Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition
Point out the revised version of the "Book of Chen"
Recently, the revised edition of the Dian school book "Chen Shu" was issued, which is the 11th type of revised edition of the Twenty-four Histories of the Dian School Book Company launched by the Zhonghua Book Company.
The Book of Chen is one of the five histories of the Southern and Northern Dynasties in the early Tang Dynasty, which was officially revised by the chancellor, with 36 volumes, 6 volumes of benji, and 30 volumes of liechuan, recording the history of the Chen Dynasty of the Southern Dynasty for a total of 33 years.
The Book of Chen, signed by Yao Silian, was actually compiled by Yao Cha and Yao Silian's father and son, and its revision time went through the chen, Sui, and Tang dynasties. The narrative of Yao's father and son is simple and strict, which comprehensively reflects the historical features of the Chen generation, and is the most basic historical material for posterity to study important issues such as social and economic development, regional transportation, class changes, and ethnic interaction in the southern region at the end of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Therefore, although it is the smallest of the twenty-four histories, later scholars still have a high evaluation of the compilation style and historical grammar of the Book of Chen.
Chen Baxian, the founding emperor of the Chen Dynasty, was born in a humble background, with the smallest political territory and the weakest national strength, and experienced five emperors in just 33 years or so. In 589, the Sui Dynasty army crossed the Yangtze River directly into Jiankang, captured Chen Hou, and the Chen Dynasty fell and China was unified. In the long river of ancient Chinese history, Chen Chao seems to be a hurried passerby, and people do not despise it. The Song dynasty had been ordered to revise the "Book of Chen", believing that the "end of the rise and fall" of the Chen Dynasty did not exceed the law of the success or failure of dynasties in history, and everything was meticulous and stealing, and there was no "beauty of the etiquette and righteousness of the first king" and "the law of governance" to be displayed in later generations, resulting in the "Book of Chen" not being valued by readers and "few people passed down from generation to generation".
Was the Chen Dynasty the end of an era that had nothing to do with the general purpose? Is "Book of Chen" an indispensable chicken rib in the history? If you open the "Book of Chen" and delve into the historical context, you will find that the history of the Chen Dynasty contains a lot of important information that cannot be ignored.
At the beginning of the "Brief Treatise on the Origin of the Sui and Tang Systems", Mr. Chen Yinke proposed that "Liang, Chen" and "Northern Wei, Northern Qi" and "Western Wei and Zhou" were one of the three major sources of the Sui and Tang systems: "The so-called source of Liang Chen, the system that the Liang Dynasty inherited and created the Chen clan because of the inheritance and unchanged system, until Yang Sui unified China, was absorbed and adopted by Yang Sui, and passed on to Li Tang", "The 'Liang system' called in the old history can actually be combined with the Chen system, and the canonical system of The Successor liang of Chen is still unchanged", and the discussion is profoundly insightful.
As a political entity inheriting the cultural system of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasty, after the Chen Dynasty was conquered by the northern regime, the historical heritage was absorbed and adopted by the Sui and Tang Dynasties, injecting diversified vitality into it, which had far-reaching significance and influence on the opening of the Sui and Tang dynasties. The "Biography of Chen Baoying" mentions that since the end of Liang, the southern society of "the chief of the county cave and the hero of the village tun Wubi" have risen in the chaotic world. Mr. Chen Yinke keenly pointed out that "the rise of Chen Room, most of the generals he appointed were southern local tycoons, and the situation was very different from that of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and Liu Song Dynasty", and "one of the major changes in the situation of Si Chengjiang's left world" caused "changes in the ethnic and social classes of the Southern Dynasty".
The changes in the social and political pattern have profoundly affected the writing of Chen Shi. In the "Book of Chen" biography, since the Eastern Jin Dynasty, there are very few High Gate clans in the north and south, and more are Han warriors and wenchen from the Cold Gate, these social forces have entered the center of the political stage under the special conditions of the Chen Dynasty, reflecting the structural changes in the social groups caused by the continuous operation and development of the south since the Eastern Jin Dynasty. After the unification of the Sui and Tang dynasties, this change still had a profound and sustained impact on the evolution of the history of the southern region.
Although the academic culture of the south during the Chen Dynasty was still difficult to compare with the grand situation of the previous generation as a whole, the cultural relics and chapters of the Southern Dynasty were still more obviously restored. The Book of Chen, with a considerable proportion of scholars, historians and scholars of literature, reflects that the academic culture of the Chen Dynasty, such as Confucianism, historiography, and literature, still had an important position in the society at that time.
