This year, the revised edition of the schoolbook "Book of Chen" was published by Zhonghua Bookstore, and recently won the honor of the annual double ten books of zhonghua bookstore. So far, the revision of the three books of the Southern Dynasty "Qi Liang Chen", which lasted for 13 years, has been successfully completed. At the same time, this is also the 11th revised edition of the "Twenty-Four Histories" and the revision project of the "Qing History Draft". For Jing Shuhui, the host of the revision and a professor of the Department of History of Sun Yat-sen University, this revision has become a strong stroke of her academic career, and she hopes to make the fine works of ancient books collation, so that people can get closer to this history and promote relevant historical research. Recently, a reporter from the People's Political Consultative Conference Daily interviewed Jing Shuhui and listened to her talk about "revising history."
One
Since the 1950s, zhonghua bookstore has organized more than 100 literary and historical experts from all over the country to carry out the work of "twenty-four histories" and "Qing history drafts", which is the largest ancient book collation project in New China. Since 2006, Zhonghua Bookstore has begun to plan the revision project of the "Twenty-Four Histories" and the "Qing History Draft" to further improve the point schoolbook in the new historical period.
In 2008, I was invited by Zhonghua Bookstore to serve as the moderator of the revision of the Book of Southern Qi, the Book of Liang, and the Book of Chen. Due to the huge revision project, it is necessary to find scholars across the country to serve as the moderators of various historical revisions. Considering the continuity of the point school and revision, as well as the academic inheritance, it is generally hoped that the scholars under the original point school will continue the revision work, but there is no suitable person among the students of Mr. Wang Zhongji, the person in charge of the "Five Histories of the Southern Dynasty" of the point school, so they find someone else. The reason why I was found, I think, may be that the Southern Dynasty was a period when literature and culture were very important, and there were considerations for the point schoolers to take into account literature and history, while in the field of Wei and Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties history research, my teacher Mr. Miao Yu has always been known for his "literature and history", and he has a deep friendship with Mr. Wang Zhongji. Since I was a child, I like literature, and I have been educated and trained by my teachers, and I have always paid more attention to literature in reading and learning.
Naturally, I feel very honored to receive this invitation. The "Twenty-Four Histories" are very important in the documents of the Department of History, and the "Twenty-Four Histories" of the "Twenty-Four Histories" is a landmark achievement in the collation of ancient books in New China. As a post-history student, I grew up reading a little bit of schoolbook. Being able to participate in revision work is an unattainable experience in an academic career. Although I realized that the revision work would be more arduous, I was determined to accept the task.
In July 2017, some members of the revision team of the Book of Southern Qi worked with the editorial team in the office of the Zhonghua Bookstore to make the final revision before publication, and the second from the left was Jing Shuhui
Initially, I envisioned that the revision work needed to be done by scholars with a certain degree of education and training, so I invited some young scholars to form a team and promote the three histories at the same time. However, as the revision unfolded, it was found that the difficulty of the work and the time it would take were underestimated. In addition, there have been some changes in personnel, so we have partially adjusted the original work plan, of which the "Book of Liang" is still undertaken by Professor Zhao Canpeng of Jinan University, and I finally reviewed the final draft. The other two historical revisions were supplemented by people, and outstanding graduate students were selected to participate.
The revision work itself is more complex than we initially thought. From the three books of the revised edition "Qi Liang Chen" that have been published, it can be known that the revision is actually not a small repair on the basis of the school book, but a re-selection of the base, the adjustment of the school book, the reference school book, and the collection and absorption of the research results of the academic community in the past 50 years. From paragraph words to punctuation marks, it is necessary to read the literature carefully, clean up and review all the proofreading records of the origin schoolbook, write the revision long part as much as possible, and supplement the revision and even rewrite the proofreading on the basis of it, which is far more than the previous estimate. Taking the newly published "Book of Chen" as an example, the number of proofreading records has increased from the original 534 to 960, of which about 110 of the old schools have been deleted, 542 new school surveys have been added, about 160 of the original school records have been rewritten, 185 articles of the original school records have been modified and supplemented, 73 articles of the original school records have been used, and hundreds of punctuation points have been changed.
Two
Why re-select the base and adjust the general school book and the reference school book?
The "Book of Southern Qi", "Book of Liang" and "Book of Chen" were generally responsible for the school by Mr. Wang Zhongji, and Mr. Wang Zhongji, Lu Zhenhua and Zhang Weihua undertook the work of point school, and had many creative ideas in proofreading and errors, and after publication, they were generally praised by academics and ordinary readers. However, due to the limitations of objective conditions, there is still more room for improvement in the choice of the three-book point school book in the choice of the base book, the general school and the reference school book. For example, the "Book of Liang" adopted the method of not setting a base book and choosing the good and following the good when pointing out the school, while the Book of Southern Qi and the Book of Chen were based on the Baiquan Ben. As for the Tong School Ben and the Reference School Ben, the Three Books Point School Ben mainly selected the ming and qing dynasty version, such as the Three Dynasties Ben, the Southern Supervisor Ben, the Northern Jian Ben, the Ji Ben, the Dian Ben, and the Bureau Ben. These versions have certain differences with earlier versions, and proofreading and revising the base according to their versions of different texts will inevitably cause some new problems and even affect the reader's reading understanding of the literature.
