The Origin of Fangzhi

The compilation and revision of local records is a long cultural tradition in China. China's local history has a long history, its content from simple to complex, from incomplete to more complete style has a gradual stereotyping process.

The origin of local history, there have been many different opinions, but there are two main opinions: one is the origin of local history in history, it is from the ancient historian's account of the development of, such as the "Rites of Zhou" mentioned in the foreign history of the palm of the "four directions of the record", may be the source of the local history; the second is the local history of the birth of geography, by the earliest of China's ancient geographic work "Shangshu - Yuyu". Secondly, Fangzhi was born out of geography and evolved from the earliest geographic works in ancient China, the Shangshu-Yugong and the Classic of Mountains and Seas. The Shangshu-Yugong recorded the area, products, and tributes before the Warring States period, and the Shanhaijing recorded the mountains, rivers, situations, and monsters in ancient times, which are considered to be the prototypes of Fangzhi. In the early Eastern Han Dynasty, Huiji Yuan Kang compiled the book "Yue Jieji", recorded the history of the two countries of Wu and Yue, which is a historiography with the nature of Fangzhi works in the history of the compilation of Fangzhi has a pioneering work, many scholars in later years as the originator of the Chinese Fangzhi, the so-called "a party of Zhizhi, began with the" Yue Jie ". Modern scholars Fu Zhenlun that "the Yue Jie book" first record of mountains and rivers, cities, burial mounds; the second and the record of the biography, unique to the present day, the later generations of party records, actually follow this. It can be said that "Yue Jie Shu" is the earliest surviving domestic local history. Equivalent to the Southern Song Dynasty to the present. Almost all of the books in this period are called Fangzhi, is the maturity of the Fangzhi body period. China's local history of the basic stereotypes, the content tends to be complete is in the Song Dynasty. At this time, the "land record". "Tujing" and so on has basically been "Zhi" replaced, the focus of the Fangzhi account also began to geography to many aspects of society, "people" and "art and literature". "Art and literature" occupied a more important position in Fangzhi, forming the general pattern of the later Fangzhi. Like "Taiping Huan Yu Ji", "Yuanfeng Nine Regions Zhi", as well as known as "Lin'an Three Zhi" "Qian Dao Lin'an Zhi", "Chun You Lin'an Zhi", "Xian Chun Lin'an Zhi", are representative of the time of the local records. Yuan Dade seven years (1303), the repair of the "Great Yuan Yitongzhi" 1300 volumes, is the first huge scale of China's history of the whole of the same Yitongzhi, for the Ming and Qing dynasties to repair the Great Yitongzhi provides an example and model. Ming Dynasty, there are about 1500 kinds of ZhiShu, more than 400 kinds of existing. The Qing dynasty is a period of revision, the Qianjia three repair "Qing dynasty," the formation of the climax of the revision of the country, the government also clearly stipulates that the provinces, prefectures, states, counties, 60 years to repair once, there are special 11 revision of the institutions, many scholars and literati also competing compilation, recording of the square, the emergence of a large number of square and high-quality square, preserved so far up to 5,500 kinds of records.

China's local history, after thousands of years of development, style, content gradually complete, the number of accumulated is also very large. Unfortunately, many of the party records in the process of circulation have been lost, especially before the Song Dynasty. At present, there are more than 8,500 kinds of local histories in the domestic collection, according to the statistics of the Joint Catalog of Chinese Local Histories, a number that is almost equivalent to one-tenth of all the existing ancient books. Among them, Beijing Library has the most, about 6000, Shanghai Library is second, about 5000, Nanjing Library is third, about 4000. University libraries also have a lot of collections, Peking University, Nanjing University, the second, Beijing Normal University, the third; Ningbo Tianyi Pavilion collection of Ming dynasty local history is the most distinctive, since 1961 has been photocopied and published in the Tianyi Pavilion collection of Ming dynasty local Jie Selection of 107 kinds.

China's square records many scattered abroad. Americans from 1869 onwards, we are interested in collecting valuable books, including more than 5500 kinds of square, only Harvard University has a collection of Song and Ming precious square. Japan's collection than the United States is more. In addition, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and other countries also have collections.