Chapter 2 preamble

During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty, someone presented a strange bird to the emperor and fed it with various foods, but it refused to eat it.The famous literati Dongfang Shuo saw the bird and said its name and what it should eat.After a test, it was exactly as Dongfang Shuo said.The emperor asked Dongfang Shuo how he knew it, and he said that it was recorded in the book, and he would know it after reading it.When it came to Emperor Xuan of the Han Dynasty, a stone chamber in a certain place in Shangjun collapsed, and someone found that the image of "reverse-binding robbers" was engraved on the stone wall inside. Legends spread, but no one knew what it meant.Liu Xiang, a university scholar, pointed out that this is "a minister with two negatives".The emperor asked him how he knew it, and Liu Xiang also replied that he saw it from the Internet.The emperor was shocked, and the courtiers stirred up, so there was a small craze for reading.In the time of Emperor Ming of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Wang Jing, an expert in water and soil engineering, was rewarded by the emperor for his achievements in harnessing rivers and canals, including one of the gifts.However, Tao Yuanming, a great poet in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, never bowed his waist for five buckets of rice all his life, but was impressed by it. He once wrote the poem "Reading Thirteen Poems of the Classic of Mountains and Seas" in one breath, which has been handed down to this day.The first poem in it expresses his happy and excited emotions and the effect of knowing the world after reading "Shan Hai Jing": "If you look up to the universe, how can you not return to joy." , readers are often attracted by the magical stories in it, and thus admire the author's rich imagination.But we know that many of the story materials and artistic ideas in the book are taken from the book, and the author's imagination is also inspired by it.And so on, the charm of the beauty is self-evident.

So, what is the specific charm?It lies in the rich and magical content. Everything that people can hear, see, know, and imagine at that time is recorded.Such as large and small hills and rivers, all kinds of flowers and trees, half-human and half-god spirits, grotesque half-human and half-beast, magnificent and colorful gold and stone minerals, grotesque birds and beasts, unpredictable myths and legends, all kinds of Various countries and peoples, mysterious sacrifices, strange costumes, strange diseases, effective medicines, delicious food, poisonous game, unreasonable sun and moon, unreasonable craftsmanship, the lineage of ancient emperors, The ancient history with different rumors... is simply an encyclopedia of ancient times.

Because it is an ancient book that synthesizes all kinds of knowledge and appears complex, there have been different opinions on its nature since ancient times, and the bibliographical classification of it is not uniform.Liu Xin of the Western Han Dynasty discussed its nature in "Shan Hai Jing Biao": "The mountains of the five directions are separated inside, and the seas of the eight directions are divided outside. Where it stops, where the auspiciousness is hidden, and beyond the four seas, the country of absolute territory, people of a special kind." Think of it as a geography book.Since then, the catalogs of historical records of the past dynasties have quite the same opinion, such as "Sui Shu? Jing Ji Zhi", etc., and it is included in the category of geography.Ban Gu of the Eastern Han Dynasty regarded it as a book of the nature of witchcraft, divination and astrology in his "Hanshu? Yiwenzhi".Since then, there have been many people who have said the same thing. For example, "Song History? Yiwenzhi" included it in the category of five elements.Hu Yinglin of the Ming Dynasty said in "Sibu Zhengyao": "The ancient language is the ancestor of monsters." It is regarded as a book of gods and monsters.After refuting the claims and classifications of various schools, the official revision of the "Siku Quanshu Zongmu" in the Qing Dynasty believed that "verified and named" should be "the oldest novel", and it was also regarded as a novel in nature.At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Zhang Zhidong included it in the category of ancient history in his "Bibliography and Answers", and regarded it as a history book.In Lu Xun's book, he called it "ancient witchcraft".As far as the nature of the book and its writing are concerned, Lu Xun's conclusion is unshakable.

