Chapter 2 Chapter 2 Papermaking Technology in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties

After the Eastern Han Dynasty, the three kingdoms of Wei, Shu and Wu followed.Later Wei destroyed Shu, and the Sima family seized the power of Wei and established the Jin Dynasty, which was called the Western Jin Dynasty (265-316 AD) in history. In 280 AD, Jin destroyed Wu and unified the whole country.Soon, the northern Xianbei and other tribes entered the Central Plains, and the Jin Dynasty moved south, which was called the Eastern Jin Dynasty in history (317-420 AD), forming a confrontation between the Northern and Southern Dynasties.The Southern Dynasties (420-589 A.D.) followed the Eastern Jin Dynasty with the four dynasties of Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen.The Northern Dynasty (386-581 AD) was the Northern Wei Dynasty, which was later divided into the Eastern Wei Dynasty and the Western Wei Dynasty.The Eastern Wei was followed by the Northern Qi, and the Western Wei was followed by the Northern Zhou.The confrontation between the Southern and Northern Dynasties was not unified until the establishment of the Sui Dynasty in 581 AD.This period of history lasted 368 years, collectively known as the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.The papermaking technology developed from the Han Dynasty entered the development stage during this period. Compared with the Han Dynasty, the output, quality or processing have improved, the raw materials have been continuously expanded, the papermaking equipment has been updated, and new technology has emerged. Paper production areas and The dissemination of paper is also getting wider and wider, and famous papermakers emerge in large numbers.More paper from this period has been handed down to the present, and there are quite a lot of unearthed objects, and there are also many document records, which provide convenient conditions for research. From the physical point of view, the paper of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties has obvious progress compared with the paper of the Han Dynasty. First of all, the whiteness is improved, the surface is smoother, the structure is tighter, and the paper is thin and has obvious curtain lines.There are fewer fiber bundles on the paper, and some advanced paper fibers have a beating degree of 70%, which is close to machine-made paper.

The progress of papermaking and the improvement of paper quality during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties can also be seen from the poems and prose chanted by literati at that time.For example, Fu Xian, a native of Jin Dynasty, wrote in "Paper Fu": "The husband is a thing, and it is beautiful and precious. The method is cheap, the body is clean and the nature is true. It contains chapters and algae, and it is really elegant. Take the disadvantages of the other and think it is new. Take it. It can be stretched and stretched, and it can be hidden and displayed." That is to say, hemp paper is made of rags, but it is white and ink-resistant, high in quality and low in price, and can be unrolled after being written into a book.Xiao Yi, a native of Liang in the Southern Dynasties, said in a poem "Ode to Paper": "Bright and white are like frost and snow, square and square like playing chess. Announcing feelings and remembering things, rather than using fishnets." If it is said that writing materials were still used in the Han Dynasty together with silk slips, paper was only used as a new material. It is not enough to completely replace the silk slips, but this situation has changed fundamentally in the Jin Dynasty.Because a large amount of white, smooth and square paper can be produced, people no longer need to use expensive silk and heavy bamboo slips, and gradually get used to writing on paper, and finally completely eliminated bamboo slips.At the end of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, some rulers had explicitly ordered the use of paper as official writing materials, and all court memorials were not allowed to use bamboo slips, and all paper was used.For example, Huanxuan (AD 369-404) abolished Emperor An of Jin and proclaimed himself Emperor, changed the name of the country to Chu, and then issued an order saying: "There was no paper in ancient times, so the use of simplicity is not the main reason for respect. Today, those who use simplicity are all Replace it with yellow paper.” Archaeological excavations have shown that although paper was mostly used for documents in tombs or ruins in the Western Jin Dynasty, bamboo slips were still unearthed from time to time, but since the Eastern Jin Dynasty, there have been no more bamboo slips and documents, but paper.In the past, when writing on bamboo slips, pieces of bamboo slips were tied up with leather strips or ropes, connected into a long string (volume), and then rolled into a large bundle.When writing with paper, stick the sheets of paper with paste and roll them up with a small wooden shaft to form a book. In this way, a roll of paper can hold the words contained in several large bundles of notebooks. The evolution of the book form.A book that used to be written in a pamphlet required two people to lift it, but can now be easily rolled out in a pocket.

