Chapter 27 Introduce several new history books

Introduce several new history books Recently, the "book reviews" in magazines seem to be inclined to criticize the fallacious aspects, and rarely introduce new books from a positive aspect.Today (July 24th) the train is going up by Lake Baikal. On one side is the light blue mirror-flat lake and on the other side are rocks. This is the third day I left China. I am a friend of history, so I wrote this short article to introduce several of their new books. Mr. Chen Yuan (Yuan)'s "Twenty History Shuoyun Table", with Western calendar and Muslim calendar, published by the Institute of Chinese Studies of Peking University, priced at four yuan This is a "tool" book, and everyone who studies history must read it Prepare a volume.In recent years, Mr. Chen has studied the history of Chinese religions with the most precise method and the most diligent collection, so he has made great achievements.His old works "Yici Leye Teaching and Research", "Ye Li Ke Wen Kao", "Manichaeism into China", "Huoyue Teaching into China" have become masterpieces recognized by historians.In this kind of work, he felt that it was necessary to combine the three calendars of Chinese and Western Hui to make a relatively long calendar, so he worked hard to make a 20-volume "Calendar of Chinese and Western Hui History" (it will also be published soon).Before he wrote that great work, he first determined the 2,000-year-old Shuo Run in Chinese history, and then wrote this book, "Twenty History Shuo Run Table".With the number of moons and leaps, the calendar can be deduced; therefore, this book is really the most convenient calendar for the 2,000 years of Chinese history.

This table started in the first year of Emperor Gaozu of the Han Dynasty (Roman 548, 206 BC) when there was a new day of Jiazi every month, so the size of the month can be known by pushing down the Jiazi of the new moon day; Jiazi of Shuo Ri. After the first year of Emperor Ping of the Han Dynasty, the month and day equivalent to the Western calendar were added.For example, in the first year of Emperor Hui of Jin Yongping (291 West): Shoji Yiyou Two 16 Jiayin Three 17 We know that the first day of the first month of the year is equal to the sixteenth of February in 291 of the Western calendar, and the first day of the second month is equal to the seventeenth of March.

After Tang Gaozu Wude five years (622), the beginning of the year added to the Hijri calendar is equal to a certain month and a certain day in the Chinese calendar.The Hijri calendar is a pure lunar calendar, and the monthly pattern is fixed. A single month has 30 days, and a double month has 29 days. There is no leap month. In leap years, December is added by one day, so the average year is 354 days. A leap year has three hundred and fifty-five days.Its calculation is the easiest, so it is enough to note the beginning of the year, and add a black dot next to the leap year. Therefore, this book is not only a 2,000-year calendar of Chinese history, but also the most concise and convenient "three histories of Chinese and Western history".

Both the Western calendar and the Hijri calendar have Sundays. Due to the historical reasons of placing or missing intercalary, the calculation must be changed. There are seven "sunday tables" attached to this book. Check the tables to know what day of the week a certain day is. Anyone who has done precise research can understand the usefulness of this book in history, so we don't need to point it out one by one.For the sake of ordinary readers, we quote a few examples given by Mr. Chen himself: (1) For example, Lu Jiuyuan died in the third year of Shaoxi in Song Dynasty. The fourteenth day of the month, according to the Western calendar, should be the eighteenth day of the first month, 1193. ... If you want to seek truth from facts, you must have the precise Chinese and Western calendar as a tool.

(2) This is true in the Western calendar, especially in the Muslim calendar. ...The Hijri calendar does not have a leap month, so the beginning of the year is not fixed. After a hundred years, it is three years behind the Chinese and Western calendars. ...Hongwu Jiazi (1384) is the seventh or eighth sixth year of the Muslim calendar. "History of the Ming Dynasty" was pushed up to 786 years by Hongwu Jiazi, and it was calculated by the Chinese calendar by mistake, so it is said that the Muslim calendar began in Sui Kaihuang Jiwei (599)!I don't know if it is calculated according to the Islamic calendar, but it actually started in the fifth year of Tang Wude (622)

June 3rd also.Covering seven hundred and eighty-six years, the difference between the Islamic calendar and the Chinese and Western calendars has occurred for 23 years.There is no middle and long calendar, so why explain the mistakes of "History of Ming Dynasty"? We should thank Mr. Chen for his painstaking efforts to make such a sophisticated tool for the use of historians.We also welcome the publication of his 20-volume Calendar of Chinese and Western Hui History in advance.This kind of hard work not only brings an end to the research of "long skills" by Du Yu, Liu Xisou, Qian Tong, and Wang Yuezhen, but also serves as an extremely useful tool for those who study history in the world.

