The Xianchun Bilingzhi is a famous Fang Zhi in ancient China, which was published in the fourth year of Xianchun (1268) and has a history of more than 740 years. It is not only the earliest surviving local chronicle of Changzhou, but also one of the only twenty remaining Song Dynasty official xiufu chronicles in the country, which has been passed down in an isolated copy and is of great significance.
Today, when readers read this "encyclopedia" that comprehensively records the physical geography and humanities of the Changzhou area from the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period to the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, they can't help but wonder: Who repaired it? What are the ups and downs of its legacy? Why did the song carvings spread to Japan? From this retrospective upwards, tracing the path of its revision, engraving and circulation in the long river of more than 700 years of history, the late ones may have a different historical warmth and respect.
The Jingjiatang Bunko collection of the "Xianchun BilingZhi" Song carved picture
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Although the merits are completed in history, they actually started in the Song Dynasty </h1>
The advent of the Xianchun Bilingzhi is inseparable from two key figures: Song Ci and Shi Nengzhi. When later generations mentioned this famous history, most of them directly signed the person who revised it as "Shi Nengzhi", which is not wrong. The Xianchun Bilingzhi was revised and completed during his tenure under the personal participation and promotion of Shi Nengzhi. After reading the "preface" written by Shi Nengzhi for the Xianchun Bilingzhi, you will understand that although its advent was completed in "history", it actually began in "Song".
Song Ci statue
Song Ci (1186-1249), courtesy name Huifu, was a native of Jianyang (present-day Nanping, Fujian). He was revered by later generations as the originator of forensic science, and was broadcast in Hainei under the name of "Collection of Washed Injustices", but few people know the origin of Song Ci and Changzhou. He served in Changzhou for seven years, during which time he collected materials for the compilation of the "Collection of Washed Grievances" and also began to revise the local chronicles of Changzhou. Before Song Ci's appointment, Changzhou already had some local chronicles of an earlier age, such as the Changzhou Tujing of the Tang Dynasty and the Biling Zhi compiled by Zou Shuzhi during the Chunxi period of the Northern Song Dynasty. With the deepening of the development of the Song Dynasty and the south of the Jiangnan, Changzhou has become increasingly prosperous, and the geography, population, and property have changed greatly, and these old aspirations can no longer fully reflect the local geographical conditions and landforms, and need to be rebuilt.
In the first year of Chunyou (1241), Song Ci was transferred to Changzhou Zhizhou. At that time, it just so happened that Shi Nengzhi, a new branch jinshi, was also assigned to Wujin, Changzhou, as a county lieutenant. Once, when the two talked about Changzhou's "Old Zhi", they both felt that the "Old Zhi" was too rough and necessary to re-edit. Therefore, after estimating the time limit, Song Ci invited the local sages to participate in the work. Unfortunately, this time, the work of rebuilding the old history was not completed as scheduled. The reason for this may be because of the voluminous volume, Song Ci's busy official duties, and he has not found a competent person to assist, or it may be because Song Ci is busy compiling the "Collection of Washed Injustices" and has limited energy and financial resources. In short, in the seventh year of Chunyou (1247), with Song Ci's transfer from Changzhou, the matter of rebuilding the old zhi was shelved.
The book shadow of "Wash of Wrongs"
In the second year of Xianchun (1266), Shi Nengzhi was promoted to Changzhou Zhizhou. After taking office, I remembered the matter of Xiu Zhi that I talked to Song Ci about twenty years ago, so I looked for the old Zhi and found that it was still the same as before, and it had not changed at all. Shi Nengzhi was very emotional, and first asked himself: "Hey, isn't it true that the obedience of duty is not ordinary and the county affairs are unrelenting, and it is because of the continuation of evil for a long time?" Or is it evil to be done? (The gist of it is: The reason why the old zhi has not been completed for so long is because the local officials are fickle and the local affairs are too complicated, so no one has rebuilt it for a long time?) Or are you waiting for some special opportunity to accomplish this? Later, he replied to himself, "To control the map, to command the land affairs, to handle the land, to seek the land", to cultivate the zhi for the sake of the latecomers to have some qualifications, Changzhou's history has changed a lot, now the situation is relatively stable, the property is also rich, "not small and weak" Changzhou if there is not a perfect local history, it will be a very big regret.
