second, the author of a dream of red mansions is someone else.
In the first text of A Dream of Red Mansions, the author is classified as a "stone", which is naturally a novelist's statement. Then it was mentioned that "Cao Xueqin spent ten years in mourning for the Hongxuan, added and deleted it five times, compiled it into a catalogue and divided it into chapters". However, a lot of fat criticism in the early manuscripts pointed out that Cao Xueqin was the author. For example, there was a comment on the first time in Jiaxu's edition: "If Yun Xueqin read and added or deleted, who wrote this wedge after opening the book?" It shows that the author's pen is very sly. " Zhi Pi also said many times that many stories in A Dream of Red Mansions are based on the historical facts of Cao family and can also be used as circumstantial evidence. Because it is revealed in the fat criticism that the author is closely related to Cao Xueqin and his family, and is familiar with and even partially involved in the creation of A Dream of Red Mansions, the fat criticism can be said to be the most direct evidence of Cao Xueqin as the author of A Dream of Red Mansions.
Ming Yi, a poet in the Qing Dynasty, said in his preface to tihongloumeng: "A Dream of Red Mansions, written by Cao Zi Xueqin, was written to remember the prosperity of romantic life, and its ancestor was Jiangning Zhifu. Its so-called grand view garden is the old address of the garden today. I regret that his book has not been passed on, and those who are little known in the world will see his banknotes. " Yong Zhong, another Qing Dynasty imperial poet, wrote a poem titled "Dream of Red Mansions" in the thirty-third year of Emperor Qianlong's reign, saying, "I can see the three quatrains of Xue Qin (surnamed Cao) in the novel" Dream of Red Mansions "because of its ink fragrance. This is probably the earliest record that Cao Xueqin is the author of A Dream of Red Mansions, except the Dream of Red Mansions itself and the fat criticism. Ming Yi and Yong Zhong are both Cao Xueqin's contemporaries. Although there is no evidence that they know Cao Xueqin, they have close contacts with Cao Xueqin's friends Duncheng and Dunmin, so their statements are considered to be highly reliable. But so far, there is no record that Cao Xueqin is the author of A Dream of Red Mansions in the writings of Duncheng and Dunmin brothers.
In addition, in the notes of Yuan Mei, Yurui and others who were contemporary with Cao Xueqin or later, and others who were later, Cao Xueqin was also recorded as the author of A Dream of Red Mansions. In 1921, Hu Shi published Textual Research on A Dream of Red Mansions, and on the basis of textual research on the notes of the Qing Dynasty and Cao Xueqin's family, Cao Xueqin was identified as the author of A Dream of Red Mansions, which became the definitive theory from then on. Later, the discovery of fat-based fat batches more strongly supported this conclusion. In recent years, although it has been suggested that the author of A Dream of Red Mansions is another person, there is insufficient evidence.
■ About the last 4 chapters
In the 12 chapters of A Dream of Red Mansions, Cheng Weiyuan said that he found more than 2 chapters in the last 4 chapters from "book collectors and even old paper piles", and the remaining 1 chapters were attributed to "drum burden", and he and Gao E just "carefully picked and picked, and made up for each other's shortcomings". However, most people believe that the last 4 chapters were actually written by Cheng Gao. In recent years, it has also been suggested that there was someone else who renewed the book in the last 4 chapters, and Cheng Gao did just edit it. Others believe that there are some old manuscripts of Cao Xueqin in the last 4 chapters.
In p>1981, Chen Bingzao came to the conclusion that all 12 poems were Cao Xueqin's original works through mathematical statistics of A Dream of Red Mansions. Academic circles still have not reached a general understanding of this.