Loss of ancient books

Under the auspices of Emperor Qianlong, Sikuquanshu was compiled by more than 360 civil servants, including Ji Xiaolan, and copied by more than 3,800 people. It took 65,438+03 years to complete this series. * * * is divided into four parts: classics, history, books and collections, so it is called Sikuquanshu. This is a huge and complicated project, which seems to be a great undertaking, which may be the impression of most people.

But in fact, Mr. Lu Xun once hit the nail on the head and pointed out: "The Qing people compiled the Sikuquanshu, and the ancient books died." It's just a book. Why will it affect ancient books?

Can it be said that Sikuquanshu is so perfect that it covers all the knowledge and makes the rest of the books meaningless? Of course not. Zhang Taiyan, another master of the Republic of China, once bluntly said: "When you burn books, the shadow is not behind Qin!"

Qin Shihuang burned books to bury Confucianism and destroyed a large number of precious pre-Qin classics. The cultural aftertaste of more than two thousand years ago has disappeared, which is a great loss of China's literature and history. Zhang Taiyan thinks that the behavior of burning books by Emperor Qianlong in Qing Dynasty is worse than that of Qin Shihuang. Combined with Lu Xun's words, it has a lot to do with the compilation of Sikuquanshu. So what did Emperor Qianlong do to attract such public opinion?

In fact, Sikuquanshu is a rich book, but it is "forbidden". It records the history of plastic surgery in China, an ancient civilization that has long been ruined. It appeared to achieve the political goal of long-term rule in Qing Dynasty. Therefore, this seems to be the prosperity of culture, but in fact it is the catastrophe of civilization.

At the same time, in order to prevent readers from being empowered by previous ancient books, Emperor Qianlong picked out the contents that could be used in ancient books, compiled them into Sikuquanshu, and then changed hands to burn them. According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 3,000 kinds and 70,000 kinds of ancient books that died out because of Sikuquanshu.

Obviously, the compiled books have also been "cleaned" and "disinfected", so even though they surpass the Yongle Dadian in scale and content, they are far behind the former in terms of literature and historical status. Of course, we can't deny the great achievements of Sikuquanshu. It has indeed created many historical records, and it is also an important reference for studying history of qing dynasty.