Since the preface mentioned the Six Arts, Six Classics, and Hundreds of Schools, I will first use Baidu Encyclopedia to supplement the relevant background. In this way, your eyes won't go dark when you read the book.
1 Six Arts
The Six Arts are the general name for the six skills of etiquette, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and mathematics, namely etiquette, music, archery, driving, calligraphy, and mathematics, that is, The yin and yang and the five elements produce restrained movement patterns. It seems that I heard the teacher say this when I was in school, but later returned it to the teacher.
The Six Arts originated from the aristocratic education system of the Zhou Dynasty. They were the six basic talents that the Zhou king's official school required students to master. They gradually disappeared with the emergence of the imperial examination system in the Tang Dynasty. A closer look at the rituals and music among the six arts revealed the following.
Li refers to etiquette, including auspicious etiquette, unlucky etiquette, military etiquette, guest etiquette, and Jia Li.
The auspicious ceremony is a sacrificial ceremony for gods, earth, humans and ghosts. Evil rituals are the rituals related to disasters and funerals. They include not only funeral rituals, but also other rituals related to disasters. Nowadays, if a family has weddings or weddings, they will still ask a respected elderly person to host the ceremony, and the etiquette procedures also need to be communicated in advance. After all, there are not many people who know all the big and small things very clearly. Military salutes are etiquette in military activities and are used in conquests. I didn’t expect that people in ancient times were really interesting. There were etiquette and rituals when fighting. The guest ceremony is the etiquette ceremony for the emperor to entertain the princes from all directions who come to the court, and for the princes to send envoys to greet the king of Zhou. Jiali is an etiquette ceremony for banquets, weddings, and festivals.
Among these etiquettes, Jiali seems to be more closely related to life, so I paid special attention to it.
There are six Jiali. The first is dietary etiquette, which is used to reconcile clan brothers. Now we only talk about table manners. For example, when you are seated, you must first ask the guests to sit at the table, ask the elderly to sit next to the guests, and when seated, you must enter from the left side of the chair. Don't move your chopsticks or make any noise after you sit down. When dining, ask the elder among the guests to use chopsticks first. Don't make any noise when eating, and drink soup in small sips. Don't burp during meals, let alone yell. Use serving chopsticks when serving dishes to guests and elders. Specific to our own lives, we feel that observing these etiquette will make each other more comfortable.
The second is the wedding crown ceremony, which is the combined name of wedding and crown ceremony, used to express congratulations to adult men and women. In ancient times, aristocratic men could get married when they were 20 years old, and women could get married after they were 15 years old. Nowadays, weddings will also be hosted by a master of ceremonies, and there will be many processes and details in the wedding. For every boy or girl attending the wedding, that day will be an unforgettable day.
The third is the guest shooting ceremony, which is used to get close to old friends. The shooter must have a clear purpose, harmonious posture, and etiquette in his appearance and movements, and his movements must be in time with the music, songs, and rhythm. If the courtyard is not spacious enough to draw a bow and shoot arrows, throw a pot instead. When watching the TV series "Do You Know", I also saw the scene where Ming Lan won the pot throw.
The fourth is the banquet ceremony, which is used to get close to guests from all over the world. The ceremony of feasting is the ceremony in which the royal family entertained guests with wine and meat in ancient times. The banquet ceremony was held in the Ancestral Temple. Although wine and meat were served, there was no actual eating or drinking. The scale is grand, but the emphasis is on ceremony, which is used to distinguish the emperor and his ministers, and distinguish the noble from the inferior. The banquet was held in the palace, and the dogs were cooked and eaten. After the guests of honor offered wine and saluted, they could drink as much as they liked. If anyone travels back in time to ancient times, he must distinguish the banquet rituals so that he will not be rude or starve.
The fifth is the ritual of making mistakes. In the pre-Qin Dynasty, the emperor and the princes had a system of rewarding guilty servants to their ministers after major sacrificial activities. Yinying is the meat offered to the gods in the sacrificial ceremony. Yinying is the meat of Sheji, which is provided for worshiping the stove. The meat is the meat of the ancestral temple and is used to worship ancestors.
The sixth is the celebration gift, which is used when the country is blessed. We watch TV dramas where the emperor ascends the throne, the queen mother lowers the curtain, appoints a prince and canonize people, and the emperor goes on hunting tours, all of which fall into these etiquettes.