Book of Southern Qi (Revised Edition of the Twenty-Four Histories of the Dian school book)
In this revision, on the basis of the existing achievements of previous scholars, we have made a relatively large effort in the selection of versions. For example, the original version used for the revision of the "Book of Southern Qi", we changed to the National Library of China's Collection of Song Carved Song Yuan Ming Early Revised Edition, this base book is well-carved, basically complete preservation, retains more Song and Yuan edition engravings, is currently the earliest and best version of the found age, is also the base of the Hundred Editions. Although the Baiyuan ben takes this version as the base, there are more digging and supplementary depictions and revisions when it is printed, and to a certain extent, it loses the old appearance of the Song and Yuan ben, and this version is obviously better than the Baiyuan ben. A photocopy of this edition was published in 2004, which also provided us with convenience. In addition, we have also adjusted and supplemented the general school book and the participating school book. For example, the original Tong school did not use the North Supervisor Ben, and it was believed that it followed the South Supervisor Ben and did not have much value. After comparing with the Nanjian Ben and the Dian ben, we found that in fact, the beijian ben was revised to the nanjian ben in the past, and it was basically used by the dian ben, which had its special value, so it was included in the general school book.
The Book of Liang has no complete Song carved Song and Yuan manuscripts, and the best version is the 40-volume fragment carved and repaired from the Shaoxing period of the Southern Song Dynasty to the early Ming Dynasty, which is now in the National Palace Library and Archives Museum in Taipei. The Book of Liang is a mixture of this edition and the Three Dynasties, which can be regarded as the best complete version of the Book of Liang. This revision has changed the practice of proofreading the original school book without a base, using the Baiquan ben as the base, and at the same time using the 40-volume fragments of the National Palace in Taipei and the 6 kinds of three dynasties books collected in the Shanghai Library, the National Library, the Jingjiatang of Japan, the Cabinet Library of Japan, and other places, which have greatly improved the adoption and treatment of the version compared with the original schoolbook.
Book of Liang (Revised Edition of the Twenty-Four Histories of the Dian school book)
Comparatively speaking, the Chen Shu is the best version in the history books of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. On the basis of in-depth edition investigation, we selected the Zhonghua Xueyi Society Ben that preceded the Baiquan Ben as the base, and then included all the surviving Song engravings, including two full texts and 4 kinds of fragments, as well as two volumes of Japanese Heian period banknotes, into the General School, plus the Three Dynasties Ben, the Southern and Northern Supervisor Ben, the Ji Ben, the Dian Ben and other Ming and Qing Dynasty editions, and there were as many as 13 kinds of Tong School Reference Editions revised in the "Chen Shu", which far exceeded the version conditions of the point school book in that year.
"Book of Chen" Published by china academy art society Song carved Song and Yuan manuscripts (Shanghai Library collection)
In short, thanks to the rapid development of publishing and digital technology, the revision team had the conditions to collect more early editions, and we also devoted ourselves to the investigation of editions. For example, the editions collected by the National Palace in Taipei, Jingjiatang in Japan, etc., we have all looked at them. In order to view and collect these versions, we took advantage of various opportunities to visit schools, hold meetings, and even use tourist visas to search, and sometimes entrust colleagues and friends to help check on them. Once a new and more important version is discovered, we will find ways to use it for revision, so as to try to get as close as possible to and restore the original appearance of the history books, leaving no regrets.
Three
The early editions are of irreplaceable value for correctly understanding the history text and restoring the original appearance of the history book, from the "Book of Southern Qi" to the "Book of Liang" to the revision of the "Book of Chen", we have a deep understanding of this. Due to the relatively complete Song Yuan and some early banknotes, conditional and post-Ming and Qing versions of the systematic and meticulous comparison and proofreading, not only can the differences and correctness of the two be more accurately judged, but also to a certain extent to explore the cause of their blackmail.
Book of Chen (Revised Edition of the Twenty-Four Histories of the Dian School Book)
For example, in the Book of Chen, volume 1, "Gao ZuJi", before Emperor Jing of Liang gave the throne to Chen Baxian, in September of the second year of the Taiping Dynasty, the Xin Ugly Edict praised Chen Baxian's exploits, including a sentence, "Chonghua Dasheng, Concubine Man Weixian". Analyzing the meaning of the text, "Chonghua" here refers to Shun, so who is "Concubine Man"? From the records of the "Records of History", it can be seen that Concubine Man is the ancestor of The Chen surname, Hu Gongman, after Shun, so it is the Concubine Clan, Shun and Hu Gongman are one saint and one sage, and the two sentences are exactly opposite; and "Concubine" is the place where Shun lived when he was a Shu person. According to the conventions and contextual meanings of such stylistic pairs, especially the following enumerations of "亶甫" (after Hou Ji) and "羲和" (after Chongli), it can be judged that the place should be named "Concubine Man" and not the place name "妫汭". The word "concubine man" is the same as in the Song dynasty, but from the "Three Dynasties Ben" below, the Ming and Qing versions have been changed to "妫汭", and the original school version has also been changed to "妫汭", which to a certain extent affects the original meaning of the edict. Therefore, the revised version changed this word back to the original, and the proofread explained the version of the text.
