I am a scribe in the Four Libraries
Wrote a word for half a lifetime
For the first time, I knew the word "pity" for "pitiful."
You can't write it that way
Only because of this one non-standard word
My boss has been credited 14 times
It's so pathetic
01
The compilation of the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book" was a vast project, and there were more than 3,800 scribes alone. After more than 200 years, everyone will study the "Four Libraries Complete Book" and find that the words on each book are very neat, and the size and font are first-class.
Seemingly uniform, in fact, it is not impeccable.
He, Qianlong Thirty-one Years Of Jinshi, changed to Shu Jishi, was awarded the title of Editor, and was an official to the Ceremonial Department. Even now, how can it be equivalent to the figure of academicians of the two academies.
In the thirty-eighth year of Qianlong, the Siku Quanshu was opened, and he was appointed as the chief official of the Siku Quanshu and the transfer of Wu Yingdian.
In the forty-ninth year of Qianlong, he was promoted to vice president of the Sikuguan, and together with Ji Yun, Lu Xixiong and others, contributed more to the compilation of the "Siku Quanshu".
Fifty-two years after Qianlong, when Qianlong was reading the Wenjinge Book, he found many mistakes. The chief editors Ji Yun and Lu Xixiong were reprimanded; as the chief school officer, he was punished the most severely, and even dismissed from his post and his home was raided...
The fate of a lifetime, with the compilation of a book, rises and falls.
He is Lu Feiqi.
Last week, Wen Maojun elaborated.
People who write well, their luck will not be too bad... Do you?
In the Sikukan, Lu Feiqi has been serving as the chief school officer. In the proofreading work of the Sikuguan, there are too many "mines" to avoid. As the chief school officer, Lu Feiqi was not only responsible for the collation of the books after the transcription, but also had to estimate in advance the problems that would arise during the transcription.
As far as transcription is concerned, in addition to the need to use the dignified and elegant pavilion style as the standard font for transcription, we must also pay attention to two "pits", one is the problem of typos in the transcription, and the other is the so-called "vulgar characters" problem.
02
"Vulgar characters" are not vulgar fonts, but vulgar characters, popular but not standardized, relative to "orthography".
In the "Yan Family Training", northern Qi Yan Zhitui has begun to oppose vulgar characters. Since the Jin and Song dynasties, people who are good at calligraphy have used calligraphy orthography. In the last year of Liang Datong, the atmosphere changed, "blackmail breeding", resulting in a large number of irregular fonts.
In the Tang Dynasty, Yan Yuansun wrote a "Book of Ganlu Characters", each of which has three bodies: vulgar, tong, and zheng. "The so-called laymen, the examples are shallow, only accounts, copywriting, vouchers, prescriptions, not involved in elegant words, the use is not cool." "The so-called righteous, and with credentials, can write articles and countermeasures, they will be allowed."
That is to say, which font to use has certain institutional norms, and there are differences in occasion, identity and content.
03
Copying the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book" is really a thrilling step by step. At that time, there was a special list of false errors to remember. If you use the colloquial word, it is a mistake. If the school officer did not check out these vulgar words, he would be recorded in a small book and punished, which was really heartbroken.
Speaking of this, Wen Meijun began to worry about the aunt of the small shop downstairs who wrote "fast food" as "fast food". Fortunately, she did not work at the Sikukan.
In fact, the mistakes of these common words are really not a big deal today. For example, in the "Jiacun Class", there is a sentence that is "who is interested in The Talent", and the scribes have written the word "憐" as the common style "pity", which is not our current simplified character "pity"?
The scribe who stands at the forefront of the trend of simplified characters, but because of this mistake, he has tired his boss, "poor"... Oh no, Zhu Ju, the chief official of the "Ke Qi", was remembered seven times, and the branch official Qin Quan was remembered fourteen times.
How will a school officer who has been remembered so many times be punished? Will it be a word that causes ruin? We don't know, and we don't dare ask.
There are many similar punishments, such as "both obsessive and crazy" in "Jiao's Yilin", and the scribes have copied "癡" into "stupidity". It is also because of the use of vulgar characters that Wang Yanxu, the chief school official, has been recorded once, and bao Zhizhong, the branch official, has been recorded twice.
In the "Qunshu KaosuoHou Collection", the word "鐵" is commonly written as "鉄", the chief school officer Yang Maoheng is recorded nine times, and the branch official Xu Buyun is recorded eighteen times.
A sentence in the "Selected Articles for Discernment" is "losing the liver and the stomach", and the word "膽" is commonly written as "bile". He Sijun, the chief school officer, was remembered once, and the branch official Li Shouqian was remembered twice.
The number of such penalties recorded in small books is innumerable. Interestingly, many of the common characters of that year have become simplified characters widely used today.
04
As the chief officer of the Siku School, Lu Feiqi was extremely concerned about the vulgarity of transcription, and he also specially compiled the book "Distinguishing popular characters".
Lu Feiqi wrote this book for the purpose of establishing a reference standard for writing for the scribes of the Four Libraries. In the book's preface, he writes:
"The dictionary is promulgated, the dot painting is not bad, and the adherent of the text is still there." Occasionally, the Zigzag is common, or it can be followed. If the dot painting is small and the sound and meaning are different, distinguish between □□. And the contempt is too much, and it is advisable to suppress it. ”
It can be seen that Lu Feiqi's attitude towards "vulgar words" is still relatively tolerant. However, this did not prevent the book from becoming a textbook for local officials to train their disciples.
In the twelfth year of Jiaqing (1807), Ye Shizuo was appointed as the prefect of Xing'an in Shaanxi, and immediately published Lu Feiqi's book. As a local magistrate, Ye Shikuo hoped to achieve the purpose of correcting the study style through the standardization of the use of words.
Despite Lu Feiqi's efforts, it was impossible to get thousands of transcription guards to completely avoid the use of vulgar characters.
Writing this, Wen Wenjun would like to ask, since the handwritten version is inevitable the emergence of vulgar characters, then why not use printing? After all, at this time, movable type printing had been invented for more than 700 years.
It's not that you don't want to print, it's that you can't print. The cost of printing was too high for the royal family to bear. Therefore, only four kinds of "Eight Kinds of Yi Wei", "Old Yi of Han Guan", "Continuation of Wei Zheng Gong's Advice", and "Di Fan" were selected from them, and later 134 kinds of wooden movable characters were printed successively, collectively known as the "Book of Gathering Treasures of the Wuying Hall of King Ding".
A total of seven copies of the Siku Quanshu were copied. Among the seven parts, the Wenyuan Geben, Wenzong Geben and Wenhui Geben have disappeared, and only the Wenyuan Geben, Wenjin Geben, Wenshu Geben and Wenlan Geben have been handed down to this day.