Chapter 6 3. Brief policy and silk system of books

UNESCO once defined a book as: a book is an indefinite periodical with at least forty-nine pages except the front and back covers.But for most of history, books didn't even have "pages."The "books" and "volumes" we call today come from the earliest official book carriers in our country - Jian Ce and Fanbo. The so-called Jian Ce refers to books that use bamboo or wood as writing materials.Specifically, a piece of bamboo is called "Jian", and several bamboo pieces are called "Ce" or "Book".In "Shuowen Jiezi", "book" is a pictograph, like one long and one short, with two series in the middle.A brief can't hold many words, and a long article must be compiled into a strategy with many briefs.The rope used to compose simplified forms is called weaving, usually hemp rope, but also leather rope (called Wei, which is evidenced by Confucius' reading "Wei Bian Sanjue") or silk rope to weave single bamboo slips.A piece of wood is called "ban", and the writing on it is called "slip".If it is one foot square, it is called "fang".Generally, short articles of less than 100 words can be written on boards, while long articles can be written in brief books.Board slips are mainly used to record the names of items or register accounts, compile maps and correspondence, etc., so the ancients often used "territory" to represent the territory of the country, and letters were called "chidots."

The tools used for writing in my country have appeared as early as the Shang Dynasty, and the characters on Jian Ce were written with a brush dipped in ink.When people write, they usually prepare a small knife. Once they make a mistake, they can use the knife to cut and rewrite it, so the revision of the article has always been called "deletion". The ancient bamboo and wood slips were of different lengths.According to Wang Guowei's textual research, the longest bamboo slips in the Warring States period were two feet and four inches, followed by one foot and two inches, and then eight inches; the longest bamboo slips in the Han Dynasty were two feet, followed by one foot and five inches, and then five inches.Calculated by Zhouchi, the longest Zhou bamboo slips is three feet (according to: Han eight inches is equivalent to Zhouchi one foot).Long abbreviations write classics, short abbreviations write biographies and miscellaneous books, and laws are written on three-foot-long bamboo slips, so there was a "three-foot method" in ancient times.There is also a kind of bamboo slips that are triangular in shape and can be placed vertically. They are called "gu", which are easy to read and are used as children's literacy books.

The number of characters on the bamboo slips varies from a few characters to a dozen or twenty characters. Each slip usually only writes one line, and even wooden slips in the Han Dynasty sometimes wrote two or three lines or even more. After compiling into a book, the first brief must write the title of the book.Sometimes in order to protect the book slips, two abbreviations without writing are added at the beginning, which is called "superior slips", which is also the source of the "cover" of later books.When a book is finished, make a volume with the end slip as the central axis for preservation.In order to avoid confusion, the policies of the same book are often filled with "zhi" or "capsule".

Jian Ce has been used for a long time. There is a saying in the "Book of Books": "Only the ancestors of Yin have codes and books".The word "book" is found in the inscriptions on oracle bone inscriptions and bronze wares, which shows that Jian Ce had existed before 1300 BC at the latest, and it has been used by later generations.It was most popular from the Spring and Autumn Period to the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty.Since the Eastern Han Dynasty, it was gradually replaced by paper, and it did not disappear until the fourth century AD. The ancient Jian Ce has been unearthed in all dynasties. "Hanshu Yiwenzhi" records that when Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty, Liu Yu, king of Lu Gong, broke down the residence of Confucius, and found ancient bamboo slips from the Warring States period in the interlayer of the wall of Confucius' old residence, including "Shangshu", "Book of Rites", etc. "Book of Jin" records that in the fifth year of Xianning, Emperor Wu of Jin Dynasty (279), the people of Jijun County, Henan Province were not allowed to steal the tomb of King Wei of the Warring States Period, and obtained dozens of bamboo books and 75 ancient books, which are called "Jizhong Books".These books were later collected and organized by the government, including "Bamboo Book Chronicles" and "Mu Tianzi Biography", which were discovered and handed down at that time.

