Chapter 29 The second section of the historical geography masterpiece - "Shui Jing Zhu"

The original volume of "Shui Jing Zhu" is 40 volumes, with 1 million characters, and about 300,000 characters are extant. The author, Li Daoyuan, with the character Shanchang (about 465 A.D. or 472-527 A.D.), was born in Zhuo County, Fanyang, Northern Wei Dynasty (now Zhuo County, Hebei Province).He once served as governor of East Jingzhou and lieutenant of Yushi.Xiao Baoyin, governor of Yongzhou, was about to rebel against Wei, but the court ordered Li Daoyuan to be the ambassador of Guanyou, but was killed by Xiao.He is diligent and studious, reads a lot of books, especially loves to read strange books, knowledgeable and talented, and is a famous geographer in our country.In addition to writing "Shui Jing Zhu", he also wrote "Ben Zhi", "Qi Pin", etc., but unfortunately they have been lost.

In ancient my country, there was a geography work on waterways, "Shui Jing", but the content was too simple and there were many mistakes.Li Daoyuan took "Shui Jing" as the outline, and referred to and collected more than 400 kinds of relevant documents in previous works, such as "Yugong", "Hanshu·Geography", among which there are more than 90 kinds of ancient geography books. , most of which were not recorded in Sui Shu·Jing Ji Zhi, and later people learned from the "Shui Jing Zhu", so from the perspective of literature, "Shui Jing Zhu" can be called a masterpiece of geography in the Southern and Northern Dynasties .Li Daoyuan also paid great attention to practice, and personally inspected various places in the north, searching and interviewing everywhere. Most of the more than 300 steles recorded in the book were researched and interviewed by him personally.He personally visited the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River and Longmen of the Yellow River, and wrote vivid chapters.The "Shui Jing Zhu" written by him is actually a new comprehensive historical and geographical masterpiece.There are more than 1,200 waterways recorded in the book, more than eight times more than the "Shui Jing", and the text is almost 20 times that of the "Shui Jing".From rivers to streams, all are collected in the book.He not only recorded the source and flow direction of the river, but also recorded the previous course, the undercurrent at the source of the water flow and the hydrological changes of each waterway, which still have scientific reference value.Water conservancy facilities, mountains, cities, products, and even folklore, inscriptions, dialects, and folk songs related to the waterway basin have been recorded. These historical materials are very precious.For example, the records about Gaoliangshui, Gaoliangshui is an important waterway near Beijing, and the records in the past are very simple.The "Shui Jing Zhu" quoted the inscription of Liu Jing's stele erected by Emperor Hui of Jin Dynasty, so that we know that the people here built water walls [e hungry] and opened channels during the Cao Wei Dynasty.In the third year of Jingyuan (262 A.D.), the car box canal was repaired to divert water to irrigate the fields. The canal ran from Changping in the northwest of Jibei to Luxian County in Yuyang in the east.Such informative and specific materials still have practical reference value for us to study the changes of rivers and topography near Beijing. "Shui Jing Zhu" also corrected the mistakes in "Shui Jing" and "Han Shu Geography Zhi".For example, the source of Sishui was wrongly recorded in both books. Li Daoyuan investigated it himself and found its true source.Li Daoyuan lived in the Northern Wei Dynasty, but "Shui Jing Zhu" is not limited to the territory of the Northern Wei Dynasty, but looks at the whole country, and is limited to the so-called "Yu domain". This is his foresight.Of course, Li Daoyuan was not able to go to the south to inspect it himself, so some information in the south is not very accurate, and there are shortcomings in the north and the south. This is caused by objective historical conditions and cannot be harsh on the ancients.

The writing style of "Shui Jing Zhu" is excellent, and it has a high status in the history of literature.It has a profound influence on the prose and travel notes of later generations. "Shui Jing Zhu" is not only a geographical work, which has a high scientific quality; it is also a literary work, which has a high artistic quality.Melting history, geography and literature in one furnace, it is really a "magic book" through the ages.For thousands of years, people have read it like prose and travel notes, and some chapters are particularly popular, such as the description of the 700-mile Three Gorges, which is deep and steep, with multiple mountains and mountains.

Since its publication, "Shui Jing Zhu" has been valued by scholars of all dynasties. For example, when Hu Sanxing made his annotations, he quoted many historical materials from "Shui Jing Zhu".However, the fate of "Shui Jing Zhu" was not good in the circulation, the transmission was wrong, the scriptures and annotations were confused, some of them were lost, and there were few rare copies.This has attracted the attention of many scholars, and there are many scholars who study "Shui Jing Zhu".Famous achievements include "Shuijing Zhuwang Correction" by Qing Quan Zuwang, Zhao Yiqing's "Shuijing Commentary", Dai Zhen's "Shuijing Zhuxiao", Yang Shoujing and Xiong Huizhen's "Shuijing Zhushu", modern Wang Guowei's "Shuijing Note school" and so on.