Author: Bai Junpeng (Associate Professor, College of Liberal Arts, Northeast Normal University)
"Anxious Chapter", also known as "Urgent Chapter", is a character book written in the late Western Han Dynasty. The original thirty-one chapters of the book were increased to thirty-four chapters by the Eastern Han Dynasty. Book of Han Yiwen Zhi: "Emperor Yuan's Huang men lingshi you composed "Urgent Chapter"... All are orthographs in "Cangjie". "The author of the "Urgent Article" and the time of its compilation are explained very clearly.
Wang Yinglin of the Southern Song Dynasty divided the content of the "Urgent Article" into three categories: "starting with the surname and name", "second to the service of a hundred things", and "and finally to the literary jurisprudence". If you read the whole text, you can find that although the "Urgent Article" is not large (in thirty-four chapters, a total of 2144 words), its reflection on the social life of the Han Dynasty is very comprehensive. Dai Biaoyuan of the Yuan Dynasty called it "the cause of the four peoples, the appropriateness of all uses, and the lack of careful study" (Dai Biaoyuan: "Notes on Urgent Articles Addendum to The Preface", "The Collection of The Source of The Yuan", four series of periodicals). Mr. Shen Yuan also pointed out that the "Urgent Article" is "a mirror of social life in the Han Dynasty" (Shen Yuan,"Study of the Urgent Article," Historical Research, No. 3, 1962).
As a character book with the main nature of teaching people to learn characters, "Urgent Articles" became popular as soon as it was compiled. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the Tunshu Jian found in the northwest region has often seen Jian Mu with the content of the "Urgent Article", and its era is mostly the late Western Han Dynasty, which is almost synchronized with the compilation era of the "Urgent Article". These jian mu may be models of Xi characters, such as Dunhuang Han Jian 1972 and 2356, etc., generally written on the three-sided wooden yao, which is consistent with the "qi yao" in the first sentence of the "Urgent Article", and the writing is more neat, and the word spacing is wide and loose; There are also Xi zi jian who write fragments of text, such as Juyan Hanjian 169.1+561.26, Juyan Xinjian EPT48.78, etc., which are often incomplete, clumsy calligraphy, and often mixed with other content. After the Fall of the Han and Wei Dynasties, the "Urgent Article" continued to have a wide impact on society. There are many accounts in the literature passed down from generation to generation, and Gu Yanwu concluded that "after the Han and Wei Dynasties, the children all read Shi You's "Urgent Article". The excavated brick inscriptions between the Han and Tang Dynasties that inscribed the text of the "Urgent Article", the remnants of Loulan paper and the turpan ancient manuscripts can also show the far-reaching influence at that time. More importantly, it withstood the chaos of the times and became the only one in the Qin Chinese character book that has been completely preserved to this day, while the Western Han Dynasty's "Fan General Chapter", "Yuan Shang Chapter" and even the Eastern Han Dynasty's "Persuasion Chapter" and "Taijia Chapter" have been lost in the long river of history, and even the mother body of many Han Dynasty character books, "Cangjie Chapter", has also died during the Tang and Song dynasties (Hu Pingsheng and Han Ziqiang, "Preliminary Study of cangjie chapter", "Cultural Relics", No. 2, 1983).
In the past, scholars generally believed that it was related to several factors such as the relative simplicity of the content of the "Urgent Article", the moderate length, and the combination of calligraphy (Zhang Chuanguan,"The School Of The Urgent Articles"),Zhonghua Bookstore, 2017, Preface, pp. 4-6). These judgments all have a certain truth, especially the interaction with Zhang Cao has played an important role in the circulation of the "Urgent Article". However, in addition to the above factors, examining the characteristics of the "Urgent Article" itself, we can find that it is a book with a self-origin and can keep pace with the times.
