There were no punctuation marks in ancient Chinese writing. However, in order to ensure a smooth tone and a correct understanding of the meaning of the article when reading, it is still necessary to pay attention to the succession and transition of sentences. Readers will add their own marks in the article. This is the so-called
If you don't understand sentence reading, it will often cause misreading and misunderstand the author's original meaning.
Therefore, after students enter Mongolia, they need to "clear sentence reading", which means learning to rely on the sense of language of the article, modal particles, grammatical structure, etc. to segment sentences. However, after learning to read sentences, ambiguities often occur, resulting in misunderstanding of the words of the article.
For example, in the joke "On a rainy day, you are a guest, but on a day, I am not". The host and the guest express seven completely different meanings through different sentences, which is very annoying. But if it were to be used in official documents or books, this would not be the case.
It's no longer a joke, but a problem and a mistake.
Historically, there are many public cases caused by different readings of sentences. The most famous one is Confucius' "The people can be made to follow it, but not to know it." Scholars have been arguing about the reading of this sentence for thousands of years. If there were punctuation at that time, the dispute would naturally be
No longer exists.
Due to his habits in his previous life, Chen Ke couldn't stand the lack of punctuation in an article from beginning to end, so every book he read had "punctuation marks" personally marked.
In the preface of this book, "A Study of Shangshu Apocrypha", Chen Ke said that the article requires readers to read it sentence by sentence, which is not only inconvenient, but also misinterprets the author's meaning. This is a sign of irresponsibility on the part of the writer, or he deliberately does not want to make the words clear.
In order to avoid his meaning being misunderstood and to facilitate readers, he added punctuation marks in advance when the article was published.
Traditional sentence reading symbols include periods and reading marks, which are equivalent to periods and commas in punctuation marks. In Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jiezi" of the Han Dynasty, there are also ',' signs, and ''' signs, so it is not that there was no punctuation in ancient times.
Symbols, it’s just that no one uses them in a standardized way.
Chen Ke made an appendix at the back of the book, listing ten commonly used punctuation marks and clearly labeling their functions.
He did this not only to avoid the meaning of his article being misinterpreted, nor as simple as promoting punctuation marks. His deeper intention is reflected in the two articles "University" and "The Doctrine of the Mean"...
In Chen Ke's time, people with a little bit of education would know that "The Analects", "Mencius", "The Doctrine of the Mean", and "The Great Learning" were all said to have constructed the Confucian ideological system and shaped the spiritual personality of Confucian students.
It doesn't matter how high its importance is.
However, during the Northern Song Dynasty, "Great Learning" and "Zhongyong" had not yet been completed. They were only two of the forty-nine articles in "Xiao Dai Li Ji". As for why they were taken out separately and placed in "Shang Shu Apocrypha"
After "Test", Chen Ke said in the preface:
My own research to prove that Shangshu is an apocrypha is not to destroy the cultural foundation of Confucianism. On the contrary, I am trying to clarify the origins of the original Confucianism and clarify the ideological system of the pre-Confucian scholars. Therefore, I did in-depth research and found the apocryphal scriptures. But I found the apocryphal scriptures.
Studying the classics is not the goal, but understanding the ideological system of the pre-Confucian scholars is.
So how to find out? Should we look for the true scripture of "Shangshu"?
Finding the true scripture of "Shangshu" is important, as it can let us know what the three generations were like. But it is of little use in understanding the ideological system of the pre-Confucian scholars. This is because this is a book that records history, and it is history that has nothing to do with the pre-Confucian scholars.
.
By the same token, "Spring and Autumn" is not of much significance. "Zhouyi" is mainly a book of divination, a book of divination. "Book of Rites" is a compilation of etiquette systems. And "Book of Songs" is a collection of poems... so Chen Ke concluded.
The Five Classics are rich and complex in content, and the meaning expressed is not focused and clear enough to form a complete ideological and theoretical system.
So how to understand the ideological system of the pre-Confucian scholars? Chen Ke advocated merging the two articles "The Great Learning" and "The Doctrine of the Mean" in the Analects, Mencius and the Book of Rites into the "Four Books".'
The "Five Classics" was incorporated into the "Four Books" so that readers can more correctly understand the teachings of Confucius and Mencius.
Well, this is all Zhu Xi's point of view. Chen Ke just advanced his career a hundred years. But this is definitely not a simple copying, but a reshaping of the Chinese national thought.
Because Zhu Xi injected his own thoughts into the Confucian classics by commenting on the "Four Books", thus enabling later generations of scholars to accept Neo-Confucian thought and turning the entire society into a Neo-Confucian society.
Chen Ke wanted to get ahead of Zhu Xi and use Zhu Xi's method to inject his thoughts into the "Four Books" so that the scholars of the Song Dynasty would accept his thoughts and then change the entire society.
Chen Ke knew that this road was a hundred times more difficult than assisting Zhao Zongji to seize the throne. Letting others accept his thoughts and turn them into his thoughts was actually the most difficult thing in the world. But no matter how difficult it was, he had to do it.
