Wu Ge: Reproduction and circulation of ancient Chinese books

Author: Wu Ge, Director of the Department of Ancient Books of Fudan University Library, Professor of the Research Center for Ancient Chinese Literature, and Doctoral Supervisor of Classical Chinese Philology

China is a big country with a history of more than 5,000 years of civilization. What does history prove? Cultural heritage in the broad sense, such as a house, daily living objects, buildings, etc., has been preserved as the historical testimony of our ancestors, and cultural heritage in the narrow sense generally refers to books recorded in writing. Our Chinese culture is something to be proud of, and there are books written down 3,000 years ago.

Historically, we have had the Book of Oracle Bones, the Book of Golden Stones, the Book of Simple Books, the Book of Silk Books, and today's most popular paper books. The form of the early books was different from the current ones, but they were also written and recorded. The nails mainly refer to the shell of the turtle, which is hard in texture and has been found to be stored for a long time after washing and drying in the sun. There are also animal bones, such as the shoulder blades on cattle, which are relatively large, easy to record, and longer than the general carrier. At that time, whenever important things were encountered, they were to be used for divination and records. During the Republic of China period, Many oracle bones were unearthed in Anyang, Henan, with writing on them. The two lines of text on the oracle bone piece, which are now gradually interpreted by experts, are the earliest words of our ancestors of the Chinese nation, and the carrier of the nature of books is called the Book of Oracle Bones.

Under the oracle bone is the golden script, which is the text engraved on the bronze. During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, Zhou Tianzi wanted to divide his relatives or high officials to various places, and what form to express the affirmation of someone's merits and status was bronze. At that time, it was popular to cast dings, small dings could be put on the table, and large ones were placed in the open air. After casting the crown, it was rewarded to ministers and relatives, which was an affirmation of their status and power. There are dragons and phoenixes and other patterns on the ding, there are also words, the text is the golden text, at that time the text has matured, the glyph is also beautiful, often record that a certain year and a month a certain event occurred, because the merit of so-and-so was rewarded to The Big Ding. This is known as the Book of The Golden Stone. In the same period, there are also words carved on stone slabs.

This is followed by a booklet. History developed to the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, the exchange of words more, it is impossible for all literate people to go out with ding, this is not very realistic, the most close connection with the ancients outside the golden stone is the product of nature, such as wooden boards, bamboo, a strip with hemp rope and so on can be recorded, so at the same time that the book of golden stone has become an official record, the popular folk book is woodcut, bamboo carving, and some places use thin cowhide rope to weave. From around 1000 BC to 1000 AD, a large number of remains have survived.

During this period, there was the Book of Silk Again. For a long time in ancient times, there was no cotton, and the main ones wore hemp, and the nobles wore silk. The ancients found that in order to preserve more conveniently, carry more conveniently, and record a larger area, it is difficult to use bamboo alone, so it is necessary to use a drapery. The books recorded on textiles existed in the tombs of nobles 2,000 years ago, and were restored to his lifetime, between nobles and between governments, and the main form of correspondence should be the use of silk veils.

Before 1800, China had paper. We now associate books with paper, but in actual human history, there are books on sheepskin, books on clay tablets, books on gold stones, but paper books are relatively late. With these increasingly easy and accessible materials, our ancestors began to create systematic books. To tell a piece of history, to tell a truth, to record their own ideas, to record what they have seen, there are the first works, these works to be copied, there are many ancient books to copy the method.

The first method of reproduction of ancient books was to copy and copy. In ancient times, there was not so much paper, and a person had to read a book, and before there was no printing, he had to copy the book. When we do the census of ancient books in the folk, we have seen a lot of handwritten books. Handwritten books are also divided into many categories, there are written books, the more typical is the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book", the Qianlong dynasty the imperial court made a large-scale collation of famous works from ancient times to the present, selected 3400 kinds of books from tens of thousands of books, a total of more than 20,000 volumes, using the national characters well-written people copied seven books, stored in Beijing, Shenyang, Yangzhou, Zhenjiang and Hangzhou and other places, built seven book cabinets, each preserving a complete "Four Libraries Complete Book"; there are manuscripts, referring to books copied by hand, not as elaborate as written books; there are photocopies, Every stroke is similar to the original appearance; there are linbens, not limited to books, sometimes postings, etc., plus the author's own cultivation of understanding, etc., and the strokes and lines of the predecessors are copied again.

The second method is the printing of printing, one of the four major inventions, which is divided into engraving, reprinting, photocopying, movable type printing, engraving stone and so on. Our ancestors invented engraving and printing in practice, carving the original manuscript onto a wooden board and printing it repeatedly. Engraving and printing has a history of more than 1,000 years, and each era has formed its own style, with Song Dynasty engravings, Yuan Dynasty engravings, Ming Dynasty engravings, etc. In terms of type, the most original is called the engraved version, the original version, the wood plate, for example, the book has been circulated for more than 20 years on the market, how to copy, then ask the engraver or the academy or the government or the large household library, etc., whether there is a woodblock engraving of the book, the copy is the original. If the original version is not there, it is necessary to re-engrave, to reorganize manpower, prepare plates, professional workers, and re-engrave a set of engraving plates with a stroke and a knife, if the book is copied according to a certain book, it is generally called a reprint according to a certain version. Between the engraving and the original engraving, sometimes there is no deviation, sometimes the text remains unchanged but the text spacing is adjusted.

After engraving printing, China invented movable type printing. Our ancestors used wooden movable type, used clay movable type, and there are also a small number of pottery movable type, porcelain movable type, copper movable type, etc., and some printed materials have been passed down to this day. But in today's book market, the output and market of engraving printing is greater than that of movable type printing works. Printing productivity and the number of readers at that time was proportional, in ancient times reading was not popular, engraving printing can meet great demand, so it is a pity that the promotion of movable type printing at that time was not as popular as engraving.

The third method was in the second half of the 19th century, when photocopied printing technology was introduced to China after the Opium War, including lithography, chromo printing, chromo printing, and imitation photocopying. Now the printing technology is more and more advanced, and the quality is getting higher and higher. After 2000, the Chinese library industry did a project "rare book reconstruction", using the north and south public library catalogs, to find out how many books printed by the earliest ancestors with engraved movable type, divided according to one era, there are about 1500 complete and mutilated books, the actual full book is not much, a large number of fragments, it is selected to print about 800 copies to make imitation prints, first take pictures and then make plates, paper is also in the manufacture of rice paper the best factory customization, made about 100 sets of replicas, the whole set of rare books remanufactured worth more than 1 million yuan. Modern photocopying technology provides a very effective method for the reproduction, preservation and circulation of ancient books in libraries.

The writing and circulation of ancient Chinese classics has gone through a long process. Since the Fall of the Song dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty, the classics of the past have been repeatedly copied and engraved, compiled and selected, and passed down to future generations, and the editions are extremely complex, and the people say that the book bag is bottomless and inexhaustible, and I will make some different engravings and versions of the picture display here.

Chinese books are not at most our blind boasting, from the fifteenth century to the end of the Ming Dynasty, the total number of books in various cultured regions of the world is less than the total number of books in our Chinese Ming Dynasty. Ancient Chinese books not only record the traditional culture of the Chinese nation, but also have a profound impact on the process of East Asian and even Western civilization, and are a precious cultural heritage shared by all mankind.