In middle school, we all studied the article "Lanting Collection", and the world's evaluation of this article was extremely high, known as "the first line of the world". As we all know, the author of this article is Wang Xizhi, a famous calligrapher in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
Wang Xizhi's calligraphy is extremely high, as early as the Eastern Jin Dynasty, his calligraphy works are very famous, with allusions to "three points into the wood" and "books into geese", his works in addition to the "Orchid Pavilion Collection", as well as "Qing Ti when the Snow Is Fast" and so on.
As we all know, the authentic handwriting of Wang Xizhi's calligraphy has long been lost. Why are such excellent calligraphy works now gone? And no collection remains to this day?
There are two reasons for civil damage and royal damage.
Civilian damage.
In the early days, Wang Xizhi's works attracted some citizens to pursue the collection, which is not a bad thing, on the contrary, this behavior is also conducive to the preservation of his authentic works.
However, it was not until the end of the Eastern Jin Dynasty that Huan Xuan, the son of Sima Huanwen, appeared, which made all this change dramatically. He was a loyal fan of Wang Xizhi and collected a large number of Wang Xizhi's authentic works, and was later hunted down and killed for his vain attempt to usurp the throne, and as a result, when he fled to the Yangtze River, he threw Wang Xizhi's calligraphy into the river and destroyed it with the psychology of revenge. This is the era when Wang Xizhi's works and authentic works exist the most, and it is also the period when Wang Xizhi's authentic works have suffered the greatest loss.
Royal damage.
More than a thousand years ago, during the reign of Emperor Wu of Liang, in his collection, there were many calligraphy works of the "Two Kings" (there were seventy-eight books, seven hundred and sixty-seven volumes), at that time Wang Xizhi's calligraphy was rare and very widespread, and his son Emperor Liang Yuandi, when the capital was about to be attacked by Western Wei, also thought of huan Xuan hundreds of years ago, and burned hundreds of thousands of volumes of calligraphy and painting classics, including countless authentic works of Wang Xi.
During the Sui Dynasty Emperor's reign, he brought calligraphy and paintings with him when he toured Jiangnan, but the boat carrying the calligraphy and painting overturned in the canal and destroyed another batch.
Tang Taizong liked to collect Wang Xizhi the most, and almost snatched up the works of Wang Xizhi's father and son in the folk, and he transported the scavenged works from the Yellow River to Chang'an against the current, and when the Sanmenxia boat overturned, he destroyed a batch of them in a concentrated manner.
Then in the era of Wu Zetian, Zhang Yizhi stole a large number of works, and after Zhang Yizhi was cursed, he went to Xue Ji's hands, and later, Xue Ji was afraid of being discovered by Wu Zetian and burned it himself, including the Orchid Pavilion Preface.
In short, through so many times of destruction, such an excellent work has disappeared into the long river of history, and it is indeed very regrettable. But don't worry too much, because it is difficult to preserve the paper artifacts of calligraphy.