Chapter 43 The joy of finding books ① (excerpt)

The joy of finding books ① (excerpt) I am not a bibliophile, but a scholar who loves to read and can use books. When buying books, I always buy reference books first, and then buy a running book. When changing a line, I have to buy another kind of book.I am sixty-nine years old this year, and I still don't know what my profession is?What about Chinese philosophy?Or the history of Chinese thought?Or is it the history of Chinese literature?Or the history of Chinese fiction? "Shui Jing Zhu"?History of Chinese Buddhist Thought?History of Zen Buddhism in China?What I call "our profession" is actually my interest. The more interests I have, the more I have to accept books.When I left Peking eleven years ago, I already had a hundred boxes of books, about 10,000 to 20,000 volumes.A few hours before leaving Beiping, I thought to myself: I am not a book collector, but a book user.After collecting so many books, it would be a pity to discard them. Take them with you, because you can’t take them with you by plane.In the end, I only brought some notes, and among the 10,000 to 20,000 books, I selected a book as a commemoration of the 10,000 to 20,000 books, and this book is a fragment.There are only 16 chapters in four copies, and these four copies can be said to be the oldest manuscripts in the world.I have collected books for decades, but in the end I only brought four of them with me, which is equivalent to disarming my soldiers, and I have also become a beggar without a stick or a monkey.

Over the past eleven years, my friends have given me a lot of books, plus the new books I bought over the years have filled up the place where I live now, but these are all irrelevant books. None.To find materials, we still need to rely on the library of the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica and other libraries such as the National Taiwan University Library and the Central Library for emergency assistance. Finding books is hard and bitter. As an old scholar who uses books, I have had the joy of finding books in my life, but I have also tasted the pain of not being able to find books.In July of the ninth year of the Republic of China (1920), when I started writing "The Textual Research of Water Margin",

The only reference materials are Jin Shengtan's seventy-one chapters, "Four Bandits" and Wait, as for the 100-chapter, 110-chapter, 115-chapter, 120-chapter, 124-chapter text, I haven't seen it yet.When my "Water Margin Textual Research" comes out, It was only in Japan that the 115th and 100th, 110th and 120th editions of "Water Margin" were discovered. pay back.At the same time, I also found the 115 and 124 chapters.It is very pitiful to do textual research work without books.During the textual research, everyone knew a lot of materials, and what they usually saw were 120 chapters.This kind of one hundred and twenty chapters is not true.

When Cao Xueqin died in his forties, he only wrote 80 chapters. Later, Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E cooperated, one contributed money and the other contributed, and completed the last forty chapters.In the fifty-sixth year of Qianlong's movable type edition, the first edition of 120 chapters was published. Before the book, there was a preface by Cheng and Gao, which said: "The whole world wants to see the complete version. In the first 80 chapters, Daiyu did not die, and Baoyu did not die." Married, everyone wants to know the ending of this book? But no one has found it. Because Cheng and Gao found a large volume of old books at a sugar stall. The last forty chapters of the book were specially edited and published together with the first eighty chapters." But such coincidences are rare in the world, so I guess the statement in the preface is not reliable.

