Cao Xueqin of the Qing Dynasty worked hard for ten years to complete the literary version of "Stone Record", and the scientific version of "Stone Record" was born as early as the Song Dynasty.
From ancient times to the present, stones as materials have been quoted and borrowed from various literary works, and there are many literary works on stones in ancient China, and the original name of "Dream of the Red Chamber" in the four famous works is called "Stone Record"; the protagonist Sun Wukong in "Journey to the West" also burst out from a spirit stone on the Huaguo Mountain in Dongsheng Shenzhou.
However, scientific research and writing on stones are seriously about the Song Dynasty. Among them, the first scientific version of the "Stone Record" that has been preserved to this day was completed by a county official in the Song Dynasty for several years...
Can Shi Yan really fly? Bullshit!
In the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, when Ling Du Xie of Ningbo County, Zhejiang Province, was reading the "Notes on the Water Classics" written by the Northern Wei scientist Li Daoyuan, he saw a record of swallow-shaped stones on Qishan Mountain in Qiyang County, Hunan Province, competing to fly during heavy rains, and immediately became suspicious. "Although swallows can fly, how can a stone swallow that has become a fossil fly?" He was a man who liked to figure things out, and he also liked to collect all kinds of stones and record them by color, shape, smoothness, etc.
After searching for doubts and information was fruitless, Du Xuan decided to conduct a field trip. He trekked thousands of mountains and rivers to the mountainside of Qishan Mountain, and saw that there was really a bat-like stone attached to the rock wall, and these palm-sized things were the stone swallows described in the "Notes on the Water Classics". Du Xuan managed to climb the stone wall and use a knife to carve marks on some of the stone swallows in order to determine whether they would fly.
Stone swallows that can be medicated. (Network Diagram)
Du Xie lived in a cave under the rock for a few days, and when it rained, he found that there was not a single flying stone swallow. Later, he went several times, and by chance, he found a stone swallow with a mark engraved under the rock wall. After many careful observations, it was found that the original location of this stone swallow was near the outside of the rock wall, and it fell to the ground after the sun and rain, not that it was written in the book that it did not return to the nest in time after the rain. Back in the county, he recorded the phrase "(Shi Yan) cold and heat hit and burst down" and used it in subsequent stone monographs.
Love stone can have a way? Find out more!
Du Xuan, who called himself a resident of Yunlin, was from a prominent family in Shanyin, Yuezhou (present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang), and was in the same village as the great poet Lu You. His ancestors were the great Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu; his grandfather was Du Yan, the chancellor of the Northern Song Dynasty, who was a vassal of Fan Zhongyan; his father was an official in the capital, and his uncle Su Shunqin was a literary scholar at that time.
In such a family situation, Du Xuan, who was born at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, has been knowledgeable since childhood, and has the opportunity to travel through famous mountains and rivers to increase his insight. During his travels, he developed a keen interest in various strange stones. After experiencing the pain of the war between the two Song Dynasties, he looked forward to the rare peace of the early Southern Song Dynasty. The capital Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou, Zhejiang) not only became the first choice for dignitaries to buy property, but also gave birth to the taste of literati such as appreciating stones, hiding stones and playing with stones.
It is no accident that the two Song dynasty literati loved the stone. Stone culture sprouted from the Sui and Tang dynasties to the heyday of the Song Dynasty. Among the emperors, the stone lovers are represented by emperor Huizong of the Northern Song Dynasty. Beginning in 1117, in order to repair The Banzai Mountain (also known as Gongyue), he used thousands of manpower to transport the beautiful Taihu Stone and other "crossing the sea and crossing the river" to the capital city of Bieliang, which was the "Huashi Gang Incident" that caused the uprisings of Fang La and Song Jiang. What is good on the top will be worse for the bottom. Most of the intellectuals at that time liked stones, and some even loved stones. The chancellor Su Shi (Zi Dongpo) preferred naturally formed strange stones, collecting them while writing poems and essays to send sentiments. The calligrapher Mi Fu (ZiYuan Zhang) loves stones and loves Yan into madness, calling the stones in his home "Lao Zhang", sometimes called "Mi Qian", which has also become a good story. In this context, there have been some articles on stones in the Tibetan stone community, such as Mi Fu's "History of Yan" and Chang Mao's "Xuanhe Stone Spectrum".
Su Shi's collection of snow wave stones. (Network Diagram)
Du Xuan, who was promoted to the rank of Ningbo County, was also treated as an important matter while collecting stones and writing works. After reading through various works on stones, he found that these books were mainly "rockery clear play" for temporary entertainment and could not be circulated for a long time. After much thought, he decided to take a different path, starting with the description of the characteristics of the representative stone, for future generations.
