Chapter 8 2. The achievements of book collection and collation during the Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period

Less than two years after Qin Shihuang burned the books, the first large-scale peasant uprising broke out in Chinese history, overthrowing the rule of the Qin Dynasty.The war continued to develop. Although Xiao He collected all the legal documents of the Qin Dynasty when Liu Bang invaded Xianyang, Xiang Yu's fire in Afang Palace almost burned all the leftover books. In the early days of the Han Dynasty, in order to stabilize social order and restore and develop production, Xiao He, Zhang Cang, and Shu Suntong compiled official books on laws, etiquette, and calendars.Yet the book ban remains in place.It was not until the fourth year of Emperor Hui of the Han Dynasty (191 BC) that the ban on books was officially lifted, making private book collection legal.At the same time, the academic and cultural atmosphere among the people gradually became stronger.Books hidden in caves and walls began to appear one after another, private writings also came out continuously, and the number of books continued to increase.

During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (140-87 BC), the government ordered the collection of books across the country for the first time. "Hanshu Yiwenzhi Preface" contains: "Han Xing, change the Qin system, collect a large number of books, and open the way of offering books." The sub-legends are all filled with secret houses."Set up "Tai Shi Gong", and order the book of the world's accounting books to go to Tai Shi first, and then to the prime minister.In the fifth year of Yuan Shuo (124 B.C.), Prime Minister Gong Sunhong managed to collect books in various ways, built libraries for collecting books, and set up officials who copied books. The books were constantly enriched, with a total of 33,090 volumes.In order to meet the needs of a highly centralized and unified central dynasty, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty put ideology, culture, and education on the agenda, accepted Dong Zhongshu's suggestion of "removing a hundred schools of thought, and only respecting Confucianism", and strengthened the importance of ideology, culture, and education. control.He took a series of measures to respect Confucianism, set up doctors of the Five Classics, and educate the people with Confucian classics, making Confucianism the orthodox thought representing the supreme ruler and the spiritual pillar of feudal society.

When he became emperor, he ordered Chen Nong as an envoy to collect books across the country, making the collection of books in the Han Dynasty extremely rich.However, since the ancient books are mainly written on the Jian Ce, they will be easily scattered and incomplete after being stored for a long time. Therefore, Emperor Cheng ordered people to collect the books and at the same time ordered the collation. Liu Xiang presided over the first time in the history of our country organized by the government. The work of sorting out ancient books. Liu Xiang first compiled the brief volume, removed repetitions, supplemented each other, determined the chapters and their titles and sequence, and then corrected the text; if there were no titles or duplicate titles, the titles were also assigned, and finally copied into a final version.After proofreading a book, write a narration, explaining the life story of the author of the book, the general content of the book, proofreading and copying, etc., and ask Emperor Cheng to read it.Liu Xiang also compiled the narrations of each book into a book called "Bie Lu", which is a compilation of abstracts from the national collection.After twenty years, Liu Xiang finally completed the collation of school books, a total of 13,269 volumes.After Liu Xiang's death, this job was succeeded by his son Liu Xin.Based on the narration compiled by Liu Xiang, Liu Xin compiled the first catalog of books——"Seven Strategies". "Seven Strategies" divides the Western Han government's collection of books into six strategies (big categories) of "Six Arts", "Zhuzi", "Poetry and Fu", "Science of War", "Shu Shu", and "Fang Ji", which are further divided into several small categories. For example, the six arts are divided into nine categories: Yi, Shu, Poetry, Ritual, Music, Spring and Autumn Period, Analects of Confucius, Xiaojing, and Primary School.Each of the six strategies has a major order, and each of the 38 subcategories has a minor sequence, which respectively expounds the meaning of the major and minor categories, as well as the academic origins and schools. The mutual relationship and the use of the book have become "the best of the six strategies". "Bie Lu" and "Qi Lue" disappeared in the Tang Dynasty, but their basic outlines were preserved in "Han Shu·Yi Wen Zhi" written by Ban Gu (32-92) in the Eastern Han Dynasty.

The main contribution of the father and son Liu Xiang and Liu Xin lies in the fact that they opened up the field of collation and bibliography on the basis of scientific collation of ancient cultural classics. The classification system they created laid the foundation for the classification of books in the feudal period. It had a great impact on the classification and cataloging of books in the feudal society for nearly two thousand years. The collection of books in the Han Dynasty suffered another devastation during the war in Wang Mang's last year.As Niu Hong of the Sui Dynasty said, it is the "two misfortunes" of Chinese books, that is, the second misfortune.When Liu Xiu, Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han Dynasty unified China, there was still a small collection of books in the court. After some collection and sorting, there were 2,000 carts of books when the capital was moved to Luoyang.Later, after decades of vigorous collection by Emperor Ming and Emperor Zhang, the Shishi and Lantai of the national collection were enriched. Later, new books were collected in Dongguan and Renshou Pavilion, and the bookkeepers Ban Gu and Fu Yi were in charge of cataloging.

After the collection of official books in the Eastern Han Dynasty was enriched, they continued to send staff to clean up the books in accordance with the old practice of the Western Han Dynasty.According to records, Ban Gu, Jia Kui, etc. were in Dongguan to school books during Emperor Ming of the Han Dynasty.During the time of Emperor Han'an, Liu Zhen, Ma Rong and others had proofread the book, and Cai Lun supervised the work.During the time of Emperor Shun of the Han Dynasty, Fu Wuji and Huang Jing once checked the books.During the reign of Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty, Cai Yong and others had proofread books in Dongguan and Lantai.Their proofreading activities all involve various categories of books in the government's collections, and rearrange the final version as the standard reading material for Confucian scholars.The famous "Xiping Stone Classic" is one of the achievements of Cai Yong's collation.But at the end of the Han Dynasty, due to the sharp internal contradictions of the ruling class, the peasant uprisings were surging, the warlords separatist regimes, and years of wars caused serious losses to the national books established since the Western Han Dynasty.Especially in the early years of Emperor Xian of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Dong Zhuo moved his capital from Luoyang back to Chang'an, and a large number of laws and documents were lost on the way.Niu Hong of the Sui Dynasty called this the third misfortune in the history of Chinese books.

There were also quite a lot of private collections in the Eastern Han Dynasty.After Emperor Hui of the Han Dynasty lifted the ban on books, private collections of books became legal. Therefore, private collections of books were extremely common.Liu Xiang used many books provided by private collections when proofreading.In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Cai Yong had more private collections of books. Cai Wenji replied to Cao Cao: "The deceased father gave more than 4,000 volumes of books" ("Han Shu Biography of Lie Nu"), which shows the abundance of his collection. Due to the stable political and cultural environment and the increasing demand for books, "book stores" began to appear at the end of the Western Han Dynasty, and the sale of books appeared. "Book of the Later Han·Wang Chong Biography" says that Wang Chong (27-97) visited Luoyang bookstores, read the books they sold, and could recite them as soon as he read them. It can be seen that there were already shops selling books at that time.