In the continent's star-studded treasure trove of cultural classics, there are two of the most famous books shining with unparalleled light. This is the "Yongle Dian" born in the Ming Dynasty and the "Siku Quanshu" in the Qing Dynasty. These two books can be described as the end of the mainland's feudal society for more than 2,000 years, reflecting the broad and profound brilliance of the mainland's traditional culture.
The Yongle Canon is the world's earliest and largest encyclopedia. The Yongle Canon is more than 300 years earlier than the famous French Encyclopedia Diderot and the Encyclopedia Britannica, and occupies an important position in the history of world culture. This book collects and preserves all kinds of intellectual works such as academia, religion, science and technology, history, literature and art, and geography before the 14th century on the mainland, and it is not more than a word for entry. The income is extensive, and various books such as "Subsets of Scripture and History since Book Deed, Books of a Hundred Schools" and "From the beginning of ancient times to the present world" are all collected in books.
The "Great Canon" has a total of 370 million words and 22,877 volumes, about two volumes into one volume, a total of 11,095 volumes. The number of examples and catalogues alone is 60 volumes. The value of this book is extremely high, and given that much of the original book has been destroyed, we cannot get an overview of the whole picture, but it is surprising to read only from the remaining chapters. For example, the stage dramas (miscellaneous operas, scattered operas, Yuan songs, southern songs, etc.) developed in the mainland from the Tang and Song dynasties to the Yuan and Ming dynasties in the past few hundred years were very brilliant and magnificent in their heyday, but this is after all the last five hundred years old, and the "Great Canon" from 13965 to 13991 volumes includes a total of 26 volumes, counting 33 kinds of plays from various periods 500 years ago, which is very valuable for our study of opera. However, it has been annihilated. As far as the three remaining "Xiaosun Tu", "Eunuch Disciples Staggered" and "Xie Zhuangyuan" are analyzed, the magical, grotesque and exaggerated artistic means used can fully understand the outstanding level of dramatists at that time. Of course, many philosophical and profound classics cannot be summed up in a few words.
For the "Yongle Classic", we can only infer what it looked like before it burned from the remaining meteorite. The completion of the "Yongle Classic" is inseparable from the literary brilliance of Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty who moved the capital to Beijing. Zhu Di, who is both civil and martial, is Zhu Yuanzhang's fourth son, and is an imperial embryo who "looks strange, wise and courageous", but Zhu Yuanzhang, who adheres to the ideological mode of "ascending the throne and concubine", passed the throne behind him to Crown Prince Zhu Yunzao, which of course greatly angered Zhu Di, who had been killed by Zhu Yuanzhang's biological mother, so he used the name of "Jing Jiao" on the side of the Qing monarch to enter the palace and forced the emperor's nephew to death (go).
The "Yongle Classic" is the Wenzhi colored ball thrown by the heavenly subordinates after Zhu Di took the throne. Led by the famous bachelor Xie Jin, this book was compiled by more than 100 scholars for six years, and was compiled in the sixth year of Ming Yongle (1408). After the book was completed, it was first collected in the Wenyuan Pavilion in Nanjing, and then moved to Beijing with the capital. However, its unfortunate fate began.
Although China's woodblock printing industry had developed to a certain scale at that time, the more than 20,000 volumes of scrolls were too voluminous after all, and it was impossible to make them into hand-engraved engravings one by one and print, so they had to be copied by hand in block letters. It was only in view of the frequent fires in the palace that it was not until the forty-first year of Jiajing (1562) that another copy was reproduced. Hence the theory of an original copy. After Li Zicheng captured the Forbidden City in Beijing, the original was burned clean. Copies were also on the verge of doom and were constantly stolen, especially after the Opium War, a copy of the "Great Canon" always sold for a high price of 10 taels of silver, of course, the buyers were mostly foreigners, and later the eight-nation coalition army entered Beijing, simply using it to set up a mattress table, or cook on a fire for heating. Therefore, the "Great Canon" has lost 3,000 copies per hundred years from the peak of more than 10,000 copies when it was written. By the time the modern library was founded in 1909, it had only a measly 64 volumes.
After the founding of New China, some countries returned some of them, and some of them were collected from society, and there are now more than 800 volumes in existence, which is only 3% of the entire book.
