An unprecedented ancient book
Yongle was the era name of Zhu Di, the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and this era name was used from 1403 to 1424. The Yongle era was an era of strong national strength in the Ming Dynasty. Major events such as moving the capital to Beijing, building the Forbidden City, and Zheng He's voyage to the West all occurred in the Yongle era. The Yongle era also witnessed the birth of the largest book in ancient Chinese history, which is named "Yongle" and is dedicated to the Yongle Canon.
In 1403, the first year of Yongle, Zhu Di ordered Xie Jin and others to compile a kind of book, and his edict said: "The ancient and modern things under the heavens are scattered in various books, and the articles are vast and difficult to read. I want to learn about the things contained in the books. And the unity of rhyme, the convenience of a few koso, such as probing the bag to take things... Since the beginning of the book deed, the history of the book of a hundred families, as for astronomy, geography, yin and yang, medical divination, monasticism, and skill, have been compiled into one book, which is not tired of a voluminous volume. ”
From this edict, it can be seen that Zhu Di hopes that this kind of school bag will include all the literature in the world and include all the categories of knowledge. Similar books are different from series of books, and the "Four Libraries complete book" that we are familiar with is a series of books, which completely includes individual books according to their own selection criteria, while class books precipitate materials from separate books and then arrange them together in different categories. Books are very similar to databases, and by entering a keyword, you can find relevant material scattered throughout the books.
Unravel
After Xie Jin received the task, he organized the staff to start compiling the book, which took only more than a year to complete, and Zhu Di gave him the name "Literature Dacheng". However, Zhu Di was not satisfied with this book, believing that the world's literature had not been exhausted, and ordered Yao Guangxiao, Xie Jin, and others to reopen the museum in Wenyuan Pavilion in Nanjing, which began in 1405 and was completed in 1408, which was the Yongle Canon.
The Yongle Canon has 60 volumes in the table of contents and examples alone, with a total of 22,877 volumes and 11,095 volumes, with a total word count of about 370 million words. "Hongwu Zhengyun" is a rhyme book compiled by Zhu Yuanzhang and Song Lian and others, it includes 76 rhymes, each rhyme includes many words, such as the rhyme "East" under the word "Dong", including Dong, Tong, Tong and other characters. The Yongle Canon uses this method to arrange the complex contents in an orderly manner.
A grand cultural project such as the Yongle Canon can only be completed when a country is strong and pays attention to cultural undertakings. Due to the sheer volume of the Yongle Canon, it was not published after it was written. In 1420, the Ming Dynasty officially moved the capital to Beijing, and the original copy of the Yongle Canon was also moved from Nanjing to Beijing. After that, it was not until the Jiajing period that another copy was copied, and it took five years to copy the copy alone.
All the remains of the Yongle Canon that we see today are derived from copies copied during the Jiajing period, and the original of the Yongle period has not even been handed down on a single page, and its whereabouts are still a mystery. After the copy was copied, it was collected in the Imperial History Palace, a new historical archive established by the Jiajing Emperor, and transferred to the Hanlin Temple during the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty. In fact, the Yongle Canon had gradually dispersed at this time, and the number of volumes was checked once during the Qianlong years, leaving more than 9,000 copies.
During the Qianlong period when the "Four Libraries complete book" was revised, the four library masters used the "Yongle Canon" to compile many books that had disappeared into the dust of history, but at the same time, some of the librarians also took advantage of their positions to take the "Yongle Canon" home as their own private collections.
For the Yongle Canon, a greater doom is yet to come.
The Yongle Canon was once used as a brick
In modern times, China has been repeatedly invaded by great powers, and the fate of books, like the fate of people, has survived in the wind and rain.
In 1860, the Second Opium War entered its final moments, and in October of that year, the Anglo-French army captured Beijing, snatching a large number of Chinese treasures, and the Yongle Canon collected in the Hanlin Courtyard was not spared, of which the British army looted the largest number of books.
Forty years later, in 1900, the Eight-Power Alliance invaded China and reoccupied Beijing, and the area around Hanlinyuan became a battlefield, some of which were burned by the war, and some of which were used by the coalition forces to shield them from bullet rain. In the contemporary Lei Zhen's notebook "New Yan Language", there is a note titled "Sven Sweeping the Floor", which mentions that "when the foreign soldiers entered the city, they took the thickness of the book by two inches and a long foot to replace bricks, cushion military objects and so on." Wujin Liu Bao Zhen Taishi picked up several volumes, read it, then the "Yongle Canon" also, this True Swen swept the ground. According to scholars, in the 1900 war, at least 605 volumes of the Yongle Canon were lost.