Textual research, check Cao Xueqin When I did my research 30 years ago, I raised two questions. This is a person who studies Hongxue. Worthy of research: 1. Who is the author of the book?What is the author like?How is his family background?Is there any information available for family biographies?Is there any basis for the prosperous world written by Cao Xueqin?Or do you talk nonsense behind closed doors?Second, the version of the question, is it eighty chapters?Or one hundred and twenty times?Where did the last forty chapters come from?At that time, there were seven or eight kinds of textual research, and Yu Pingbo and Gu Jiegang helped me find materials.At first, it was discovered that there was a preface by Cheng Weiyuan in the fifty-seventh year of Qianlong (1792), including seven prefaces and introductions by Gao E. Later, the first edition was found, which proved that the last forty chapters were continued by Gao E. Published with movable type at the expense of Cheng Weiyuan.It is also known from many other materials that Cao Xueqin’s family is a weaving job in the south of the Yangtze River. It is specially used to weave silk and satin for the royal family. Some documents were found in the emperor's secret drawer, and it was known that Cao Xueqin's grandfather, Cao Yin, was a special agent sent by the emperor to check the people's hearts and the activities of retired prime ministers.There is a passage in which Wang Xifeng and Li Mama talked about the emperor's southern tour and stayed at Jia's house, which is true.Later, I was instructed by Mr. Zhang from Henan to find Yang Zhongxi's "Xueqiao Shihua" and "Eight Banners Wenjing", as well as the records about Duncheng and Dunmin of the Aixinjueluo clan. , is the grandson of Cao Yin, and then found "Eight Banners Poetry Notes", "Xi Chao Ya Song Collection", found the poems presented by Duncheng and Dunmin brothers to Cao Xueqin, and found Duncheng's "Sisongtang Collection". An uncensored version of the clear banknotes, in which there is a poem to lament Cao Xueqin, which contains the sentence "forty years of Huafu Yaoming".From here we can know the year of Cao Xueqin's death, he was about forty years old.

In the 16th year of the Republic of China, I returned from Europe and the United States and lived in Shanghai. Someone wrote to me and told me that they would sell me a copy of "Zhiyanzhai Commentary on Stone". Many, ignored.Soon after, I opened Xinyue Bookstore with Xu Zhimo in Shanghai, and that person sent me the book again. It turned out to be a re-commentary handwritten in the year of Jiaxu. Although there are only sixteen chapters, it contains many important historical materials.There is a sentence in it: "On the New Year's Eve of Renwu, the book was not completed, and Qin died of tears. Tears written in August of Jiawu", pointing out that Cao Xueqin died in the winter of the twenty-seventh year of Qianlong, that is, February 12, 1763 in the Western calendar. "Every word seems to be full of blood, ten years of hard work is unusual"

The poems fully describe Cao Xueqin's mood when writing.Zhiyanzhai may be Cao Xueqin's wife or friend.Since I published "New Materials for Textual Research on "Dream of Red Mansions"" in February of the 17th year of the Republic of China, people have only noticed "Zhiyanzhai Commentary on Stone Stories".However, in the 22nd year of the Republic of China, I borrowed a Gengchenqiu finalized edition from Mr. Xu Xingshu, which has been reviewed and reviewed by Zhiyanzhai. Seventeen or two times. talk, praise Wu Jingzi Now let’s talk about my textual research: it is a book that criticizes the education system at that time, and criticizes the imperial examination system in the political system.At first, I only found the first volume of Fu (four pieces), the second volume of poems (131 pieces), and the first volume of Ci (47 pieces) in Wu Jingzi's "Wenmu Shanfang Ji". I took these as materials.But a hundred years ago, Jin He, the great poet of our country, said in his postscript that he had collected "Wen Mu Shan Fang Ji", which consisted of five volumes.But most people say that there is no printed version of "Wenmu Shanfang Ji". I don't believe it, so I asked someone to look for it in a bookstore in Beijing. After several years of searching, there was no result.I used this collection to refer to Anhui's "Quanjiao County Chronicles" and wrote a 18,000-word "Wu Jingzi Chronicle". No one can have more biographical materials on Chinese novels. In the 14th year of the Republic of China, I wrote this book Book typography came out.

If you compare Cao Xueqin and Wu Jingzi, I think Cao Xueqin's thinking is very ordinary, while Wu Jingzi's thinking is beyond the times at that time, with a strong sense of resistance.Wu Jingzi was here, severely criticizing the education system, and had his more scientific ideas. ... Finally, according to my personal experience of looking for books for decades, I found that the scope of our collection of books in the past was narrow.But we must understand that the attitude of truly collecting books is to accept everything. In the 14th issue of "Journal of the Chinese Library Society" in Taipei, December 1962