There used to be a saying: proofreading books is like sweeping leaves, and it grows with sweeping. It is not easy to sort out the radicals. Of course, on the surface, it is easy and mechanical to get a book, but this is only the appearance. As Duan Yucai and Chen Yuan pointed out, proofreading books is really a mechanical job, as long as you are patient and careful. But this is only the first step of collating. The important job is to judge right and wrong and decide to abandon it, which depends on personal skill and academic level. Northern Qi Yan Zhitui's "Yan Family Training Mianxue" said:
Proofreading books is not easy, since Yang Xiong and Liu Xiangfang called it this position. If you haven't read all the books in the world, you must not be presumptuous. Or he thinks it is wrong, and this one thinks it is; Still different at the end; Still owe both, don't be partial.
In other words, it is difficult to correct if you don't learn. This is also the reason why predecessors attached great importance to collating Confucian classics. Duan Yucai, a scholar in the Qing Dynasty, said in the preface to reprinting Ming Dow Mandarin for two years:
If you don't know how to study correctly, you may say that the rest is a defect, and the defect is even worse. If we don't keep its uncorrected roots, scholars will judge its defects according to their shallow knowledge, but this is the truth of the defects. People in ancient times were worse than those who didn't go to school, especially those who went to school. People who are worse than those who are not in school should be dealt with by the school; People who are worse than school can't be cured for a long time.
Duan Yucai's meaning is very clear, and the consequences of correcting mistakes are more serious. Let me give you an example to prove it. Five years' publication of Han Shi Zhuan in Yuan Dynasty;
Use the country of Wancheng, make mistakes again and again, and make a decision once. The poem says,' Although Zhou was an old country, his life changed', which is in vain. It can be said that Wen Wang is a great scholar.
This passage is from Xunzi's Confucian Essays. Xun Wen wrote "Look at mistakes once", and there is no such thing as "poetry". In the Tang Dynasty, Yang Xu commented on Xunzi, saying that "reading is the hegemony". Therefore, according to Yang's comments, Zhao Huaiyu, a scholar in Qing Dynasty, changed "from one time to another" to "from one time to another" and deleted the words "it can be said to be white". Gu talked about his views on school reform in his letter to Zhao Weixin:
Today, if we investigate it extensively, then "ego" should be regarded as a "white" mistake, that is, the mistakes of "Bo" and "white" in Xunzi, which Yang read incorrectly. Why is there still a long way to go? There are two books in this paper to prove it: Xun Confucian Filial Piety also says: "Your name is white, and the world is ruled." "Wang Ba" says: "Different people have different opinions, and the wise have different opinions". There is another cloud: "Therefore, it is said that a country is right, and a day is white, and Tang Wu is also." "I want a white name," said Jundao. "To the Scholars" says, "And your name makes a wish during the day." "Tian Lun Pian": "Then fame is not white." Biographies are rolled together. Honor and Disgrace: "My name is Bai when I die." At the end of Wen Yao, he wrote: "Because of this, its name is not white." However, those "white" are solid words used by Xun Qing, but here they are wrongly written as "Bo" ears. Yang's annotation means that the cloud is "white", "bright" or "bright". But it is wrong to look at the meaning of literature according to this typo. Fortunately, the biography is correct, which can be proved. However, Yuan Kan's engraving regarded the shape as "zi" and later changed it to "empty" in seal engraving, so there is no reason to know that it should be "white". Here is "white". If we follow this, we can explain the above "white" solution, so we don't need to delete it again. It doesn't work.
(On Book Mistakes in Zhao Weixin's Biography of Korean Poetry, see Shi Si Zhai Ji, Volume 6)
According to "White Tiger Tongjue", "Life Insurance in Spring and Autumn Period and Yuan Dynasty": "Bo is white and knows virtue." Therefore, it is not a big mistake to write "Bo" in Xunzi, but Yang Qi read "Bo" as a bully and gave it to Aberdeen, which is completely wrong. Because I don't know the meaning of "once and for all", I changed it to "once and for all", thus covering up the wrong evolution between "white", "self" and even "bo" No wonder Duan Yu lamented that there are many books worse than school.
But proofreading is, after all, the basic work of academic research, and many scholars are inevitably involved in this matter. In order to avoid the disadvantages pointed out by predecessors, there are several points that must be noted:
(1) When proofreading a book, it is necessary to investigate its version and previous proofreading results in order to have a comprehensive overall view.
(2) Collation emphasizes the importance of evidence. If there is conclusive evidence, it will be corrected. If there is no evidence, there will be doubts, and there will be no big mistakes.
(3) Don't use "school management" to make subjective guesses and change the original work, otherwise it will be very dangerous.
Collation, as a practical subject, is mostly embodied in the collation of ancient books, but there are few works devoted to collation. Besides Chen Yuan's collating notes, there are Jiang's Collating History, Ni Qixin's Collating Outline and Pei Rucheng's Collating Brief History.