Like a fallen star, we can only speculate about its full picture from the pitiful hundreds of fragments and the chapters collected in the later Siku Quanshu, and its oblivion is a portrayal of the corruption and darkness of Chinese feudal society and the painful humiliation imposed on us by imperialism over the centuries.
Along with the Ming Dynasty's Yongle Dian, another large-scale series of books born during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty is the Siku Quanshu. This is also a book to write, and it is also called the best in the world. It has more than 79,000 volumes and is packed into 36,078 volumes. The book has a total of 997 million words and contains more than 3,500 works from ancient times to the Qing Dynasty. There is no other book comparable to its size.
As one of the achievements of "Wenzhi Wubei", the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, who was very happy, often talked about this and other large books compiled by him, such as "History of Ming" and "General Examination of Literature". In fact, this is hiding his sinister intentions.
Mr. Lu Xun's discussion of the compilation of the Siku Quanshu in the "Essays of Hejieting" is quite insightful. Qianlong used the name of collecting books and compiling books to change books and destroy books. In fact, the Siku Quanshu can also be regarded as a summary report of his large-scale "word prison".
The "literary prison" campaign that began with the Kangxi Dynasty to persecute intellectuals has lasted for three dynasties and decades before and after. Hundreds of ministers and their families were killed, and the intensifying bloody cases made the literati of the Qing Dynasty tremble. With such a harsh and heavy law, who would dare to play with their heads again? The harsh reality forced those book-loving intellectuals to beg for a living in piles of old paper. Qianlong still refused to let go, and he realized that there were still some things in many books that were not conducive to the Qing rule. Therefore. The Siku Quanshu was actually a general encirclement and purge of the Chinese library up to that time. "Forbidden to be forbidden" was his original meaning. He collected from the provinces in several ways, from bibliophiles, and even sent personnel to buy from book markets like Liuli Factory. Coupled with the engraved manuscripts that have always been archived in the emperor's palace, and the copied parts of the "Yongle Classic", after reviewing these books one by one, removing those works that "violate the obstruction and rebellion", and then compiling them into one volume.
Qianlong's compilation of the Siku Quanshu not only preserved a large number of excellent cultural classics for China, but also made some precious works forever.
The Siku Quanshu was compiled for 10 years and used as many as 3,000 manpower, which is the crystallization of the perseverance and wisdom of ancient intellectuals on the mainland. The completion of this huge book shows the great spirit and fine cultural traditions of the Chinese nation, and is a feat that the Chinese people are proud of today.
It is worth mentioning that a large number of knowledgeable scholars such as Lu Xixiong, Dai Zhen, and Zhu Jun have been behind bars for 10 years, have endured the cold and heat, conscientiously fulfilled their duties, and did not make a single word flawed. In particular, the famous scholar Ji Yun (Ji Xiaolan) personally wrote the 200 volumes of the "Synopsis of the General Bibliography of the Four Libraries". He commented on tens of thousands of ancient Chinese books, and since then he has pioneered the study of "cataloguing" and become a generation of grandmasters.
The academic spirit of the intellectuals of the predecessors is really a valuable asset. In order to collect the compiled "Four Libraries of Complete Books", Qianlong ordered the construction of seven pavilions in seven places, including the Beijing Imperial Palace, the Old Summer Palace, the Old Palace of Shenyang, the Jinshan Temple of Zhenjiang, the Grand View Hall of Yangzhou, and the West Lake of Hangzhou, to divide the seven "Four Library Complete Books" compiled by the collection, so it is known as the "Three Pavilions of the South" and "Four Pavilions of the North".
The seven Siku Quanshu have different fates. Two of the three southern divisions, Zhenjiang and Yangzhou, were destroyed by artillery fire when the Taiping army captured the city, and the one in Hangzhou was also robbed by people during the siege of the city by the Taiping army, and lost more than half. In the early years of the Republic of China, manpower was organized to copy it completely. The collection of the Old Summer Palace of the four departments in the north was burned by the Anglo-French army in 1860 when the Old Summer Palace was burned; A copy of the "Cultural Revolution" in Shenyang was transported to Gansu for collection; A copy of the summer resort that exists in the Beijing Library, the earliest, most refined edition and best bound copy of the Forbidden City Wenyuange collection, has been drifting for more than ten years in Nanjing, Shanghai, Chongqing and other places in China since the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, and was transported to Taiwan for collection in 1948.
With the ups and downs of China's modern history, the Siku Quanshu has traveled a very uneven road.
#古籍里的历史#