Happiness is the six kinds of happiness. It refers to the six music and dance sets of "Yunmen Dajuan", "Xianchi", "Dashao", "Daxia", "Dayi" and "Dawu". "Yunmen Dajuan" is the earliest ceremonial music and dance in ancient times, used to worship the gods. When Yao arrived, he used "Xianchi" to worship the earth gods. During the reign of Shun, "Da Shao" was used to worship Siwang. During the reign of Yu, he used "Da Xia" to offer sacrifices to mountains. During the Shang Dynasty, "Da Yi" was used to commemorate Jiang Yuan, the ancestor of the Zhou Dynasty. During the Zhou Dynasty, "Dawu" was used to worship ancestors of the Zhou Dynasty.
The six pieces of music are all famous ceremonial music and dances. Confucius greatly praised Shao music and said that the music and dance were perfect. Compared with today's fast pace, the etiquette of the ancients was accompanied by music and dance, which had a strong sense of ritual and must have been quite grand.
This kind of grandness makes people feel the romance of life, and this kind of ceremony nourishes people's yearning for a better life. When you are being carried forward by life, if you can stop temporarily and give yourself such a sense of ritual and grand and romantic buffer, you will feel that life still needs to flow slowly, and you cannot be content with it, nor can you live in it.
2 The Six Classics
The Six Classics is a classic of the Zhou Dynasty and is the collective name of the six Confucian classics. These six classics are the Book of Songs, the Book of Books (the Book of Records), the Book of Changes (the Book of Changes), the Book of Rites, the Book of Music, and the Spring and Autumn Annals. If you pick up any one of these six classics, you can read them for a long time. They cannot be studied overnight.
Sima Qian believed that there are tens of millions of scriptures on the "Six Arts" and texts explaining the scriptures. Successive generations cannot master this knowledge, and it will take a person's lifetime to understand it. The etiquette involved cannot be detailed. He said that Confucianism was extensive but lacked essentials, and was more powerful but less effective, so he compiled and supplemented the Six Arts and Six Classics in the Historical Records. I also hope that by reading historical records, I can learn more about the Six Arts and the Six Classics.
3 Baijia
Baijia is the general term for various academic schools in the pre-Qin period. "Sikuquanshu General Catalog" records that there are thousands of schools of thought, but the most widespread, influential and famous ones are only a few dozen, such as Legalism, Taoism, Mohism, Confucianism, Yin-Yang School, famous schools, etc. Miscellaneous family, farmer, novelist, political strategist, military strategist, physician. Tai Shigong also mentioned several of them in his preface.
The scholars here refer to Confucius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Mencius, Mozi, Guiguzi, etc. For example, the story of Malingdao shooting Pang Juan with ten thousand crossbows is a competition between their students under Guiguzi. The person who put forward the views of "universal love" and "non-aggression" and hoped to unite the world was Mozi. "The gentleman said: Learning cannot stop itself. Green comes from blue, and blue comes from blue. Ice comes from water, but cold comes from water." This catchy sentence comes from Xunzi's "Encouragement to Learning" chapter. Who of us Dare I say that I didn’t read it when I was in school? "There is a fish in the North Ming Dynasty, and its name is Kun. Kun is so big that I don't know how many thousands of miles it is. It turns into a bird, and its name is Peng..." This is another masterpiece of Zhuangzi. "Heaven and earth are unkind and treat all living things like straw dogs, and saints are unkind and treat common people like straw dogs." This comes from the Tao Te Ching. The name of its author has also been loved by the people of Hubei, and they will regard themselves as Lao Tzu no matter what. Haha, just kidding, Hubei people also use these two words, but the pronunciation is different and the meaning is completely different.
Back to business.
Baijia refers to various schools, such as Legalism, Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, etc. At this point, we are more familiar. Shang Yang studied under the Legalists and implemented a series of reform measures in the Qin State, including abolishing well fields, focusing on agriculture and mulberry trees, awarding military merits, and unifying weights and measures, which made the poor and weak Qin State increasingly powerful, and this was how the Qin Empire came into being. .
In the middle period of the Warring States Period, there were various schools of thought and rich theories, which laid a solid foundation for the development of Chinese culture. This period is called the contention of a hundred schools of thought or a hundred schools of thought. Collision brings sparks, and contention promotes development. It was a glorious era. Sun Haohui's "The Great Qin Empire" also mentions the story of various schools of thought. I also hope to see more content in the Historical Records.