In the second year of Dade (1298), Wang Zhen, an agronomist in the early Yuan Dynasty, created more than 30,000 kinds of wooden movable type, and tried to print his own version of Dade Jingdezhen County Records, which is the 1 local history of Chinese wooden movable type.
Edition book: the birthplace of wooden movable type ○ Strange place name: Edition book town ○ Orientation: Jingde County ○ Place name origin: historical materials ○ Strange index: ★★★★★★★ ★○ Narrator: Zhu Xianming (vice chairman of Xuancheng Writers Association and chairman of Jingde Writers Association)
The version of this book is a very interesting place name. Located at the junction of Jing and Ji counties, surrounded by mountains, the mountain is steep. Its unique geographical location and favorable climatic conditions make it rich in plant species and tree species resources. Historically, it is a place with beautiful mountains and rivers, towering old trees and rich products. Excellent wood not only provides the necessary raw materials for carving wood movable type, but also breeds a large number of folk artists who take wood carving as their profession. And the version of the book is the only place to perform the post road in ancient times, and the traffic conditions are very convenient. After occupying the favorable weather, geographical location and human harmony, the edition book naturally undertook this huge project and fixed an antique name on the historical album.
As can be seen from the place names, this version contains endless cultural meanings. There is a folk saying about the origin of place names: A pair of brothers, the elder brother carved characters and patterns on a bamboo stick, and the younger brother made "inkpad" with bottom ash and water, and then dipped the bamboo stick in "inkpad" and printed it on paper, so that the characters and patterns were clearly displayed and could be printed in batches. This primitive printing technology inadvertently led to the printing of book names.
When it comes to printed books, we can't help mentioning letterpress printing, and we can't forget Wang Zhen. Wang Zhen, a native of Dongping, Shandong Province, was an agronomist in Yuan Dynasty and an innovator of block printing. He served as Yin in Jingde County for six years, and he was benevolent to the people with outstanding achievements. "The people of Jingdezhen pay tribute to it." In addition to attaching importance to administering the county by agriculture and writing the book of agriculture, improving movable type printing is another great achievement of Jing Deyin. He deeply felt that traditional engraving was time-consuming and laborious, and the existing tile (clay type) was not satisfactory, so he decided to improve it. After two years of research with the sculptor * * *, we designed a "movable type board rhyme wheel" and produced more than 30,000 kinds of wooden movable types. The wooden movable types were arranged on the typesetting frame of the wheel according to rhyme, and the roulette wheel was rotated during typesetting, so that people could match the characters and take the characters in turn, saving time and effort. In the second year of Dade (1298), Wang Zhen used this wooden movable type for the first time to typeset the 60,000-word Jingde County Chronicle he majored in. "Within a month, one hundred books will be finished." Wang Zhen wrote "Making Movable Type Printing Calligraphy" with the creative method and typesetting technology of wooden movable type, and attached it to the end of "Agricultural Book". It is the earliest document in the world that systematically describes movable type printing.
Why did Wang Zhen put such an important thing as wooden movable type printing in a printed book? This is because there are dense and suitable miscellaneous trees and sculptors willing to do so. Besides, it is not surprising that a county yin does some "chores" in the office, which is also detrimental to his image. Therefore, it is not surprising that the printed version of this book is the birthplace of wooden movable type printing.
Since then, wooden movable type has developed rapidly, including not only Chinese characters, but also Xixia characters and Uighur characters. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, wooden movable type became popular. In Qing dynasty, wooden movable type printed books were more common in government offices, private houses and workshops.
From the Yuan Dynasty to the second year of Zhi (1322), Ma Chengde, a magistrate in Fenghua, Zhejiang Province, carved 65,438+10,000 words in movable type and printed them into books such as The Meaning of the University. The existing imperial examination policy in Yuan Dynasty may be the printed version of wooden movable type after the first year of Yuan Dynasty (1333). Uyghur movable type of Yuan Dynasty was found in Thousand Buddha Cave in Dunhuang, and it was made of hardwood. During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, wooden movable type printing was popular, and some princes, academies and private individuals used it to print books. In the 11th year of Chongzhen (1638), "Dibao" was printed in wooden characters, which was used until the end of Qing Dynasty. In the thirty-ninth year of Qing Qianlong (1774), under the auspices of Jin Jian, 253,500 kinds of movable jujube trees were engraved and printed into 134 kinds and 2,300 volumes of Wuyingdian Juzhen Edition series. Emperor Qianlong changed his name to Juzhen Edition under the name of Movable Type Edition. Later, local government offices, academies, provincial official bookstores, and even folk and bookstores printed books with movable type. Classics, history, books, anthologies, novels, custom books, series books and Beijing Daily are all available, especially the movable type version is the most used in genealogy. Jin Zhujian wrote a book "Wu Yingtang Jubao Ji", which described the printing process and recorded the contents in detail. Later, other places followed suit, and 14 province printed books with wooden movable type, most of which were poems. There are thousands of other genealogies, such as Shaoxing, Changzhou and Huizhou. Seven out of ten books are movable type books. Wood movable type printing was popular in ancient China, second only to block printing.
It is estimated that there are more than 1000 kinds of wooden movable type. Among them, during the reign of Jia Dao, there were books such as Ming History printed by Wu Zhizhong, The Story of Luoyang in Galand printed by Zhang Jinwei, The Long Edition of Continuing History as a Mirror printed by Chao Shi in Lu 'an, and The History of Southern Xinjiang printed by a semi-rambling layman in Liulichang, Shi Jing. In the same year in Xi 'an, the series of the Chamber of Secrets were printed by Ren He and Hu Da, and the supplement of the characters and the chronicle of the Song and Yuan Dynasties as a mirror were printed by Jiang He Yu Chaozong Bookstore. During the Guangxu period, Jin Jian had a hole to reprint the Lin Lang Chamber of Secrets series, and Yao Jinyuan printed Bei Tang banknotes.