Author 丨 Ma Jiaqin
Edited by 丨 Wu Youren
On November 2, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted in sync with Weibo. He first wrote the word "Humankind" in English, and then quoted an ancient poem Chinese:
Boiled beans burning beans,
Beans cry in the kettle.
Ben is born from the same root,
Phase frying Ho too urgent!
The content is simple, with no context and no specific context. Musk's tweet quickly turned into a guessing game on social media. Some say it may be related to Musk's forced donation by the United Nations Food Programme, while others say it may be mocking the Democratic Party's new tax policy against the wealthy.
In contrast, the focus of the author's attention is a bit off: almost all Chinese media report the news, saying that "Musk quoted Cao Zhi's "Seven Steps Poem"", but the ancient poem "Boiled Beans Burning Beans" was not written by Cao Zhi.
"Seven Steps Poem" is not Cao Zhi's work, in fact, it is a literary common sense.
The poem is not found in Chen Shou's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, nor in Pei Songzhi's notes to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The earliest record of the poem is the notebook novel "The New Language of the World" written by Liu Yiqing, a scholar of the Southern Dynasty and Song Dynasty, the original text of which is:
"Emperor Wen (Cao Pi) tried to order King Dong'a (Cao Zhi) to compose a poem in seven steps, and those who did not succeed in practicing Dafa should be called poems: boiled beans are held as soup, and wet is thought to be juice. The beans burned under the kettle, and the beans wept in the kettle. Ben was born from the same root, and he was too anxious to fry. The emperor is deeply ashamed. ”
At that time, it had been more than two hundred years since Cao Zhi's death.
Especially importantly, the seven-step poem is also not found in the Cao Zhi Collection.
Before his death, Cao Zhi compiled his own collection of works, "Seventy-eight Articles for the First Record"; the Wei Ming Emperor Cao Rui also issued an edict to compile a collection for Cao Zhi, including works on various themes "More than 100 Articles". These two collections were circulated in the Jin Dynasty, and were still fairly well preserved until the Tang Dynasty, and their dispersal occurred around the chaotic time of the handover of the two Song Dynasties. According to the Book of Jin, Sima Yan, the emperor of the Jin Dynasty, read a certain work and suspected that it was written by Cao Zhi, so he summoned his son Cao Zhi to inquire. Cao Zhi's reply was "The first king has a catalogue of handmade works, please return to the press" - it can be seen that Cao Zhi not only left a collection of works, but also a complete catalogue of works. Cao Zhi later replied to Sima Yan, saying that the work was not written by Cao Zhi, and that the real author was Cao Yuan.
Scholars of the Southern and Northern Dynasties and Tang Dynasty who can see the thirty-volume complete edition of the Cao Zhi Collection generally only say that they are from the "New Language of the World" when mentioning the "Seven-Step Poem", and no one says that it is from the "Cao Zhi Collection" (for example, Li Shan made notes to the "Anthology of Writings" and often quoted the "Cao Zhi Collection", but the mention of the seven-step poem is said to be quoted from the "Shi Yu", which shows that there is no relevant record in the "Cao Zhi Collection" he read). As far as the existing historical data is concerned, in the more than 150 years of the two Jin Dynasties, there was no story about the "seven-step poem". These facts are enough to show that the "Seven Steps Poem" is not included in the "Cao Zhi Collection". It not only shows that there are no "seven-step poems" in the "Cao Zhi Collection", but also that there are no "seven-step poems" in the unpublished works preserved by Cao Zhi's descendants (if they exist) - based on reasonable suspicions, Cao Rui may have deleted Cao Zhi's works that were unfavorable to Cao Pi in order to whitewash the image of his father Cao Pi. However, after entering the Jin Dynasty, there is still no "seven-step poem" story circulating, which is very telling.
In short, the "New Language of the World" is the only source of the seven-step poem that can be seen so far. This is roughly equivalent to a book that came out in 2021 saying that the Jiaqing Emperor of the Qing Dynasty (reigned 1796-1820) actually wrote a poem that no one had known about for more than two hundred years.
The image of Cao Zhi in the picture of Gu Kaizhi's "Luoshen Endowment" of the Eastern Jin Dynasty
The content information conveyed by the story of the seven-step poem is also enough to prove that it is a pseudo-history.
