Chapter 17 Section 7 Spreading and Collection

Due to the strong political role of the genealogy before the Tang Dynasty, most of them had to be handed over to the government for collection after completion.During the Qin and Han dynasties, the royal genealogy was managed by Zongzheng, a specialized institution.Non-governmental revisions should also be submitted to relevant government agencies.The Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties were the era when the genealogy was the most important in our country. Whether it was the election of officials or marriage, the genealogy was the first thing to be checked. The government set up a special agency "Genealogy Bureau" to edit and manage various genealogy.Private self-study must also be submitted to the government and stored in the Hucao of Shangshu Province, or in a special "Jiku" and "Puku", as the basis for future official selection.In the public and private catalogs after the Southern and Northern Dynasties, there are generally special categories for describing various genealogical documents.In the Tang Dynasty, the centralized management and compilation of genealogy by the government was still a major method of genealogy collection.

The government centrally collects and preserves the genealogy, which is not only convenient for management and use, but also convenient for preservation, which makes the compilation of genealogy tend to be standardized and unified.However, if the government’s collection of books encounters soldiers (xianxian) and wars, it will still be doomed. The Lvlin and Chimei Uprisings in the late Western Han Dynasty, the Yellow Turban Uprising and Dong Zhuo’s Rebellion in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, the Eight Kings’ Rebellion in the Western Jin Dynasty, Erzhu Ronghe in the Northern Wei Dynasty The Yin Change, the Hou Jing Rebellion in Xiaoliang, the peasant uprising at the end of the Sui Dynasty, the Anshi Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty, and the peasant uprising at the end of the Tang Dynasty all burned the government's books and archives (including various genealogical records stored by the government).The difference is that after all the wars before the Tang Dynasty, due to the status and role of genealogy in politics, the government was quickly restored through various methods.After the Huangchao Uprising in the last years of the Tang Dynasty, the late Tang Dynasty lingered for a period of time, and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms stood side by side. In troubled times, family genealogy is meaningless. The selection of officials and marriages are all backed by strength, and the government will manage and compile genealogy. Since it no longer has any meaning, there is no need to restore the genealogy it contains.This is also one of the reasons why the genealogy before the Tang Dynasty has been lost.

In the Tang Dynasty, there was another situation in which monks were in charge of the genealogy of prefectures, counties and townships.The Dunhuang posthumous books preserve a lot of physical materials in this regard, and many remnants of the documents are marked with the words "Shi Huiyun and other documents" and "Shi Xun [zhe Zhe] Huiyun Shaozong and other documents".In some areas in the south of the Yangtze River, this phenomenon still existed until modern times. When each family continued to build a family tree, it must first go to the relevant temple to check the lineage of the ancestors and the date of death of the clan.The surrounding residents have to go to the relevant temples to report their birth date and name when they add a child to the entrance.If there is a deceased person, the temple monks will automatically issue a letter, briefly stating the date of birth and death and simple deeds of the deceased.If a foreigner dies in the local area, only the name and time of death of the deceased will be recorded in the "record ghost book" in the temple.The fly in the ointment is that the genealogy of temples has never been published and circulated. Therefore, in the event of an accident, it will disappear. For example, Jixiang Temple in Changxing County once contained relevant genealogy from Tang to Qing, which was very complete. Do not stay.After nearly a hundred years of war and turmoil, it is now difficult for any temple to preserve more complete genealogical information.

After the Song Dynasty, the selection of officials no longer depends on family background, and marriages rarely pay attention to family background.Therefore, the government has no interest and no need to continue collecting and compiling various genealogies.From then on, except for the government setting up a special agency to edit the emperor's family tree, that is, the Jade Book, all other types of family trees were edited by the people themselves, and they were preserved and collected by themselves.The completed family tree is generally kept in ancestral halls and private hands.Some family branches have to hand over one copy to the headquarters of the family after they have completed their branch trees. In the Confucian Mansion in Qufu, Shandong Province, there are more than 300 genealogies compiled by members of the Kong surname from all over the country.

After the Ming Dynasty, the family tree was considered to be entrusted with the souls of the ancestors. Therefore, it was strictly forbidden to spread it outside. It is because of the far-fetched and self-proclaimed self-promotion when compiling, and providing outsiders with material for talking and laughing.All in all, the family tree is absolutely not allowed to be passed on to the outside world.Therefore, unless the descendants are unworthy or other very special reasons, they will rarely be exiled outside.Anyone who lends to outsiders without authorization, alters, copies or sells without authorization will be regarded as treason and will be severely punished.In order to ensure the implementation of this measure, many families have adopted the method of number distribution, that is, after the family tree is completed, a certain number is copied or printed, numbered, and distributed to the clan members after registration.They also agreed to bring their respective family trees to the ancestral hall for inspection every once in a while, and those who are correct will be sent back.Anyone who violates the law will be chased back to the genealogy at least, or expelled from the clan at worst, and will never be allowed to enter the shrine and genealogy.This is a very serious punishment in feudal society. If a person is expelled from the clan, he will not be able to enter the shrine in life, and he will not be buried in the ancestral tomb after death. The blow was extremely heavy.

