The influence of excavated documents from the pre-Qin and Han dynasties on the study of classical literature

In recent years, due to the continuous advancement of active or rescue excavation work and the successive appearance of a number of Jian Mu, the literature sorted out and published has mushroomed, such as Qinghua Jian, Guodian Chu Jian, Shangbo Chu Jian, Sleeping Tiger Land Qin Jian, Fang Ma Tan Qin Jian, Ma Wang Dui Shu shu and Beihan Han Jian, etc., this article is collectively referred to as the excavated documents. These excavated documents have promoted the development of Chinese philology, enabling us to have a deeper understanding of ancient Chinese characters, and at the same time, the excavated documents after interpretation (deciphering) have also had a great impact on related disciplines such as classical literature, philosophy, and history. This article discusses the important influence of the pre-Qin and Han dynasties on the study of classical literature by using old and new materials from the literature unearthed in the pre-Qin and Han dynasties.

When discussing the influence of excavated documents on the study of classical literature, academic circles often focus on the two major issues of "style" and "different texts". Those who study "style" are concerned about whether they can trace the origin of classical style through excavated documents. For example, when it comes to Han Fu, scholars often use the Warring States Xunzi's "Chengxiang" as the origin; when it comes to The Tang Dynasty's Zhiwei novels, they mostly use the Southern Dynasty Song Dynasty Liu Yiqing's "Record of the Underworld" as an indiscriminate reference. The above two views are almost certain in the history of literature, but after the publication of documents such as the Northern Han Dynasty Jian "Anti-Fornication", "Delusional Audit" and the Fangmatan Qin Jian "Dan", these documents not only supplemented the intermediate links from Xunzi to HanFu, but also pushed the origin of Zhiwei novels to the qin and Han dynasties.

Those who study "different texts" focus on using excavated documents to supplement and correct the documents passed down from generation to generation. For example, the re-reading of "Bi Huan in Li Min-like" in the Yi Zhou Shu by Qinghua Jian 's "Sacrifice Gong" to "Bi Huan, Jing Li, and Mao Ban" solved the academic suspense cases of thousands of years; for example, Guo Dianjian's "Lao Tzu" re-understood the "spoiled and frightened" in the heirloom "Lao Tzu" as "spoiled and honored". "Stylistic" is related to the definition of the nature of literary excavated documents, while "different texts" belong to the composition of content. At present, most of the literature unearthed in the literature category that has been published may produce the problem of "style" or "different texts" belongs to the three categories of "poetry", "historical biography" and "lexicon".

Deepen your understanding of the Book of Verses

Unearthed poems refer to texts of the same genre as the Book of Poetry. Recently, the Anda Jian "Book of Poetry" published in recent years, including the "Zhou Nan", "Zhao Nan", "Qin", "Qi" and so on in the "National Wind", a total of 57 pieces, but its arrangement is different from the "Mao Poems", Zheng Xuan's "Poetry Spectrum" and "Zuo Zhuan", reflecting that the composition of the pre-Qin "Book of Poetry" text may have multiple versions, different from the types familiar to traditional classics. A similar problem can be found in Shangbo Jian's Yi Shi, which contains two works in form and style, "Jiaojiao Mingwu" and "Multi-Salary", which are very close to the "Book of Poetry", which are likely to be scattered "Book of Poetry" texts. In this way, the "deletion of the "poem" that is traditionally used to honor The Hole may need to be corrected because of the appearance of excavated documents.

In addition, there are also some passages in the excavated literature that are similar in style to the Book of Poetry, such as Shangbojian's "Collecting Wind Repertoire" and QinghuaJian's "Qi Ye". The former belongs to the musical literature of Chudi during the Warring States period, recording the names of the music that belong to the five-tone music; the latter records the feasting and composing of the "Crickets" by the Duke of Zhou and the King of Zhou Wu, which is closely related to the "Book of Poetry, Tang Feng, Crickets". The above literature has important academic significance for the study of the origin and composition of the text of the Book of Poetry in the pre-Qin period, especially compared with the chuanshi version, there are a large number of "different texts" in the Anda Jian Book of Poetry, including differences in chapters and sentences, differences in words and sentences, and differences in word use, which are not only conducive to the study of language and writing, but also to the interpretation of the Book of Poetry. For example, Anda Jian 's "Zhou Nan Guan Ju" "Waist Lady", now this work is "Lady of the Waist". "Waist" is "slender waist", which is used to describe the appearance of women, which is more specific and clear than the old note to explain "good looks" to explain "窈窕".