The widespread use of paper in Chinese society has effectively promoted the surge of books and literature and the spread of science and culture.On the contrary, the development of scientific culture and book industry requires the production of more and better paper.Before the invention of engraving and printing, ancient books were all in the form of scrolls.At the beginning of the Jin Dynasty, the collection of books in the official government was counted in tens of thousands of volumes. According to the catalog of internal government collections compiled by Wei Secretary Supervisor Xun Xu (?—AD 289), the collection of four books was nearly 30,000 volumes.By the eighth year of Song Yuanjia (AD 431), Secretary Supervisor Xie Lingyun had created four catalogs that contained 64,000 volumes.Private book collections also gradually increased. Zhang Hua, a native of Jin Dynasty, carried 30 carts of books when he moved, and Guo Tai, a contemporary, had 5,000 volumes.Therefore, during Emperor Wu of Liang (502-549 A.D.), "every family has literature and history within the four seas." Of course, these books were all written on paper.The large number of writings led to the prevalence of copying books, which also promoted the development of calligraphy art and the change of Chinese character fonts.When writing on a piece of narrow and hard bamboo slips, the strokes of the brush cannot be fully displayed due to the space and texture of the writing material.But switching to white, smooth, flexible and ink-absorbing large sheets of paper, the situation has fundamentally changed.The emergence of such outstanding calligraphers as Wang Xizhi (321-379 AD) and Wang Xianzhi (344-388 AD) in the Jin Dynasty is largely due to the widespread use of paper.After the Jin Dynasty, the transition from Han Li to Kai Li finally formed the current regular script, and the cursive script was also developed. The change of Chinese character fonts was also caused by the use of paper, because there is no restriction on the use of paper.Similarly, painting on paper will also receive good artistic results. Unearthed in Turpan, Xinjiang in 1964, a figure painting on paper (106.5 cm x 47 cm) from the Eastern Jin Dynasty may be composed of six sheets of paper, making it the earliest paper painting in existence.Drawing maps with paper began as early as the early Western Han Dynasty, and developed again in the Jin Dynasty. The progress of cartography led to Jin Pei Xiu (AD 223-271) who put forward the theory of "six cartography".It is conceivable that in addition to a large number of books, official and private collections also include maps, calligraphy, and paintings, so "pictures" or "books" were collectively called "books" in ancient times.

During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, in addition to using paper to copy classics and history collections and public and private documents, the rise of Buddhism and Taoism also consumed a lot of paper.Most of the scriptures from the Dunhuang Stone Chamber in this period are Buddhist scriptures.It may have consumed more paper than copying non-religious works.At this time, government and private paper workshops were established in all parts of the north and south (including minority areas), and paper was made from local materials.In the north, Chang'an (now Xi'an), Luoyang, Shanxi, Shandong, Hebei and other places are the centers, producing hemp paper, mulberry paper and mulberry paper.After the Eastern Jin Dynasty crossed to the south, Jiangnan also developed paper production. Today Shaoxing in Zhejiang, southern Anhui, Jianye (now Nanjing), Yangzhou, Guangzhou and other places became the papermaking centers of the south, and the paper types were the same as those in the north.However, the coast of Shan [Shanshan] Creek in Shengxian County, Zhejiang Province became the center of rattan paper again.As paperworkers have accumulated advanced experience in production, famous papers have emerged repeatedly.In addition to Zuo Bozhi, Zhang Yongzhi was also famous for a while.Zhang Yong was born in the Liu Song Dynasty (420-479 AD) in the Southern Dynasty, and the paper he made was inferior to the imperial paper.In addition to natural color paper, various colored papers are also produced. In addition to using a single raw material, sometimes bark fiber and hemp fiber raw materials are mixed to make pulp and paper.Jia Sixie, an agronomist in the Northern Wei Dynasty, introduced planting in "Qi Min Yao Shu", in which he wrote: "Those who cook, peel and sell (tree) bark work hard and benefit a lot. (If) they can make paper themselves, the benefits are great .” This reflects the situation of papermaking in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River in the north. In 1972, a volume of "Book of Filial Piety" in the tomb of Gaochang Jianchang four years (558 AD) was unearthed in Astana, Xinjiang. In 1973, the Earth Temple in Dunhuang Thousand Buddha Cave was unearthed. In the third year of Xing'an in the Northern Wei Dynasty (AD 454), the paper used to write "The Great Compassionate Tathagata" was also Chu paper.However, among the existing paper relics of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, according to our inspection, the vast majority are still hemp paper.

