◎Moon full sky heart
At an auction on December 2, 2020, three volumes of Wang Anshi's Anthology, Song Longshu's "Wang Wengong's Collection" and "Song's Lost Slips" published in the Song Dynasty were sold for 263.35 million yuan, making them the most expensive ancient books at present. .
In fact, it is not only the high value of the Song blockbooks that appeared in modern and contemporary times. As early as the Ming Dynasty, the Song blockbooks were already priced at a thousand pieces of gold.
In order to collect a Song Dynasty rubbing "Liquan Ming", the collector Zhu Wenjun during the Republic of China sold Shen Zhou and Wen Zhengming's combined painting and calligraphy work "Yunshan Tu" to raise money.
Nowadays, most of the Song-printed editions are auctioned in units of pages, which shows its value.
So, why is the value of the Song blockbook more important than gold in the book world?
Song block-printed editions currently available in China
A total of no more than 1200
The real publishing industry began probably in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, when it was only a small amount of printing, mainly publishing Buddhist scriptures and so on.
It belongs to the early stage in terms of paper, content, number of prints and dissemination, so the circulating version is almost negligible.
The carving and printing skills were mature, and the real mass publication of books was in the Song Dynasty.
There are three kinds of paper materials in Song edition: hemp paper, bamboo paper and vellum paper, among which bamboo paper is the most common.
my country began to make a lot of paper since the Jin Dynasty, and the papermaking technology became more sophisticated in the Song Dynasty.
Su Dongpo said in "Dongpo Zhilin": "People today use bamboo as paper, and there is nothing in ancient times." It can be seen that bamboo was mainly used in papermaking in the Song Dynasty, which is why most of the Song prints came from Zhejiang, Sichuan and Fujian. .
There was a saying that "Fujian is written several times in the world".
The disadvantage of bamboo paper is that the production process is complicated, and it takes more than a dozen processes to complete. The advantage is that the production is very fast, which has led to the number of engraved copies. However, the weather in southern Fujian is humid, and the possibility of mold and insects is very high. This is also the Song block version. one of the great losses.
In addition to bamboo paper in the Song Dynasty, there was also a kind of "pepper paper". Pepper paper was dyed with pepper. This kind of paper is not afraid of insects, so there are a lot of pepper paper in the Song blockbooks that remain.
Time flies, thousands of years. Among them, there are wars, natural disasters, man-made disasters and many other uncontrollable factors. Therefore, although the Song editions are rich and numerous, after such a long period of unconsciousness, most gradually disappeared.
Rare books are precious, and those that are lucky enough to be handed down become rare books, rare books, or even isolated books.
According to the latest "Chinese Ancient Books and Rare Books" statistics, there are about 3,500 Song editions in existence, and a large part of them have been sold overseas and are collected all over the world.
At present, there are no more than 1,200 Song Dynasty block copies that can be collected in China. Every time one is found, it will almost be designated as a national first-class cultural relic.
The block-printed editions of the Song Dynasty were just ordinary books at that time, so they were kept by the upper classes and the people. Many folk block-printed editions were not protected.
In the process of this gradual separation, the five volumes of "Jin Jiang Ji" written by Xue Tao in the Song Dynasty were all lost.
In the auction market in recent years, there have been fragments of manuscripts and pages. The Song block-printed version has been damaged so far, and what has survived has become a precious collectible and a hard-to-find treasure.
Excellent content
To make outstanding contributions to the promotion of Song Dynasty poetry and culture
Books on culture and literature in the Song Dynasty have been vigorously developed, and the cultural level of the people has risen rapidly.
The "Three Character Classic" and "Hundred Family Surnames", which later became national textbooks, were all from the Song Dynasty.
In the age of books, people have no access to culture and knowledge, and literacy is useless.
However, in the Song Dynasty, the circulation of print editions was huge, and it was convenient to read, buy and read books, which greatly enhanced the literacy level at the bottom. The culture of the Song Dynasty was prosperous, and Song Ci and Song poetry were passed down by word of mouth. .
The publication of the Song Edition not only prints Song Ci and Song poetry, but also organizes and publishes the works of many great poets in the Tang Dynasty.
Although many poets in the Tang Dynasty were famous, they were passed down by word of mouth, and their collections were extremely rare. After the poets got old or passed away, they gradually faded out of people's vision. Great fame, such as Du Fu.
In the two dynasties of Song Zhenzong and Renzong, engraved editions were popular, and there were many bookstores. Some people began to engrave Du poems, and Du poems appeared on the market in large areas.
