging on the gate, for those who violate the prohibition, no matter who you are, what kind of backstage, even the imperial relatives and state relatives are also severely punished, so many of the original rampant people can not go on, can only slip away from home, he served for three years, the local level is calm and solemn, it seems that this chaotic world is still very reasonable.
Li Daoyuan's talent was recognized by the Northern Wei court, but also because he offended the magnates, the foreign regime still made Li Daoyuan a scapegoat after weighing it up, and dismissed him from office, but Li Daoyuan did not care too much, he took advantage of this free time, traveled around, and it was the experience of the mountains and rivers during this period of time that laid a solid foundation for him to later write the "Notes on the Water Classics".
A few years later, there was a rebellion of a considerable scale in the Northern Wei regime, at this time the imperial court did not know what kind of psychology it was, and actually recalled Li Daoyuan and asked him to lead the troops to quell the rebellion, you must know that he is an authentic civilian official, why did he use Li Daoyuan at this critical time, is Ping Su an all-rounder who hides deeply and has both Wen Tao and martial strategy, anyway, I am puzzled.
As a result of the counter-rebellion, under the leadership of Li Daoyuan, he actually succeeded in quelling the rebellion, so he was given the title of Henan Yin and was responsible for the security of Kyoto, and later because of his harsh government, he was promoted to lieutenant of the imperial history who specialized in the management of the prison.
Shi Zai: When he was in local administration, he was "harsh for the government, and the officials were afraid of it", although he also did a lot of beneficial things for local public order and people's livelihood, but in the end he was too harsh and rarely praised, and even the people were expelled because of "mighty government"; Shi Zai said: "The barbarians pointed out that they were harsh in their lawsuits, and asked them to stab Shi Kou Zuli before him." And sent seventy soldiers to return Daoyuan to Beijing, and the two of them sat down and dismissed officials. ”
The same was true when he was a lieutenant in the central government, he was not afraid of power, just like Han Zhizhang Tang and Zhi Du, so he was also hated by many powerful people in the court, and always wanted to find excuses to harm him.
When The Yongzhou assassin Shi Xiaobao, who was stationed in the Xi'an area, wanted to rebel, some people instigated the imperial court to send Li Daoyuan to restrain himself, Xiao Baoyuan was of course very unhappy, so he sent people to rob and kill in half a way, when Li Daoyuan walked to Lintong, he was surrounded, the drinking water was cut off, and there was no way to continue, so he was killed at the same time as his brother and two sons, Li Daoyuan angrily rebuked the traitors before his death, and the righteousness was awe-inspiring, but he regretted that he had spent half his life investigating the water of the world, but finally ended up with no water to drink.
Li Daoyuan's personality should be too straight, interpersonal relations are certainly not his strength, but he does not think so, blindly go his own way, turn a deaf ear to the shortcomings that people talk about, and his relationship with his brother is not good, so that "brothers can not be harmonious, and they are jealous, and they are thin-minded." ”
Li Daoyuan was eager to learn at an early age, loved to travel, when he was an official, he took advantage of various opportunities to investigate the mountain and water conditions and understand the geographical landform, he found that the previous book "Water Classic" was not only too brief, but also with the passage of time, the city was abandoned, the river was diverted, the situation has changed, which is very inconsistent with the current actual situation, so he made up his mind to annotate this book.
Speaking of annotations, in fact, it is almost completely innovative, he added many rivers on the basis of only more than 100 rivers in the "Water Classic", reaching as many as 1252, and the text increased from more than 10,000 words to more than 300,000 words, divided into 40 volumes, which can be said to be a new "Water Classic" written by Li Daoyuan.
In Chinese history, before the modern era, successive dynasties and dynasties did not attach great importance to science, leaving a large number of poetry and songs, moral articles, few academic works on science and technology, astronomical geography is full of astrology, gossip, feng shui and other superstitious colors, the birth of this "Water Commentary" has great value for people to understand human geography, but also a milestone in the history of Chinese science and technology, with epoch-making significance.
Li Daoyuan lived in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, is the most chaotic period in the history of our country, a former unified empire is fragmented, the regime is lined up, although the Northern Wei territory is large, but it is only limited to the Qinling Mountains and the area north of the Huai River, and as a descendant of the Han nation, Li Daoyuan still has the territory of our Great Han in his heart, and he firmly believes that his motherland will achieve reunification.
Therefore, in his "Notes on water classics", not only the rivers under the actual control of the Northern Wei Dynasty, but also all the territories once controlled by the Han people, and even many countries such as today's Vietnam, India, Iran, the Soviet Union and Mongolia.
On the one hand, the direction of the river and the beginning of the river are actually the embodiment of the Han people's view of the world in the li daoyuan pen, because, in the eyes of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, there were two countries under the heavens, one is known, called the Han Empire, and the other is unknown, which is the place that will be included in the territory of our Great Han in the future.
Although Li Daoyuan's book is called "Notes on the Water Classic", he has actually already broken through the shackles of the original "Water Classic" book, not only focusing on a single item of the river, he takes the river as the outline, and records all aspects of the content including mountains, landforms, products, towns, and even historical evolution through the river, and it is accurate and informative, which is the crystallization of his years of hard work.
