Chapter 13 Section Four: The Discovery and Arrangement of Jizhong Books

In the fifth year of Xianning, Emperor Wu of Jin Dynasty (AD 279), the people of Jijun (now Jixian County, Henan Province) were not allowed to steal the tomb of King Wei Xiang of the Warring States Period. Among them were a large number of scattered bamboo slips from the pre-Qin period. In Luoyang, there are more than 100,000 characters in bamboo slips.Because these bamboo slips were unearthed in the tomb of Jijun, they are called Jizhongshu. Emperor Wu of Jin Dynasty Sima Yan attached great importance to this and ordered Xun Xu and He Qiao to sort it out.The way they sorted it out was to use yellow paper equivalent to the length of the original slips (about two feet) to copy the characters on the bamboo slips, so that it was easy to find and correct wrong slips, and they could roughly see the number of missing words in the slips. □ Instead.In order to identify the characters, they checked the characters on the slips with the "Zhengshi Stone Classic" inscribed in ancient Chinese, seal characters and official script in front of the Luoyang Academy, and finally finalized the book in official script popular in the Jin Dynasty.After sorting out by them, the Jizhong Book consisted of 15 parts and 87 volumes, which were included in the "New Book of Chinese Classics" compiled by Xun Xu, and included in Part D.

During the reign of Emperor Hui of Jin Dynasty, Jian Zhiyu, the secretary, carefully proofread and compiled an official book.Secretary Cheng Weiheng studied Jizhongshu from the perspective of philology, and Wei Heng was killed due to the war.The unfinished business was completed by my friend Shu Xi.Shu Xi reclassified Jizhong Shu into 16 categories and 75 chapters, which were different from Xun Xu's division of volumes and chapter titles.The records of some historical events in Jizhongshu are different from some existing historical books, which are very meaningful for understanding and studying history.From the Jizhong Book, there are "Mu Tianzi Biography", "Bamboo Book Chronicle", "Jizhong Suojing" and other books, which enrich our ancient classics, but unfortunately, except for "Mu Tianzi Biography", the rest The books were lost later, and now we can only see the volumes.

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