The literary giants of the late Ming Dynasty began by copying books

Jin Xuezeng had been in poor health before returning home. After returning to his hometown in Zhejiang, he had been facing rumors and accusations from the outside world. Although he did not say it, he felt depressed in his heart and his body was getting worse. He had rarely spoken in the past few days, but at this moment Listening to the content of Wang Wenlong's new book, he quickly became engrossed.

After listening to the book for a while, Jin Xuezeng reached out and called the servant aside to take the spittoon. He coughed into the spittoon and spit out a lot of the medicinal soup he had drank before.

"Father, are you okay?" Both sons were extremely concerned.

Jin Xuezeng shook his head, pointed to his second son and said, "Keep reading!"

Jin Jiamo accompanied his father to study like this. Jin Xuezeng listened very carefully and asked Jin Jizhen to find "Shang Shu" in his study to compare and analyze the content written by Wang Wenlong.

After reading a book for five days, Jin Xuezeng couldn't help coughing and praised: "Wang Jianyang wrote a good book!" After finishing the whole book, Jin Xuezeng seemed to have become much less sick.

……

In Guide Mansion, Henan Province, Dong Qichang sat among a pile of oracle bones.

Through the study of oracle bone inscriptions, Dong Qichang has basically determined that these are relics of the pre-Shang Dynasty and cultural relics of three generations before King Wen. This matter has caused a stir among the scholars. Local officials took it seriously and sent people to work with Dong Qichang to maintain it. The oracle bone ruins were reported to the imperial court. Even the local tax eunuchs in Henan did not dare to make mistakes on this matter for fear of offending the world's literati.

But the situation of Dong Qichang's family is not good either.

He came to Henan to excavate oracle bones at his own expense. At first, he only thought that a few oracle bones remained, but the more he dug, the more he discovered.

The oracle bone sites of this era have not yet been destroyed by the large-scale mining of medicinal materials since the Qing Dynasty, so the site area is even larger than that of later generations. The area where oracle bones are most likely to be found occupies less than half of the mountain.

Dong Qichang no longer had the funds to continue digging, and local farmers discovered that this thing was profitable and began to illegally collect and dig it, repeatedly prohibiting it.

Dong Qichang has now changed to purchasing private oracle bones at his own expense. Even after dispersing all his family wealth, it was still not enough, he even went out to borrow money for this purpose.

Nowadays, an oracle bone with many characters can be sold for ten taels of silver in the market. The oracle bones filled with rooms in Dong Qichang's house are actually a huge asset. However, Dong Qichang loves ancient antiquities so much that it is impossible for him to sell them out.

Even in order to buy more oracle bones, Dong Qichang had to take time to write, paint and sell them to raise funds.

In his previous life, Dong Qichang's family had become a local tycoon in Songjiang, bullying men and women. Now, it is difficult to live with a house full of oracle bones.

Dong Qichang, on the other hand, enjoyed it endlessly and did not feel any pain at all.

Chen Jiru walked into Dong Qichang's new house with a book in his hand.

The decoration of this room is very simple, but the rammed earth walls are very thick. This is a house built locally by Dong Qichang specifically to preserve oracle bones. When building it, the dry and humidity conditions required for the storage of cultural relics were taken into consideration, and fire prevention was also taken into consideration. Dong Qichang spent a lot of money to build this house.

Now Dong Qichang's family has dismissed a large number of servants in order to buy oracle bones. After Chen Jiru entered the house, there was no one to serve him. He picked up a stool and sat down and asked, "Have you read Jianyang's new book?"

Dong Qichang nodded quickly: "I have also been reading Jianyang's new works these days. They are really shocking."

Chen Jiru agreed and said: "This book is even more astonishing than The Wealth of Nations. It actually comes to falsify the Ancient Documents. It is too ambitious."

"You think it's ambition, but I see Jianyang's attitude toward learning." Dong Qichang said with interest: "Jianyang suspects that "Guwen Shangshu" is a forgery. It may seem shocking to outsiders, but I come into contact with these oracle bones every day. , translating the text, I feel more and more that the pre-Shang era is quite different from the records in historical books - I even suspect that many pre-Qin records have been modified and processed, and it is not surprising that "Gu Wen Shangshu" is a forgery."

Chen Jiru said with a smile: "I feel a headache when I read this book. One moment I picked out a passage from another book, one moment I discussed geography, one moment I studied ancient official positions, and the next I started doing calendar calculations. He wrote I have to think about a piece of text for half an hour, and sometimes I don’t have the corresponding book reference at hand, and I can’t even check whether it is correct or not.”

"This is exactly the benefit of this book," Dong Qichang said with a smile: "I think the most impressive thing about Jianyang's book is the various methods he used, from the evolution of characters, titles of officials, historical relics, and other historical relics of the same period. In terms of records and other aspects, we will examine the "Guwen Shangshu". These methods are much smarter than just typing and copying words here. I would like to ask Wang Jianyang to give us some ideas on how to use this oracle bone inscriptions. The research is thorough. And I also saw in this book a new piece of knowledge that Jianyang wanted to introduce."

"New knowledge?" Chen Jiru said curiously: "I looked through the whole book, why didn't I see it?"