In recent decades, due to the continuous discovery of bamboo and wood slips, we have a better understanding of the ancient Jian Ce system. In 1930, more than 10,000 wooden bamboo slips of the Han Dynasty were found in Juyan, Gansu. One of the bamboo slips consisted of seventy-seven wooden compendiums linked together into a slip of soldiers in the Eastern Han Dynasty and Emperor Yongyuan (89-104). Well preserved, this is the first complete Jian Ce unearthed, and it is now in Taiwan. In 1959, 504 bamboo and wood slips were found in the Eastern Han Tomb at Mozuizi, Wuwei, Gansu.The content is the Confucian classic "Rituals", including "Rituals of Drinking Wine in the Countryside" and "Mourning Clothes". In 1972, 4,942 bamboo and wooden slips were unearthed from the Western Han Tomb at No. 1 Yinqueshan, Linyi County, Shandong Province, including 105 pieces of "Sun Tzu's Art of War" and 222 of the long-lost "Sun Bin's Art of War". Twelve.The "Six Secret Teachings" and "Wei Liao Zi" were also unearthed, which corrected the view that many people thought that these two books were fake books. In 1975, a handful of Qin bamboo slips were unearthed from Cemetery No. 11 in Shuihudi, Yunmeng County, Hubei Province, with a total of 1,150 pieces, filling the gap that had not been discovered for a long time in the Qin Dynasty bamboo slips.

Although bamboo and wood are cheap and easy to obtain and easy to make, they are bulky and inconvenient to carry.According to legend, when Mozi traveled around the world, there were three carts behind him loaded with books, and Huishi had five carts loaded with books.It is also difficult to read, and each slip contains limited words. Once the long-length works compiled into a plan are scattered and wrong slips occur, it will bring great inconvenience to reading and book collection, which is very unfavorable to the development of books.Therefore, during the period when bamboo slips were in vogue, books written on silk—silk books—appeared.

The sericulture and silk reeling industry in our country was quite developed as early as the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Due to the soft texture of silk, it was a good writing material. By the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, silk scripts were quite popular.The "bamboo and silk of books" mentioned in Mozi's book includes bamboo slips and silk books.Books written on silk can be cut according to the length of the book, and then folded or rolled into a roll. Therefore, "roll" has become a unit for calculating the number of books, which has been used to this day.

Silk has greater advantages than bamboo slips, because it is light and soft, easy to write, unwind, store and use. This is an improvement in the book system.However, since silk was a valuable item at that time, and the output was not large, it was impossible to popularize it. Therefore, in the two book systems, simple policies are still the main ones. Because silk fabrics are perishable and difficult to preserve for a long time, and silk scripts are not as common as bamboo slips, there are not many unearthed in history.The earliest ancient silk script that can be seen today is a silk painting from the Warring States Period discovered in Changsha, Hunan Province in 1942.The most important thing is the silk script unearthed in 1973 from the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha. There are more than 20 kinds of scripts with more than 100,000 characters in Xiaozhuan and Lishu.

The formal system of silk script is basically the same as that of Jian Ce.Silk scripts are written horizontally, and there are two types: full and half, the full one is about 48 centimeters high, and the half one is about 24 centimeters high.When silk is used for writing, lines are usually drawn or woven on it, which are called boundary lines or column lines.The black row grid is called Wusi column; the red boundary grid is called Zhusi column.The text is written in rows, and each row is equivalent to a simple slip of the short book.Most of the Mawangdui silk books are Zhu Silan.The grid width of the whole silk script is 7.8 mm, and the width of the half grid is 2.3 mm.Write six or seven crosses or three crosses in each line.The length of the line is equivalent to two feet and four inches of the Han ruler, and the short one is equivalent to one foot, which exactly matches the length of the bamboo slips.The inscription method of the silk script is the same as that of the bamboo slip script.