Ancient map of China
The standardization of ancient Chinese cartographic principles began with Pei Xiu in the Western Jin Dynasty, and to the Tang and Song dynasties, with the continuous improvement of cartographic techniques, more and more maps and cartographic theories beyond the previous generation began to appear, which marked that China's cartographic level began to move towards a new stage.
In the history of China's cartography, the first clearly recorded cartographer was Pei Xiu of the Western Jin Dynasty. Pei Xiu was a native of Wenxi County, Hedong County (present-day Yuncheng, Shanxi), and during the Cao Wei Dynasty, Pei Xiu held important positions in the palace, and during the Western Jin Dynasty, Pei Xiu became an official to Sikong, and later Pei Xiu began to concentrate on mapping.
The Biography of Pei Xiu of the Book of Jin reads: "Eighteen articles of the Yugong Geographical Map, hidden in the Secret Palace. It is clearly recorded in the literature that Pei Xiu once produced the "Yugong Territory Map", which was "hidden in the secret palace" after being played, and this kind of map was only accessible to the courtiers or imperial nobles. However, with the change of the times, this "Yugong Geographical Map" has ceased to exist.
Pei Xiu
Although the "Yugong Territory Map" has been lost, it is the earliest historical atlas recorded in China's literature, and the most precious of them is that Pei Xiu put forward the six basic principles of map drawing in the preface (the preface is preserved in the "Jinshu Pei Xiu Biography" and "Art and Literature Cluster"), which is the famous "Cartographic Six Bodies" in the history of ancient Chinese maps. Cartographic six bodies for the Daoli, Quasi-Wang, Gaoxia, Fang Evil, Roundabout, etc., is the traditional map of the six basic principles, translated into today's map terminology is scale, elevation, distance, direction and terrain slope ups and downs, etc., these six institutional principles deeply influenced the later traditional Chinese map drawing, but also laid the foundation for china's traditional map cartographic theory.
Pei Xiu's hometown - Wenxi County, Shanxi (taken by the author)
The map made by Pei Xiu also belongs to a kind of map, and its style is similar to that of the Mawangdui map, although Pei Xiu handed over the map to the forbidden place of the palace to be preserved, but it is precisely because the map is hidden in this forbidden place that cannot be seen by more people, so it is difficult to survive in the world, and there is no detailed explanation and account outside the original map. Regarding Pei Xiu's cartographic theory and practice, we can only find some clues from sporadic literature.
Mawangdui Shu Shu Public Opinion Map Partial
Pei Xiu's cartography influenced a large number of geographers and cartographers in later generations, and he is also recognized as one of the earliest Cartographers in China who was admired by later generations. Although maps such as Mawangdui and FangmaTan also appeared in the history before Pei Xiu, there is a lack of records and materials on their origins, let alone who made them for. So in a sense, Pei Xiu is an epoch-making master in the history of China's cartography.
In the Sui and Tang dynasties, because China ended the situation of division and division for nearly three hundred years since the Eastern Han Dynasty, it ushered in a new round of stability and development, which provided a good era environment for the development of maps in the later period, and the drawing of ancient Chinese maps from the Tang Dynasty entered a new stage of development.
For example, in the Tang Dynasty's National General Chronicle of the Yuanhe County, the author Li Jifu, when making this book, once wrote a county, he made a map for it, and the amount of the map could be imagined, and the level of cartography in the Tang Dynasty at that time could also be imagined. However, the "Atlas of Yuanhe County" was lost due to its age. Although Li Jifu was unable to make the maps he compiled circulate to the world, we can still imagine the superb skills of drawing at that time through the words in the book.
"Yuanhe County Map" book shadow
Another influential cartographer of the Tang Dynasty should be Jia Tan, who was not only good at writing geographical records, but also good at drawing maps. He once mentioned Pei Xiu's cartographic six-body in the table text of his book "Longyou Shan Nantu", and on its basis there was a new development.
Jia Tan's greatest influence was the "Hai Nei Hua Yi Tu", which took him a full 17 years to complete the drawing, and he was nearly fifty years old when he wrote the map. In the "Hainei Huayi Map", it was proposed that the scale of one inch and one hundred miles, and different place names were noted on the map with different colors, these two cartographic methods were called "Planning In The Drawing Party" and "Ancient and Modern ZhuMo", which was based on Pei Xiu's six-body cartography, which further put forward new requirements for the drawing of the map.
The Hainei Huayi Map is a huge national map of the Tang Dynasty, although it was later lost due to war, but it influenced the drawing of the Map of the Song Dynasty.
Jia Yan statue
In the Song Dynasty, the production of maps was more diverse than that of the Tang Dynasty, and the scope of application was greatly expanded. The most representative of the level of cartography in the Song Dynasty is the "Yu Trace Map" and "Huayi Map", according to the inscriptions on the two maps, the two maps were formed in the seventh year of Fuchang (1136) and are now in the Xi'an Forest of Steles Museum.
These two drawings follow the cartographic principles of Pei Xiu and Jia Tan from the principle of cartography, and the base of the Huayi Map is the "Huayi Map of Hainei" made by Jia Tan. Since the two maps are inscription maps, after nearly 9 centuries of wind and rain, the content of the maps can still be learned from the rubbings of these two maps.
《Huayi Tu》
The geographical scope of the Huayi Map is very wide, and although the principle of planning and drawing is not adopted in the map, it indicates the four directions of east, west, south and north. The map shows the rivers, mountains, roads, and geographical locations of the states throughout the Song Dynasty.
The "Yu Trace Map" adopts the cartographic principle of the planned drawing party inherited from Jia Tan, each side folds the ground for hundreds of miles, of which the horizontal side has 71, the vertical side has 73, a total of 5110 squares, this kind of mapping also greatly improves the accuracy of map drawing. The word "Yu Trace" in the "Yu Trace Map" refers to the "footprint of Dayu", and this figure is obviously influenced by the Shangshu Yugong. It includes the names of Kyushu, rivers, and mountains recorded in the Yugong, which also contrasts ancient and modern with the local geography. According to scholars, the author of the Yu Trace Diagram is most likely Shen Kuo, a scholar of the Song Dynasty.
Rubbings of the Yu Traces
China's map production has achieved rapid development since the beginning of the two Jin Dynasties, from Pei Xiu's "cartographic six-body" to Jia Tan's "planning and drawing" cartographic principles, all of which have made positive contributions to the development of ancient Chinese maps. Although with the change of the times, the original map left by the two men no longer exists, but the theory of their map drawing was inherited by the Song Dynasty, so that we can still glimpse the appearance of the ancient map of China before the Song Dynasty through the map of the Song Dynasty.
Han Zhaoqing, "The Study of Chinese Cartography from the Present to the Ancient and from the Ancient to the Ancient: A Commentary on the History of Chinese Cartography in Yu Dingguo", Journal of Fudan University (Social Sciences Edition), No. 11, 2009.
Wang Chengzu: Ancient Chinese Geography (Pre-Qin to Ming), Commercial Press, 2015.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Yugong Walker)
This article is the original work of Wenshi Science Popularization Self-media Haoran Wenshi, and unauthorized reprinting is prohibited!
The pictures used in this article, unless otherwise noted, are from the network search, if there is infringement, please contact the author to delete, thank you!
We will provide you with wonderful historical articles every day, and we kindly ask all readers and friends to pay attention to our account! Your likes, retweets, comments, this is the best support for us!