In the excavated documents of the "Book of Poetry", we cannot ignore Shangbojian's "Treatise on the Poetry of Confucius". This text, including the "Preface" (An Overview of "Wind", "Ya", and "Ode") and the "Treatise on Poetry" (on "Ya" and "Ode"), is an important commentary on the Book of Poetry by pre-Qin Confucians, and once published, it attracted the attention of scholars. Scholars pay special attention to "poetic theory" and "genre", and Gein's "Treatise on the Poetry of Confucius" is considered to be a posthumous remembrance of the content of Confucius's poetry by Confucius disciples. This text makes a short, in-depth, and repeated progressive exposition of the poems contained therein, and the concise text more directly records Confucius's arguments such as "poetry does not depart from the zhi, music does not depart from the feelings, and the text does not depart from the words", among which "poetry does not depart from the zhi", which is more interesting than the "poetry of the "Poetry Of the Preface", which shows the meaning of literary language. In addition, the order of the poems of Confucius poetry is not found in the present edition, providing direct and reliable evidence for researchers to understand and study the Book of Poetry.

Present the narrative of historical documents

The excavated historical documents refer to historical essays similar to "Zuo Zhuan", "Chinese", and "Warring States Policy", such as Shangbo Jian 'Zhao Wang's Destruction of the Chamber's Room', Cambodia's Great King Po Chan", "Jing Gong Malaria", "Zheng Zi Family Funeral", Qinghua Jian 's "Lineage Year", "Lady Zheng Wu's Rules and Widows", "Jin Wen Gong into Jin", "Yue Gong Qi", Ma Wangdui Shu "Spring and Autumn Affairs" and Northern Han Jian "Zhao Zheng Shu", etc., which are abundant in number. Although historical documents are mainly based on recording historical materials, they can promote the historical and social research of the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, but they can also use this to study the "literary narrative" and "constitutive context" of similar texts. Yu Jiaxi mentioned in the "General Rules of Ancient Books" that "fu quotes ancient people do not have to be false, and it is difficult to set up metaphors to be true... As for the use of the sons, just like the poet's luck, Gou helps the article, and does not ask whether it is true or false", it can be seen that "ancient books are more made up of stories", different stories may have the same "archetype", and the plot is only the author's reasoning to propagate, not necessarily true. Wang Chong of the Eastern Han Dynasty also mentions in his "Treatise on Balance": "The commentators think that the metaphor is added, so that the matter is lost, and the sincerity (extinction) does not exist; the twists and turns are frustrated, so that the falsehood is spread endlessly." ”

Similar narratives are common in such literature. For example, Shangbojian's "The Destruction of the Chamber of king Zhao" records the story of the people of the Chu state who hoped to bury their parents together in the palace of King Chu Zhao, and similar records are found in the present "Yanzi Spring and Autumn", one is the "Jinggongtai Sleeping Platform Chengfeng Yu He Wishes to Bury Yan Zi Zhi And Xu" in the "Outer Chapter", and the second is "Jing Gong Tai Cheng Bon Cheng Xiang "Zhaowang Destroys the Room" is a Chu text, and "Yanzi Chunqiu" is a Qi text, the two stories are very similar, may be the narrative tradition of the Warring States period, by transforming the "mother book (prototype)", the characters are replaced by familiar characters in the country (the place), so that the author can make an argument.

Similar phenomena are also such as ShangBojian's "Jing gong malaria" and the "New Order" in "Zhongxingyin will die, but to summon him too blessed, and want to add guilt", the stories are that the above-level people ("Qi Jinggong" and "Zhongxingyin") hope to alleviate the illness by punishing Wu Zhu, but they are advised and stopped by their subordinates ("Yanzi" and "Zhu Jian") to convey the Confucian way of benevolence. Another example is Shangbojian's "Lupin Great Drought" and "Yanzi Chunqiu", "Jing Gong Wants to Worship Lingshan Hebo pray for rain Yanzi Advice", the story begins with the hope of relieving the drought by praying for rain ("Lu Aigong" and "Qi Jinggong"), but stopping people ("Confucius" and "Yanzi"), thus showing that we should focus on cultivating virtue rather than escaping the problem through witch blessings. The authors of such texts use fictional plots to modify "story archetypes" to convey Confucianism, showing a strong warning significance.