Do, because God sent him here, perhaps to give China a chance to reshape its soul...
Of course, Chen Ke also knows that this matter cannot be done by a saint like Zhu Xi, at least at his current level. But it doesn't matter, just like back then, he still dared to support Zhao Zongshi even though he knew he was the future Song Yingzong.
Just as Zhao Zongji competed with him, Chen Ke never lacked courage and confidence.
In other words, he is born to be a bold and pretentious person, and he does not believe that there is anything he cannot do...
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Taking into account the reader's receptive ability and his current level, Chen Ke did not annotate "The Great Learning" and "The Doctrine of the Mean" as soon as he came up. He just extracted them completely from the "Book of Rites"... without even changing the paragraphs.
The order is just punctuated according to my own understanding.
If you take too big a step, you will be in trouble. These things must be done slowly in the future. Chen Ke will not rashly comment on it without integrating his own thoughts with Zhu Xi's thoughts to form a set of New Confucianism suitable for China.
However, just this "Examination of Shangshu Apocrypha" with added materials is enough to make him the center of attention again.
Scholars in Bianjing City and even in the Song Dynasty have long known that Chen Ke said that "Shang Shu" was an apocryphal book at the Jingyan Festival, but what exactly he said was unknown. Many people were unconvinced and wanted to refute Chen Ke and defend him.
The Taoist tradition became famous in one fell swoop. Out of sheer curiosity, many people wanted to see what the theory was and actually lectured the emperor and officials for a month...
No matter what mentality they hold, any scholar who cares a little about things outside the window will have the idea of reading this book. Moreover, this book is especially easy to buy. Almost immediately, it appeared in various places in Bianjing City.
bookstore, the most eye-catching location.
After two or three days at most, the shadow of this book appeared in bookstores in Luoyang, Yingtian, Daming, Chengdu, Jiangning, Suzhou... and even Fuzhou and Guangzhou, and they were all placed in the most eye-catching positions. For today
For Chen Ke, even if it is a book written by his feet, he can use commercial means to sell it.
The cultural and educational prosperity of the Song Dynasty was unparalleled in previous generations. There were 300 bookstores in Bianjing alone, and hundreds of them in big cities like Luoyang and Jiangning. As a result, the 5,000 volumes of the first edition were only enough to be sold in bookstores everywhere.
The goods were distributed, and everything was sold out on just the first day. Immediately, the dealer boasted that it was a "well-received, Luoyang paper expensive" masterpiece, which aroused the interest of scholars even more.
People are like that. If you pile them up there, no one might care about them, but if they sell out all at once and others can’t get them, you’ll feel uncomfortable.
As a result, orders from all over the country came to Bianjing like a snowflake, and in total, there were as many as 50,000 copies. Fortunately, the Bianjing Printing Press, which owns the copyright of this book, had been working overtime to start printing, and put the carloads of brand-new books into the book.
Sending to all parts of the country, this thirsty marketing will not be self-defeating.
The so-called "copyright" comes from the Song Dynasty. In this era, every page of a book came from a block of engravings, and all engravings had to be reviewed and registered by the government. After checking that there were no taboo contents, the government would mark the margins in the margins.
and carve a seal to prove that the copyright of this book is under the supervision and protection of the government. Any piracy will be investigated by the government.
In order to protect the interests of the industry, publishing guilds in various places will supervise various bookstores and are not allowed to sell pirated books. Therefore, in cities, there are basically no pirated books for sale. But outside the cities, there are vast towns and villages, which are beyond the reach of the government.
, the guilds were powerless. Many black bookshops specializing in piracy hid there, producing a large number of shoddy pirated books with many aliases. But because they were cheap, they were still very attractive to the vast number of poor scholars...
…They even know very well which pirated version has fewer typos and better paper quality.
This made the people who wrote books in the Song Dynasty very uncomfortable, but there was nothing they could do about it.
But it was not a problem for Chen Ke. He instructed the Bianjing Seal Publishing House to publish another batch of simplified editions, which were sold to a large number of towns and villages. The prices were cheaper than pirated copies. Whoever stole his books would be screwed for eight lifetimes...
…
Of course, this kind of anti-piracy method can only be used by a guy like Chen Ke who is backed by a business empire and who publishes books not to make money but not to be afraid of losing money.
Fortunately, this book sold very well. In one winter, it was reprinted and reprinted in hardcover, paperback and simple cover, with a total of more than 200,000 copies sold, setting a sales record other than exam-oriented textbooks such as the "Thirteen Classics" of the Song Dynasty.
At the end of the year, the printing press not only recovered its costs, but also made a net profit of 20,000 yuan. Chen Ke was so happy that he gave all the printing press employees as a reward for their hard work over the past six months.
This amount of money is not a small amount, it is enough for the 600 employees of the book club to have a good year. Naturally, everyone is grateful, but it makes Zhou Dingkun's teeth itch: "Didn't we agree to save money?"
"You can't make the horse run fast and not eat grass at the same time, right?" Chen Ke knew he was wrong, so he laughed and said: "By the way, Aziz's guy has finally arrived, you and I will pick him up.