Dong Qichang laughed and said: "When people in the world talk about Confucianism today, they often sit around and talk about the nature of mind and principles. Everyone thinks that their own ideas can speak for the saints, and even attack each other because of their different views. Wang Jianyang's book uses a kind of A completely novel method is to organize, collate and annotate ancient books, and to start to remove the false and preserve the true, and to clarify the source of the vast pre-Qin literature. This is a truly novel method." Dong Qichang judged and said: "Wang Jianyang analyzed the "Guwen Shangshu" in the book Several arguments, such as the difference between the writing style and "Jinwen Shangshu", etc., almost have to write down the original content of those articles. Now I am convinced that "Guwen Shangshu" is a forgery, and I can even guess that it has been lost. The general meaning of the original "Book of Documents"... It can be seen that this method can not only remove the false and preserve the true, but can even restore lost classics that cannot be read."

"This sounds like it is going to overthrow the nest of right and wrong. All psychology has been suppressed by Wang Jianyang. I am afraid it will cause dissatisfaction among hundreds of famous officials." Chen Jiru said worriedly after hearing this, "Wang Jianyang, please don't be fooled by others." Are you talking about insulting saints and getting into trouble?"

"That's not true. This is just knowledge from books to books." Dong Qichang said with a smile: "This is the sage's words that people in the past faked, and Wang Wenlong was just analyzing them. To explain, he can still say that he was doing it for The sage voiced his injustice, and he did a solid job and did not make any wild guesses, so no one can say anything wrong."

Chen Jiru thought for a while and said with a smile: "Even so, this book will probably arouse a lot of discussion. This thing that has been studied for thousands of years is suddenly falsified by Wang Jianyang. I don't know how many people will be upset."

……

The publication of "Shu Zheng" was handed over to Yuan Wuya by Wang Wenlong. When he saw this book, Yuan Wuya knew that this book was powerful and might be banned.

In this era, although the law prohibits writing novels, in fact, writing novels, even erotic novels full of filth, is generally not cared about by many people. Works that advocate uprising like "Water Margin" have to wait until something goes wrong. will be banned.

The real hardest-hit areas of banned books are books in the intellectual world. For example, a bunch of Li Zhi's books could not be published for a long time before his death.

At this time, book distribution in Suzhou, according to legal regulations, first required booksellers to submit the book bundles to Si Yue of the Suzhou Government Academy for review. In fact, not many people did this. Before the issuance of "Shangshu Ancient Wen Shuzheng", Yuan Wuya However, I went through the complete official process because I was afraid that "Shang Shu Ancient Texts and Evidence" would be banned if it made a big fuss.

It wasn't until "Shu Zheng" was already a legal book approved by the Suzhou government that this book dared to be published in the world. Empress Yuan Wuya paid money to publish "Shang Shu Gu Wen Shu Zheng" and would even lose money if it didn't sell two or three thousand copies. But he still worked hard - this book was used to earn fame, and having this book in Shuzhitang is enough to leave a name in history.

……

Gu Menglin rode a white horse and hurried to Yang Yi's house with his servants waiting on him.

He is only seventeen years old this year. He comes from a wealthy landowner family in Taicang, Jiangsu Province. He is a high school scholar and his talent is well-known.

Gu Menglin likes to debate the meanings of sages' scriptures with others. He often takes pride in making brilliant remarks. His remarks can open up the confusion of scholars. At a young age, he is already known as a talented man in Jiangnan.

"Zichang, come out quickly. Why didn't you open the door before you received my letter?" Gu Menglin knocked on the door of Yang Yi's house and broke into the inner courtyard. Yang Yi came out of the study and said with a smile: "I just received your letter yesterday. I thought You won’t come so soon.”

"I have a good book to show you. It's about "The Book of Classical Literature"."

Yang Yi is only nineteen years old now. He has just accepted Qian Qianyi as his teacher, and he is close friends with Gu Menglin.

Yang Yi was not surprised to hear that Gu Menglin had a book to share with him. He sat down and asked, "What else did you read?"

"My Suzhou Shu Zhitang just published "The Book of Classical Texts". It's such a good book that I couldn't sit still after reading it. I came all the way to Changshu to show you this book."

Yang Yi's family was rich. He was originally a famous landowner in Changshu, but his family had no literary talent. Until Yang Yi's generation, his father asked him to make friends with scribes since he was a child. Yang Yi was only one year older than him. Qian Qianyi studied hard and finally began to achieve some success.

Yang Yi and Gu Menglin often argued over Confucian issues, trying to "clarify the meaning of the sage". After the two quarreled, they wrote articles together. At this time, they were already known as "Yang Gu".

In the original history, these two people would organize and establish the Fushe after the collapse of the Donglin Party twenty years later, trying to inherit the mantle of the Donglin Party. Yang Yi was even praised as the founder of the Fushe.

Being able to organize the restoration of society was not just because of Yang Yi's high level of knowledge. The key was that his family was really rich. At this time, he had just been admitted as a scholar. He studied classics and doctrines all day long and had nothing important to do. He got Wang Wenlong's favor After "Explanation of Classical Texts in Shangshu", I picked it up and read it attentively.

After only an hour of reading, Yang Yi could no longer bear it. He threw the book away and felt a tightness in his chest and shortness of breath.

"This book is ridiculous and nonsensical. It doesn't use textual research on the meaning of the scriptures. I think it just wants to confuse right and wrong!"

(End of this chapter)