"Han Chengqin System", according to the previous disclosure of the "Han Zhi", it can be known that the "Urgent Article" was written on the basis of the "Cangjie Chapter", and the Chinese characters of the article were taken from the latter. At this time, the Cangjie Chapter was a Han Dynasty version formed by the "Luli Shushi" merging Li Si's Cangjie Chapter, Zhao Gao's "Calendar Chapter", and Hu Mujing's Erudite Chapter. The main background of Li Si et al.'s "Cangjie Chapter" is that "when Qin Shi Huang was in the beginning of the reign of Emperor Qin Shi Huang and the world, Li Si Nai played the same role, and he was not in harmony with Qin Wen" (Shuowen Jiezi Shu). Therefore, it has a very important value of "book and text", which objectively requires it to be carefully considered when selecting words, which is probably comparable to the "increase and loss of one word to a thousand gold" in the "Lü's Spring and Autumn" in the same period. "Urgent Article" was born from the "Cangjie Chapter", which can be described as deeply rooted, and absorbed a large number of influences from the arrangement and combination of words. If we compare the Cangjie Chapters of Peking University Jane (which was admitted to Peking University in 2009 and is generally referred to as Peking University Jane) with the Urgent Article, we can find that if we look at it from the perspective of words or phrases, the two books have a lot in common. For example, the two sentences of "荠芥荏" and "茱臾蓼苏" connected by Peking University Jane 24 and 25 are compared to the "Brassica garlic mustard mustard" in the tenth chapter of the "Urgent Article"; For example, peking university jian 18 "pen research and chips" to the "pen research chips" in the thirty-first chapter of the "urgent chapter", such examples are many, let alone enumerated.
However, the acceptance of the Cangjie Chapter by "Rush" is by no means a mechanical copy, but a macroscopic and microscopic adjustment. These adjustments are in tune with the realities of social life and language evolution at the time, in keeping pace with the times.
At the macro level, "Hurry up" first adjusts the sentence form. The four characters and one sentence of the "Cangjie Chapter" may have a grammatical relationship between the words, such as "Cangjie Writing Book" and "Teaching Heirs", or as a synonymous (or antonym) and a list of similar words, such as "颛顼 祝融" and "黚黶黮" and so on. The "Urgent Article" takes seven words as the main body, mixed with three words and four words. The three sentences are all name words, located in the opening chapters, while the four sentences are mainly the last chapter of Shi You's original work. This, in turn, can be compared with the development of the Seven Words and Poetry of the Han Dynasty. It is generally believed that the seven-word poetry of the Han Dynasty "is more of a miscellaneous speech between seven words and three words and four words." (Ge Xiaoyin, "Asana Characteristics and Generation Principles of Early Seven Words: On the Reasons for the Lagging Development of Han and Wei Seven Words Poetry", China Social Science, No. 3, 2007). It shows that the "Urgent Article" was influenced by the specific language environment at that time when it was written. Similarly, at about the same time as the "Urgent Article", the Shuiquan Zi Han Jian "Cangjie Chapter" also changed from four words to seven words, such as "Qianshou [~symbol ~] Kang Ge Guser" and "Relatives and Brothers Zong Yiqiang", etc., which were added three words on the basis of the four words to continue or relieve the meaning of the four words. On the one hand, this practice is to make the meaning of the text more clear, on the other hand, it is also closely related to the development of the seven-character poetry at that time, which is also similar to the change of sentence pattern of the "Urgent Article".
In addition to the change of sentence pattern, compared with the "Cangjie Chapter", the "Urgent Article" has also made a relatively large adjustment in the text arrangement. As mentioned earlier, the Han Dynasty's "Cangjie Chapter" is the "Luli Shushi" combined with the Qin Dynasty "Cangjie", "GongLi" and "Erudite" three parts, now it seems that this work is only a simple merger, and did not change its internal structure, which will inevitably cause contradictions in content, a very prominent problem is that some content-related texts will appear in different positions, such as the distribution of "disease" content in the "Cangjie Chapter", Peking University Jane 2 "Fistula" belongs to the "Cangjie Chapter", Jane 36 " Scabies "Scabies" belongs to the "Calendar", and Jian 39 "Malaria Breaks Malaria [~ Symbol ~]" belongs to the "Erudite Chapter". The relevant content in "Rush" is concentrated in Chapter 23 – this arrangement is obviously more scientific and easy to learn and accept.
