The Background of Shan Hai Jing

Shan Hai Jing is an ancient book in the pre-Qin period and the oldest geography book full of myths and legends. Mainly describes ancient geography, products, myths, witchcraft, religion, as well as ancient history, medicine, folk customs, ethnic groups and so on. In addition, Shan Hai Jing also recorded some strange events in the form of a running account, and there is still a big debate about these events. The most representative myths and fables are daily life, goddess mending the sky, jingwei filling the sea, and Yu harnessing the water. The exact date and author of the book are unknown. Featuring The Classic of Mountains and Seas, the rare book The Classic of Mountains and Seas is one of the oldest rare books of the Chinese nation. It has the following characteristics: First, Shan Hai Jing [1] is a book describing pictures. Liu Xicheng pointed out in the preface of Holographic Comparison of Mountains and Seas (1): "The records and expositions of Flowing Mountains and Seas 13 by Tao Yuanming, a poet in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and Pictures are also in the shape of cattle and in fear of beasts by Guo Pu show that as early as the Warring States period more than 2,000 years ago, they all said that the part of the Sea Classic was Ma Changyi (2) also thinks: "The mother of Shan Hai Jing may have pictures, and it (or its main part) is a book with pictures as its text (pictures first, then texts). The ancient paintings are lost and the words are circulated. It is a classic of mountains and seas that we have seen. " Liu Zongdi (3) wrote: "The absurdity and myth of Hai Jing are closely related to the special origin of this book and are unique among ancient books. Simply put, this book is a picture-depicting work, that is to say, the Sea Classic we see today has a picture before the book, and the contents in the book are a portrayal of the contents in a picture. The characters in Shan Hai Jing are characterized by less static description, more dynamic description, more spatial orientation and less time process. In fact, predecessors have long noticed this point, and Zhu, a scholar in the Song Dynasty, was the first to point it out. However, predecessors have the same misunderstanding on this point, that is, the whole Shan Hai Jing, including Shan Hai Jing, has pictures. In fact, it is impossible to draw all-encompassing knowledge of natural history like Mountain Classic, what's more, it also records the sounds and habits of many animals. How are these contents represented by pictures? Unless there was such multimedia technology in ancient times. However, the picture that Hai Jing relied on has long been lost. The Classic of Mountains and Seas that we saw today is illustrated, which is strange and dazzling. It's just that later generations added it according to the contents of the book, which is completely different from the ancient paintings I said. "Second," Shan Hai Jing "retains a large number of ancient historical materials. Shan Hai Jing has always been regarded as "absurd" by most people. Even Sima Qian, a historian who dared to break the shackles of Shangshu and push the ancient history of China to Emperor Yanhuang, said that "I dare not say the monsters in Yu Benji and Shan Hai Jing". The reason for this view seems to be related to the writing process of Shan Hai Jing from pictures to characters. For example, Overseas East longitude records that there are two workers and worms in the north, each with two songs. One is in the north of the country of scholars. " According to the writing process of Shan Hai Jing, there is a rainbow in the north of Scholar's Country in Shan Hai Jing Tu, indicating that rainbows are often seen there. The hieroglyphics at that time should be similar to the rainbow characters in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, both of which are the images of a rainbow with two heads (see Xiong's Shuo Wen Jie Zi). Later, when the ancients wrote Shan Hai Jing according to the map of Shan Hai Jing, hundreds of years passed, and the author was not necessarily a philologist. At this time, the rainbow character of the rainbow has become a "work bug", so I describe the rainbow as a "work bug" and hope to describe it with "two poems each" in the literal sense, so that future generations can't know whether it is a rainbow on the horizon or a monster with only two heads. So even Sima Qian said, "I dare not speak. "Third, Shan Hai Jing is related to the Yi people in the East. Jin Rongquan (4) pointed out in the article Textual Research on Emperor Jun and His Divine System: "Emperor Jun is a mysterious god in ancient China mythology. His deeds are not recorded in the official history, nor are they circulated by other scholars, but are recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, especially in the two classics "Wild" and "Hainei". Investigating its origin and vein, it is obvious that it does not belong to the lineage of Yandi or Huangdi. It is the third lineage that coexists with the two lineages of Yan and Huang. There are different opinions about the position of Emperor Jun among the ancient gods in China today. But it is generally believed that the emperor is the ancestor of the ancient oriental nation. This view is consistent, because the place where the emperor lived and the country of his descendants recorded in Shan Hai Jing are mostly in the East. Xu (5) said: "Di Jun is the most prominent figure in Shan Hai Jing. There are as many as sixteen things about him (in the classics, only Emperor Zhuan Xu has as many as seventeen things, but he has seen three things about the burial place of Mrs. Jiu, and only fifteen things are left. In addition, there are ten things about Huangdi, four things about Yan Di, three things about Di Ku, two things about Yaodi, eight things about Shun Di, Danzhu, Di Jiang and Di Hong. The rest of the people don't have an emperor's name). Through these sixteen stories of Di Jun, we can see that, firstly, he is omniscient, east and west, north and south; Second, almost all the important inventions in ancient times came from his descendants; Third, many clans, including Ji, Jiang and Yao, were separated by him. Fourth, the sun is his son and the moon is his daughter. Below him, there are "human face, dog ears, animal body, two green snakes, named Shebi corpse" and "colorful bird" as "the next friend". Fourthly, Shan Hai Jing consists of two parts. Gu Jiegang (8) thinks: "The Classic of Mountains and Seas has been handed down to this day, among which the Classic of Mountains and Seas is integrated; Sea Classics can be divided into two categories, one is the foreign four classics and the domestic four classics, the other is the wild four classics and the domestic four classics. The two sets of records are almost the same, and they are all illustrated by a picture. So it can be said that it is two records of one thing. "Modern research agrees with this view. Wang Ning said in the Division of Mountains and Seas Classics that "the Wild Four Classics is actually another version of the overseas Four Classics". Therefore, in the textual research of Shan Hai Jing, wild east longitude and overseas east longitude can confirm each other. Fifth, the order of geographical description in Shan Hai Jing is different from that in reality. The sequence of Shan Hai Jing is south, west, north and east, which may be related to the ancient custom of "Far North". In other words, the ancient map of mountains and seas is different from the current geographical map in orientation. Take the overseas Tang Valley King in East longitude as an example: "Black is red in the north and black in the north, eating rice snakes, one red and one green, beside. On the one hand, in the north of Shu Hai, people have black heads, eat rice to make snakes, and a snake is red. ".Hao Yixing said," when it's dark, you should take your teeth off. Wang Yi noticed that Chu Ci called the soul cloud: "Hei Chi, his teeth are all black." Gao Huainan said in a falling shape: "He is a black fool who eats rice and spits snakes, but he is in the Tang Valley." This is the proof that there are teeth in ancient books. "Under the soup valley. There is a hibiscus flower in the Tang Valley where I bathed for ten days, which is in the north of Blackpool. Living in the water, there are big trees, No.9 lives in the lower branch, and No.0/kloc lives in the upper branch. "The above records clearly show that in the mountain and sea map, Heichizhou is in the upper (south) of the map, and Tanggu is in the lower (north) of Heichizhou. This provides direction coordinates for the textual research of Shan Hai Jing.