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Ancient Chinese Books |
| Along with the far and mysterious history of China, there were a great many of ancient books which came out almost since the very moment of ancient culture began. These books, ranged from history to religion, etiquette, poem, novel and so on, tracked the records of that time in various aspects, leaving us a wonderful treasure of proof to investigate that long passed lives, the society, and the brilliant wisdom of the people. In this newsletter, I’d like to introduce to you some of the most renowned ancient Chinese books, as well as the behind stories or backgrounds of them |
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The earliest Chinese book was written a little before Confucius about 2,500 years ago. The earliest writing, however, could be traced back to 6,000 years ago. The oracles carved on bones of the Shang Dynasty revealed a mature writing system of 4,500 words. The true form of the book was not born until bamboo pieces were used as the medium of writing around the time of Confucius. Pieces of the same length were strung together to serve as a bound book. Another medium of writing, a twin of bamboo, was silk, which was used very sparingly as it was much more costly. Paper as a medium of writing began before the Christian era. Earliest paper unearthed dates back to 2,200 years ago. In China, by the second century AD, it replaced bamboo and silk as the principal medium for writing. |
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| The Four Books and the Five Classics |
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The Four Books and the Five Classics were the canonical works of the Confucian culture in the feudal society in the ancient China. The Four Books refers to the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean, Confucian Analects and the Works of Mencius. The Five Classics includes the Book of Poetry (also known as the Book of Songs, the Book of Odes), the Book of History, the Book of Rites, the Book of Changes, and the Spring and Autumn Annals.
The Five classics got their names during the reign of Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty, and there emerged a group of scholars responsible for the interpretation of these classics.
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The Book of Poetry, the first major collection of Chinese poems, comprises of 305 poems from the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty ( the 11th century BC – 771 BC) to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC – 476 BC), over a span of approximately 500 years.It reflects broadly and truly the life in ancient China and the feelings of various classes.
The Book of History is an incomplete collection of the original and feudal societies in ancient China; with its records of many speeches, it also makes great progress in argumentation.
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| The Spring and Autumn Annals canonical book of history which, in fact, is a combination of cannon and history. Later on, interpretations of the important annals also became influential, collected in the Three Commentaries.The Commentary of Zuo focuses on history itself while the Commentaries of Gongyang and Guliang concentrate on comments on historical events. In short, all of them are valuable materials for the study of the political, cultural, and academic histories of China. |
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| The Records of the Historian |
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| In China,the Records of the Historian, written by a great historian of Han Dynasty, Si Maqian, was acclaimed as the most valuable literary work among books on history. The reasons lie not only in its narrative descriptions of historical events and individual biographies, but more importantly in its solemn and stirring, yet lyrical style that can be felt throughout the book.
This style comes from the fact that, whatever he wrote about, be it a person or a historical event, the historian would pour forth all his concern and outrage into those lines, along with his understanding of history. Therefore, the history and historical characters he depicted are immersed in a kind of poetic ambience.
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 The Book of Changes contains sixty-four hexagrams, each representing a particular quality of time, action or attitude, which is clarified in the text supplementary to it. When someone consults the Book of Changes a question, like the change of natural phenomena, one’s gain and loss, good or ill luck, etc., the answer is given by one of the hexagrams, which captures the precise substance of what is involved.
The Book of Changes also expounds the trinity or union of Heaven, Earth and man, which has attracted the attention of thinkers from different ages, and eventually became the oriental mode of thinking.
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The traditional Chinese novel developed as literary form during the Ming and Qing dynasties. It is episodic in nature, relating to the adventures of a large number of characters in a string of loosely connected event. Its thematic range is broad, including historical romances, chivalric tales, ghost stories, social satires and love stories. Most of the novels depend heavily on the ancient tradition of popular storytellers in the marketplaces and teahouses. This dependence carries two consequences.
The first is that the long, episodic novels are strong in fascinating detail but weak in unified plot. The second is that the authors tend to be collectors, editors, and adapters of earlier materials. There follows a few of the best-known novels that still remain popular among current Chinese readers. |
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 It cannot be denied that the movable type printing technique invented in the 1040’s has greatly influenced the development of the ancient Chinese books. This invention was brought by Bi Sheng, a great scientist in North Song Dynasty. Using different pottery characters that were carefully carved and fired, the page layout could be made up for printing conveniently, and then again broken up for reuse. In this way, this technique could produce massive high-quality, low-price books in a rapid manner.
| As the Chinese characters varied less in long development, the movable type printing profoundly boosted the flourish of academic activities and the prevalence of education since it came into being, which was even 400 years earlier than the Gutenberg revolution in Europe. However, the advantage of China did not last for a long time, because those books printed were mostly on the Classics, Sutras, and Taoism, but not science ones. |
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