The most obvious problem is the childishness of the plot. As Guo Moruo said:
"If Cao Pi wanted to kill Cao Zhi, why did he use the excuse of forcing him to write poetry?" Zi Jian (Cao Zhi) is jie, he is not unaware, and if he really wants to kill him, the poem can still be killed when it is done, why is he deeply ashamed just to be a little sarcastic? ”
Ye Jiaying also said:
"I thought the rumor was unreliable. ...... With his (Cao Pi's) wisdom, that is, to kill Cao Zhi, there are other ways, and they will never use this stupid method. ”
In the "Xie Table of the King of Fengjuancheng" presented to Cao Pi, Cao Zhi said that he was "crazy and exposed, and began to dry Tianxian; he gave up on himself and held his sins for life." This shows that he did have a charge that was serious enough to kill himself in cao pi's hands (or that cao pi deliberately charged him with this crime). Cao Pi has such a handle, but he does not directly use it to kill Cao Zhi, but instead wants to play what "seven steps into poetry", playing what can not be written and killing people, except for brain diseases, it is really difficult to explain.
According to Huang Yongnian's research, the "New Language of the World" also records a story of "hundred steps poem" with a more childish plot. The general content is: Cao Pi and Cao Zhi traveled in a carriage together, and saw two bulls fighting each other, and one cow fell into a well and died. Cao Pi ordered Cao Zhi to write poems about this scene, not to talk about cattle, not to mention wells, not to talk about fighting, not to mention death, and to complete forty words within a hundred steps of the horse, otherwise he would be "beheaded". Cao Zhice Ma completed forty words, and also wrote the poem "Born from the same root, frying He Tai anxiously" within a hundred steps, which made Cao Pi feel deeply ashamed.
This "hundred steps poem" story was later deleted by the Northern Song Dynasty Man Yan Shu, who re-compiled the "New Language of the World", and was only preserved in the Northern Song Dynasty's large-scale book "Taiping Guangji". The main reason for Yan Shu's deletion of it is repetition and childishness. Repetition refers to the fact that the story framework is roughly the same as that of the "seven-step poem"; naïve refers to the "Dead Cow Poem" named Cao Zhi in the story, which is extremely low-level, and even the "old dry body" is not as good. The full text of the poem is as follows:
The two flesh walked in unison, and the transverse bone was worn on the head.
Walk to tai tu tou, and the rise is abrupt.
The two enemies are not strong, and one flesh lies in the earth cave.
It is not as good as the force, and the grand intention must not be leaked.
In addition, the "Seven Steps Poem" also has a strong Buddhist color.
First of all, the "seven steps" stem is very special (normal limits generally take integers such as ten steps and one hundred steps), and its source is the "Story of the Birth of the Buddha" that was circulating at that time.
The story was officially introduced to Middle-earth, about the beginning of the "Cultivation Book" translated by the monk Zhu Vigorously during the era of Emperor Xian of Han. It reads: After the Buddha was born from his mother's right flank, he "took seven steps, raised his hand, and said: Heaven and heaven, solipsism." All three realms are suffering, and I should be at peace. "In the Three Kingdoms period, the Wu monk Zhi Qian translated the "Prince Ruiying Benqi Jing", which also has the same record. Since then, the Western Jin Dynasty monks' translations of the "Sutra of the Alien Bodhisattvas" and the "Puyao Sutra" and the Eastern Jin Dynasty monks' translation of the "Great Treasure Accumulation Sutra" can see this story of "buddha taking seven steps to make a declaration".
The "seven steps" stem commonly found in Buddhist scriptures
The second is the metaphor of "boiling beans in a kettle" in the poem, which is also a common element in Buddhist texts. The Western Jin Dynasty monks translated the "Cultivation Daodi Sutra" and the "Building Charcoal Sutra", and the Eastern Jin Dynasty monks translated the "Mud Plough Sutra", etc., all used boiled beans to correspond to people's suffering, and took the "iron kettle" of boiling beans to correspond to the torturous "human cauldron".
After Buddhism entered China, it underwent a gradual process of localization. In the process, the protagonists of many Buddhist stories were replaced by famous historical figures in China. A typical case is "Cao Chong called an elephant", according to Chen Yinke's research, the prototype of the story is in the Buddhist scriptures, and the protagonist later changed from a foreigner to a local celebrity Cao Chong. Cao Zhi's "seven-step poem" is obviously the same situation - the "seven steps" stem comes from the Buddha story, and the metaphor of "boiling beans in a kettle" also comes from the Buddhist scriptures, and these are all cultural elements that were popularized after Cao Zhi's death.
The "cauldron on earth" in buddhist scriptures and the metaphor of boiled beans
The remaining question is: Why did these elements of Buddhist culture favor Cao Zhi and concentrate on him, evolving into an allusion to the "seven steps into poetry"?
The reason may be that Buddhism during the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Two Jin Dynasties also needed Cao Zhi.
During the Liu Song Dynasty, where Liu Yiqing lived, Cao Zhi was already regarded as the creator of Middle-earth Sanskrit chanting (chanting scriptures in the form of chants). In the "New Language of the World", it is said: "The Brahman singing of the present day is all made according to the imitation"—the rhythm of the monks singing the scriptures was all transformed during Cao Zhi's reign as King Dong'a. Liu Yiqing was a senior Buddhist who "raised Shamen", and most of his records were heard from Buddhist circles. Later, in the Xiao Qi and Xiao Liang eras, the monks also believed that Cao Zhi was the creator of the Middle-earth Fan song.
In fact, in the historical materials of the Wei and Jin dynasties, there is no record of Cao Zhi composing Sanskrit songs. Ren Jiyu based on this belief that Cao Zhi's creation of Sanskrit singing was not credible. But another possibility exists: Sanskrit, as an emerging foreign culture, is obviously the easiest and most effective way to attract the attention of the Middle-earth cultural circles and be accepted by the Middle-earth cultural circles, and to attach oneself to a Middle-earth cultural celebrity. This method is somewhat similar to the missionary Matteo Ricci dressing himself as a Confucian after coming to China, and some similar to the local snacks claiming to have been blessed by the Qianlong Emperor. Cao Zhi happens to be the most popular figure in the cultural world of the Wei and Jin dynasties, and he is also the person with the most stories.
Cao Zhi, who is connected with the Sanskrit song, will naturally be connected with the "seven steps" stem and the metaphor of "boiling beans in a kettle" in the Buddhist scriptures. It is not surprising that the story of the "seven-step poem" finally evolved.
The "Seven-Step Poem" scene in the TV series "Romance of the Three Kingdoms"
In fact, the ancients discovered very early on that the logic of the "Seven-Step Poem" story of the "World Speaking New Language" was naïve. When answering the question of the followers, "Why is there a Brahman in this side" (why is there a Sanskrit singing in Middle-earth), the late Tang monk Renfu Cited the Tang Dynasty's popular history book "Records of the Emperors" and told a story of "seven-step poems" with a completely different appearance:
"Emperor Wu had two sons, Cao Pi (曹丕), and Cao Zhi (曹植,...... (Cao Zhi) is beautiful and literate, and the brother Pi is heavy in every ceremony, and the Zhen (concubine) is biased. Zhi Sui was forced by Concubine Zhen to disobey and smacked his arm. When the brother saw that the concubine's hind arm was damaged, he asked the reason for it, and he wanted to kill him. Order the seven steps, the poem is not to be killed (killed), if it is not done, it is burned. Poetry: Boiled beans ran douqi, bean kettle in the middle of the rule. A kind of same root, frying He is too anxious. The poem is complete, so it is spared. ”
In this story, Cao Zhi is no longer a victim, but a villain who violates Cao Pi's wife Zhen. Cao Pi let him take seven steps into a poem, seemingly to kill him, but in fact, knowing that Cao Zhi was well-written, he deliberately left a way of life for Cao Zhi and also gave himself a step down. The logic of this story is smoother than that of the "New Language of the World", but it is also inconsistent with historical facts and makes many basic mistakes.
To sum up, the "Seven-Step Poem" is a good poem, but it was not written by Cao Zhi, and we do not know who its author is. (Source: Tencent News)
Song Zhanli: "Seven Steps of < Poems>to Name Examination", included in the biography of Cao Pi, Emperor Wen of Wei, Henan University Press, 2009.
Zhang Weiqi: "Cao Zijian's Seven-Step Poem Questioning", Guoxue Monthly, No. 1, 1927.
Huang Yongnian: "Commenting on the Collation of Cao Zhi's Poems from the Origin of the Seven-Step Poem".
Li Xiaorong, "Buddhist Factors in the Process of < Seven-Step Poems > Generation and Circulation", Classical Literature Knowledge, No. 6, 2016.
Liu Ming: "Annotations to the < Cao Zhi Collection> Collected "< Seven-Step Poems > Discernment".
Sun Meng: "Detailed Examination of the Japanese National See in the Catalogue of Books", Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2015 edition, page 642.
Lu Lizhi, "On the Evolution of the Relationship between Cao Zhi and Buddhist Music", Studies on Characteristic Literature of Ancient Literature, Vol. 1.