Ancient books also mentioned that there was a kind of side-li paper or moss paper in the Jin Dynasty.According to Wang Jia's "Supplementary Notes" of the Later Qin Dynasty, Zhang Hua, a scholar of the Western Jin Dynasty, completed his "Natural History", and Emperor Wu gave him ten thousand sheets of paper.It is said that this paper was made by the southerners with sphagnum moss, which is green in color, also known as moss paper.Because of this, there are vertical and side textures on the paper, and the sphagnum moss is also called Zhili, and then it is called side texture, and it is renamed side texture paper.Our simulation experiment proves that water moss cannot make paper, and there is a kind of sedge family moss that can make paper, but it is not water moss.Therefore, this kind of paper may still be made of hemp fiber, and a small amount of fresh sphagnum moss is mixed into the pulp, and the surface of the paper has a vertical and horizontal slanted green texture.If you use hair vegetables instead of sphagnum moss, the texture will be black, which is the so-called hair paper.Therefore, the so-called side handle paper or moss paper is actually a kind of artistic processing paper, which has a long history.Later, the Korean Li Dynasty (AD 1392-1910) made Goryeo moss paper or hair paper, which was made according to the technology developed in the Jin Dynasty of China.This technology inspired Europe and Japan to create a series of art papers with different color additives.In order to improve the performance of paper, sizing technology existed in the Jin Dynasty. The early sizing agent was plant starch, which was either brushed on the paper surface or mixed into the pulp.This treatment can increase the resistance of the paper to water permeability, block the capillary pores between the fibers, or improve the suspension of the pulp.Previously, Westerners believed that sizing technology began in the third year of Dali in the Tang Dynasty (768 AD), and later Japanese scholars believed that it began in the eleventh year of Taiping Zhenjun in the Northern Wei Dynasty (450 AD).However, my physical examination in 1964 proved that the paper of the "Lyuzang Chufen" written in the 12th year of the founding of Xiliang (AD 416) was treated with the internal paper sizing technique, which is equivalent to the Eastern Jin Dynasty. It seems that the sizing technique It can be traced back to the Wei and Jin Dynasties.Because in the first year of the post-Qin Baique (384 A.D.), the surface of the paper used for the list of tombs was treated with starch agent and then polished. This is the earliest sized paper so far.

Han Dynasty paper is generally thicker, while Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties paper is slightly thinner than Han paper, and has obvious curtain patterns.From a technical point of view, during the Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, it was made with movable curtain bed paper molds similar to the traditional way of papermaking today.This kind of mold is composed of bamboo curtain and wooden bed frame, and then two side columns are used to make the two parts close together, which can be combined and disassembled.When the two are put together, put the paper in the pulp and fish out the paper. After filtering the water, take off the bamboo screen and put the wet paper on it on the wooden board; Put it on the wet paper that was copied last time; repeat this, and finally press the wet paper that is stacked together to remove water, and then dry it.The advantage of this detachable paper machine is that the same mold can be used to continuously produce tens of millions of sheets of paper, which improves labor productivity and equipment utilization, and the paper taken out is thin and even.It can only be judged from the unearthed objects when the movable curtain bed papermaking device started. It was widely used in the Wei and Jin Dynasties at the latest, and it seems to have been developed on the basis of papermaking technology in the Han Dynasty.This kind of paper machine was used all over the world for more than 1000 years.During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the paper curtains were woven with thicker (each thick 2 mm) bamboo strips, and sometimes Achnatherum splendens poles were used instead of bamboo strips in the north.The shape and size of the paper machine are the same as the paper to be copied.Su Yijian (958-996 A.D.), a native of the Northern Song Dynasty, wrote in his "Four Books of the Study · Paper Books": "The Jin ordered all to make paper. The large paper [wide] was one foot and three minutes long, and the length was one foot and eight minutes. The small paper was nine inches and five inches wide. The length is one foot and four inches.” After conversion, the Jin Dynasty large paper is 31.3 cm x 43.4 cm, and the small paper is 22.9 cm x 33.7 cm.However, the size we obtained after measuring the unearthed object is slightly different from what Su Yijian said. In 1977, a complete piece of paper was unearthed in Xinjiang in 384 AD, with a format of 23.4 cm x 35.6 cm.This is small paper from the Jin Dynasty, but it is still larger than Han paper.After I measured dozens of paper patterns, the results are shown in the following table: From the above data, we can know that most of the paper and paper-making utensils in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties were rectangular. Operated by one person.Due to the small size of paper, it was mostly used for writing, while large-scale paper was used for painting, so painters still used silk as their creative materials at this time.