In addition to being able to study classical literature, philology, and linguistics, a large number of "different texts" in historical documents can also discuss the context of the narrative tradition and the flow of story archetypes in the pre-Qin period. If we do not interpret it in the narrative style of literature, but directly look at it in terms of historical materials, we will not only ignore the shape and meaning of the text, but also construct biased historical facts. For example, the Northern Han Dynasty Jian Zhao Zhengshu called "YingZheng" "Zhao Zheng", reduced him to the rank of prince of the Warring States, and recorded that Qin Shi Huang was located in Huhai, not Fusu. Its content is different from that contained in the "Records of History", so some researchers believe that the "Book of Zhao Zheng" contains historical facts that have not been transformed by Sima Qian. However, this kind of statement ignores the exaggerated and untrue narratives in the "Book of Zhao Zheng", and it is easy to make wrong judgments if it is classified as historical materials on this basis alone.

In addition to being comparable with the present version, some of the excavated documents of history also have differences in manuscripts, which can be cross-referenced, such as Shangbojian 's "Zheng Zi Family Funeral" (A and B ben), "Tianzi Jianzhou" (A and B ben) and "Chengwang for Chengpu's Journey" (A and Bben), etc.; some contents can be merged into one, such as "Chengwang for Chengpu's Trip", scholars mostly compile B simplified texts into Jiaben, believing that it is caused by different chapters of the same text; some highlight the differences in word habits, such as "ZhengZi Family Funeral", Some scholars believe that the first book is copied and completed after proofreading on the basis of the B version, so the B book has many mistypes, unstable use of words and out-of-text phenomena. Such documents are of special and precious value for the study of the textual transcription and writing habits of the Warring States of Chu.

Promote the study of the origin and formation of lexical styles

The literature unearthed by the lexicon class refers to texts with genres close to Chu Ci or Han Fu, such as Shangbo Jian 'Fan Xiang's Form', "Li Song", "Lan Fu", "The Rise of the Emperor", and the Northern Han Han Jian 'Anti-Obscenity', "Delusional" and so on. It is generally believed that the collation and naming of the "Chu Ci" began with Liu Xiang in the Western Han Dynasty, including the works of Qu Yuan, Song Yu and others, and later wang Yi of the Eastern Han Dynasty compiled the "Chu Ci Chapters and Sentences", and Liu Xiangben lost it. However, in Ban Gu's Book of Han and Yiwen zhi, styles such as Chu Ci are classified as "Poetry Endowments", which shows that in the Concept of the Han People, the endowment includes not only Xunzi's Yongwu endowment, Lu Jia's reasoning endowment, but also the lyrical endowment of Qu Yuan and others.

"All Forms of Flow" is a rhyming text, the first half is mostly question sentences, talking about the nature of the universe, life and death gods and ghosts and other worldly conditions, is the author's question about these natural phenomena; the second half is a direct sentence, with "Tao" as the law of the monarch's "self-cultivation", believing that "Observing the Tao" can reach the highest realm of rule by doing nothing. The author uses a series of questions between the lines, so some scholars have looked at the "Fan Xiang Form" and the "Heavenly Question" in unison, which in turn has led to an academic discussion on whether this part belongs to the Chu Ci class (or endowment). However, whether this is agreed or not, "Fan Xiang Zhi" as a rare pre-Qin long rhyme, can be used for us to study the origin and formation of related genres.

Compared with "Fan Logistics Form", the four articles of "There is an Emperor Rising", "Li Song", "Lan Fu", and "Partridge" are obvious Chu cihua. "Rise of the Emperor" is likely to be composed by the upper class scholars of the Chu State at the end of the Warring States period, because he served as a bodyguard for educating the children of the nobles, he felt the turmoil of the political situation at that time, coupled with the slander of the villains, so there was this work; it not only expressed the love and love for the students' fists and fists, but also revealed indignation, which had the charm of Qu Yuan's works. "Li Song" and "Lan Fu" are poets singing "Li Shu" and "Lan", expressing their own hearts. Through the contrast of "official tree (tung tree) and wood alien (plum tree)", "Li Song" highlights that although Li Shu is snubbed and excluded, he can be single-minded, keep his toughness and not sway with the world's wind, showing the poet's "gentleman" mentality of pursuing noble character. "Lan Fu" starts with "Lan", and through the expression of Lan's character, expresses the poet's emotions and aspirations: the orchid flower falls without losing its fragrance, and although it is denigrated by its neighbors, it can be praised in all directions. "Lan Fu" praises Lan as much as Qu Yuan's "Leaving sorrow". "The Pelican" starts with "owl", accusing the villain of not getting it for nothing, and the expression method is the same as the traditional literary work "Satire gentleman villain leads vanilla evil bird as a comparison".

