The Paper's reporter Gao Dan
The Yongle Canon is one of the "Four Great Collections" in the Rare Books of the National Library of China, and it is also the most mysterious and storied document in ancient Chinese classics. In order to let readers feel the characteristics of the "Yongle Canon" "Zhu Mo Brilliant, Gentle and Elegant, exquisite layout" and the hardships of generations of scholars in the folk search, search for this legendary classic, as well as the legendary stories of the Yongle Canon in history, on May 31, the Classics Museum of the National Library of China will hold the exhibition "Zhu Huan Hepu, The Return and Reconstruction of the Yongle Classic", which will be open to the public free of charge from June 1.
The image of this article is a remake of the surging news reporter Gao Dan
The fate of the original copy of the Yongle Canon
We first need to understand, why is the Yongle Canon so important? And when and under what circumstances did it start writing?
Many founding fathers liked to compile a document that "integrates the ancient and modern" after the pacification of the world to show the importance attached to the rule of culture and show the strength of the country. The "Yongle Canon" is that Ming Chengzu Zhu Di, in order to eliminate the uneven atmosphere between the government and the public after the "Battle of Jing", issued an edict xie jin and others to collect "the things contained in each book are clustered, and unified with rhymes" and "the book of the scriptures, history, zi, collection, and hundreds of families since the book deeds, as for astronomy, geography, yin and yang, medical divination, monasticism, and skill" compiled into a book. Xie Jin was instructed to gather more than 100 people to form a revision team, and the following year it was submitted. After Cheng Zuguan, he gave the name "Literature Dacheng", but Zhu Di was not satisfied, believing that "there are still many unprepared".
It is recorded in the Records of Emperor Taizong wen of the Ming Dynasty that in November of the second year of Yongle, Ding Ji, Xie Jin, and others advanced to cultivate the Yunshu, and Chengzu gave the book a name, gave 47 people involved in the banknote, and gave a banquet in the ceremonial department.
In the third year of Yongle, Zhu Di ordered Yao Guangxiao and others to revise it, and recruited more than 2,000 Wenru people to edit the book, and finally "collected six or seven thousand kinds of books in the world, arranged according to rhyme, and compiled into one book." In the fifth year of Yongle, Yao Guangxiaojin presented the "Yongle Canon", and Chengzu was very satisfied after reviewing it, and personally wrote the preface and officially named it "Yongle Canon". In the winter of the sixth year of Yongle, the whole book was completed, totaling 22877 volumes, 60 volumes of catalogs and examples, and 11,095 volumes, with a total of about 370 million words. ”
The catalogue of the Sixty Volumes of the Catalogue of the Yongle Canon was copied from the Hanlin Academy, preceded by the preface of Ming Chengzu and Yao Guangxiao's "Table of the Great Canon of Entering Yongle", which allowed posterity to get a glimpse of the whole picture of the canonical citations in the case of the destruction of the original canon.
The Jiajing Emperor liked to ask immortals, so he liked the Yongle Canon, which detailed all kinds of knowledge, and the Jiajing Emperor often put one or two books on his desk for reading at any time. In the thirty-sixth year of Jiajing, the Forbidden City was burned down, and the Fengtian Gate and the Three Great Halls were burned down, and Jiajing was worried about the damage to the Yongle Canon stored in the nearby Wenlou, and sent an edict three or four times in one night to relocate it to save it from the fire.
Just in case, the Jiajing Emperor decided to re-record (i.e., re-copy) a copy of the Yongle Canon, and in the autumn of the 41st year of Jiajing, he formally appointed Gao Gong and Qu Jingchun to be responsible for writing copies of the Yongle Canon. The re-recording work lasted five years until the year after Jiajing's death, that is, the completion of the first year of Longqing, and the re-recording and the Yongle original were almost identical in content and appearance. At this point, the Yongle Canon has two copies, the original and the copy.