Therefore, Shi Nengzhi, as the head of a government, invited colleagues with "material knowledge" and local "learned" scholars, "saw and heard on the Internet, cleaned up and lost", and found the "unfinished book" left by Song Ci twenty years ago, "the blackmailer is correct, the slight one is prepared, and the poor person is supplemented", and began the road of reconstruction. What is amazing is that Shi Nengzhi's road to reconstruction this time is progressing rapidly. Generally speaking, the revision of zhishu, because of the voluminous volume and rare talents, often takes years, or even decades. However, Shi Nengzhi's revision of the Xianchun BilingZhi is "ten months and then complete". From the second year of XianChun (1266) to serve in Changzhou Zhizhou, to the fourth year of Xianchun (1268) when the "Xianchun Biling Zhi" was published on the first month, it was only two years. The fact that the book was written so quickly is largely due to the "unfinished book" left by Song Ci.
Therefore, the cultivation of the Xianchun Bilingzhi was finally accomplished by Shi Nengzhi, but it began with the hands of Song Ci twenty years ago. Unfortunately, today we know very little about Shi Neng.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Under the chaos of war, there are fewer and fewer figures </h1>
From its cultivation to its publication, the Xianchun BilingZhi lasted thirty years. In the eyes of posterity, this book is self-evident and well-deserved, and it is listed together with Fan Chengda's "Wu Junzhi" and Shi Su's "Huijizhi" as the three famous zhi of the Song Dynasty. Wang Mingsheng, a famous historian of the Qing Dynasty, said after reading it: "Now that we have this, we can have no hatred, but we know that the author is bitter and it is not easy to be good." But what makes people today feel very strange is that compared with the unceasing praise of later generations, on the day of the completion of the zhizhi, and even in the following hundred years, it seems that few people mentioned the "Xianchun Bilingzhi", and its circulation does not seem to be widespread. Why? The reasons for this are complex, but one of the most obvious factors is the war.
"Xian Chun Bi Ling Zhi" was re-engraved in 2005
When Shi Nengzhi rebuilt his old history, the Southern Song Dynasty was already in its final years. Mongolian iron horses from the northern steppes frequently went south, and the Song Room was already in turmoil. In the second year of Deyou (1276), only eight years after the xianchun bilingzhi came out, yuan soldiers captured the southern song capital Lin'an. In the Battle of the Yuan Army to Destroy the Song Dynasty, Changzhou had insisted on defending the city and resisting for half a year, and could not escape the massacre of the city on the day of the destruction of the city, and the corpses were all over the field, and it was unbearable to see. It is said that only seven people in Changzhou at that time escaped the disaster because they hid in the bridge pit. Under the fire and water of the soldiers, the "Xianchun Bilingzhi" naturally could not escape this disaster, "people and books are dead, there is no enough evidence".
In the second year of the Yuan Dynasty (1315), because of the need to collect the land endowment, after searching for everything, he finally found a Song carving "Xian Chun Bi Ling Zhi", which was republished in the fourth year of Yan You (1317) for the Yuan. In the 10th year of Hongwu of the Ming Dynasty (1377), Zhang Du, the prefect of Changzhou, and Xie Yingfang, a famous scholar of Changzhou, bought a broken Yuan engraving, and on this basis, they revised the ten volumes of the "Biling Continuation" and reprinted the "Xianchun Bilingzhi", which was an engraving for Ming Hongwu. In the twentieth year of Ming Chenghua (1484), Zhuo Tianxi, Sun Renzeng, Zhu Yu and others rebuilt it again on the basis of the Xianchun Biling Zhi, which was an engraving for Ming Chenghua. In the Qing Dynasty, Zhao Huaiyu, a native of Changzhou, searched for the Ming carved version, visited the supplement, and asked Li Zhaoluo and Wu Shanzi, a famous Fang Zhijia in Changzhou, to proofread it, which was published in Jiaqing in the twenty-fifth year (1820) for the Qing engraving.
"Xian Chun Bi Ling Zhi" re-engraved in 2005
In the circulation of more than 700 years, many versions have been reproduced around the original Song carving "Xian Chun Bi Ling Zhi", which can be described as a succession of generations around the Yuan, Ming, Qing, and the Republic of China to the present. Tracing back to the more than 700 years of the "Xianchun BilingZhi" to re-revise the road of engraving, it can be found that the original Song engravings appeared less and less, and occasionally people mentioned it, frequently titled "heavy gold purchase", "fragmentary copy" and "orphan book". By the time of the Qing Dynasty's Qianjia Dynasty, the famous scholar Qian Daxin discovered that the Song carved "Xianchun Bilingzhi" was very rare, even Qian Zeng, the most famous local bibliophile in Changzhou, and Zhu Yizun, a bibliophile in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, had not seen it. He once went out to visit a friend, and when he saw one unexpectedly, he immediately borrowed it home and copied a copy. But unfortunately, the Song carved version he saw was also a fragment, although it was copied by many parties, "the twentieth volume was ultimately unobtainable."