Due to these reasons, the collection of genealogy is extremely difficult. There were many book collectors in Ming and Qing Dynasties, but basically none of them could collect family trees as their feature.This situation did not change until the period of the Republic of China. In view of the fact that private collections are not as long-lasting as public collections, and in order to promote the improvement of the level of genealogy editing, some newly completed genealogies were printed and distributed to relevant libraries. and research institutions, some domestic libraries began to pay attention to collecting various genealogy.Some foreign institutions pay great attention to collecting all kinds of Chinese materials, including genealogy, especially Japan and the United States. Japan looted a large number of Chinese documents during the war of aggression against China, and the United States used schools and cultural groups opened in China to buy them everywhere. .In addition to the collections in my country, there are more than thousands of Chinese genealogies in the collections of the United States and Japan.

According to incomplete statistics, the earliest ancient genealogy handed down to the present is the oracle bone tablet "Ku 1506" and other three pieces. There were some bronze Yi wares with original genealogical properties in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and only some genealogical properties remained in the Han Dynasty. Stone inscriptions and Dunhuang posthumous books still retain some fragments of genealogy in the Tang Dynasty.According to the "Comprehensive Catalog of Chinese Genealogy" compiled by the State Archives Bureau and other institutions, there are about 14,000 kinds of family trees in China, of which the Beijing Library has the most collections, with a total of more than 3,000 kinds of genealogy. There are three types compiled by humans, two types compiled in the Yuan Dynasty, 325 types compiled in the Ming Dynasty, 1528 types compiled in the Qing Dynasty, and the rest were compiled in the Republic of China and contemporary times.Other major libraries also have many collections. The shortcoming is that although the number of genealogies collected in China is the largest, most of them have not been well managed and utilized.

The number of family trees originally collected in Taiwan was relatively small, but in the past 20 years, Taiwan has set off an upsurge of new genealogy. According to the "Taiwan Region Genealogy Catalog" published in 1987, there are more than 10,600 kinds, most of which are new works in recent years. uneven.At present, Taiwan has the largest collection of family trees in the "United Daily News" cultural foundation under the jurisdiction of the National Studies Archives, which was established in 1981 with the purpose of collecting precious Chinese books that have been circulated overseas for reading and use by academics and all walks of life. , the family tree is one of the main collection objects.In addition to copying microfilms from the Utah Genealogical Society, they also purchased many genealogies from Japan, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong. Now there are more than 6,000 kinds of Chinese genealogical materials in their collections.In addition, the Chinese Culture University and the Mormon Genealogy Service Unit in Taipei also have microfilms of some genealogies for public inspection.

Before World War II, Japan paid great attention to collecting documents about China, and genealogy was one of the targets of its attention.According to the "Study of Clans" written by Japanese scholar Taga Shugoro, the Japanese collection of Chinese genealogy is the most in the Oriental Library, with a total of more than 800; followed by the Library of Congress, with more than 400; the Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo has more than 200 In addition, there are some units that only have a few copies, totaling more than 1,500 copies. The number of Chinese genealogies collected in the United States has also reached a considerable number. It is understood that Columbia University has nearly a thousand species, and Harvard University, the University of California, and the University of Chicago also have tens or hundreds of species.In addition, the most famous institution for Chinese genealogy in American collections is the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU). The Genealogical Society of Utah is headquartered in Northeast Temple Street, Salt Lake City, Utah. It was founded in 1894 by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is a civil non-profit An international organization that collects, organizes, and preserves valuable historical records for the study of genealogy.At first, they only collected manuscripts and books. Since 1936, they began to reproduce the family trees of various countries and ethnic groups with micron technology. Of course, Chinese genealogy is also included in the collection. Since 1974, he has collected more than 3,000 types of genealogical materials in Taiwan. The library of the Utah Genealogy Society has collected more than 10,000 volumes of materials related to China. In addition, he has microcopied Chinese materials stored in the United States, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, and private collections. There are 100,000 volumes, among which there are more than 5,000 genealogies related to China, covering various provinces and cities in China, among which Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, and Guangdong are the majority.The pages vary in size, some less than 20 pages, and the largest is "Confucius Family Tree" edited by Kong Decheng published in 1937 with 154 volumes in four episodes.All were made into microfilm, one set was permanently preserved in the underground database of Granite Mountain 20 kilometers away from the association's location, and one set was placed in the library for public use.There is no charge for using the books and equipment of the club.At the same time, the Utah Genealogical Society has also established data exchange relationships with more than 1,000 libraries in more than 40 countries and regions.