Chapter 291 The Origin of Xuefu Wuche and Books

Today, when we mention that someone is knowledgeable, we always say that he is "learned and rich in five cars", that is to say, he has read five books.This is an allusion from the Warring States Period.At that time, there was a thinker named Hui Shi. When he traveled, he used five carts to load his books. He was considered a learned man.In fact, his so-called books are actually bundles of bamboo and wooden slips.If it is printed on paper, I am afraid there are not many copies. After Qin Shihuang unified China, he had to do everything by himself. At that time, the official documents were also written on bamboo slips and wooden slips. The official documents he had to read every day weighed more than 100 catties.

In the Western Han Dynasty, Dongfang Shuo gave advice to Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. He actually used 3,000 bamboo slips to write a memorial, which was carried into the palace by two people with difficulty. When did you start writing characters on bamboo slips? In the Yin and Shang dynasties, the materials our ancestors used to "write" characters were bamboo chips and wood boards other than oracle bones.Those made of bamboo are called bamboo slips, and those made of wood are called wooden slips, also called tablet slips. Jane's length is different, the long one is three feet, and the short one is only five inches.When people wrote letters, they often used one-foot-long bamboo slips, so the letters were called "chidots" later.There is also a kind of Jane, which has edges on three sides and can be erected to facilitate children's reading.The number of characters written on each slip varies, most of them are about twenty characters, some are as few as one or two characters, and some are as many as thirty or forty characters.

When people write on the bamboo slips, they also prepare a knife, in case a word is damaged, they will cut it off and rewrite it.To this day, we refer to revising an article as pruning. Our ancestors wrote words on the bamboo slips, and used rope characters, silk threads or belts to weave the bamboo slips together.In this way, it becomes the most original book, volume by volume. "Book" is a pictographic character, just like a Jane strung together with a rope.Confucius read "Yi", "Wei Bian Sanjue", that is, the strings that strung the bamboo slips were broken several times.

The characters on the bamboo slips and wooden slips are all written with brushes, which shows that Chinese brushes were invented in the Yin Dynasty. Writing on bamboo slips and wooden slips is easier than carving on oracle bones, and it is also easier to compile.In this way, the ancients had the conditions to compile books, and books officially entered the stage of history.