From the "Book of Chen" record, we see that a large number of scholars who were exiled to all sides due to the chaos at the end of The Liang Dynasty returned to the countryside or left the imperial court in the Chen Dynasty, so that the cultural relics system of the Southern Dynasty could be maintained. Therefore, in the "Later Master's Chronicle", Shi Chen specifically pointed out that at that time, "lilly and criminal administration, xian compliance with the old classics, the deep promotion of the six arts, and the wide opening of the four doors, are to be the disciples of the edict, competing for the golden horse, the show of the ancients, and gathering in the stone canal".
There are many characteristic records in the Book of Chen that are not recorded in his history. For example, the "Biography of Ru Lin Zhang Sneer" records that "the Later Lord was in the Eastern Palace, gathering palace staff to hold a banquet, and when he made a jade handle and a new tail, the Later Lord personally insisted on it, saying, 'Although there are many people like a forest today, as for those who can catch this, they are ridiculed alone', that is, hand-taught ridicule. Yu Wendian was still ordered to lecture on "Zhuang" and "Lao", and Gaozong Xinggong listened to it" and in the "Biography of Yuan Xian", Zhou Hongzheng tested the confucian level of Yuan Xian, a national son, in the way of Qing Talk, which quite uniquely reflected the influence and evolution of Metaphysical Qing Tan in the late Southern Dynasty. Even in terms of the system that Zeng Gong regarded as weak, some of the records in the Book of Chen are unique, such as the content of the ancient criminal law on "measuring prisoners" and the method of "upper testing", which were later included in the "Book of Sui and Criminal Law", and their importance goes without saying.
The Book of Chen retains many relatively primitive historical materials, such as various official edicts, which are very stylized texts that intuitively show the internal political structure, administrative operation, military system, and civil-military relations of the Chen Dynasty.
Nearly half of the "Biography of Xu Ling" records the full text of Xu Lingliang's envoys to the north and to the Northern Qi chancellor Yang Zunyan to ask for return, which is speculative and emotional, which makes readers of ancient and modern times read it. Shi Chen did not shy away from the extensive recording of the text, but actually showed the general experience of the displaced people in the chaotic world at the end of Liang, and expressed the nostalgia and inner sorrow of the vast number of Southern soldiers in the north for the homeland of their homeland.
Mr. Wang Zhongji is in charge of the Zhonghua Bookstore's "Chen Shu", and Mr. Zhang Weihua is responsible for the work of the school. Zhang Weihua has a profound education, especially in the fields of Chinese and Western transportation history, Qin and Han history, and historical geography, and has done a very solid job in point school work, and has many creative ideas in proofreading and error making, and can especially carefully observe the internal logic of historians' narratives in terms of segmentation and punctuation, and take into account the rhythm and integrity of historical events. In March 1972, the point schoolbook was widely praised by the academic community after its publication.
The point school book takes the Baiyuan ben as the base, limited to the conditions at that time, and selects the Ming and Qing dynasty versions such as the Three Dynasties Ben, the Southern Jian ben, the Northern Jian Ben, the Ji Ben, and the Dian Ben as the general school and the reference school, these versions have certain differences with the earlier versions, according to such a version of the different texts to collate and revise the base text, it is inevitable to cause some new problems, affecting the reader's reading comprehension of the literature.
In this revision, on the basis of absorbing the results of the proofreading and surveying of previous scholars, through in-depth edition investigation, we have clearly grasped the basic situation and circulation process of the early edition of the "Chen Shu" and confirmed the irreplaceable value of the early version of the "Chen Shu" for correctly understanding the historical text and restoring the original appearance of the historical book. We changed the zhonghua xueyi society as the base, added 6 kinds of Song periodicals (two full texts, four fragments) and two volumes of Japanese Heian period banknotes as the general school book, and made great efforts in the comparison and collation and application of various versions, checking and cleaning up the original schoolbook one by one according to the Ming and Qing versions, and correcting some errors and omissions in the original school; at the same time, giving full play to the professional strengths of the members of the revision team, fully referencing and absorbing the research results of the history and literature of the Wei and Jin Dynasties in recent decades, and intensively reading the texts, Under the premise of going deep into the historical context, we should accurately understand the historical events, combine rigorous and in-depth research on the history of the broken era with meticulous and solid literature proofreading, and revise and correct the historical books.
The revised edition of the "Book of Chen" is the final work of the revision of the Three Books of Chen of the Southern Dynasty qi liang for more than ten years, and it has the conditions to fully draw on and absorb the lessons learned from the previous revisions. It is expected that our meticulous revision will be able to make the "Book of Chen", a historical book with a low "sense of existence", into a fine collection of ancient books.
(The author is a professor at the Department of History of Sun Yat-sen University and the moderator of the revision of Chen Sanshu of Qi Liang in the Southern Dynasty)