It is indeed an ancient shamanistic book, which was accumulated by generations of shamans who passed on what they saw and heard through word of mouth.A long time ago, there was no distinction between shamanism and history, and they were a group of people with hereditary and professional identities. They were well-educated intellectuals of that era, presided over the sacrificial ceremonies of the gods of mountains and rivers, met various people, had frequent exchanges with each other, enjoyed the superior conditions of exchanging and absorbing various cultural knowledge, and shouldered the great responsibility of passing on and preserving various cultural knowledge.They have a high social status and mainly serve as senior advisors to clan leaders, tribal chiefs and slave owners.In order to make ordinary people believe and worship themselves, wizards should try their best to appear well-informed.Therefore, they worked hard to accumulate cultural knowledge, picking up anecdotes and strange things, so that the cultural knowledge they mastered increased from generation to generation.People of later generations sorted out and recorded the knowledge handed down by wizards orally, which became the original data on which to base.In the Warring States period, someone compiled these similar and disorganized materials into a document, and it came into being.In the Han Dynasty, it was added, deleted and modified by others, and it became what we see today.

There are a total of 18 chapters in total, which can be roughly divided into two parts: "Shan Jing" and "Hai Jing" from the perspective of its shell structure.And the content related to it can be divided into more details.That is, the five chapters of "Wu Zang Shan Jing", the geographical scope is the land of China, and the content is mostly recorded in the geography of mountains and rivers, strange animals, plants, minerals, rituals for worshiping gods, sacrifices, sacrificial vessels, and sometimes the appearance of mountain gods , functions, and divine power; the four chapters of "Overseas Classics" have a wider geographical scope than "Shanjing", and they contain more records of foreign people and objects from overseas countries, as well as some ancient myths and legends, such as Kuafu Chasing the Sun and Xing Tiandu The first class; the four chapters of "Hainei Jing" not only miscellaneously record the miraculous things in China, such as the scene of Kunlun, the shape of Jianmu, the Ba snake and the second negative, but also record some countries and nations, and also write about the lineage of emperors and the invention of utensils Creations, such as Panyu, the descendant of Emperor Jun, invented the boat, Jiguang invented the car, Yan Long invented the qin and se, and they were all the earliest blacksmiths. Guyan, a descendant of Emperor Yan, invented the bell and composed music, etc.

Most scholars in ancient times believed that it was written by Xia Yu and Boyi, but today it seems that this theory is pure nonsense.No matter from the perspective of its all-encompassing content, or from the fact that the writing time of each article is different, it is not written by one person at a time, but compiled by a collective.Because the content of the book is very extensive, it is beyond the ability of private individuals, and even the leading group of a clan and tribe can only compile a part of it.Due to the limitations of ancient regions and transportation conditions, it is impossible for a tribe to know the situation in various places.Therefore, it can only be accumulated through the word of mouth of wizards, and it will be compiled into books in the later generations of the Great Unity.The responsibilities of the early wizards determined the structure of their cultural knowledge. Generally speaking, they knew everything about astronomy, geography, history, religion, biology, medicine, imperial lineage and major technological inventions, etc., so the content was very heterogeneous.

It is the mountain of knowledge and the sea of ​​knowledge, and it has been praised and admired by people throughout the ages for its broad and rich content and unique and superb imagination. Therefore, it is not only an important research topic for social and natural science workers. It is not only an object, but also a treasure house for readers and friends to obtain a lot of knowledge about ancient culture, history, and folk customs.The mountains, waters, countries, ethnic groups, animals, plants, minerals, medicines, etc. recorded in this book, except most of them are different, some of them are common.However, whether it is different or common, it is an aspect of ancient history, geography, and customs.Therefore, if you want to understand ancient mountains and rivers geography, folk customs, strange beasts and birds, gods and devils, gold and jade treasures, natural minerals, and fairy tales, you must read them.Moreover, it also provides valuable information for people to understand natural knowledge and some ancient social life full of witchcraft prayers.In particular, the well-known myths and legends preserved in the "Shan Hai Jing" such as Jingwei reclamation, Kuafu chasing the sun, Yi shooting the nine suns, Yu Gun controlling the water, and Gonggong angering Buzhou Mountain are not only in the form of fantasy It reflects the contradiction between man and nature, and more importantly, it gives people positive encouragement; and those records about nature, such as the daily rising and setting of the sun, the monthly waxing and waning of the moon, and the changes of cold and heat throughout the year, are not only It was the ancients who wanted to explain natural phenomena, and more importantly, to give people the courage to explore.And so on, it can be said to have a permanent charm!