As a geography monograph, it is not easy to be accurate and informative, and its difficulty is far more than those literary and artistic works that can be imagined and played arbitrarily, rendering and exaggerating, which not only requires the author to possess a large amount of first-hand information, but also needs to be able to write after field investigation.
In Chinese history, there are two people who are famous for their geographical works, namely Xu Xiake and Li Daoyuan, but Li Daoyuan's fame is far inferior to Xu Xiake, and now the China Tourism Day is named after the first article of Xu Xiake's travelogue.
But in my personal opinion, compared with the "Notes on the Water Classics", "Xu Xiake's Travels" is not at one level in terms of historical knowledge citations or literary levels, and the "Notes on the Water Classics" are higher than "Xu Xiake's Travels" in all aspects.
According to some people's research, "Xu Xia's Travels" is full of errors and loopholes, so that some people doubt whether Sanmao has been to Africa and whether Marco Polo has come to China, in this regard, I have not made any evidence, do not dare to speak indiscriminately, I just think that sometimes, the real history is invincible to the novel drama, which is the fundamental reason why Guan Yu became a saint.
The river basins covered in the "Notes on the Water Classics" could not have been experienced by Li Daoyuan himself, except for the places he had traveled in the past few years, most of them quoted a vast number of documents, and the amount of information he possessed was truly amazing, according to statistics reaching more than four hundred kinds.
However, I think that after so many years of war and chaos in the history of China before the Northern Wei Dynasty, most of the books and historical periodicals were destroyed in the war, li Daoyuan must have poured a lot of effort into collecting materials, which is also conceivable, and because of this, he quoted and transcribed a lot of them, and also gave us a glimpse of a lot of literature that has long been scattered, and this alone has made great contributions.
"Seven hundred miles from the Three Gorges, there are mountains on both sides of the strait, and there is no gap. Heavy rocks stacked on top of each other, hidden in the sky, from the non-pavilion midnight, not seeing the moon. As for the Xia Shui Xiang Mausoleum, it is blocked along the way. Or the king's order is urgently announced, sometimes the white emperor, twilight to Jiangling, in the middle of a thousand two hundred miles, although riding on the royal wind, not to the disease.
In the spring and winter, the green pool is turbulent and the reflection is cleared. There are many strange cypresses, hanging spring waterfalls, flying gargling, clear and lush, a lot of fun. Every sunny and early frost, the forest is cold and cold, and there are often tall apes roaring, which is miserably caused, and the empty valley is heard, and the mourning is long gone. Therefore, the fisherman's song is: The Three Gorges of Padang is long, and the apes sing three tears. ”
This is a beautiful passage of text describing the Three Gorges in the "Notes on the Water Classic", the writing is beautiful, the sentences are brilliant, not to say that it appears in scientific monographs, even if there are several people who write prose professionally, at least comparable to the prose liu Zongyuan's "Eight Records of Yongzhou".
At that time, I also memorized this "Three Gorges", and at that time I was amazed by his beautiful sentence, and then I could see from it that Li Bai's poem: "Between the clouds of the White Emperor, a thousand miles of Jiangling will return in one day." The apes on both sides of the strait could not stop crying, and the light boat had already passed through the Ten Thousand Heavy Mountains. It must have been born out of this poetic language of Li Daoyuan.
If xie Lingyun, who was also with him during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, was the originator of the Shanshui school of poetry, then this Li Daoyuan must have been the grandmaster of the pioneering landscape travels, and many literary scholars and poets in Chinese history, including Li Bai and Du Fu, all drew artistic nourishment from the "Shanshui Classic", and Su Dongpo also wrote in the poem "Sending Zhou Anru Tea": "I am happy and deep, and the Water Classics are also read many times", which shows the great influence of the "Shanshui Jing" noted by Li Daoyuan on future generations.
It cannot be said that modern people do not know Li Daoyuan, but can only say that they have a very incomplete understanding, just as we have always known only Yan Zhenqing as a calligrapher, and few people know that he is still a courtier, a loyal martyr who died at the hands of rebels for the loyalty of the country. Just like this Li Daoyuan, we only know his "Notes on the Water Classics", and as for the rest, everything is at a loss.
Guan Li Daoyuan's life, he was originally a scholar, a scholar, but fate let him enter the official field, embark on a career, and his fierce character let him enter the annals of history as a "cool official", and then led the war with the life of a warrior, and then was trapped by people and died at the hands of the rebels; fate made people, the sky did not take a holiday, in a chaotic world, there was no certain rule for life and death; whenever he thought of this, he could not help but sigh.
Fortunately, he has the "Notes on the Water Classic", which is enough, we can see from his words a pure heart that is as quiet as water and does not stain the hustle and bustle of the world, even if we do not know his former career as a horseman, do not understand the many bumps he has taken on the road to the official, do not know that he died heroically on the mountain; however, Li Daoyuan, these three words themselves are a monument, and his name will forever flow in the long river of history!