Author: Guo Youwei Unit: School of Marxism, Zhongkai Agricultural Engineering College
The knowledge of biology in ancient China developed into the Two Song Dynasties, and gradually separated from the original knowledge categories to form the "birds, animals, plants and trees" science. This is related to the differentiation of knowledge and the increase in books, and one of the important manifestations is the emergence of a large number of botanical monographs represented by flower genealogies. Combing through the Song Dynasty's "grass and wood" monographs, you can get at least 41 kinds of monographs in this field, and you can find that Ouyang Xiu, Lu You and other scholars played an important role in promoting the development of "grass and wood" science, and their way of pursuing natural knowledge has left valuable historical materials for future generations.
Luoyang Sui Tang City Ruins Botanical Garden Ouyang Xiu and "Luoyang Peony Record" sculpture
Write a record of creative examples
The earliest genealogies are closely related to the records of genealogies and genealogies, and later people began to use this style to record different types of things. Writing a record of plant genealogy is not the first of its kind in the Song Dynasty, as early as the Wei and Jin Dynasties, there were botanical monographs ("Bamboo Spectrum", "Wei Wang Huamu Zhi", "Southern Grass and Wood", etc.), and there were also flower monographs in the Tang Dynasty ("Hundred Flower Genealogy", "Flower Classic", etc.). However, from the perspective of quantity and quality, the botanical monographs of the Song Dynasty are far ahead of the previous generation, especially the flower tree. Since the 1960s, scholars such as Wang Yuhu and Amano Gennosuke have conducted in-depth research on ancient Chinese agricultural books, including the Flower Genealogy of the Song Dynasty, and sorted out 41 flower monographs involving seven major categories such as peony, chrysanthemum, peony, orchid, plum blossom, begonia, and jade flower. Most of the authors of these flower scores are from the scholar group, including many famous scholar leaders such as Ouyang Xiu ("Luoyang Peony"),Lu You ("Tianpeng Peony Spectrum"), Fan Chengda ("Fancun Plum Spectrum", "FanCun Ju Spectrum"), and Zhou Bida ("Tang Chang Yurui Dialectics"). They jointly participated in the grand event and passed on the torch, recording the prosperity of the flowers in the Song Dynasty, so that future generations can see the beauty of the flowers more than 1,000 years ago.
Of course, when Ouyang Xiu, Lu You and other scholars wrote flower genealogies, they no longer just focused on the poetry of their predecessors who appreciated flowers, but recorded the planting techniques and variety changes, so that the literary color of the genealogy faded and the scientific and practical colors gradually became stronger, such as Ouyang Xiu's "Luoyang Peony Record" is to detail the planting and irrigation, detail the peony flowers and explain the origin of the flower names one by one. This style of writing became the formula for writing flower monographs. Lu You's "Tianpeng Peony Spectrum" is "all imitation of The Book of Europe". Wang Guan's "Yangzhou Peony Medicine Spectrum" is also similar to ou Ji's style, and the style tends to be the same - Ouyang Xiu's "Luoyang Peony Record" details the planting and irrigation, and Wang Guan's "Yangzhou Peony Medicine Spectrum" also has more ink on the cultivation and transplantation technology of peony; Ouyang Xiu lists 24 kinds of peony flowers, and Wang Guan also ranks 31 kinds of peony flowers in order. In addition, Wang Guan also mentioned in the score that "the details of the luoyang soil wind have been found in the record of the present-day Ouyang Gong, and this is not repeated." It shows that Wang Shi had read the Luoyang Peony Book before writing the score, and it is likely that he wrote the peony medicine recipe under the influence of Ou Shi's writing style.