During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the paper processing technology also developed, and the most important achievement was the surface coating technology.This technique is to evenly paint the white mineral fine powder on the paper surface with an adhesive, and then use stone calender (ya matte) to polish it.This can not only increase the whiteness and smoothness of the paper surface, but also reduce the light transmittance, so that the paper surface is tight and the ink absorption is good.This technique was first used in Europe by the Englishman George Cummings in 1764, mixing lead white, gypsum, lime and water and painting it on paper.But Dard Hunter, an American scholar who studies papermaking technology, believes that "this method was first used by the Chinese."When did China develop coating technology? At the beginning of the 20th century, Austrian scientist Julius Wisner tested paper from the Southern and Northern Dynasties unearthed in Xinjiang and found that China had already applied gypsum to the paper surface in the 5th and 6th centuries. In 1973, when I tested the document paper unearthed in Xinjiang in the 36th year of Jianxing (AD 348) and the paper used in the Eastern Jin manuscript "Three Kingdoms·Sun Quan Biography", I found that they were all surface-coated paper, so we traced this technology back to In the 4th century, it was more than 1400 years earlier than Europe.Commonly used white mineral powders include chalk, gypsum, talc, lime, and later china clay or kaolin.The coating method is to grind the white powder finely, put it into water to form a suspension, then boil it with starch and water (glue can also be used), and apply it on the paper with a brush. Because of the brush marks, it needs to be calendered after drying.This type of paper is observed under a microscope, and there are clearly visible mineral powder grains between the fibers.Generally, if the paper is only written on one side, it is coated on one side, while the back side is still the base paper.

Another art of paper processing is dyeing.In addition to adding to the aesthetics of the paper, it sometimes has the practical effect of improving the properties of the paper.The most commonly used colored paper is dyed yellow paper, which started as early as the Han Dynasty.Liu Xi in the second century interpreted the word "Huang" as dyed paper in "Shi Ming".The Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties developed the dyeing and embellishment technology. At that time, there were two ways, or write first and then decorate, or first decorate and then write.In the eighth volume of Lu Shilong Collection by Lu Yun, a native of the Western Jin Dynasty, there is a letter from him to his elder brother Lu Ji (AD 261-303), which said: "The previous collection of brother's essays is twelve volumes, suitable for the eleventh (just completed) 11 volumes), when Huang Zhi." This is written first and then Huang. "Book of Jin Liu Bian Biography" records that Liu Bian went to Luoyang Taixue to take an examination of Confucian classics, and the officials ordered him to write a deer cart on yellow paper.Bian said: "Liu Bian is not the one who writes yellow paper for others." This is the first to write.Yellow paper is widely used in public and private occasions, especially when religious believers copy Buddhist scriptures and Taoist classics on yellow paper.The dyestuff used for dyeing yellow is the bark of Cortex Phellodendron (called Cortex Phellodendron in ancient times) of Rutaceae deciduous tree.In the Eastern Han Dynasty alchemist Wei Boyang's "Zhou Yi Can Tong Qi", there is a sentence "if the barberry is dyed yellow, it looks like blue into green group".The "Baopuzi" written by Ge Hong, an alchemist in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, also mentioned Huangbo dyed paper.Phellodendrons produced in China include Sichuan Phellodendron and Guan Phellodendron. The dry skin is yellow, bitter in taste, and slightly fragrant.After chemical analysis, it contains alkaloids, mainly berberine.This alkaloid is not only a dye, but also has the effect of repelling insects and moths.Calligraphers Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi of the Jin Dynasty also liked to write on yellow paper.The habit of writing books on yellow paper continued to prevail during the Northern and Southern Dynasties.Writing on this yellow paper has the following considerations:

(1) This paper can repel insects and moths, prolong the life of the book, and has the fragrance of books. (2) The yellow color is not dazzling, and can be read for a long time without hurting the eyes.If there is a clerical error, it can be painted with orpiment (AsS) before writing, which is convenient for collation.The so-called "letter pen and opilot" comes from this. (3) Yellow means solemnity and elegance, and it is the positive color among the five colors. There are many such objects in the scriptures written in the Dunhuang Stone Chamber.In addition to yellow paper, it also produces various other colored papers. Volume 21 of "Beginner's Notes" quotes Ying Dezhan's "Huanxuan False Things" as saying: "[Huan] Xuanling made green, red, ethereal, green, and peach blossom paper on a regular basis, making it extremely precise and making it fast." And "Ye Zhong Ji" says: "The imperial edict is written in the mouth of the phoenix chick with five-color paper." The colored paper mentioned here includes blue, red, ethereal, green, peach blossom and other colored papers.