The first volume of Gu Jiegang's "Ancient History" was published by Pushe, Jingshan East Street, Beijing. book of.This book can liberate people's minds, point out the way of learning, and advocate the "deep and violent truth" the spirit of.Those who study history, those who want to sort out the history of the country, and those who want to truly learn, should read this interesting book. This volume itself is divided into three parts: the first part is the correspondence between Mr. Gu and Mr. Qian Xuantong and myself. The middle part is the text discussing ancient history published in the "Book Magazine" in the twelfth year of the Republic of China; the second part is the papers and correspondence after the "Book Magazine" stopped publication.There are sixty-four articles of various lengths in the three series, some tens of thousands of characters long, and the shortest less than fifty characters.

For the convenience of ordinary readers, I advise them to read the following first: (1) Self-reported submissions on Chinese history (pages 34-37) (2) Discussion on ancient history books with Mr. Qian Xuantong (page 59-66) (3) Reply to Mr. Liu Huer's letter (pages 96-102) (4) Things you should know first when studying Chinese studies (pages 102-105) (5) Reflections on the discussion of ancient history (pages 189-198) After reading these few articles, you can get the fundamental starting point and fundamental method of the book, and then read the other parts of the whole book calmly, and you will find it more interesting and easier to understand.

But no matter who you are, you must read Mr. Gu's preface.This preface of more than 60,000 characters is the author's autobiography, an autobiography that has never been seen in the history of Chinese literature.In this autobiography, he frankly described his personal life experience, difficulties encountered, the influence of teachers and friends, changes in interests, evolution of thoughts, and work plans.My friend Mr. Hummel read this preface and wrote to the author, saying that this article should be translated into English, because although this is the history of one person in thirty years, it is also the most recent change in the trend of thought in China in the past thirty years. good record.I very much agree with this meaning.Mr. Gu joined the Socialist Party when he was a teenager; he was a "theater fan" for several years when he entered the preparatory course of Peking University; So I entered the philosophy department; after graduating from the philosophy department, I gradually returned to the path of history.He is a really studious person, reading is like "a blind cat dragging a dead chicken", so the changes in domestic academic thought in the past thirty years have left a deep impression on him one by one.He is also a person who "loves completeness too much" and wants to "break the black basin and ask the end" in everything, so no matter what he does, he refuses to try it, and he refuses to drag it down, so his "prosperity"

Can have high grades.His collection of Wu songs, research on Meng Jiangnu, and discussion of ancient history all reflect these two aspects of his temperament: on the one hand, he is open-minded and eager to learn, and on the other hand, he is deliberately seeking perfection. Thanks to Mr. Gu's kindness, I made a short message of forty-eight characters from me the first part of his ancient history essay.My forty-eight characters can lead to a big book of 300,000 characters, and I can push Mr. Gu to the road of lifelong career in ancient history. This is something I never dreamed of back then.However, only hard-working farmers like Mr. Gu can achieve such a harvest of "one million profits".When I asked him to read "Ancient and Modern Forged Books" in November of the ninth year of the Republic of China, I just thought he could get some money because of his financial difficulties.He promised me that "the slowest is no more than twenty days" (page 6).But he refused to do anything sloppy because of financial difficulties. He must "want to indicate the volume and edition of all the books he cites; indicate the birth and death and region of all the people he cites." (page 14).For this reason, he was in contact with the scholars of the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties on counterfeiting every day, so we have the plan of "Discriminating Counterfeit Series".First, distinguish "false books", and then turn to distinguish "false things".Since then, Jiegang has embarked on the road of identifying "pseudo-history".