The 566 Volumes of the Records of Emperor Su of the Ming Dynasty records that the Jiajing Emperor deliberately re-recorded the canon in case of an accident.
In fact, the original copy of the Yongle Canon has been hidden in the Forbidden Secret House since the completion of the compilation of the Yongle Sixth Year, and most of the Ming Emperors have not directly used this book, and only the two emperors in the historical materials, Hongzhi and Jiajing, have actually read the records of the Yongle Canon. In the first year of Longqing, after the copy of the Yongle Canon was recorded, it was almost difficult to find any account of the original Yongle in the literature, and no original physical existence was found.
Where the original copy of the Yongle Canon, which was recorded in historical documents, was once stored
The mystery of the original copy of the Yongle Canon
Because there has been no news in history for a long time, there have been many speculations in the world about the whereabouts of the original Yongle, which can be summarized as follows.
The first is the "burial of the Jiajing Emperor", because the time of the completion of the copy entry is not far from the date of the burial of the Jiajing Emperor, so some contemporary scholars speculate that the original may have been buried in the Yongling Tomb of the Jiajing Emperor. The reason is that the Jiajing Emperor was immersed in alchemy, and regarded the Yongle Canon as the most precious treasure before his death, and the burial after death may have been a long-made arrangement. Secondly, when the Jiajing Emperor ordered the re-recording of the copy, Xu Jie, the most important civil official in Jiajing, made it clear to him that the re-recording could only be "copied from the book", and the project was huge and could not be completed quickly. Jiajing, on the other hand, stressed that the "re-recording" was for "two collections" and "just in case" and must be completed step by step. Four years later, Jiajing died and was buried three months later, just after the funeral, the Longqing Emperor announced that the Yongle Canon had been copied and rewarded the copied courtiers. It was at this time that the original mysteriously disappeared. So far, no written evidence has been found in the historical records of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The second theory is that in June of the twenty-fifth year of the Ming Dynasty, the three major halls of the Forbidden City were burned down, and the original Yongle Canon is also believed to have been buried in the sea of fire at this time; the third theory is that the original yongle canon is hidden in the Imperial Palace next to the current Forbidden City. The Imperial Palace is a royal archive, the city wall is very thick, 3.45 meters from east to west, and the north and south walls are 6.17 meters thick, and the walls of this thickness are unusual, even accounting for 64% of the building area, so some people speculate that there is another sandwich wall, which contains the original copy of the Yongle Canon. However, the copy of the Yongle Canon was entered into the Imperial Palace after it was recorded, and the original copy was also placed in the Imperial Palace is very unlikely, and until now, the original copy of the Yongle Canon has not been found here at all.
The fourth theory is more commonly used, that is, in 1644, Li Zicheng was defeated at Shanhaiguan and burned down the imperial palace when he withdrew from Beijing, and only the Wuying Hall survived, and if the original yongle canon was in the imperial palace at the time, it should have been scorched.
Qian Qianyi adopted this view in the Fifty Volumes of the Muzhai Youxue Collection.
The above is the speculation about the original Yongle, and when did the copy of the Yongle Canon begin to disperse? According to the literature recorded during the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, copies of the Yongle Canon began to be lost as early as the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and after the Yongzheng Period of the Qing Dynasty was moved to the Jingyi Pavilion of the Hanlin Academy, it was guarded by officials and robbed, and a few were destroyed in the war or plundered, and by the first year of Xuantong, only 64 copies of the Yongle Canon of the Hanlin Academy remained.
The Yongle Canons that we are collecting and seeing now are all in the copy system. The original 11,095 volumes, 22,937 volumes (including catalogs, 60 volumes of ordinary examples) of Jiajing copy, so far only more than 400 volumes, more than 800 volumes and some zero leaves have survived. The National Library of China has a total of 224 volumes of the Yongle Canon (of which 62 volumes are now temporarily stored in Taiwan), making it the largest collector of the Yongle Canon at home and abroad.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, copies of the Yongle Canon were seriously lost
"If you find the Yongle Canon, you can directly achieve dialogue with the Song and Yuan dynasties across the long history"
In addition to the above-mentioned fateful and particularly attractive, the Yongle Canon itself has a very high value, which is reflected in the following aspects.
