How did the "Three Character Classics" come into being?

San Zi Jing is a widely circulated and far-reaching work on Mongolian studies in China, and its author is generally regarded as Wang Yinglin (1223-1296), a scholar in the Southern Song Dynasty. But in fact, the prototype of San Zi Jing appeared long before Wang Yinglin. For example, Xiang Anshi once said, "The ancients taught boys to use rhymes, such as San Zi Xun." Xiang Anshi was born in Wang Yinglin more than one hundred years ago, so San Zi Xun can be regarded as the predecessor of San Zi Jing. In any case, in view of the fact that the early Three-Character Classic described the rise and fall of the past dynasties only in the Song Dynasty, it can be concluded that the earliest drafting time of the Three-Character Classic should be in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. Therefore, it is not surprising to say that the author of San Zi Jing is Wang Yinglin, a poet of the Song Dynasty. The Three-Character Classic became popular in China after its publication, and it became a widely used enlightenment reader in China after the Song Dynasty. It can be said that there are probably very few Han Mongolian children who have never read the Three-Character Classic. With the increasing influence of the San Zi Jing, the annotations and gains of the San Zi Jing have also appeared constantly. Especially since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, not only the annotation, phonetic notation and drawing books of the San Zi Jing have increased day by day, but also its content has been increased with the change of dynasties, resulting in various supplements, among which the most widely circulated one should be the Annotations of the San Zi Jing compiled by He Xingsi during the reign of Qing Dynasty. With the increasing influence of San Zi Jing, the translation of San Zi Jing has also begun to develop gradually. As early as the early Qing Dynasty, in order to facilitate the spread of San Zi Jing among Manchu and Mongolian ethnic groups, San Zi Jing began to be translated into Manchu and Mongolian, among which Tao Gejing's Manchu San Zi Jing and Xiuyan Fujun's Mongolian and Chinese San Zi Jing had great influence. In addition, by the end of the Qing Dynasty, San Zi Jing had been translated into foreign languages and gradually spread overseas, among which the Latin version of Wei Franciscan, the French version of stanislas julien, and the English versions of Bi Zhiwen, Zhai Lisi and Eitel had great influence. Although the above translation was written by westerners, its language expression is blameless, but the translator's non-Chinese cultural context naturally makes them lack sufficient understanding of the true meaning of traditional culture in Xia Dynasty, so the grasp of the cultural essence contained in San Zi Jing will inevitably be biased due to cultural barriers. In view of this, under the general trend of the times when Chinese and Western cultures meet in an all-round way, it is a necessary and meaningful task to interpret and translate Sanzijing more accurately from the perspective of Chinese cultural context. There are two reasons why the Three-Character Classic has been popular since its publication: first, it has a catchy rhythmic beauty; Second, it has a concise educational function. Theoretically speaking, the translation of San Zi Jing should not only convey the rhythmic beauty of the original text, but also convey the educational function of the original text, so as to be perfect. From the perspective of translation practice, it is extremely difficult to achieve this goal of trying to be perfect in language conversion in cross-cultural context, because if you want to convey the rhythmic beauty of the original version of San Zi Jing, it is naturally better to translate the verse, but if you weigh less than the rhyme, you will be afraid of hurting your meaning because of the sound, and the beauty will be beautiful and it will be difficult to be perfect; In order to reproduce the educational function between words and meanings, it is natural to convey the meaning and convey the truth. However, if you are eager to understand the meaning, you may be suspected of harming rhyme with meaning. Good is good, but it is difficult to be perfect. When it is difficult to be both good and beautiful, translators often have to seek the second best, or show their beautiful voice and lose their words, or show their true meaning and let their rhyme go. Today, the prose translation is presented to readers, asking them to express their ideas. In a word, the beauty of translation lies in two minds: self-mind and other mind. Self-mind is the brave and diligent mind to manage translation. His mind is considerate of the reader's convenience and separation. Two hearts are one, and the translation is also the most important. Qian Zi Wen was compiled about 15 years ago during the reign of Liang Wudi in the Southern Dynasties. The editor was Zhou Xingsi, an assistant minister in the Liang Dynasty. According to Liang Shi and other historical records, in order to teach his son to study, Liang Wudi asked a literary attendant named Yin Tieshi to extend 1 non-repetitive words from the handwriting of Wang Xizhi, a great calligrapher in the Jin Dynasty, one word per paper; But so many words are hard to remember, so Liang Wudi called his most trusted literary attendant, Zhou Xingsi, and ordered him to organize these words into an easy-to-understand enlightenment reading. Zhou Xingsi thought hard all night, and combined these 1 words into a four-character rhyme book with exquisite conception and rich connotation. It is said that Zhou Xingsi's hair and beard were all white the next day because of excessive brain use. Since then, Qianziwen has become a popular children's literacy reader. From the content point of view, every eight-character line in Thousand Characters can be divided into four parts: the first sentence is "the heavens and the earth are mysterious and the universe is vast" to the eighteenth sentence is "the vegetation is transformed, and it depends on ten thousand parties"; The second part of the 19th sentence, "Build your body and hair, the four permanent members" to the 51st sentence, "Insist on elegant exercises, and be proud of yourself"; The fifty-second sentence is "the capital of China, the east is two or two Beijing" to the eighty-first sentence is "the vast expanse of land, the strictness of the land" as the third part; The fourth part is from the eighty-second sentence, "Cure the root cause of agriculture, provide services for crops" to the penultimate sentence, "Ignorance, ignorance, etc." The last sentence, "The predicate helps, how is it?" has no substantive meaning and is listed separately. The first part outlines the general situation of the formation of the universe and cultural evolution: the second part focuses on the cultivation and virtue of people, which can be seen mainly from the Confucian educational tradition; The third part describes the luxurious life and literary martial arts of those who live in the temple, and also describes the vast and beautiful Chinese territory; The fourth part is the longest, mainly describing the pastoral life of those who live far away from rivers and lakes and the superb skills of skilled craftsmen. In the process of English translation, the translator adopts three strategies. The first is literal translation, basically word for word, with a few exceptions, in order to highlight the function of the original text as a literacy reader. In the free translation part, the scattered words in the literal translation are reorganized, transformed and polished to conform to English grammar and realize the organic connection of context. In addition, the added notes provide the necessary background knowledge for English readers to understand. The author hopes that English readers can better grasp the characteristics of Chinese by comparing literal translation and free translation. In addition, in order for readers to better learn "Thousand Characters" and appreciate the traditional culture of China, we also copy it here; Wang Xizhi's running script is authentic, although after thousands of years, every specific word may not have been chosen by Liang Wudi in those years. The only thing that needs to be explained is that we have not found the word "Xuan" in Wang Xizhi's calligraphy works, so we have to replace it with the synonym "Yuan".