On the Difficulties and Importance of Organizing and Publishing Documents

In the Tang Dynasty or before, the method of document transmission was mainly note-writing. Before the widespread application of engraving and printing technology, writing on notes became the main state of document circulation, whether it was on stone, cloth or silk, or on document rolls. Before the Tang Dynasty, there were different versions of the canonical books, but the engraved versions began in the Song Dynasty, and before the Song Dynasty, all the books were written (not engraved). For example, the Shiji was first published in the fifth year of the Chunhua reign of Emperor Taizong of the Song Dynasty (994), and the only surviving copies of the Shiji that are related to the Northern Song version are the Shiji Jiejiejie (The Collected Explanations of the Historical Records) ten-rowed and fourteen-rowed versions. The Shiji was written during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty, a thousand years before the Northern Song Dynasty. However, from the time it was written until the Northern Song Dynasty, the Shiji could only be handed down in the form of notes. This was not only the case with the Shiji, but also with all the pre-Tang dynasty texts. The compilation of The Essentials of the Rule of the Group of Books or Qunshu Zhiyao 群書治要 by Wei Zheng and others in the early Tang Dynasty was intended to compile a selection of pre-Tang canonical works that were relevant to the way of ruling the country into a single book for reference by the rulers of the country. According to Ozaki Yasushi’s Explanation of the Qunshu Zhiyao 群 書 治 要 解 題 , the Qunshu Zhiyao preserved many ancient texts of the pre-Tang dynasty, and was of great documentary value. At that time, the revision of the Book of Jin had not yet been completed by Fang Xuanling and others, Wei Zheng and others saw the eighteen Jin books; the Notes on the Book of Han are also all by Yan Shigu before the old notes; Zishu are the works of the two Jin or before. The most precious parts of the books were extracted from the "Essentials of the rule of all books", and the latter part of the Six Dynasties (i.e., before the seventh century A.D.) was used for the text, which is very precious. There are four important copies of the Ganshu jisho, namely, the Kujo family edition of the Heian period, the Kamakura period Kanazawa Bunko edition, the Suruga edition of the second year of the Yuanhe period, and the Omoto edition of the seventh year of the Tenmyo period. The first two are notes. In the era when ancient texts were copied, there were many handwritten variants of Chinese characters, which were prone to typographical errors. In comparison, the Kujo family edition of the Heian period and the Kanazawa Bunko edition of the Kamakura period had this problem. In collating the Qunshu Zhiyao, using the Suruga edition of the second year of the Yuanhe period as the base text could probably eliminate the problem of handwritten anomalies, and minimize the number of cases in which handwritten anomalies led to errors in the proofreading process. Admittedly, the Suruga edition has its own inaccuracies, but compared with the Kanazawa Bunko edition, which is the oldest edition of the time, the Suruga edition is the best choice for the base text.The present paper is centered on the Qunshu zhiyao, and makes use of comparisons between different editions to show the advantages and limitations of the earlier notes. Lastly, it aims to bring out the importance of choosing the right source when collating documents.