National Library of China "Yongle Canon"
By 1912, the Republic of China was founded, and today's predecessor of the National Library, the Beijing Normal Library, only has 64 volumes of the Yongle Canon, less than 1% of the original number. These 64 volumes were successfully entered into the Library of the Beijing Normal Division, which is closely related to Lu Xun. It turned out that these 64 volumes of the Yongle Canon, which had survived the disaster, were taken home and collected by Lu Runyu, a scholar of the Hanlin Academy. After the founding of the Republic of China, Lu Xun served as the chief of the first section of the Department of Social Education of the Ministry of Education, in charge of library work, and he repeatedly wrote to Lu Runyu in the name of the Ministry of Education, hoping that he would entrust the treasured "Yongle Classic" to the Beijing Normal Library for safekeeping and collection. On July 16, 1912, these classics were entered into the Library of the Beijing Normal Division.
At that time, the concept of public libraries still needed to be accepted by more people, and the establishment of the Beijing Normal Library was a milestone in the history of the development of public libraries in China. As a major country in literature, China's national public libraries should have documents that match their status. These 64 volumes of the Yongle Canon of the Beijing Normal Library began the process of the National Library's continuous search for the Yongle Canon.
In this process, Zheng Zhenduo's name cannot be forgotten. Zheng Zhenduo's interest in the Yongle Canon reflects the trend and direction of the times. In 1938, Zheng Zhenduo published the "History of Chinese Folk Literature", a work of foundational significance, which turned his vision to the "folk literature" that was not much concerned by literary researchers before, such as songs, variations, drum words, children's books, etc. These literary forms that arose in the folk actually had more audiences than "Ya literature", which profoundly affected the formation of social psychology. Many of these folk literature materials are preserved in the Yongle Canon.
Of course, the Yongle Canon not only preserves many folk literature materials, it can be called "the source of classics", especially the literature it contains is rarely deleted and changed, and basically maintains the original appearance. From the Qing Dynasty to the present, the compilation of the Yongle Canon has allowed the reborn that has disappeared and the forgotten to be remembered again.
The National Library is the largest collection
After 1949, Zheng Zhenduo became the first director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. On August 31, 1951, the People's Daily published Zheng Zhenduo's article "On the Yongle Canon", which introduced the compilation, loss and collection of the Yongle Canon. In the same month, under the planning of Zheng Zhenduo and others, the Beijing Library held an exhibition of "Yongle Dadian", and during the 20-day official exhibition period, more than 8,200 people saw the original "Yongle Dadian".
In 1951, the number of volumes of the Yongle Classics in the Beijing Library's collection jumped from 109 volumes the previous year to 144 volumes, of which 33 new volumes came from the following three sources: in March of that year, the library of the Department of Oriental Studies of Leningrad University in the Soviet Union returned 11 volumes to China; in July, at the suggestion of Zhang Yuanji, chairman of the Shanghai Commercial Press, the Commercial Press donated all 21 volumes to the government; in August, Zhou Shuhan, then vice mayor, industrialist and collector of Tianjin, donated 1 volume to the government. These 33 volumes were transferred to the unified collection of the Beijing Library.
The scattered texts, like wandering wanderers, seem to naturally have the desire to "return the nest to the phoenix". In 1951, Chen Qinghua, a bibliophile based in Hong Kong, wanted to sell a number of ancient books. Because Chen Qinghua's collection of books was known for its preciousness, Zheng Zhenduo quickly reported it to Premier Zhou Enlai when he learned of this. At that time, the state was financially embarrassed, but still decided to buy this collection, and in 1955, Chen Qinghua's first collection of books was included in Beijing, including 4 volumes of the Yongle Classic. In order to let the ancient books return home safely, Zheng Zhenduo asked not to take a plane.
However, who would have thought that in 1958, Zheng Zhenduo was killed in the line of duty because of a plane crash. After his death, his family donated all of his collection to the Beijing Library.
Today, the National Library of China has become the library with the largest collection of "Yongle Canon" in the world, with 224 volumes not easy to come by, and such achievements have only been achieved in hundreds of years. This embodies the collector's embrace of turning private into public, the careful search and proper protection of books by managers, and the concern of the public.
The context is related to the fortunes of the country. The gathering and ups and downs of the "Yongle Canon" vividly show how the book and the fate of people are closely linked, and the country is strong and prosperous, in order to continue the context of The Great Harmony and Hongdae. From the Imperial Palace to the library, from the palace secrets to the people's possessions, the legendary experience of the Yongle Canon is also a footnote to the historical trend.
Source: Magazine of All Walks of Life, Issue 4, 2022
Author: Yi Shun