The Yongle Canon is a kind of book, that is, a large-scale information book in ancient China for inspection, somewhat similar to the current dictionary. However, the Yongle Canon is different from the general books in that it takes rhyme as the outline, uses the word as the subject, and each word is classified to collect various materials related to the word, combining the rhyme order with the order of the class, and attaching a general discussion to some matters, and each item has a title. The Yongle Canon first indicates the rhyme of the word in the Hongwu Zhengyun and the earliest provenance and interpretation under the search word, and also indicates the seal, affiliation, line, and grass. Italics and other kinds of calligraphy and variant characters, the content is very rich. Selected texts or articles are generally listed below the glossary. However, depending on the circumstances, some are also listed under the headings.
The style of the Yongle Canon.
The Yongle Canon determines the entry according to the words in the literature, and copies the records of this entry that appear in various texts, and even the entire book, and points out who wrote it, what article or bibliography it is taken from, so that people can clarify the source and can be examined. This is also its most precious place, scholars believe that "finding the Yongle Canon, you can cross the long history to directly achieve dialogue with the Song and Yuan dynasties."
Many of our current very important documents are compiled from the Yongle Canon. As early as the Ming Longqing period, Gao Gong, Zhang Siwei and others participated in the re-recording of the Yongle Canon, from which Zhang Siwei compiled the two books "MinggongShu Judgment Qingming Collection" and "Prison Turtle Jian". During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the compilation and revision of the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book" began, and the Yongle Canon was valued, and even Qianlong approved the establishment of a special "Collation and Survey of the Yongle Canon" Scattered Book Office. Famous scholars Dai Zhen, Shao Jinhan, and Zhou Yongnian participated in this work.
By the 46th year of Qianlong, a total of 66 kinds of scriptures, 41 kinds of historical departments, 103 kinds of sub-departments, and 175 kinds of collection departments were compiled in the "Yongle Canon", totaling 385 kinds of 4946 volumes. For example, the "Spring and Autumn Interpretation", "Yuan He Surname Compilation", Xue Juzheng's "History of the Old Five Dynasties", which was later included in one of the "Twenty-Four Histories", the important historical materials for studying the history of the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, "Records of the Year since Jianyan", the Song Dynasty medical masterpiece "Bo Jifang", "Imitation of Han Weizhi", etc., thus show the important value of the "Yongle Canon".
The History of the Old Five Dynasties compiled from the Yongle Canon.
The Yongle Canon is written in the Taige style at that time, the Yongle Canon is about 370 million words, and the rules of the main text are to use a line of large ink bibliography, a double-line small character Zhu pen to record the author and title, the ink pen to record the title and content of the article in the book, and the broken sentence and the phonetic symbols are stamped with small red characters and small circles. In addition to the title's first character written in a variety of seals, affiliations, and cursive scripts, the main text is copied by the scribes in the Ming Dynasty official italics - the Shutai Pavilion Style " (qing Dynasty called "Pavilion Style").
Because the Ming and Qing dynasties required the writing of the examination papers to be neat, black and upright, and consistent in size, young students and officials of the pavilion and Hanlin Academy appointed by the scientific expedition were good at writing this kind of rule, and this kind of cabinet body was not soft and weak at all, and there was bone in the softness.
Moreover, when copying copies, the procedure for selecting a scribe is very solemn and strict. The re-recording of the Yongle Canon features Gao Gong, a waiter in the Ministry of Rites, Zuo Chunfang, and Zhai Jingchun, a waiter, as the chief school official, and the important participants are Zhang Juzheng, Xu Shixing, Wang Xilie, and Zhang Siwei, officials of the Hanlin Academy.
The re-recording work has high requirements for the level of writing, and the official department and the ceremonial department presided over the "pasty name examination" for this purpose, and finally recruited 109 good writers to be responsible for copying and transcription. In order to ensure the smooth progress of the re-recording work, the imperial court set up the necessary service facilities and personnel as usual, such as the internal government's imperial supervisor to allocate painters and paper smiths, the Suncheonfu specially provided high-grade brick platforms, pens and inks, the salary department and the Ministry of Works supplied heating charcoal, the Guanglu Temple was responsible for wine and rice, the Hanlin Academy paid the writing staff "Moon Rice", and the Jinyi Guards were sent to patrol and prohibit to ensure safety.
There are strict rules and regulations for re-recording copies, stipulating that the writers must register every time they receive the original copy of the canon, and they are not allowed to go out privately to hire others to write on their behalf. Each person copied the three leaves every day, completely in accordance with the original book style, line of imitation, if there is a mistake, must be rewritten, found that there are mixed reports and slackers, but also "guilty of sitting on the officials." After the re-recording of each volume of the canon, the names of the chief school officer, branch official, writing officer and map point personnel are indicated at the end of the book to show the responsibilities of each person.
The 9-volume Jiajing copy of the Yongle Canon is on display for the first time in recent years
Enter the highlight of this exhibition - a copy of Jiajing in the 9 volumes of the Yongle Canon.
According to the National Library of China, the exhibition exhibited more than 70 volumes (pieces) of more than 60 kinds of exhibits, of which 9 copies of Jiajing of the Yongle Canon were exhibited for the first time in recent years.
They are "Ren" character album, "Chen" character book, "Nong" character book, "Yi" character book, "Song, Rong, Rong, Yong" character book, "Lang" character book, 2 "Water" character book, "Shi" character book.
Lang Zi Book
At present, many volumes of the Yongle Canon in my collection are returned from overseas, such as the "Nong" character album purchased by Wang Chongmin from Britain for the Beiping Library in 1938, the "Ode, Rong, Rong, and Yong" character album returned to China by the library of the Department of Oriental Studies of Leningrad University in the Soviet Union in 1951, and the "Shi" character album returned to China by the German government in 1955.
The Yongle Canon, vol. 540-541, "Ode, Dissolve, Rong, Yong", was originally stored in the library of the Department of Oriental Studies of Leningrad University in the Soviet Union, and was returned to China in 1951 by the Cultural Relics Bureau of the Ministry of Culture and handed over to the Beijing Library.
In addition, there are the "Yi" character book donated by Gu Zigang in 1950, the "Lang" character book donated by Xu Bojiao in 1951, the "Water" character book donated by the Commercial Press in 1951, and the "Water" character book donated by Peking University in 1958.
Easy Word Book
The special section of the exhibition shows the return and reconstruction of the Yongle Canon, and in the form of charts and descriptions of key events, comprehensively sorts out the process of the Yongle Canon through various channels such as government transfer, overseas return, collector donation, employee interview, etc., and digs deep into the deployment arrangements of the National Library around the canon in different periods. At the same time, it reviews the past of the migration of rare books such as the Yongle Classics and the transportation of the United States during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and sorts out the return process of the overseas Yongle Classics.
In order to promote the protection and research of the Yongle Classic, with the approval of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the National Library of China will officially hang the "National Library yongle Classic" research center in the Ancient Books Museum, and continuously introduce more new research results of the Yongle Classic through exhibitions, the development of cultural creativity, the use of multimedia publicity and promotion, and other aspects of work. The research center plans to hire An Pingqiu, deputy head of the National Leading Group for the Collation and Publication planning of ancient books and director of the National Ancient Committee of Colleges and Universities, Li Zhizhong, a research librarian of the National Library, Chen Li, former executive deputy director of the National Library, and Zhang Chenshi, editor and reviewer of Zhonghua Bookstore Co., Ltd., as special experts and scholars who have achieved results in the research of the Yongle Classic.
Editor-in-Charge: Liang Jia