Lu You's "Tianpeng Peony Spectrum" book shadow
Record changes
Scholars in the flower catalog focused on recording some of the flower varieties of changes, which can be seen that thanks to the more systematic cultivation technology, the artificial planting of flowers in the Song Dynasty achieved remarkable results. For example, judging from the peony varieties recorded in Ouyang Xiu's "Luoyang Peony Record" and Zhou Shihou's "Luoyang Peony Record", the peony species in the Luoyang area of Henan Province increased from 24 species in 1031 AD (Ouyang Xiu's "Luoyang Peony Record") to 109 species recorded in 1081 AD (Zhou Shihou's "Luoyang Flower and Wood Record"), and the varieties more than quadrupled in the past fifty years and fine products continued to emerge. In addition to Luoyang, other areas of Henan are also rich in peonies. Zhang Bangji recorded in the "Records of Peony in Chenzhou" that the peony varieties in the Chenzhou area are constantly exquisite, and a single product of "wisps of gold" has attracted everyone to stop and watch. To a certain extent, this shows that during the Northern Song Dynasty, the technology of cultivating peonies in Henan became increasingly sophisticated. Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions are also the main peony-producing areas, and the first peony special genealogy in the mainland (Zhongxiu's "Peony Flowers in Yuezhong") was born here. According to the record, there were 32 varieties of peonies in the early Song Dynasty. During the Qing calendar year, the peony monograph "Qing Li Hua Pin" was also born in this place, "with the forty-two products of sheng fan in Wu Zhong". Extending further west from the Jiangnan region, peonies in the Sichuan region also flourished during the Song Dynasty. Judging from the peony varieties recorded in Lu You's "Tianpeng Peony Spectrum" (66 species), the peonies in the Tianpeng area of Sichuan are comparable to Luoyang in the Northern Song Dynasty.
The Henan region of the Northern Song Dynasty was also a place where chrysanthemums were produced, and Shi Zhu described the chrysanthemum varieties in Henan with the title of "Yudi Species" in the "Hundred Chrysanthemums Collection". At that time, in the Luoyang region of Henan, flower farmers cultivated a wide variety of chrysanthemums. Written in the last year of the Northern Song Dynasty (1104), the "Liu's Chrysanthemum Spectrum" can be said to have set a precedent for the chrysanthemum spectrum of the mainland, mainly recording 35 chrysanthemum varieties in luoyang, which is 9 more than the chrysanthemum species listed by Zhou Shihou (26 species in Luoyang Flowers and Trees). In the Southern Song Dynasty, with the southward shift of the political center, chrysanthemums in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions were fully developed. Judging from the varieties of chrysanthemums recorded in the special genealogies passed down from generation to generation ("Shi's Chrysanthemum Spectrum", "Fancun Chrysanthemum Spectrum", and "Hundred Chrysanthemum Collection Spectrum"), the chrysanthemums in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions during the Southern Song Dynasty showed a beautiful scenery of hundreds of chrysanthemums.
Compared with peonies and chrysanthemums, which were able to form planting areas in the north and south, peony flowers were mainly concentrated in the Yangzhou area at that time. Liu Fei's "Peony Medicine Spectrum" divides the 31 kinds of peony medicines in Yangzhou into seven grades, while the 33 kinds of peony flowers recorded in Kong Wuzhong's "Peony Medicine Spectrum" are the results of the author's field investigation and visit, and he lists the names of these peony medicines one by one, and explains their color, shape, etc. in detail. On the basis of the second spectrum, Wang Guan's "Yangzhou Peony Medicine Spectrum" added eight new products (39 kinds), which was the most at that time. In the spectrum, According to the more scientific classification method, Wang Shi started from the two aspects of flower color and flower shape, and listed in detail the 8 kinds of flowers he had newly obtained.