At the micro level, the replacement of the Cangjie text by the Urgent Article is also synchronized with the change of the daily vocabulary of the Qin and Han Dynasties. Peking University Jian 3 "or according to Qi Jiu (moxibustion)", Shuiquan Zi Han Jian and the newly published Han Mu ben "Cangjie Chapter" "Qi" are all "open", which is obviously to avoid the name of The Han Jing Emperor Liu Qi. Ma Wangdui's book "Pulse Law" has a sentence "Those who use the pulse must be like the style", and the "qi pulse" in it is "puncture the blood vessel" (Zhou Zuliang, "Interpretation of the Medical Literature of Jian Shu", Xueyuan Publishing House, 2014, p. 62). As a method with a very early origin, there is no doubt about the predecessor of the method of acupuncture. In the relevant literature of the Mawangdui Book, only the moxibustion method and the acupuncture method are found, but not the acupuncture method. "The Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, Lingshu, Nine Needles and Twelve Plains": "Yu wants not to be poisoned, useless stones, and wants to use microneedles to pass through its meridians." "There is a clear reference to the substitution of needlework for the method. In the literature of the late Western Han Dynasty, it can also be clearly seen that the "acupuncture" method has replaced the "Acupuncture" method at this time, such as the Brief Text of Wuwei Medical Jane describing acupuncture therapy, which is used in conjunction with "Zhen (needle)" and "thorn". The "Urgent Article" corresponding to the "Cangjie Chapter" "Qi Jiu (Moxibustion)" is "Moxibustion", and the Wuwei Medical Jane 25, which is similar in time, has a sentence that "those who are over 100 years old shall not be moxibustion". The change from "Qijiu (moxibustion)" to "moxibustion" and "acupuncture" shows that as a medical word, "thorn" has replaced "qi" at this time, and the "Urgent Article" has been replaced at the right time.
Another example is Peking University Jane 35 "Mirror Thinning Ratio", and the corresponding content of "Urgent Article" is "Mirror Thinning Ratio". Yan Shigu's ancient note "Mirror basket, the instrument of the mirror, if the mirror box is also." Peking University Jian arrangers were initially influenced by the "Urgent Article" to read "籋" as "籢" (Peking University Institute of Excavated Literature, "Peking University Tibetan Western Han Bamboo Book (I)", Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2015, p. 104). However, the Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字) is called "籋, 箝也." Duan Yujie: "The instrument of the clamp is called the tweezer, and the present person makes it of copper and iron, which is called the tweezers." "Explanation" can be used as the meaning of "箝" and "镊". This sentence "籋" in the Han Mu Ben "Cangjie Chapter" is "镊". Checking the Han and Wei literature, it is very common for "jing 籢 (奁)" to be used consecutively, and the term "jing 籋 (镊)" is hardly seen. Therefore, the change from "Jing Ji ()" to "Jing 籢 (奁)" also indicates that the "Urgent Article" replaced the vocabulary of the "Cangjie Chapter" with the change of common social usage.
It should be admitted that keeping pace with the times is not the only factor in keeping the "Urgent Article" immortal, but its role in the circulation of the "Urgent Article" is obvious. Although the "Urgent Articles" "gradually weakened their learning from the Tang Dynasty" (also Gu Yanwu), the "Thousand Character Text" and the "Kaimeng Essentials" that began to be compiled during the Sui and Tang dynasties of the Southern and Northern Dynasties were not unaffected by it, and these works directly or indirectly influenced the education of children for more than a thousand years. After being annotated and supplemented by Yan Shigu of the Tang Dynasty and Wang Yinglin of the Song Dynasty, the "Urgent Article" gradually embarked on the road of classicization, and continued to play an important role in cultural dissemination in another capacity.
Guangming Daily ( 2022.08.27 11th edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily