The reporter learned from the Hunan Provincial Museum on the 26th that in the recent systematic clearance of cultural relics excavated from the Mawangdui Han Tomb, dozens of fragments of the Book of Books with handwriting were found, and it can be determined that some of them are from the C of the Book of Punishment, which provides new information for relevant research.
This is a part of the first part of the book "Punishment Virtue" excavated from the mawangdui Han tomb. (Courtesy of Hunan Provincial Museum)
There are three parts, A, B and C, all of which were excavated in 1973 at Tomb No. 3 of Mawangdui in Changsha, Hunan Province. Among them, Part A is an important chapter of the theory of criminal virtue in the early Han Dynasty, and Part B is mainly about the explanation of the operation law of criminal virtue and the interpretation of the "Nine Palaces of Punishment Virtue", as well as the provisions on measuring the victory or defeat of war by astronomical weather such as clouds, wind, rain, and thunder.
Yu Yanjiao, director of the Mawangdui Han Tomb and Collection Research and Exhibition Center of the Hunan Provincial Museum, said that the first part of the book "Punishment" is copied by ancient li, it is well preserved, the text is roughly readable, the nine palace diagrams and the dry branch table are clearly recognizable, and it is inferred that it was copied during the reign of Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao, which has important academic research value; the second part is copied in the Lishu, and the date of the copy should be around the first year of Xiao Hui (194 BC), which provides an important reference for determining the transcription time of the similar book manuscripts in the Book of Shu; while the copy of part C is 48 centimeters wide in one piece. It is about 82 cm long on the drapery.
This is a part of the second part of the book "Punishment Virtue" excavated from the Tomb of Mawangdui Han. (Courtesy of Hunan Provincial Museum)
Some of the fragments found this time can be determined to be from the book "Criminal Virtue" part C. "The extant original objects of the first part of the "Punishment Virtue" are framing into 18 fragments, all of which are copied in Zhu Wen, and the columns of the article are all black silk columns, and there is a very thick ink line border around the periphery. Yu Yanjiao said.
Experts pointed out that some of the Mawangdui books have Zhusi bars or Wusi columns, and some scholars have believed that they were woven, and this time according to the comparison of fragments, it is determined that they are painted.
More than fifty books have been unearthed from the Mawangdui Han Tomb. "All the books are manuscripts, and each person's handwriting is different, so each one has its own characteristics. Therefore, the handwritten font feature can provide a basis for distinguishing which book the words on the fragment belong to. Yu Yanjiao said.
This is part of the C part of the book "Punishment Virtue" excavated from the tomb of Mawangdui Han. (Courtesy of Hunan Provincial Museum)
In fact, handwriting recognition requires years of experience accumulated in research, so the "homecoming" of fragments of the book can only rely on manual search and comparison. In addition, because the layers of the book are adhered to each other, the ink will produce positive and negative printing and dyeing, and layer by layer of infiltration dyeing.
"When the book was first unearthed, it was complete, but it became a 'brick', and due to the technical limitations of the time, in order to uncover the book page by page, it had to be dampened by the most primitive steam fumigation method, and then to uncover it, and in the process, many fragments were produced." Chen Rui, deputy director of the Mawangdui Han Tomb and Collection Research and Exhibition Center of the Hunan Provincial Museum, said that in order to "return" the fragments of the book, it is necessary to find out what kind of books they belong to, and how the books were stacked at that time, so that we can distinguish between the infiltration and anti-Printing languages, and then determine which layer the fragments belong to, which work is quite difficult.
The Hunan Provincial Museum has cooperated in the research of the fragments of the newly sorted book with characters and the Research Center for Excavated Documents and Ancient Characters of Fudan University, and these "beads" are of great significance to the restoration and improvement of the book and the compilation of its revised version.
Excavated from 1972 to 1974, the Mawangdui Han Tomb is the tomb of the three families of the Western Han Dynasty Changsha State Minister and the Yuanhou Licang family, and is one of the world's major archaeological discoveries in the 20th century. Among them, more than 100,000 words and more than 50 extensive documents have been unearthed to inherit the knowledge and wisdom of the sages.
Reporters: Zhang Yujie, Sun Yi
Editors: Liao Yi, Wang Wei