However, he knew very well that in order to complete such a work that inherits the past and the future, it is certainly not possible for people to follow the clouds and copy from the east to the west, and what he has to do is to follow the principle of seeking truth from facts, and he must go deep into the scene when he should investigate. Therefore, this is the story of the previous article that he went to Qishan alone to observe Shi Yan and finally clarified the misunderstanding.
Famous works plus titles? A perfect match!
After years of research and investigation, Du Xie finally completed a two-volume monograph on stone in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, "Yunlin Stone Spectrum". The book is about 14,000 words, describing 116 kinds of stones in detail in terms of origin, shape, color, percussion sound, texture, etc. As recognized by the industry as the richest content of the Song Dynasty, it is also the earliest surviving scientific version of the "Stone Record", the biggest highlight of the content of this book is the scientific description of various types of stones and minerals, and the description is the most detailed four points of "color, sound, hardness and grain". For example, in order to distinguish the hardness of the stone, the book first created 8 refined description grades such as "very soft, slightly soft, slightly firm, not very strong, and firm"; in order to distinguish the thickness of the stone surface, the stone was divided into 11 levels such as "rough and boring, dry, quite coarse, slightly coarse, slightly coarse".
Photocopy of the Stone Spectrum of Yunlin. (Network Diagram)
In addition, the Yunlin Stone Genealogy is extremely professional and forward-looking in the record of fossils. The book uses personal experience to point out that the stone swallow is a fossil of the shell of a marine brachiopod and clarifies the misunderstanding of the legend. At the same time, he pointed out that the cause of fish fossils is "broken and obtained, and there are many fish shapes... Is it not the ancient Pi Ze fish born in it, because the mountains have been decadent for a long time, and the soil has condensed into stone, and it has caused it to be destroyed. Regarding the formation theory of fish fossils, the Western scientist Steynu only published an article in 1669 to confirm it, more than 500 years later than the "Yunlin Stone Spectrum" record. In this respect, Du is a well-deserved geologist and mineralogist.
Fish fossils (network diagram)
Soon after the birth of the Yunlin Stone Spectrum, Jian Ben was passed on to the hands of the Great Rukong Of Qufu, Shandong. Kong Chuan was the 46th generation grandson of the great thinker Confucius, who was proficient in the study of Yixue and was an official of the Southern Song Dynasty Court. He found that the book was of great scientific value and beautiful writing, so he gladly wrote the preface and printed it for distribution. This preface begins with "The Essence of Heaven and Earth, and the Knot is a Stone", giving the stone a super high positioning: the essence of heaven and earth, the epitome of the mountain. Next, the text cites examples such as Li Deyu Aishi, the chancellor of the Tang Dynasty. Li Deyu liked and collected stones in addition to his work, and built the first professional stone viewing club in China's history, Pingquan Villa. Finally, the importance of stone collection is explained. The whole article shows a very deep literary foundation. Du Xuan's famous works and Kong Chuan's name sequence are a perfect match, and they are passed down as a good story in the Tibetan stone world.
A masterpiece? nature!
After the advent of the prefaced edition of the Yunlin Stone Genealogy, Kong Chuanjia was valued by people and successively included in the "Yimen Guangmu", "The Collection of Insufficient Knowledge", "Xuejin Discussion", "Zhejiang Collection of Testaments" and other books. Since the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, the local chronicles of Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, have recorded parts of the "Stone Genealogy of Yunlin". The Qing Dynasty officials revised the "Siku Quanshu", and the compilers believed that "that is, it is beneficial to the front, more zealous than the qihou", and included it in the "Sub-Division Genealogy Category" of the whole book, and other stone genealogies were "cut and not loaded". This can be said to be the highest recognition of the "Yunlin Stone Spectrum". In addition, the "Yunlin Stone Spectrum" was valued by experts in the stone appreciation industry after the Song Dynasty, the more famous of which was the Ming Dynasty scientist Lin Youlin. Based on the "Yunlin Stone Genealogy", he created the first picture book genealogy "Suyuan Stone Genealogy", which was passed on to future generations.
Cover and photocopy of the "Stone Notation of Suyuan". (Network Diagram)
Stone research has no borders, so the "Yunlin Stone Spectrum" has also had a great influence abroad. The modern American writer Xue Aihua made special research and translation of this book, and introduced it to the West in detail in the 1940s, while the stone appreciation and geological circles in South Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia and other countries and regions still regard "Yunlin Stone Spectrum" as a classic. The most proud thing is that the famous British scientist Joseph Needham mentioned the "Yunlin Stone Spectrum" three times in his huge work "History of Science and Technology in China", one of which preached: "(Song Dynasty) there was a whole set of books on stones and minerals, some of which are incomplete to this day, but Du Xuan's "Yunlin Stone Spectrum" has been preserved intact... [This book] embodies a spirit of observation and analysis that is missing from European writings. Presumably, this sentence was also what Du Xuan, who had found another way to write the world's first "Stone Record", wanted to hear the most.
Author: Wei Deyong