After personal practice and drawing on the experience of his predecessors, Chen Yuan summed up the general rules of proofreading, this school, and other schools in the "Yuandian Zhang School Survey and Interpretation Case" ("Li Yun Shu Wu Series Carving"), which was regarded by many people as a guideline. However, when sorting out ancient books, it is easy to compare the similarities and differences with the help of these methods, and it is not easy to further determine right and wrong. Regardless of the sub-categories of literature of history, even if it is a novel, opera and other popular literary works, sometimes although it is only a word difference, it must be repeatedly considered, repeatedly deliberated, and even protracted, left and right. Take The most famous Wang Shifu's "Records of the West Chamber" in the Yuan Miscellaneous Drama, for example, there have been dozens of periodicals and banknotes in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and there are many differences in text, and some are convenient and difficult to assert. For example, the first sentence of the first book's last "title is correct", "The old lady's idle spring courtyard", other books or "old lady closed spring courtyard", or "old lady open (open) spring courtyard". Behind the three different texts, each has a number of versions that are not small as Austrian aid, either a rare book or a commentary by famous masters, so they compete with each other and do not compete with each other. In the early Qing Dynasty, Mao Qiling vigorously advocated the word "closed" as "closed" in the "Maoxi River On the West Chamber", and criticized: "'Closed' means 'the door is hidden and closed', although the trip is closed." The saying that the common man advocates not visiting the temple must mean that the courtyard is open and the warbler is seen, so it is easy to 'close' to 'open'. It is not difficult to imagine that such a complicated situation is bound to make many scholars hesitate at the time of trade-offs.
Mr. Wang Jisi
In his early years, Wang Jisi, who was trained by the songwriter Wu Mei, tried to study the "Records of the West Chamber" by means of historical examination. His annotated "Notes on the Five Dramas of the West Chamber" was published in 1944 by the Zhejiang Longyin Book House, and the "Self-Introduction" mentions: "Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, the commentaries on the five dramas of the West Chamber, citing its authors, include Xu Wenchang, Xu Shifan, Wang Boliang, Ling Maochu, Min Yuwu, Jin Shengsi, and Mao Xihe; and the books outside the Holy Sigh are the most widely circulated. However, in his view, the commentaries of previous generations are often lost in the chiseling and do not satisfy people. He thus vowed to rewrite Dong Li, and in terms of textual revision, "the original text is recorded in the warm red chamber engraving, and the song text recorded in Wang Boliang's annotations, the "Sixty Legends" and the song recorded in the "Yongxi Lefu" is supplemented." The sentence in the first book, "Title Correct Name", was corrected as "Old Lady's Leisure Spring Temple". However, during the period of writing, the war was in full swing, and he was "lost" and "proved beyond evidence" in the turbulent displacement, and there were not many editions to be proofread. After four years, Shanghai Enlightened Bookstore published his "Commentary on the Annotation to the West Chamber", adding Mao Qiling's commentary to the school edition, and the annotation part was also profitable and profitable; after that, he did not slacken off and strived for excellence, and successively published the annotated version of "The Book of the West Chamber" in the New Literature and Art Publishing House (1954), the Classical Literature Publishing House (1957), the Shanghai Editorial Office of the Zhonghua Book Company (1958), and the Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House (1978), and each edition and even each reprint will have a different degree of addition, deletion and addition. The referenced version has also successively added several newly discovered Hongzhi ben, Zhang Shenzhi ben, and Liu Longtian ben. However, the original survey of the "Old Lady's Leisure Spring Temple" has not changed, but there is no proofreading instruction, there is no way to know its selection criteria, perhaps it is considered that the word "idle" is obviously superior and not raped, or it is felt that such trivial food is not beneficial to the reader.
The People's Literature Publishing House published Wu Xiaoling's annotated "Records of the West Chamber" in 1954. Wu graduated from the Department of Chinese of Peking University in his early years, and under the influence of Hu Shi, Zheng Zhenduo and others, he made many achievements in the study of folk literature. According to his "Preface", "the version of the miscellaneous drama of "Xi Xiang Ji" has been circulated very much, and there are more than forty kinds of miscellaneous dramas that we can see today", "This book is basically based on the books of Ling Chucheng and Wang Boliang, and then used the other nine kinds of books to proofread, and when there is any difference in text, we refer to the Beijing Yue Shi Ben and the Yongxi Lefu to choose", and made careful choices of the base book and the school book. Although the details of the annotations are not as meticulous as the Wang's annotated version, they are concise and clear, and they are not bothersome, which is very much in line with his original intention of "wanting to initially develop a book that is closer to the old version (not the original) and suitable for general reading and appreciation". Probably in order to avoid the ridicule of "cumbersome research", Wu Shi did not list the similarities and differences of each book and wrote a detailed proofreading record. He calibrated this sentence as "Old Lady's Spring Garden" - "Idle" and "Idle", when it was caused by the mistaken planting of the hand people when Fu Zi - it can be seen that although the version used is not the same as Wang Jisi, the final conclusion coincides.