The above literature makes extensive use of the mood word "兮", which has obvious Chu cipher characteristics, but the sentence form is mostly used interactively between four-word sentences and five-character sentences, and has not yet been fixed as a typical five-word sentence or six-word sentence. In addition, "Lan Fu" pays attention to the battle, and many consecutive texts use synonymous or synonymous characters, such as "Maofeng", "Remnant Thief", "Preparation", "Covenant Frugality", "Comparison", etc., so some scholars believe that the beauty of this endowment rhetoric, the clarity of the words and sentences, is not inferior to Qu Yuan and Song Yu's works.

As for the fragments of "Tang Lefu" excavated from the Han Tomb in Yinqueshan, Linyi, Shandong in 1972, some scholars believe that it is the first han fu, but for Song Yu's previous fu works, their genre and form should be inconsistent. In addition, is XunZi's "Chengxiang" an endowment? How did "riot body endowment" evolve into "word endowment"? What is the line between the "gift of the poet" and the "gift of the writer"? Many related questions may be answered through the excavated literature of lexicography.

Northern Han Jian's "Delusional" and "Anti-Obscenity" are longer endowments. "Delusional Audit" is "nonsense", Han Fu often named virtual characters (such as Mr. Wu You, Dead Is Gong, etc.), this fu narrates the story of the Western Han Dynasty celebrities (Zhou Chun) and his wife (delusional), intended to express the improper behavior of "jealous women" and reflect the social problems of "women's jealousy" in the Qin and Han Dynasties. "Anti-fornication" is composed of a dialogue between "soul" and "魄", intended to oppose excessive indulgence of desires, and its content is mostly consistent with the "Seven Hairs" of the Multiplication, so some scholars believe that although the two are independent chapters, they should be related, and the content of "Anti-Fornication" is more trivial, and its production time should be earlier than that of "Seven Hairs", and "Seven Hairs" is a re-editing classification of "Anti-Fornication".

The writing era of "Delusional" and "Anti-Obscenity" is mainly in the late Han Wudi period, and the lower limit is not later than that of Emperor Xuan of Han, but some of the glyphs have the style of the Qin Dynasty, and scholars have analyzed that their bases may have originated in the early Western Han Dynasty. After its excavation, "Delusion" was regarded as the earliest and longest "ancient novel" on the mainland, but after collation and research, the academic circles changed it to the category of customary endowment in Hanfu, so that the history of secular endowment was pushed forward by more than half a century compared with the time identified when the "Shen Wufu" was excavated from the Western Han Tomb in Yinwan, Jiangsu Province in 1993 (during the YuanYan period of the Western Han Dynasty).

The content of excavated documents is not necessarily equivalent to the documents handed down from generation to generation, but it can enable us to start from new materials and new viewpoints, explore the origin and reconstruction of related texts, and promote the study of literary history. It should be noted that the use of the "double evidence" of excavated and handed down documents for research cannot arbitrarily assign ancient glyphs and distort the meaning of words, let alone change the classic characters and overturn the case. The correct approach is to subordinate the script through the "historical comparison method", after all, "there are ancient and modern times, and there are north and south in the land", and the language and writing have their own changes, and it is necessary to use a dialectical point of view to cooperate with the knowledge of linguistics, classical literature and other disciplines to study. Neither the ancient law nor the present nor the present can accurately represent the academic value of the indigenous literature.

(This paper is a phased result of the Fujian Provincial Science Planning Project "Sorting and Research on The Collation and Research of Numerical Words in the Early Western Han Dynasty" (FJ2019C061))

(Author Affilications:College of Literature, Fujian Normal University)

Edit: Zong Yue