However, since it was not written by one person, nor was it written at one time, the written records are already sparse and chaotic, and it has been handed down for a long time. Therefore, there are many cases of corruption, addition, deletion, and alteration, which make it difficult for people to read. It is often difficult to understand, and some collation and dredging work is required.However, considering that this book is a popular book, it is concise and not suitable for cumbersome textual research, so the method of expediency is adopted, which can not only maintain the appearance of the original text, but also correct and straighten the text, and it is unnecessary to list collation notes.This is: when encountering wrong text, mark it with parentheses, followed by the word of correction, and mark it with square brackets to indicate correction, such as the sentence "its shape is like a valley but black reason" in the Queshan article of "Nanshan Jing". , "谷" is an error of "首", so it is corrected to "it looks like (谷) [視] and black"; when encountering Yanwen, it is marked with parentheses to indicate deletion, as in the last article of "Nanshan Jing" The sentence "One Bi Rice" in the above and below cannot be read clearly, and it is actually a derivative text, so it was corrected as "(Yi Bi Rice)"; when it meets a broken text, it is marked with square brackets to indicate a supplement, such as "Nanshan Jing". In the sentence "Three hundred miles to the east of Jishan", the word "yue" was removed from the bottom of "three hundred miles", so it was corrected as "Another three hundred miles to the east [say] Jishan".All texts that have been corrected in this way have a reliable basis and are carried out on the basis of absorbing the research results of ancient and modern scholars, such as Wang Chongqing of the Ming Dynasty, Wang Niansun of the Qing Dynasty, He Zhuo, Wu Renchen, Wang Fu, Bi Yuan, Hao Yixing, modern Wang Shaoyuan, Yuan Ke, etc., especially benefited from Yuan Ke's collation results.In addition, there are many characters with different pronunciations and false characters, which are difficult to recognize and read, so the phonetic alphabet is used to annotate the pronunciation along with the text, and repetition is not avoided, so as to facilitate today's young readers.

The annotations of this book are based on the principle of being easy to understand, avoiding extensive quotations, trying to be concise and concise, and focusing on clarifying the meaning of the text.The commentaries are mainly based on "Shan Hai Jing Biography" by Guo Pu from Jin Dynasty, "Shan Hai Jing Jian Shu" by Hao Yixing from Qing Dynasty, and "Shan Hai Jing Annotation" by Yuan Ke today.In addition, he also occasionally came up with his own ideas to invent things that the predecessors failed to catch.In case of plausible theories, or several theories are acceptable but difficult to decide, they will be listed in the notes for readers to identify and choose.If the meaning is unclear and there is no circumstantial evidence to look for, you still have doubts and do not make assumptions, in order to be cautious.Except for individual cases, do not make repeated notes.The translation of this book is mainly based on literal translation, supplemented by free translation, and try to avoid substituting interpretation for translation.

There are many versions, including several annotations, such as "Shan Hai Jing Zhuan" written by Guo Pu of Jin Dynasty, "Interpretation of Shan Hai Jing" written by Wang Chongqing of Ming Dynasty, "Guang Zhu of Shan Hai Jing" written by Wu Renchen of Qing Dynasty, Hao Yixing of Qing Dynasty Writing "Shan Hai Jing Jian Shu" and so on are more important.Among them, Hao's annotation is the most comprehensive work.In view of the previous research, there is still a situation of "distinguishing similarities and differences, publishing correctness and error, and covering them in detail", so he has collected the strengths of many families, "as "Notes and Shu". There are more than 100 things in the scriptures, and there are more than 300 things in the orthodox text. Although there is a lot of evidence, the old text is still used, so there is no change. Gai Fang (imitation) Zheng Jun Kangcheng (Zheng Xuan) Note An example of not daring to change the characters."Therefore, Hao Yixing's "Shan Hai Jing Jian Shu" is a better and accessible book.This time, the annotation and translation of "Shan Hai Jing" takes Hao's annotation as the base version.As mentioned above, the words that were corrupted and derived in the original text are marked with parentheses and square brackets, and they are not changed directly. It is to follow the principle of "not dare to change the words in the scriptures", so as not to be rigid.

January 1996