My life skills in Daming Liver - Chapter 630

c620 Punish the mind and publish the Records of the Ming Dynasty

Yan Jun was wearing short work clothes, sitting cross-legged on the ground and repairing tools for an employee.

Tong An stood quietly by the side, waiting until Yan Jun deftly repaired the tools, and then handed the ancient book to Yan Jun.

The hired worker thanked Yan Jun and then left the simple wooden house.

Opening the book Tong An sent, Yan Jun said, “Is this a rare book from the Song Dynasty? If it had been a few years ago, it would have fetched a high price.”

Tong An nodded and said: “I heard from the seniors in the Imperial College Library that this book was bought by Yan Shifan, the elder of the small cabinet, and donated to the Imperial College.”

Yan Jun closed the book and said: “With the continuous war disasters, I don’t know how many ancient books will be out of print.”

Tong An also sighed, the so-called antiques in prosperous times and gold in troubled times, when the fire is cooking, officials and rich people will pursue these rare ancient books and start to be arty.

In troubled times, these books will be worse than firewood that can be used to warm the fire.

This is the case with the library of the Imperial College. After the Imperial College was converted into a military academy, these officers and soldiers had no interest in ancient books, but no one took good care of the library.

Even the books on the first floor of the library were thrown onto the playground, turning the library into an arsenal for storing weapons.

Tong An couldn’t bear the destruction of these ancient books, so he bribed the soldiers guarding the library to take these ancient books out of the Imperial College.

He gave part of it to Wang Shizhen and part to Yan Jun.

Yan Jun opened the book, read it for a while and then threw it aside.

“The book is a good book, but the content in the article is not new. Master Wang said back then that people today view the world from the perspective of the ancients. If we look at it from a broad perspective, today’s people are the ancients.”

“So Master Wang argued that writing is not as good as new. I refuted Master Wang back then, but now it seems that I am still too arrogant.”

Tong An thought for a while and nodded.

Before Governor Su improved the printing press, collecting ancient books was still quite difficult.

When Su Ze was studying, a set of reference books for the imperial examination, “The Complete Collection of Four Books and Five Classics”, was enough to bankrupt an ordinary family. Some of Su Ze’s textbooks for studying in Weixue were donated by Baizhi County, and some were copied by him himself. .

At that time, besides books being expensive, there were also very few books.

In addition to books related to the imperial examinations, bookstores in the county will purchase some ancient texts of the Tang and Song Dynasties, poems of the Qin and Han Dynasties, and pre-Qin prose, which are beyond the reach of ordinary scholars.

But since Su Ze improved the printing press, the cost of printing books has been greatly reduced.

As the literate population increased, there was a market for all kinds of books, and book publishing became a profitable industry.

Books that were previously shelved by bibliophiles as heirlooms can be reprinted using a printing press. Once they sell well, they can earn a lot of silver dollars.

Various rare and unique books were printed, and the horizons of scholars also improved.

The new generation of scholars who grew up in the era of the printing press have a completely different vision. They not only get nourishment from the selected articles of the ancients, but also from the new theories of literary masters and academics headed by Su Ze.

Especially six months ago, Su Ze suddenly announced that he would print the complete set of “Yongle Dadian” and give it to publishers for free copies and sales, which attracted the attention of scholars all over the world.

“Yongle Dadian” is a grand canon compiled during the reign of Zhu Di, the founder of the Ming Dynasty. It is compared with the “Selected Works of Zhaoming” in the Southern Dynasties. It contains various collections of books collected from various places in the early Ming Dynasty and compiled them into an all-encompassing canon.

Since the early Ming Dynasty, ministers have continuously requested the emperor to publish the Yongle Dadian.

However, emperors of all dynasties regarded the Yongle Dadian as their own private property. At the same time, for some political purposes, they regarded this Dadian very closely. Only the best Hanlin officials among the Jinshi or important cabinet ministers could read it.

The last time Su Ze went to Beijing, he moved the complete set of “Yongle Dadian” from the Forbidden City. Then Su Ze organized the scholars of the Imperial College to proofread and typeset, and it took three years to print and publish the complete set of “Yongle Dadian”!

It is also because the “Yongle Dadian” is to be published in the southeast, so bibliophiles from all over the world have to publish the books they have collected, because a large number of ancient books are collected in the “Yongle Dadian”. If they wait until the “Yongle Dadian” is published, these bibliophiles will have to work hard to collect The ancient books that come will be worthless.

As a great scholar, Yan Jun’s biggest hobby is reading.

The workers in the community knew about his hobbies. After asking Yan Jun for help, they would buy a book as a reward.

After Yan Jun finished reading these books, he naturally didn’t have much interest in the ancient books sent by Tong An.

Literati and officials collected ancient books, often not for reading, but for placing on bookshelves.

Those uncommon articles and poems are used at literary conferences to show that one is knowledgeable.

But in this era, the printing press turned ancient books that were originally in the libraries of the rich into cheap books that ordinary citizens could buy.

Moreover, Su Ze was also engaged in the “Vernacular Movement” in the Southeast Imperial College. He organized scholars in the Nanjing Imperial College to translate complex classical Chinese texts into vernacular, and also added sentence readings to newly published books, which greatly lowered the reading threshold.

Only then did people discover that the reason why the articles in those remote ancient books had not been handed down was because they were so poorly written!

These ancient books only have collection value, but in today’s turbulent times, this collection value is gone.

Yan Jun added: “I heard from a bookseller from Dagu that Southeast is preparing to publish Ming Dynasty records.”

“ah?”

Tong An was completely shocked now!

What is the record? It was a historical document compiled from the emperor’s daily life notes. It not only recorded the emperor’s deeds, but also recorded various major events in the Ming court.

It also includes discussions by courtiers on various important issues and important letters from officials and censors.

The records of the emperors are important materials. Like the “Yongle Dadian”, ordinary officials have no access to these files, let alone ordinary people.

Even the actual records of the previous dynasty will not be published. After all, they record the daily life of the emperor. Even the emperor of the previous dynasty must maintain the sanctity of the emperor.

Southeast wants to publish the actual records of the Ming Emperor! ?

It’s heartbreaking to kill people!

Tong An only thought of these four words.

There are three untouchable issues in the Ming court records, each of which will cause moral decline, and these three important issues are all recorded in the records.

Once these three important issues are made public, it will cause huge damage to the sanctity of the Ming Dynasty’s previous emperors, and the prestige of the current royal family will also fall to the bottom.

The remaining patriotism among the scholars in the Ming Dynasty will also be wiped away.

Tong An understood why Su Ze had to take these classics with him when he entered the capital!

Kicked out, sorry sorry