Shan Hai Jing is a peculiar type of ancient books, which shows the infinite imagination of the ancients. Many people are curious about all kinds of beasts in Shan Hai Jing, and many film and television creations will also learn from the contents in Shan Hai Jing. However, the existing Shan Hai Jing is not the earliest version, and what we are seeing now is also invented by later generations, which is not the same as the version in the Warring States period. In fact, Shan Hai Jing was not written by one person, but it took many people's manuscripts to form this wonderful book. What will be the content of the earliest version?
Shan Hai Jing is a treasure of ancient culture in China. Since the Warring States Period to the early Han Dynasty, it has been recognized as a wonderful book.
It is said that Shan Hai Jing is a wonderful book, because it records about 40 countries, 550 mountains, 300 waterways,1000 historical figures and more than 400 monsters in 3 1000 words.
Shan Hai Jing integrates geography, local geography (minerals, animals and plants), ethnology and folklore. It is not only a witch book, but also preserves a large number of primitive myths of the Chinese nation. Because it created China's illustrated narrative tradition, its strangeness was vividly reflected in Shan Hai Jing.
Ancient printing was not as convenient as it is now, but most of them had pictures and texts, and Shan Hai Jing was no exception. 1500 years ago, Tao Yuanming, a famous poet in the Jin Dynasty, wrote a poem "Looking at Mountains and Seas", and Guo Pu in the Jin Dynasty also praised mountains and seas. When commenting on the mountains and seas, he also wrote the words "The picture is also bull-shaped, and in the fear of animals, this picture is Hong Niao", which shows that there are still pictures in the mountains and seas of the Jin Dynasty.
Moreover, in the scriptures of Shan Hai Jing, some narratives that show the orientation and movements of characters can obviously be regarded as explanations of images. For example, "Wild East longitude" records Wang Hai: "Fuck the bird with both hands first, and then eat its head." Another example is "Overseas Western Classics": "Wu beast ... stands on Kunlun Mountain in the east" and so on).
Unfortunately, this chart of Taoshan has not been handed down, and it has long been lost. In addition to knowing that the original "Shan Hai Jing" had pictures, the current "Shan Hai Jing" has also been revised beyond recognition, and it is difficult to distinguish between true and false.
According to the analysis of modern experts, it is considered that the pictures mentioned in the overseas classics and domestic classics of Shan Hai Jing are all Yu Ding pictures. The following five chapters of Wild Classic are handed down by Han; These two ancient maps are slightly different. However, Guo Pu did not see this picture when he annotated this sutra in the Jin Dynasty. There are only gods who are afraid of animals on it, and many pictures are gone. It was drawn by Zhang Sengyou in the Southern Dynasties, and the Map of Mountains and Seas was compiled by Shu Ya in the Song Dynasty. One * * * ten volumes is different from the mountain and sea maps seen by Guo and Tao.
To sum up, secondly, the illustrated version of Shan Hai Jing was added after Qing Dynasty, but the map of Shan Hai Jing in ancient books of Song Dynasty and Ming and Qing Dynasties is different.
Where is the real classic of mountains and seas?
Since ancient times, most scholars believe that Shan Hai Jing is a geography book and Shan Tu Hai is a map. When Emperor Hanming was in the Eastern Han Dynasty, Wang Jing was in charge of water conservancy, and he gave the scenery with Shan Hai Jing, Hequ Shu and Yu Gong Tu. It can be seen that Shan Hai Jing was indeed regarded as a geography book at that time.
In 1930s, Japanese scholars speculated that the map of mountains and seas was "compiled according to the map of the world held by Zhou Zhifang", which was similar to the ancient map of medieval Europe. In the Textual Research on the Classics of Mountains and Seas, he said: "Between the Western Han Dynasty, the Classics of Mountains and Seas were parallel, and later generations were lost and kept alone."
Contemporary China scholars believe that Shan Hai Jing has pictures and classics, and pictures precede classics; The picture shows the map, which is illustrated by the picture.
Secondly, the classic Shan Hai Jing is a kind of geographical map, which shows the general situation of the ancient Kunlun where China lived in ancient times.
According to three geographical phenomena recorded in Shan Hai Jing. There are "Winter Xia Xue" Mountain in the north, "Flame Mountain" in the southwest, and "Shouma country has no scenery", which can prove that this ancient Kunlun is in two parts of Yunnan. Shan Hai Jing records the geography of ancient western Yunnan.
According to experts, the monster in Shan Hai Jing Tu is a hieroglyph and a map symbol. Using "map symbols" instead of "monsters" is the key to open the treasure house of this book.
The production time of Shan Hai Jing Tu should be in the Dayu era. The picture was written by one person, and the mountain and sea classics were written by many people. The original mountain and sea map was lost in the late Zhou Dynasty. Therefore, the secret of Shan Hai Jing needs archaeological discovery and scientific verification.