A Simple Study On The History Of Regimen Publication In Ancient China

Hu Yinglin, the scholar in Ming Dynasty, held the view that "learning from the previous works, it is known that engraving books dated from Sui Dynasty, began in Tang Dynasty,were popular in Five Dynasty and widely used in the Song and Yuan Dynasties ". Whether the carved plate printing originated in the Sui and Tang period is still under discussion, but Hu’s last remarks have won the support of history experts of all times. The Song-Yuan period is when the new procedure of "edition-printing-publication" came around. During this period, the civil rulers of the Song Dynasty and the pro-Confucius Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty replaced the predominance of Confucian works by collecting and compiling many other philosophy works including history books and books on regimen. However, most scholars mainly focus on the contents of those books on regimen of the Song-Yuan Period, but have ignored the basic information of the edition and publishing of the books in question.The Song-Yuan period is when China’s regimen culture was systematically compiled and published into books. According to some related bibliography, there were more than260types of works on regimen published in this period. Among them, some are specially on regimen, others only include a few chapters on this topic. Genres of those works are essays on medical science and history journals. They are either annotations or compilations or books published by the government. It is due to the efforts of the rulers, experts of regimen, men of letters and bookstore assistants, who compiled the previous works, developed the culture of regimen and recorded their theoretical achievements by the new printing method that we could have a general view of China’s regimen culture.This paper will investigate the publication of regimen works in the Song-Yuan period by referring to related works of all ages and collecting the records sporadically scattered in different books. In the second chapter after the introduction, I will simply analysis the internal and external factors that led to the development of regimen studies as the foundation of the publication of regimen works. In the third, fourth and fifth chapters, I will study the carving, edition, publication and circulation. Especially, I will dwell upon the new developments and new changes with a view to a systematic summary of the categorization of the works. In the sixth chapter, I will look into the geographic distribution of the publication in this period, which will help draw a vivid picture of the regimen culture. The seventh chapter will draw a conclusion of the general information about the publishers and editors in the hope of enlightening present day’s general public.