It was not until January of the 10th year of the Republic of China that we had to read Cui Shu's "Kao Xin Lu".We decided at that time that Jiegang's "Pseudo-History Kao" could follow "Kao Xin Lu" (page 22).Cui Shu overturned the "biography" and returned to several "classics" that he believed to be credible.We decided that even the "classics" should be "tested and believed".In this regard, we have received the greatest help from Mr. Qian Xuantong. By June of the tenth year, Jiegang had already surpassed the plan of the "Discrimination Series".He himself wants to make three kinds of books: (1) "Pseudo-History Source"; (2) "Pseudo-History Cases"; (3) "Pseudo-History Conversations" (page 36). Among these three, his views on "pseudo-historical sources" had the greatest influence on his historical research in the past five years. He said: The so-called "source" was only advocated by one person at the beginning...Unfortunately, ten people combined it and applied it over and over again.Now we are going to test which person is the first to say it, and many people are learners, let's see how he gradually changes.This is the basic method of this "Ancient History Discrimination".Using this method, he worked hard for two years, and then published his "Ancient Chinese History Created Over Layers". "Chinese ancient history created layer by layer" has three meanings: (1) It can explain why the ancient history of the legend is longer as the age goes. (2) It can explain why the central figure in the legend is getting bigger and bigger as the times go by. (3) Here, even if we cannot know the true status of a certain event, we can at least know the earliest status of that event in the legend. He applied this method and got some conclusions: (1) People before the Spring and Autumn Period did not have a long guess about the ancient times. (2) Later, there was a Yu.Yu was first a god and gradually became a human king. (3) Yao and Shun came later. (4) The relationship between the son-in-law of Yao and Shun, and the relationship between emperor and minister between Shun and Yu were all formed later. (5) From the Warring States period to the Western Han Dynasty, many ancient emperors were added before Yao and Shun.First add a Yellow Emperor, then add a Shennong, then add a blood sacrifice, ... until Pangu. These conclusions, in our opinion, are very tenable.However, the authority of thousands of years of traditional thinking has caused a group of conservative scholars to oppose it.A Mr. Liu Jieli came out of Nanjing; even my hometown, a village among thousands of mountains, also came out a Mr. Hu Dongren.The rebuttals of these people made Jie Gang extra diligent to seek new evidence to strengthen his barriers.The results are part of the discussion and subsections of this book.These discussions are still ongoing.But we can say that Jie Gang's central theory of "Chinese ancient history formed by layers" has opened a new era for the Chinese historiography circle.China's ancient history was built up gradually and layer upon layer—"for example, accumulating salaries and catching up from behind"—this is an undeniable fact.In the later years of the 18th century, Cui Shu used a big ax of "testing and then believing", and cut off millions of years of ancient history with one blow. (His supplement "Ancient Research Letters" is very admirable).But Cui Shu still left behind a lot of ancient emperors; he dared not overthrow anyone who was famous in the "Jing".Now Jiegang took a bigger axe and became more courageous. He chopped straight at Yu and sent all the ancient emperors before Yu (even Yao and Shun) to the stage of conferring gods!Even Yu and Hou Ji inevitably had problems.Therefore, in Chinese ancient historiography, Cui Shu was the first revolution, and Gu Jiegang was the second revolution. This is a fact that does not need to be defended. In recent years, Jie Gang has continued to do the work of dialectical ancient history, and he already has a manuscript of nearly one million words.The second volume of his "Ancient History Bian" has been roughly compiled, and the third volume and below also have a foundation.His future contributions to the field of history are limitless.He himself said: I have a very clear self-consciousness and strong self-confidence in the ancient history of discriminating falsehood and falsity. On the one hand, if I can be allowed to develop, I can satisfy people's hearts and not just win people's mouths. (preface) His conclusions may not be completely without errors; the examples he gave may be wrong. (For example, he said that "the society sacrifice began in the Western Zhou Dynasty". The error in this sentence has been corrected by himself in his preface. Also like his preface, page 71, he said that "Yan Luo" and Nero's voice are consistent. This is a big Wrong. Yan Luo was originally Yan Moluo, and Sanskrit was Yamaraja; raja was the king, said to be the king of Yama, a god in the ancient Indian "Veda" era, originally in the Paradise of Paradise; later gradually evolved, from kindness to cruelty, falling from the highest heaven to hell. This has nothing to do with the Nile in Egypt).But his basic method cannot be overthrown; his basic spirit of learning can never be buried.He quotes Rodin on the first page of the book: To be profound and violent.Never hesitate to say what you can think of yourself, even when you feel that it goes against the accepted thinking of the world.At first others may not understand you, but your loneliness will never last long.Your comrades will come to you soon, because the truth of one person is the truth of everyone. If you read Jiegang's book, you must understand the spirit of "deep and fierce truth". The second volume of Ms. Chen Hengzhe's "Western History" was published by the Commercial Press, and the price is one yuan and one dime. In recent years, historians who study China have a tendency to gradually adopt the scientific method; but Chinese scholars who study Western history have made little contribution.This is probably because Chinese scholars feel that it is not easy to have any creative opportunities on this road, so they can't feel much interest, so they have never had any important works. In my opinion, it is not.Studying Western history can train our methods of governing history, and it can increase our knowledge of governing Eastern history.Writing Western history may not seem to be a creative contribution at first glance, but in fact there may be sufficient opportunities for creation. Historiography has two aspects: one is scientific, which focuses on the collection and arrangement of historical materials; the other is artistic, which focuses on the narration and interpretation of historical facts.It may not be easy for us to make any major contributions in terms of science in the field of Western history.However, we approach Western history