Chapter 6 Section 2 Local Chronicles Lost in the Long River of History

However, the number of local chronicles edited in the past dynasties in China is far more than this number, and many more local chronicles have not been handed down to this day due to various reasons, and have been lost in the long river of history. Before woodblock printing was widely used, books were copied by hand and it was difficult to spread widely, so most of them could not be preserved.Lu Cheng of the Southern Qi Dynasty compiled 160 geographical works and compiled 149 volumes of Geography Book.Ren Fang of the Liang Dynasty added another 84 and compiled them into 252 volumes, called "Diji".Only 100 years later, when the "Sui Shu·Jing Ji Zhi" was compiled during the Zhenguan period of the Tang Dynasty, 9/10 of the originals of these 200 kinds of books could not be found.A few hundred years later, by the Yuan and Ming dynasties, the books recorded in "Sui Shu·Jing Ji Zhi" had disappeared, and even the collections of Lu and Ren had been lost.It can be seen how serious the loss of ancient books is.

Even after the development of printing, there are still many local chronicles that have never been published.Or even though it is published, the number of copies is very small.Most of the local chronicles of the Ming and Qing dynasties were compiled by officials. After they were completed, several copies were submitted to the superiors. The manuscripts or book boards were hidden in the government offices of prefectures and counties. In case of turmoil or war, prefectural and county government offices are the first to bear the brunt.For example, Shulu County (now Xinji City) in Hebei Province compiled five chronicles in the Ming Dynasty, and the Hutuo River was flooded during the Tianqi period at the end of the Ming Dynasty.In Fangxian County, Hubei Province, a book of aspirations was compiled as early as the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, but the board was destroyed during the war at the end of the Ming Dynasty.It was rebuilt during the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, and after 15 years, "the board was destroyed and the book died".Linjiang County in Jilin (now Linjiang District, Hunjiang City) rebuilt the county annals twice in 1926 and 1928. Both times, the original manuscripts were burned due to fire. It was reedited again from 1930 to 1931, and then encountered the "September 18th Incident", and the Northeast fell under the iron heel of the Japanese army. "The manuscript that has been released will be paid for."Looking at the history of the compilation of chronicles in various places, this kind of sad and regrettable records can be seen everywhere.

The dynasties of the past dynasties have invested huge financial resources in organizing the compilation of local chronicles. The compiled local chronicles are concentrated in the central government, and a solid library has been carefully built, and a special management organization has been set up to keep them properly together with other books.But even these blessed royal collections were repeatedly buried in large-scale wars or fires.For example, the collection of books of the royal family of the Tang Dynasty was destroyed by the "Anshi Rebellion" and then by the war at the end of the Tang Dynasty.In the eighth year of Dazhong Xiangfu in the Northern Song Dynasty (1015 A.D.), a fire burned more than 30,000 volumes of books in Zhaowen Library, Jixian Yuan, History Library and Mi Pavilion in the royal library.Since then, the royal collection of the Song Dynasty was destroyed twice in the Song-Jin and Song-Yuan wars.These destroyed atlases contain a large number of local chronicles.The government of the Ming Dynasty collected and preserved many local chronicles of the Song and Yuan Dynasties.The "Yongle Dadian" edited in the early Ming Dynasty has a total of more than 20,000 volumes, which is the largest book in the history of our country, and many of the valuable materials come from local chronicles.The war at the end of the Ming Dynasty was another catastrophe for books. The people who compiled "Yongle Dadian" had read and used many Song and Yuan annals books, but they have never seen them again. "Yongle Dadian" has an original and a copy. The original was also destroyed in the war in the late Ming Dynasty, and the copy was lost after being robbed by the British and French allied forces and burned by the Eight-Power Allied Forces in the late Qing Dynasty. Only the original part survived. Three thousandths, and most of them were robbed.Many local chronicles of the Song and Yuan Dynasties that were preserved only by the "Yongle Dadian" finally disappeared from this world forever together with the "Yongle Dadian".

The cultural autocratic policy of the feudal ruling class also often affected local chronicles.Sima Qian said in "Historical Records Preface to the Chronicles of the Six Kingdoms": "Since Qin was proud, he burned the world's poems and books, especially the historical records of the princes, and he ridiculed them." Now it seems that they are all precious local documents. Since there are often disrespectful words in them, it is especially difficult to escape bad luck when Qin Shihuang burned the books. During the period from Kangxi to Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, in order to suppress ideas that were not conducive to the Qing government, literary inquisition prevailed.Some local chronicles were banned because of being implicated in the literary inquisition.The largest book ban was during the Qianlong period, when the Qing government borrowed the name of "Siku Quanshu" to collect books from all over the world to review one by one. If the content did not meet the requirements, all of them were destroyed, or some of them were destroyed and excavated.In some local chronicles, traces of deletion and modification can still be seen.In the forty-fourth year of Qianlong (AD 1779), the governor of Anhui asked to check the annals of prefectures and counties all over the world. Emperor Qianlong ordered all provinces to do so. ", "Jinshan Zhi", "Songjiang Xinzhi" and other chronicles.

In modern times, imperialist aggression and plunder became the main reason for the loss of local chronicles.In addition to those scattered abroad, many local chronicles were destroyed by the artillery fire of the invaders.For example, the board of "(Daoguang) Guangdong Tongzhi" was hidden in Yuexiu Academy in Guangzhou, and it was destroyed by the artillery fire of the British and French allied forces during the Second Opium War.The famous Shanghai Oriental Library in the Far East has collected more than 2,600 local chronicles after decades of dismal management, including 140 precious Yuan and Ming editions. During the "January 28th Incident" in 1931, the Oriental Library was first bombed by Japanese planes and then set on fire by the Japanese. Its collection of more than 500,000 books, together with these local chronicles, were all burned.There are also many newly completed manuscripts that could not be published due to the national crisis, and were lost in the war and exile.They died just after they came to this world, and the efforts of many Zhixie practitioners were wasted.

Some of these annihilated local chronicles have left a little shadow in history.They have been quoted or mentioned in other ancient books, some only leave a title, some can know the author and the time when the book was written, and some still preserve some fragments, or a few sentences about it A brief introduction of .Only these "well-documented" ones, the number is already extremely impressive. Zhang Guogan's "Ancient Chinese Local Chronicles" records more than 2,000 kinds of local chronicles before the Yuan Dynasty, of which only about 40 are extant.According to statistics from various catalogs, the number of lost local chronicles of the Ming Dynasty is nearly twice that of the existing ones.There were not a few local chronicles lost in the early Qing Dynasty.In terms of region, for example, before the Yuan Dynasty, there were 36 well-known and testable local chronicles in the Shandong area, and only the "Qi Cheng" compiled in the Yuan Dynasty survived to this day; there were 14 testable local chronicles in the Guangdong area in the Yuan Dynasty, and only "(Dade) South China Sea Chronicles" is one, but not the complete version; there are 637 kinds of local chronicles in Zhejiang in Ming Dynasty, and only 102 existing ones; there are 271 kinds of local chronicles in Guizhou area before 1911, and there are only 102 existing ones. 89 kinds, less than 1/3.As for the number of local chronicles that disappeared without a trace with the passage of time, it is impossible to check.

Boring figures contain exact facts.We cannot but marvel at the scale of our country's past dynasties, and we cannot help but sigh at the disaster of the country and the loss of documents.And those local chronicles that have survived the ups and downs of history and are lucky enough to survive today are more worthy of our cherishing.