Who cut the wall and stole the light?

From: Miscellanies of Xijing Volume II: "Kuang Heng's ci is childish, and he studies hard without a candle, but his neighbor has a candle that he hasn't caught. Balance is to send its light through the wall and read it with a book that reflects light. " There is no record about the author of this book in Sui Shu Economic Annals, but both Old Tang Book and New Tang Book have records of Ge Hong in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. This is because there is an essay by Ge Hong at the end of the six volumes. The postscript said: "Hong Jiashi has 100 volumes of Ivanx Liu's Hanshu, with no beginning and end titles. The number of volumes is in the order of A, B, C and D ... My late father passed it on to me. Xin, who wanted to compile Hanshu as a catalogue of Han affairs, died without structure, so the book had no genealogy, only miscellaneous notes, and there was no distinction between before and after. After a busybody, it means two, with a beginning of ten, and ten volumes are ten volumes and a hundred volumes. Hong Furniture has its own books. Try to record what Ban Gu did. Almost all of them are Liu's books, but there are similarities and differences. And solid don't take, but twenty thousand promise. Today, it is copied into two volumes, named Xijing Miscellanies, to make up for the deficiency of Hanshu. " According to Ge Hong, the author of this book is Liu Xin, who just copied more than 20,000 words that Ban Gu didn't use to write Hanshu, and gave it a name. Later generations don't believe Ge Hong's postscript, and think it is "borrowed from Zhong Er by leaning on the ancient times". In fact, Miscellanies of Xijing was written by Ge Hong. But not all the stories in the book were invented by Ge Hong, and some items may have been extracted from ancient books preserved at that time. Ge Hong (284-364), a Taoist theorist, was born in Jurong, Danyang, Eastern Jin Dynasty. His works include Bao Puzi and Biography of Immortals. Who is the real author of this book? The mystery remains unresolved. Gu Jiegang, a famous historian in China, clearly pointed out in his book An Introduction to the History of China that the book Miscellanies of Xijing tells many stories of the Han Dynasty. Who is the author of this book? There is no conclusion. Some people say it's Liu Xin, others say it's Ge Hong of Jin Dynasty, and even Wu Jun writes books. This has brought great difficulties to the research work. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, especially after Emperor Taizong succeeded to the throne, in order to assist the country to learn from history, it attached great importance to the revision of history. Historians at that time tried their best to collect historical records, such as "the imperial court ordered the world to compile books", "searching for different books" and "collecting all its ancient books". However, the Annals of Sui Shu Classics compiled by Wei Zhi and others failed to find the real author of Xijing Miscellanies, so they had to find the author. More than 400 years later, Huang, a poet in the Song Dynasty, adopted the eclectic theory in "The Legacy of the East View", thinking that Ge Hong adopted everything Liu Xin said in "Miscellanies of Xijing". Liu Bao and others in the late Jin Dynasty compiled Tang Jing Lu, entitled Ge Hong. In the late Qing Dynasty, a number of textual research works came out. However, the textual research did not find the real author of Xijing Miscellanies, nor did it compile a clue. In the works of some scholars and experts in modern times, people hold their own opinions on who is right and who is wrong, and even avoid talking about it. For example, Li Zongye said in "An Introduction to Historical Records of China": "The two volumes of Xijing Miscellanies were written by Liu Xin, and the Tang book was mistakenly named Ge Hong"; However, Jin's Selected Readings of Historical Records is definitely written for Ge Hong. Lu Xun made a detailed textual research on Xijing Miscellanies in A Brief History of Chinese Novels. He said that "Miscellanies of Xijing" has two volumes, and the Song people are divided into six volumes. At the end of Ge Hong's postscript, he said, "His family has 100 volumes of Liu Xin's Hanshu, almost all of which are quoted from Liu after being collated by Ban Gu. Although there are similarities and differences, they are not from him, but only 20,000 words." "Since Lu Xun listed" Miscellanies of Xijing "in China's novels he saw today, and Liu Xin was listed in the content, he denied Ge Hong. Some textual research articles also say that Xijing Miscellaneous Notes is a history of miscellaneous notes, but it is not recorded in Hanshu. But Jin said: "The old title was written by Liu Xin in the Western Han Dynasty, and the author was Jin after textual research." What is the basis? The dictionary is not quoted, so it is unknown. May be due to the above reasons, so Zhang Shunhui's "China Historical Masterpieces", although the book lists the miscellaneous history of past dynasties, there are dozens of notebook titles, but it happened that there is no "Xijing Miscellanies". The historical records compiled by Chai Degeng are even more inconvenient to enumerate. Other works and even reference books are different. Who is right and who is wrong is still inconclusive.