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > is a unique copy in the Shizukado Bunko library in Japan </h1>
So, is the original Xianchun Bilingzhi, which was revised and printed by Shi Nengzhi more than 740 years ago, still alive today? The answer is yes, the Japanese Jingjiatang Bunko collection contains a Song Dynasty original engraving of the "Xianchun Biling Zhi", which is also the only surviving copy known so far, which is a priceless treasure. Why did this Song carved "priceless treasure" pass into the hands of Japanese collectors? Retrospectively, it is also a mixture of feelings.
Jingjiatang Bunko Song and Yuan Edition Ancient Book Database Picture Shadow
In the late Qing Dynasty, Lu Xinyuan (1838-1894), a native of Huzhou, Zhejiang, founded the famous Song Dynasty Building, which specialized in collecting books. It is known as the "Four Great Library Buildings" along with the Qu Clan Bronze Sword Building in Changshu, Jiangsu, the "Haiyuan Pavilion" of the Yang Clan of Liaocheng in Shandong, and the "Eight Thousand Scrolls Building" of the Ding Clan of Qiantang, Zhejiang Province. The reason why the Song Dynasty Tower has "皕" means that there are as many as 200 kinds of Song carvings, including the "Xianchun BilingZhi" published by Shi Nengzhi. After the death of Lu Xinyuan in the twentieth year of Guangxu (1894), his son Lu Shufan fell into the middle of the family road because of the failure of business, so he contacted the collector in many ways to sell his father's collection of books, but after looking for two or three years, no one took over.
Jing Jia Tang Bunko Picture Shadow
Just at this time, Yanosuke, a Japanese who founded the Shizukado Bunko Library and was looking around for ancient books, heard the news and immediately expressed his willingness to buy it. Lu Shufan thought to himself, instead of gradually selling them in batches and watching the collection scatter in his hands, it would be better to sell them to Japanese collectors intensively, at least to ensure the integrity of his father's collection. Therefore, in March of the thirty-third year of Guangxu (1907), the Japanese Jingjiatang Bunko invested 100,000 silver dollars to buy all of the more than 40,000 volumes of The Lu's collection, including the "Xianchun Bilingzhi", which is still hidden in the Jingjiatang Bunko library in Kyoto, Japan.
At that time, the Jingjiatang Library became an important international sinology town due to the acquisition of the books of the Song Dynasty, and has attracted many scholars to visit the literature every year. In recent years, Jing Jia Tang has selected the essence of its collection and developed an electronic database of ancient texts of the Song and Yuan dynasties for scholars to visit and study. According to relevant information, there are more than 120 kinds of ancient books of the Song Dynasty in the database alone, more than 2600 volumes, and the Xianchun BilingZhi is also among them. Although it is already a fragment and has been lost overseas, after all, it can still be glimpsed, and it can also comfort the ancestors of the past generations who have revised and engraved this book.
bibliography:
1. (Song) Shi Nengzhi: "Xianchun Biling Zhi", Guangling Book Society, 2005.
2. (Yuan) Detachment, etc.: History of the Song Dynasty, Zhonghua Bookstore, 1985.
3. (Song) Hu Zhi and Luo Jun: Baoqing Simingzhi, Dahua Bookstore, 1987.
4. Nanping Jianyang Song Ci Research Association: Song Ci Culture, Straits Literature and Art Publishing House, 2016.
5. Qian Daxin: "Xianchun BilingZhi", Compilation of Qing Humanities and Geography, Volume 2, Zhejiang People's Publishing House, 1990.
6. Xia Lingwei, "The Shi Family of the Four Ming Dynasties of the Southern Song Dynasty and Their Literary Research", Doctoral Thesis of Jinan University, 2009.
7. Wu Zhen, "Jingjiatang Bunko as An Offering: How Japanese Chaebols Collect Rare Chinese Books," The Paper, April 7, 2015.