Describe the customs and folklore
The scholars also recorded some customs and customs in the floral genealogy, so that we can get a glimpse of the folk customs and social culture of the society in the two Song Dynasties. During the Song Dynasty, flower appreciation became a mass cultural activity, and women, children, and children were loved by all ages. The general love of the masses stimulated the planting of flowers, so that the planting of flowers into a prosperous period, the formation of an independent planting industry nationwide, the emergence of the main peony production areas such as the Chenzhou area in Henan and the Tianpeng area in Sichuan, and the planting area was also expanding. Zhang Bangji directly described the planting area of peony in "Chen Zhou Peony Record", "The garden household plants flowers, such as planting millets, and moves in counts." Lu You also recorded in the "Tianpeng Peony Spectrum" that the flower households in the Tianpeng area "looked at each other". The increasing number of flowers and the increasing variety of flowers made the hairpin flower a common folk activity in the Song Dynasty. Ouyang Xiu recorded in the "Luoyang Peony Record", "The customs of Luoyang are mostly good flowers. In spring, there are no nobles in the city, and no one in the city arranges flowers, even if it is a burden." Wang Guan's "Yangzhou Peony Medicine Spectrum" also said, "The people of Yang are no different from Xiluo, and all nobles like to wear flowers." Judging from the time recorded in the two special genealogies, in the early Northern Song Dynasty, Luoyang, Yangzhou, one north and one south, and the hairpin flower has become a common practice in the cities of the Song Dynasty. In the folklore of the Song Dynasty, there were also flowers. During the Song Dynasty, most of the flower offerings were made by the people to the officials, and Hu Yuanqian recorded it in the "Peony Record". Once the flowers were sacrificed to their superiors or the imperial family by local officials, they became tribute flowers, Hu Yuanqian said, "(Song Jingwen) Gong was in Shu for four years, and each flower was taken according to its name, and Pengzhou sent flowers, which became a story." This kind of tribute also allowed the "wax sealed fruit stalk" invented by the Sui Dynasty to be used on the tribute flower, and Ouyang Xiu recorded the specific practice of "wax sealed peony stalk" in the "Luoyang Peony Record" to preserve the freshness and incense.
Whether it is Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge or Peter Burke's History of the Society of Knowledge, its bibliography conveys to the reader the message that the text or book carrying knowledge is formed in continuous construction. Readers reading these texts or books should not only know what is "what" in the text or book, but also know "why" the text or book was formed at that time. This should be the significance of the study of the history of knowledge with "knowledge" as the object of investigation. Flower monographs are a concentrated summary of the long-term experience and knowledge of Chinese ancestors in ornamental and use of flowers, reflecting the basic situation of the understanding, development and utilization of ornamental plants represented by flowers in Song Dynasty society. The scholars were in the middle of it, some of them were the local rulers, presumably also the direct planners and participants of this cultural feast, and they wrote this cultural phenomenon into a special spectrum so that future generations could see the flourishing scene of the flowers of the Song Dynasty.
On the other hand, recording the evolution of knowledge presented in flower monographs such as chrysanthemums and peonies is an aspect of the naturalistic transformation of the Song Dynasty, and also a footnote to the changes in spiritual and cultural history. Naturalism is the intellectual basis of the spiritual beliefs and cultural scholarship of the ancient ancestors. Judging from the content of botanical monographs, Confucian scholars such as Ouyang Xiu and Lu You have a more conscious sense of naturalism, and the way of pursuing knowledge is constantly changing. As Zheng Qiao, a southern Song Dynasty man, said, "Most of the Confucians did not know the things in the field, and the farmers did not know the purpose of the poems and books, and the two had no reason to participate, so that the learning of birds, animals, plants and trees was not passed on." In Zheng's view, the study of birds, animals, plants and trees belongs to the field, and the way to obtain knowledge is to seek verification in the natural world of the field farm on the one hand, and on the other hand, to participate in classic documents such as "Poetry" and "Book". Shi Zhengzhi, the author of "Shi Shi Ju Genealogy", made a fair judgment on whether the chrysanthemum had fallen into the English from the aspects of participating in the literature and paying attention to practice. A similar example is Zhou Bida, although his "Tang Chang Yurui Dialectic" is still mostly a reference to the literature of his predecessors, but there is also the author's actual investigation, "to give a book to the Self-Zhao Yin Temple, the vine is like a mushroom, the winter withers and spring glory ... Among them, don't draw a ying, stand out on the whiskers, scattered into more than ten rui, just carved Yuran, the flower name yurui lies in this." From the way Shi Zhengzhi, Zhou Bida and others explored plant knowledge, it may be shown that with the rise of Song Studies in the Song Dynasty, their spirit and method of exploring metaphysical righteousness greatly enhanced the depth of Confucianism's thinking, and also changed the way they pursued natural knowledge, making them feel responsible for exploring strange plants or questionable plants mentioned by the ancients. This way of exploring natural knowledge is obviously different from the purpose of Western natural scientists to study and summarize the laws of nature in order to understand the nature of natural species.
Guangming Daily (2022.01.21.16 edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily