Friends who see the title should not rush to spray, in "Dream of the Red Chamber", Jia Baoyu is of course Jia Zheng's son, which is clearly written in the book. But why should I say that Jia Baoyu is not Jia Zheng's own son? In fact, it involves a large branch of red science, Cao Xue, and Jia Baoyu's prototype is probably not the son of Jia Zheng's prototype.
Since the publication of Hu Shi's "Examination of the Dream of the Red Chamber" in 1921, the dream of the Red Chamber has become increasingly popular since the legend. The so-called self-legend refers to Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber, which is actually written according to her own family affairs. The so-called Jia family is actually the Jiangning weaving Cao family.
In view of the fact that many lovers of the Red Chamber are not interested in Cao Xue and know very little, the following is a brief introduction to the core content of Cao Xue that I know.
Cao Xueqin is the grandson of Cao Yin, a weaver in Jiangning. After Cao Yin's death, his son Cao Yin took over as Jiangning Weaver, but Cao Yin had only been in office for two years, and he went underground to find his father Cao Yin.
Cao Yin had only one son, Cao Yin, who was in his early 20s when he died, and although he married his wife, he had not yet had children.
No way, Cao Yin's wife Li Shi, that is, Jia Mu in the book, chose the youngest Cao Fu from the four sons of Cao Yin's younger brother Cao Xuan as her son, that is to say, Cao Fu was passed on to Cao Yin, and then Cao Fu took over the Jiangning weaving vacancy left behind after Cao Yin's death. The prototype of Jia Zheng is Cao Fu.
So who is Cao Xueqin? According to Mr. Zhou Ruchang, an authority on red studies, he was the son of Cao Fu and was born in the second year of Yongzheng.
It is said that Cao Xueqin was born in the second year of Yongzheng, in fact, there is no actual evidence. This year was deduced by Zhou Ruchang based on cao Xueqin's death year and the age at the time of Cao Xueqin's death mentioned in a poem.
The most obvious record of Cao Xueqin's death is found in the Commentary on the Jia of Li Yan:
At noon, Chinese New Year's Eve, the book was not completed, and Qin died of tears.
Cao Xueqin died during the Qianlong period, the twenty-seventh year of Qianlong's reign, and the Chinese New Year's Eve of that year was February 21, 1763. After this comment, there is another paragraph like this:
Yu tasted the weeping celery, and the tears were also waiting to be exhausted, and every time he wanted (wanted) to find QingganFeng, he asked Brother Shi again, NaiYu did not meet the leprosy monk He, and he was afraid. ...... A noon August tear pen.
The year of Jia Wu is the thirty-ninth year of Qianlong, and the eighth month of Jia Wu in the Gregorian calendar is September 1774, eleven years after Cao Xueqin's death. Although the person who wrote this comment cannot be sure who it is, he and Cao Xueqin are very closely related, and there should be no problem.
Of course, things are not so simple.
Cao Xueqin had a friend named Dun Min, and there was a poem in his "Mao Zhai Poetry Notes" called "Send cao Xueqin", which did not specify the date and month of the time when the poem was written, but was compiled under the year of Yan Wei. A yi propylene ding noon he geng xin non dec, 癸未年 is the year after the noon year, so some people say that since Dun Min wrote poems to Cao Xueqin in the year of the noon, Cao Xueqin naturally will not die in the noon year. Maybe the person who wrote the fat review above remembered the wrong year, the old brain is not clear, and it is also possible to miss a year before and after.
Speaking of this, in fact, I think that whether it is the year of noon or the year of decay, the difference is not big, originally died in the embarrassing time period of Chinese New Year's Eve night, what does it matter in the previous year and the next year?
But the red scholars liked to be more truthful, so they found another record. That is, Dun Min's brother Dun Cheng wrote a poem "Bang Cao Xueqin" in the year of Jia Shen, and the following full poem is reproduced:
Forty years of Hua Fu meditation, mourning a piece of Ah Who Ming. Orphans and indifferent souls should be expelled, and the bride should be blinded. The cattle ghost relics mourn Li He, and the deer car is buried with Liu Ling. The old man had only the tears of the green mountains, and the wine was raw and the old ones were on the ground.
Old grave, meaning old grave. Looking at the last two sentences comprehensively, it should be said that it was a year apart to give a friend a grave. Based on this meaning, we can infer it. If Cao Xueqin died in the Chinese New Year's Eve of the noon, he could only be buried in Yanwei, and after a year, it was just the year of Jia Shen, to give his friends a grave. If he died in the Chinese New Year's Eve of Decay, he can only be buried in the year of Jiashen, then Duncheng should not mention the old tomb in the year of Jiashen, but should say that the new grave is new.
The above is the examination of Cao Xueqin's death year, that is, Cao Xueqin died in the Chinese New Year's Eve of Qianlong Noon, and the academic circles generally agree with this statement. According to the sentence in Duncheng's poem "Bang Cao Xueqin", forty years of Hua Fu Ji meditated for forty years, that is, the second year of Yongzheng (1724) mentioned above, as the birth year of Cao Xueqin.
So is there a problem with this birth year? In fact, the controversy is still very big. Let me talk about three aspects if Cao Xueqin was born in the second year of Yongzheng, what problems would there be.
Cao Xueqin's age when she began writing Dream of the Red Chamber
According to the research of red scholars, as early as the fourteenth and fifteenth years of Qianlong, the Dream of the Red Chamber had already been unscripted. And "Dream of the Red Chamber" begins by saying:
Cao Xueqin was in the Mourning Red Xuan, reviewed for ten years, added and deleted five times, compiled into a catalog, and divided into chapters.
The fourteenth year of Qianlong is 1749, so as early as 1739, Cao Xueqin, who was fifteen or sixteen years old, had already begun to write "Dream of the Red Chamber". Like all lovers of the Dream of the Red Chamber, I believe that Cao Xueqin's talent is rare in the world. But no matter how genius, I don't believe that a novel like "Dream of the Red Chamber" can be done by a fifteen-year-old teenager. Without a certain amount of experience, without a certain amount of personal feelings, it is impossible to write a work with such a deep foundation.
Cao Xueqin's age when the Cao family was raided
The Cao family experienced two raids, the first in the fifth year of Yongzheng (1727) and the second in the fourth year of Qianlong (1739). If Cao Xueqin was born in the second year of Yongzheng (1724) according to the above, then Cao Xueqin was only three years old when she first raided her home. The second time he raided his home, he was only sixteen years old. After the first raid on the family, the Cao family had already fallen a lot, and when the Cao family was rich, Cao Xueqin did not experience much at all, which made him how to write the first eighty times of the flower cluster.
Can Duncheng's poem "Bang Cao Xueqin" prove that Cao Xueqin was exactly forty years old when she died?
This actually involves the principle of solitude in historiography. Cao Xueqin, as a literary genius, has many friends in poetry and literature, which is why we can still find various clues now. But in so many sources, the only evidence that Cao Xueqin was exactly forty years old at the time of her death is Duncheng's poem. But poetry is poetry after all, and his language is very broad, especially when it comes to numbers, in fact, there is a lot of uncertainty. In my impression, the ancients did not seem to have the habit of rounding, for the rhyme of poetry, I think whether it is forty years old or forty-seven or eight years old, in fact, it can be called forty years of Hua Fu meditation.
In addition, who can be sure that the forty years here must refer to Cao Xueqin's age? Is it possible to say that Cao Xueqin and Duncheng have known each other for forty years?
So are there any other records about Cao Xueqin's age?
Speaking of this, I have to admire those red scholars who have been drilling in the pile of old paper for many years to find materials related to Cao Xueqin. They also found that Cao Xueqin's friend Zhang Yiquan had this passage in his self-annotation of the poem "Wounded Xueqin's Residents":
He was a man of natural nature, a good drinker, and a good poet and painter, and died before he was fifty years old.
One says forty years, the other says that he is not yet fifty years old, which seems to be a contradiction, but in fact it is not a contradiction. As long as it is admitted that the forties mentioned above can also be called forty years, it is not a big problem.
Well, now back to me, I said that Jia Baoyu's prototype was not Cao Fu's son, nor was he born in the second year of Yongzheng. So who is he?
Personally, I think that Mr. Deng Jiarong's statement that Cao Xueqin is Cao Tianyou, the widow of Cao Yuan, is relatively reliable. (ps: (Not necessarily mr. Deng Jiarong first proposed, but I read it from Mr. Dungaron's book, and Mr. Deng held this view)
The following is a brief introduction to this view.
As mentioned earlier, when Cao Yin (Cao Yin's son) died, although he had no sons, he married his wife. Cao Fu (son of Cao Yin's younger brother Cao Xuan, who later succeeded Cao Yin and succeeded Jiangnan) wrote a letter to Kangxi in March 54, which reads:
Slave's sister-in-law Ma Shi, because she is now pregnant in July, is afraid of a long journey, and has not had to go north to mourn, and if she is lucky enough to give birth to a man in the future, then the brother of the slave is there!
The brother of the slave here naturally refers to Cao Yuan. Apparently, although Cao Hao was dead, Ma Shi was still alive and pregnant. In the past, red scholars did not think that Ma's son was Cao Xueqin. First, pregnancy can not prove anything, who knows if it will be a miscarriage? Even if born, who knows if it is a man or a woman? Even if it is a man, who knows that he will grow up?
However, some people found that there was a record of Cao Tianyou under Cao Yong's name in the Cao Family Tree "Wuqingtang Family Tree". Before this, we already knew that Xueqin was actually a number, and his real name was Cao Xia. In the "Book of Poetry, XinNanshan", there is a saying that "both The Xia is enough" and "receiving the heavenly qi", both 霑 and 祜 have the meaning of bearing grace, and The hu and you are actually connected in ancient times, and most of the names and words of the ancients are related. Therefore, if you say that the Cao Xia character Tianyou, it is actually very natural to say.
As for why the verses are associated with the two words 霑 and 佑, there is also a reason. In Mr. Wu Shichang's "Comments on the Dream of the Red Chamber", in fact, the names of the Cao family are mentioned from the "Book of Poetry" and "Shang Shu". For example, Cao Yin Zi Qing is from the "Book of Shang" (尚書), "夙夜惟寅, Zhi Zhao Wei Qing", Cao Xuan Zi Zi Yi (曹宣字子猷) from "Poetry Classic Sang Rou" (Poetry Sutra Sang Rou) "BingXin XuanYi, Considering His Appearance", Cao Yin's Zi Zi Qing (曹颙) from "Xiao Ya", and Cao Fu's third brother Cao Qi (曹颀) from Qi Feng 's "Qi Feng".
Now we assume that Cao Tianyou is the widow of Cao Yuan, Ma Shi, who was born in March of the fifty-fourth year of Kangxi, and Ma Shi was seven months pregnant, then Cao Tianyou (that is, Cao Xueqin) should have been born in May and June of the fifty-fourth year of Kangxi (1715), and by the afternoon Chinese New Year's Eve of Qianlong (1763), it was exactly in line with Zhang Yiquan's statement that "he died before the age of fifty".
According to this birth year, when the Cao family first raided the house, Cao Xueqin was 13 years old, the ancient people were precocious, and the 13-year-old child already understood a lot, and the impact of the raid on him and the deep impression in his heart can be imagined. According to the age when Cao Xueqin began to write "Dream of the Red Chamber" in this birth year, she is also 26 years old, although in our eyes now, it still feels incredible, but it is always much more reliable than a fifteen or sixteen-year-old teenager.
In this way, many difficult points in the book can be explained. It is precisely because Cao Xia (Cao Tianyou, Cao Xueqin) is not Cao Fu's own son, so when Jia Huan falsely accused Bao Yu of bullying his mother-in-law, Jia Zheng would be so cruel to Bao Yu that he even had the intention of directly killing him.
Jia Zheng is the inherited son of Cao Yin's wife Li Shi, and Bao Yu is Li's grandson, which can also explain why Jia Mu hurts Bao Yu so much, but she does not have any feelings for her son Jia Zheng.
As for Lady Wang's pain for Baoyu, it can also be explained that she herself and Jia Zhengsheng's son died, but Aunt Zhao had a Jia Huan with Jia Zhengsheng, and she urgently needed a son to compete with Aunt Zhao, and Jia Mu just gave Baoyu to her to raise, so she would be so nervous and regard Baoyu as her own lifeblood. Because the mother is expensive by her son, if there is no baoyu, she may not be able to compete with Aunt Zhao.
Perhaps, we can also follow this line of thought and explain what Jia Huan said to Jia Huan in the seventy-fifth time:
In the future, we will do this, fang is our tone, and in the future, this hereditary future will not be able to run away from you.
It is precisely because Jia Huan is Jia Zheng's own son, and Bao Yu is not, so Jia Huan is likely to inherit this hereditary future. This can also explain why Aunt Zhao's mother and son want to frame Baoyu five times.
Finally, in the end, I still have to say that my aunt is vain, and your aunt is vainly listening. In fact, I myself do not agree with the forced use of novel characters to the prototype, mainly because I think that Cao Xueqin is Cao Tianyou's statement that cao tianyou is relatively novel, and it is quite self-justified, so I take the opportunity to introduce the basic knowledge of Cao Xue to you, and also count my own study notes.
Thanks for reading, stay tuned!