The master of classics Zheng Xuan and the archives of ancient books are sorted out

Zheng Xuan (127-200), courtesy name Kangcheng, was an Eastern Han Dynasty classicist and a native of Zhenggong Village, Gaomi County. At the age of 13, he was able to recite the Five Classics. The 21-year-old was well-read, proficient in almanacs, arithmetic, and graphs, and was promoted to a townshipman, in charge of litigation and collecting taxes. His family was poor, he still taught himself, and often consulted with the scholar. Because of the commissioner. Later, in 157 AD (the third year of Yongshou), he was sent to Taixue for further study, and successively studied with the fifth yuan of the history of the assassination and Zhang Gongzu of DongJun. In 160 AD, he entered Hangu Pass in the west and studied under the famous ancient scholar Ma Rong. In 168 AD, he returned to his native country. Because his family was poor and helpless, he was transferred to Donglai (present-day Ye County), where he farmed and lectured on the other, and nearly a thousand people came to seek education. In 169 AD, the eunuchs of the Han court fought for power with foreign relatives and created the "disaster of the party", and Zheng Xuan was imprisoned for decades. During this time, he lived in seclusion in the mountains, closed closed doors and concentrated on annotating the scriptures. In particular, he deeply studied He Xiu's "Ram Ink Shou" and other famous works, and refuted his mistakes one by one, and He Xiu was impressed. He annotated the scriptures, taking ancient scriptural studies as the mainstream, taking the essence of each school, synthesizing the ancient and modern, and integrating them into one. In 181 AD (the fourth year of the republic), Emperor Ling dismissed the party, Zheng Xuan became an official, and the state and county officials forced him to go, and He was courteous to him, but he was not subject to court clothes, insisted on the dress of a scholar, and only overnight, he found an opportunity to escape. In 190 AD, Dong Zhuo held emperor Xian to move the capital to Chang'an, and Gongqing raised Zheng Xuan as Zhao Xiang, and he was not affected. In 196 AD, he returned to his hometown of Gaomi. In 199 AD, Yuan Shao promoted Zheng Xuan to Maocai and played zuo zhonglang, and he was never thankful. The imperial court also sent a bus to enlist as the grand si nong, but he resigned and returned to his hometown on the grounds of illness. In 200 AD, Yuan Shao and Cao Cao fought at Guandu, and Yuan coerced Zheng Xuan to accompany his army to Yuancheng County, where he was too ill to move forward, but still commented on Zhou Yi, the sixth month of the lunar calendar, and died with hatred.

Zheng Xuan has been talented since childhood, and he likes to read and is diligent and studious. He studied the study of book numbers from a young age, and by the age of eight or nine, he was proficient in the arithmetic of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, not only the average adult could not compare with him, even if he was a reader, those who did not specialize in learning books could not catch up with him. By the age of twelve or thirteen, he would be able to recite and narrate the Confucian "Five Classics" of Poetry, Book, Yi, Li Ji, and Spring and Autumn. At the same time, he also likes to delve into astronomy, and has mastered some techniques such as "divination", "wind angle", "hidden technique" and so on to speculate on auspiciousness based on changes in weather and wind direction. Since his youth, Zheng Xuan has been devoted to learning, establishing the ambition to learn the scriptures, and indulging in books all day long, diligently pursuing them.

Zheng Xuan lived in seclusion all his life, and his career was to sort out ancient books. He was able to grasp the strengths of many families without regard to the views of the portal, and almost compiled all the important confucian classics before him, the number of which reached more than 60. The work he carried out in the collation of ancient books, including collation of texts, explanatory words, hooked up the compendium, and wrote as a catalogue, is worthy of being an outstanding ancient book collationist, and his achievements are remarkable.

Zheng Xuan's academic achievements are unprecedented. Born before Zheng Xuan, Ma Qian, a Taishi company, once lamented that there were too many versions of the scriptures, and the annotations were chaotic and cumbersome, and they were extremely irregular, he said: "Confucians take the "Six Arts" as the law, and the "Six Arts" are passed down, with tens of millions, and they cannot learn from them in the past, and they cannot investigate their etiquette in those years. Zheng Xuan's annotations not only recorded different texts and examined doubts, but also devoted himself to examining the source flow of the mirror and analyzing the passages. Therefore, Duan Yujie, a Qing scholar who was good at school teaching, once praised Zheng Xuancheng for the great cause of school learning through the ages in the "Preface to the Miscellaneous Records of The Classics of Righteousness". Mr. Zhang Shunhui, a present-day scholar, wrote "Zheng's School Study of Fa Wei", which believes that Zheng Xuan's achievements in school study are manifested in the following 12 aspects: First, the six arts of discernment, that is, the use of the six classics; second, to annotate the old classics, the Li Cha Qun Book; the third is to write the book of etiquette, so that the rank of the department is orderly; the fourth is to describe the sub-articles, which have outstanding creative ideas in bibliography; fifth, to widely collect different texts, compare similarities and differences, and be careful to hate; sixth, choose the good and follow, not be bound to the teacher's law and the modern ancient text; seventh, the broad and comprehensive saying, give up the short and take the long, not the first entrants; the eighth is to seek common ground while reserving differences. Self-assertion; ninth is to examine the posthumous compilation and verify the authenticity; the tenth is to correct the error; the eleventh is to supplement the falsehood; and the twelfth is to examine the pronunciation and determine the character.

Zheng Xuan's greatest achievement was to edit and annotate the "Three Rites". The Han Dynasty "Book of Rituals" only relies on the teacher's instructions and has no annotations, and Ma Rong only notes the "Funeral Dress" scriptures and transmissions, and although the name "Three Rites" was proposed by Ma Rong and Lu Zhi, it was determined after Zheng Xuan made annotations to the Zhou Li, the Rites, and the Book of Rites. The anthology of the 49 articles of the Book of Rites was written independently, and also began with Zheng Xuan. The "Three Rites" are the origin of the ancient Chinese canonical system and are very valuable historical documents, but many of them are difficult for us to understand directly from the original text, so Zheng Zhu is indispensable. Zheng Zhu's merits in helping us understand the contents of the "Three Rites" and in the errors of the canonical texts are indelible. Moreover, when Zheng Xuan explained the scriptures, he added many materials other than the scriptures, greatly enriched the content of the documents, and made great contributions to expanding the cause of archival model planning.

All of the above has involved all aspects of school teaching, and those who aspire to sort out ancient books in later generations have taken Zheng Xuanshou as an example. Zheng Xuan diligently devoted his life to "recounting the original intentions of the first saints, and the unevenness of the whole hundred families" ("Later Han Shu Zheng Xuanlie Biography"), so that all scholars have returned, and solved the problem of doubts that no one has corrected, and doubts have existed for a hundred years and a thousand years. Chinese culture has a long history, ancient books are like a sea of smoke, the collation of ancient books is necessary for the study of traditional culture and history, but also an important part of the archival collation work. As a professional science of ancient book collation, Zheng Xuan's achievements have greatly enriched the content of Chinese archives and school history, and its contribution is indispensable. (Du Yali Jinglong)