from the perspective of Easterners, break away from the unconscious prejudices of Western historians, and reduce the authority of traditional religious and ideological concepts. In terms of narrative and interpretation, we have more room for galloping.Just look at the general history of the West that is most popular today is just a general history made for Westerners from the perspective of Westerners; the history of religion is just the history of Western religions made by believers of a certain school of Christianity; the history of philosophy is just the history of Western philosophy made by philosophers of a certain school of thought.If we can retell the historical facts of the West with a fair heart, there will be many opportunities for creation. Ms. Chen Hengzhe's "Western History" is a work with creative ambitions.In terms of historical materials, she had to rely on the supply of Western historians; but in terms of narrative and explanation, she did do a lot of careful structure.This book can be said to be the first Western history carefully written for Chinese readers by Chinese scholars of Western history.In this respect, this book is also a pioneering work. It's a pity that I went out in a hurry and never brought the first volume of this book with me.As far as the second volume is concerned, Ms. Chen combined the six hundred years of modern history into ten major topics. For each topic, she can pay attention to the cause and effect of historical facts, so that readers can't forget the origin of a major movement or trend among the numerous facts. clue.Sometimes, she also made many diagrams herself to help the narrative of the text. Among the ten chapters, several chapters are particularly exciting. Two Chapters of "The Religious Revolution," "The French Revolution" This chapter is the most exciting in the whole book.Ms. Chen originally liked literature and art, so her historical narration also has a literary meaning.Narrative and discussion texts are rare in vernacular Chinese.Ms. Chen's efforts in this area can open a new direction for us.Let us take two passages from Chapter 3 as examples: In short, religion was the only element of European life throughout the Middle Ages.It is like a net in heaven and earth, allowing you to fly high and deep, go through life and death, and never try to escape from its range.But this privilege of setting up a network also has its own price.The reason why the church can gain such power is that in the early Middle Ages, it was able to protect the people, maintain order, and continue to burn the dying star of ancient culture.In other words, the great power of the church is acquired by its merits.But at this time it has forgotten its responsibilities, but only warm clothes and delicious food to enjoy its happiness.This has virtually canceled the rights of its network.But at this time, the several powers that had been wiped out by the barbarians in the past revived again, asking the Pope for the various powers that he had not returned for a long time.So the rising kings of various countries asked him for the independence of the court, the right to confer bishops, and the right to collect taxes on the church property; The freedom to judge good and evil, the right to life and the right to die; ordinary poor peasants are begging the church to reduce their burdens with bleeding foreheads.Poor that arrogant and arrogant church, at this moment it is beset by enemies from all sides. But why is that so surprising?The strength of the church is only a Christian doctrine.It is like a small bright pearl, which should have been allowed to shine freely.It's a pity that at this time, it is not only wrapped in brocade, but buried by its collector, and the collector is adding another box to the box, building a huge house, and building a besieged city to guard it, so that ordinary people can't see the brilliance of the pearl. , but I saw a huge fortress with heavy siege, thick walls and strong walls; what I saw outside the fort was the rampant rampage of guards.Therefore, the meaning of the religious revolution is nothing more than the cause of demolishing cities and walls.The king wants to get back the bricks and roof tiles that belonged to them, the people want to wave away the guards like wolf and tiger, and the believers want to take a look at the bright pearl that has been hidden for a long time.Then there was a shout, and the crowd gathered together. Although they each had their own goals, they were gearing up for the same thing.Their common goal is to demolish this giant fortress.For this reason, the scope of the religious revolution is so vast, its location is so important, and its influence is so far-reaching. Such a comprehensive and restrained narrative shows the author's insight and genius.Only when history is done in this way can it be interesting and wonderful.Western history has to do this before it can be counted as merely copying books, and only then can it make its own contribution in terms of narration and judgment. Narrating the modern history of the West is the easiest way to arouse the feelings of the nation.Ms. Chen is a person who leans towards internationalism and world peace, so she can fully appreciate the contribution of nationalism, and at the same time calmly point out that international peace is the only way for human beings to save themselves. It is not easy to describe 600 years of modern Western history in 100,000 words.Naturally, Ms. Chen's book cannot completely avoid some mistakes.For example, in Section 4 of Chapter 1, it was said earlier (page 36) that Galileo invented the telescope, so Copernicus’s theory “had to be proven by scientific methods”, the following ( p. 37) but also said that "the scientific method has not been improved; they are still using Aristotle's deductive method... until the time of Francis Bacon (Francis Bacon), the scientific method has a great revolution" .This is wrong.The improvement of scientific method is gradually achieved by scientists, and has nothing to do with Bacon; no scientist learns method from Bacon.It is also wrong to say on page 291 that Harvey invented the theory of blood circulation in the eighteenth century.It's a pity that I don't have a reference book in my travel bag, so I can't collate this book in detail. This book is a very powerful work.Its strength lies in recounting the historical facts of the West with a fair perspective and in its own language.The author's efforts can at least let us know that the study of Western history can allow us to make full use of historical imagination and literary genius to make creative contributions. Fifteen, seven, twenty-seven, when the car arrives at Tiumen, the script is out Modern Review, Volume Four, September 4-11, 1926 The ninety-first and ninety-second issues are included in the second volume of "Ancient History Discrimination"