"Detailed Notes on Du Poems" states: "During the reign of Emperor Renzong and Jiayou, Wang Qi guarded Wu County and engraved 20 volumes of "Du Gongbu Ji" in his family's collection in Gusu, and printed 10,000 copies, and "people in the world are competing to buy". "
Zhang Gaoping wrote in "The Publishing of Du Collections and the Style of Song Shizong" that there were 129 versions of Du poetry published in the Song Dynasty, with more than 1240 volumes, which greatly increased Du Fu's popularity.
Even the research on Du Fu's life and the compilation and revision of the chronology were formed in the Song Dynasty.
Under the promotion and dissemination of block-printed editions, Du Fu established his status as a poet and became an insurmountable peak in the history of poetry. Loss?
In addition to Du Fu, Huang Tingjian, Chen Shidao and other poems in Song Dynasty have all published annotated and engraved editions. Students use engraved editions as a way to get enlightenment from Du Fu's rhythm poems, or follow Huang Tingjian's style of writing.
Later, Yang Wanli threatened to always follow Huang Tingjian.
Lu Youshi's pairings are neat and tidy, and they also follow Du Shi's rigor.
When publishing is prosperous, it is very easy to be turned into business, and business is more convenient for the flow of culture to the market and the bottom.
At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, Hangzhou Booksellers changed from a collection of poems by scholars to a collection of engraved poems by Jianghu poets, and at one time they promoted poetry from an elegant level to the public.
This approach, although originally intended for business, has expanded the influence of literature and poetry.
The literary level, public aesthetics, and poetry culture of the two Song Dynasties have all become the peaks of the dynasties and dynasties. The culture of the Song Dynasty was widely spread, and the national aesthetics and thoughts had a certain height, which was the result of the development of the publishing industry in the Song Dynasty.
The beauty of calligraphy and typesetting, the strictness of proofreading
No dynasty can
The most precious thing about the Song edition is that it pushes the beauty of books to a height of excellence.
In the Song block edition (printed in 868) of the Diamond Sutra collected in the British Library, each character is a beautiful calligraphy work.
It can be seen that not only the person who wrote the Song blockbook is a calligrapher, but the engraver is also a peerless master. Because carving is different from writing, carving will always leave rigid traces, but the Song blockbook is so beautiful, combining the beauty of calligraphers' words and the beauty of laws , are displayed together, so that the viewer can only see that the text has been like a spring breeze.
One of the major features of the Song block version is that it must not be perfunctory. It must be engraved on a book from the perspective of the beauty of calligraphy.
my country's calligraphy was also at its peak in the Song Dynasty. Almost all literati could write a good calligraphy. From the current Song calligraphy, the fonts are beautiful and blooming.
There is a rigorous and neat European style, a sturdy Yu style, an upright and powerful face, and a thin and vigorous Liu style... These calligraphy works that are as bright as a galaxy are perfectly presented by the engraving, and have achieved the ultimate font of the Song blockbook. beauty.
In addition, the Song Dynasty respected culture, the brush, ink, paper and inkstone were excellent, and the writing ink was excellent. Every word was like a work of art.
The layout method of the Song block version is also different from that of later books. The layout focuses on aesthetics, and the pages are left blank, which is very charming.
Strict calculation is carried out between words, line spacing and line spacing. The version circulating today is generally seven or eight lines per half page, never too much, fifteen or six words per line, which is very comfortable to read. Every page is like a classical painting, and reading is also a beautiful enjoyment.
Selecting the best materials, finding the best calligraphers for writing, engraving by the most brilliant engravers, and framing and typesetting in the most beautiful way, these are not counted.
Every Song edition has been checked by experts for more than a dozen times, and there will be no mistakes. At the end of the edition, the names of the experts must be published.
Important engraved editions, the emperor should personally intervene, and the final collation is very rigorous.
Therefore, any block-printed edition of the Song Dynasty is an important and authentic material for later generations to study the culture of the Song Dynasty.
This is also one of the reasons why modern scholars find the Song version so valuable. As long as there is an error with the information in the Song version, it proves that there is an error in the book, and the Song version should be used as the standard for revision.
In the 1980s, the State Council set up an editorial bureau for the Tripitaka of China for the compilation and publication of ancient books, and it was also based on the “Zhaocheng Jinzang”, which has the most preserved copies of the “Kaibaozang” in Song and Shu, and published the “Tripitaka of China” after collation.
The Tripitaka of China is an important national cultural heritage. After the collation, it has also had a huge influence in the world. This is due to the Song block edition.
Sun Congtian, a bibliophile in the Qing Dynasty, said: "The block-printed version of the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties has a light fragrance of ink and a pale color of paper, and the exhibition volume is amazing."
Scarce stock, well-made, high-quality calligraphy, high-quality carving, precious ink writing, and rigorous collation, all of which are difficult to reproduce, and have achieved the value of the Song block edition.