Portrait of Chen Baxian
When the Ming people read ancient books, some meanings that were not clear would change the meaning; some glyphs were not clear and changed to other words. For example, in the "Book of Southern Qi Zhang Rong" in the "Haifu" has two sentences of "窂浪硠拉,崩山相", "硠拉" was originally a two-tone continuous onomatopoeia, but the Song carved ben "la" character is very close to the following "collapse", the Ming people may not be able to see the strokes clearly, so the following versions of the Nanjian Ben will split the "collapse" character of the Song ben, the "mountain" character belongs to the head, so the "pull" word is changed to "掊", "collapse" is changed to "peng", these two sentences become "窂浪硠掊, Peng Shan Xiang", due to the difficult semantics, causing a lot of trouble in the interpretation of posterity, The revised version of the "Book of Southern Qi" was revised according to the original, which fundamentally solved this problem.
Similar situation, there are a large number of examples, the origin of the school according to the Ming and Qing version of the changes and deletions we check one by one to clean up, where it is not appropriate to change, are changed from the bottom.
In addition to making full use of early rare books, we have also fully referenced and absorbed the research results on the history and literature of the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties in recent decades in the revision, giving full play to the professional strengths of the members of the revision team, accurately understanding the historical events under the premise of intensive reading of the text and going deep into the historical context, and combining rigorous and in-depth research on the history of the broken dynasty with meticulous and solid document proofreading to revise and correct the historical books. At the same time, as far as possible to improve the original processing is not standardized, such as the distinction between different historical source materials when citing documentary evidence, the treatment of de-derivation errors in the base, the way of proofreading and expression, and even the further specification of the use of punctuation marks, etc., we strive to be accurate to improve the quality of revision. In this process, our understanding of history has also been further deepened.
Four
The revision of the three books of "Qi Liang Chen" lasted for 13 years, and I personally feel that the biggest gain, in addition to the publication of the three revised editions that can be seen, is the exercise and growth of young scholars. Our ancient history major cultivates students to attach great importance to the training of basic skills, one of the most important basic skills of historiography is the ability to interpret historical documents, requiring starting from the version catalog and text proofreading, going deep into the historical sources layer by layer, thoroughly cleaning up the connotation of historical materials, so as to make the closest to correct interpretation. We used to set up historical bibliography classes or reading classes, but there was no link in the revision of editions, and the opportunity of the revision of the three books this time made everyone get the best opportunity to learn and train. Every member involved in the revision has strict requirements, must be word by word, carefully and carefully deal with the version of the document and historical facts, systems, words and other specific issues, and use accurate and standardized, logical and clear language to write a long revision, but also to accept questions in repeated discussions, and finally form revision opinions. The subsequent writing of the proofreading record is particularly critical, because it involves the preservation of many important documents and information, we are very cautious in the grasp of the scale of the school, and there are also strict requirements for the text specifications of the proofreading, which may be several thousand words long, but the relevant proofreading record is only a dozen words, and some cannot even be reflected in the proofreading. This is an all-round training for young scholars, and what they learn is not only knowledge and methods, but also the edification of academic attitudes and study styles, and they understand that academic research must not be impetuous.
Practice has proved that the training is effective, and when doing the Book of Southern Qi, almost every doctoral student participating in the work has completed a very good graduation thesis. Some students have carefully sorted out and expanded the content of their doctoral dissertations on the basis of the ranks of the officials involved in the revision, which has become the beginning of the study of the institutional history of this period; some students have started from the in-depth discussion of the Buddhist moral theory debates such as "Yixia Theory" and "Ming Dao Theory" cited in the Three Histories, carried out the study of the doctrines of medieval Buddhism, and written outstanding papers. The multi-dimensional in-depth research of young scholars, in turn, helps to solve new problems encountered in the revision process.
After completing the revision of the three books of "Qi Liang Chen", there may be some finishing work to be done next, such as revising the long edition, hoping to sort them out, so that readers can understand more academic information other than the collation record, so as to have a deeper understanding of the history and documents reflected in the three books of "Qi Liang Chen".
Looking back at the road, the vast extreme water waves. To this day, we all miss the time when we worked on revisions. For more than a decade, the revision team has invested a lot of time and effort, repeatedly discussing and revising the revised content, brainstorming, and changing drafts several times before and after. For me, doing this work was bittersweet and mixed in retrospect. Everything will become the past, and we only hope that through our revision work, we will provide readers with the fine works of ancient books and promote the study of this period of history.
(This article was originally published in the 5th edition of the People's Political Consultative Conference Daily on December 11, 2021, dictated: Jing Shuhui, interview and collation: Xie Ying, reporter of the newspaper)