Research On The Royal Families And Their Publication Activities

As a special part of the government and culture, the Ming dynasty families had greatly influenced on the society, the politics, the economy and the culture. Because of the rigor and special policy, the royal family members hardly had achievement in the political and military affairs. However, many of them were excellent on the cultural and academic talent. Many of them had a lot of works, collected books and publications. Throughout the Ming dynasty, their publishing and printing Activities were continual.In this article, the publishing and printing activities of the royal families are placed in the very background of the Ming dynasty. Based on the relevant historical facts, the variation law will be opened out clearly, on the other hand, the causes will be analyzed deeply, too.At the first part of this article, we define the scope of our study, summarize the current research areas and the condition of this field, and the main problems and causes are analyzed, followed by the major research methods that we used, summarize purpose, value and significance of our research. Next, the background of the publishing and printing of the royal families, including the Military, political, economic and cultural background, the causes of the Ming Dynasty knight system, the information and the policies about the knighted seigniors, the cultural and academic activities, and their main achievements are deeply analyzed. All of these are the necessary basic of the study on the publishing and printing activities of the royal families in the Ming dynasty.The main body of the article consists of two parts. One is the general investigation, the other is the case study. In the general investigation, we collected and analyzed a lot of documents in order to find out the total number of the royal family editions in Ming Dynasty. According to the study on the characteristics of the state of the development, the geographical distribution and the content class, the general investigation about the publishing activities and the editions of the royal families were well taken.As far as the state of the development of the royal family publishing activities in the Ming dynasty, there is a course of beginning, developing, prosperity and declining. In this course, the period from Hongwu to Tianshun is the beginning. The developing period is between Zhengde and Chenghua. From Jiajing to Wanli, the publishing and printing activities had a prosperity time, the royal family editions welled up in a great deal. This period is the fastigium of the royal family publishing activities, followed by gradual decline, and the ultimately demise with the end of the Ming Dynasty. Such a course is deeply related to the experience of the royal families'members themselves.Touching the geographical distribution of the royal family editions, there are large differences allover the country. Jiangxi and Henan have the largest amount of them. The geographical distribution of these editions reflects the following common characteristics of these areas:the strategic roles and the military status are obvious; most of these areas are underdeveloped; away from the political, economical and cultural center; with profound cultural traditions. The geographical distribution of the editions also has underlying political, economic, military and cultural causes.The content of the royal family editions also has its own characteristics. The main body of them is philosophy and literature works, a few are Confucian classics and history writings. Works of art, iatrology and Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism have the largest proportion. However, those drama and fiction works which were very popular in Ming dynasty, were very infrequent among the royal family editions. At the same time, the royal family editions are showing a distinct systematic character in content. This character reflects the focus and emphases of these editions. The causes of its laws also have distinct characteristics of the royal group itself.In the case study of this article, there are two kinds of case in our research. One is the royal family group itself. Taking the development and special experience of these families as the key clue, according to the study of their history, we review the different experiences and the characteristics of their publishing activities. The other kind of case we choice is the royal family editions. Taking some representative works as a clue, using comparative method, we study the origins, connection, versions and the edition impact of these works, and reveal their value and function.Based on the overall investigation and case analysis, compared with the other publishing and printing activities, such as the official, private and commercial printing, we find that the royal family editions have many distinct complementary features in the state of development, geographical distribution and content with the official, private and commercial printing activities. The publishing and printing activities of the royal families are the most distinctive part of the whole publishing industry in the Ming dynasty, and the royal family editions have very particular value and important influence on the history of the literature and artistic.