After the careful review and revision of these two experts, Wang and Wu, it seems that this different article can temporarily shelve the controversy. However, when the Beijing China Bookstore was sorting out the storehouse in 1978, it inadvertently found four remnants of the "New Compilation and Correction of the West Chamber" from the back of the back of a yuan-engraved "Literature Tongkao", which made waves rise again. Jiang Xingyu, who was the first to write "The Earliest Fragmentary Leaves of the Newly Discovered "Records of the West Chamber" (in TheOry of the Masses, No. 1, 1980, and included in the 1997 edition of the Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, "The Study of the Literature of the West Chamber"), after detailing the basic situation of these leaves, focused on discussing the first "title correct name" preserved in it. He carefully analyzed the three known different texts and believed that they could all justify themselves, "the problem is that the characters 'closed', 'idle', and 'open' are similar in shape, and I don't know what the word was at the beginning, and it may also be later engraved and sung and then passed on"; however, since the newly discovered remnant leaves are "closed" and "the era of engraving books is earlier than all the existing Ming periodicals", "it is more likely that the earliest books will use 'old lady closed spring courtyard'".
Immediately after that, Wu Xiaoling published "Spring Courtyard Delights in Hearing and Closing"" (published in Guangming Daily, September 27, 1983, and included in the fifth volume of the 2006 edition of Wu Xiaoling's Collection by Hebei Education Publishing House), although it was emphasized that "we cannot simply rely on the early age of the engraving or the shock of the famous school notes to decide to take it, but we must make more efforts to deliberate on the writer's conception and the content of the work", but still advocate that "the earliest "Xixiang" remnants of the period can be the main evidence", supplemented by other supporting evidence, we can conclude that "" The word "closed" is undoubtedly the original word of Wang Dexin." According to Wu, he was invited to identify the age of the fragments of leaves, and was "the first 'outsider to see the original' except for the discoverer", but the oral appraisal made was "only for the reference of book lovers, not written into writing". As a reviser of the Book of the West Chamber, he did not immediately write an article to discuss it, which was quite unusual. Does it mean that he still had doubts about how to choose between the words "idle" and "closed" at first?
"The Old Lady's Closed Spring Courtyard" (Picture taken from Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1987 edition)
At the same time, on the basis of the old book "Notes on the West Chamber of the Collected Commentaries and Schools", Wang Jisi drew on the results of the examination over the years, further corrected the text, added annotations, and asked Zhang Ren to collect commentary materials, and finally compiled it into a new edition of the "Notes on the West Chamber of the Collected Commentaries and Schools", which was published by the Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House in 1987. The book also changes the "Xian Chun Yuan" that has been attacking this front for decades to "Closed Chun Yuan", and has an annotation cloud: "The closed character was originally idle, according to the Fragments of the Late Yuan and Early Ming Dynasty engraved pages of the Chinese Bookstore in Beijing." "The same is based on new discoveries to overturn the old judgment, and the reason for this is probably because the publication time of this batch of remnants of leaves is first. Wang Shi later edited quanyuan opera (People's Literature Publishing House, 1990), of which the "West Chamber" was recorded according to the new edition of the "Collection Commentary annotations on the West Chamber", only "deleted the content of the collection commentary and annotations, and retained the school record", which is obviously regarded as the final version.
Perhaps under the influence of Jiang, Wu, Wang, and others, the collated editions of the "Records of the West Chamber" (such as the 1994 edition of Zhang Yanjin's Annotated Edition of the People's Literature Publishing House) or research treatises (such as the 1995 edition of Zhang Ren of the Northeast Normal University Press) have also based on these remnants, and have also calibrated this sentence as "The Old Lady's Closed Spring Courtyard", which seems to have become a fixed conclusion. But if you dig a little deeper, there may be room for discussion. Taking the most entangled "idle" and "closed" as an example, the former is blackmailed by the long brush, and the probability is much greater than that of the latter because of the addition of strokes and the former. Attaching importance to the old books that were engraved before is certainly an important criterion for the collation of ancient books, but as Wu Xiaoling said, the remnant leaves are "originally titled 'New Compilation and Correction', and it can be seen that there are still old books", if it is found that the engraving time is earlier and is used as the version of "Xian Chun Yuan" or "Kai Chun Yuan", then how to deal with it? Sorting out ancient books was originally a very tedious thing, but as the ancients said, "when thinking about the wrong book, it is also a fit", and it is quite interesting to think about it occasionally.