The Study On Copy In Ancient China

Copy making by writing as a major means of duplicating knowledge in ancient China, played an important role in protecting, passing down and spreading knowledge and culture transmission in history from Han to Qing dynasty. "Making copies by writing" discussed in this thesis mainly involves two circumstances:under the first circumstance, the copy was acquired by duplicating the original book by writing to pass down and spread the knowledge. However, due to the copyists'purposes and social influences, certain difference was produced between the copy and the original one, which affected the knowledge spread to some extent. Under the second circumstance, based on its content, the copyist compiled, edited, revised and mended the original book to obtain a "new" creation, which is a duplication of knowledge in broader sense.This thesis makes a survey of the origin, development of copy making by writing in history from Dynasty of Han to Ming and Qing dynasties as well as the factors associated with it. Generally speaking, the internal and external factors contributed to copy making mainly include social and political environment and demand, copying tools and technologies, purposes and motivations, copying materials and copyists, among them, the copyist is of vital importance. Based on the survey, this thesis discusses the essence of copy making and analyzes its function on culture transmission.Chapter one discusses the imperial agency of copy making and the copyists in ancient China, which are the two key factors in development of making copies by writing. Establishment of the imperial agency for making copies from the original books by writing reflects how much imperial organization attached importance on copy making, spread of classic works, imperial examination and culture. On the other hand, the copyists involved in copy making for various reasons are the most important factor in development of copy making. It was copyists who produced different copies to meet the various political and cultural needs in different dynasties. In this chapter, a detailed study is chronically made on historical imperial agencies of copy making as well as the copyists, who might be officials or employed by official agencies, or believers or employed by certain religious group, or common people just for sake of earning a living or simply for sake of collecting books.Chapter two makes a brief analysis to the impacts of historical background, copy-making media and tools on development of making copies. Social environments, copyists and copy-making media and tools are the three factors in development of making copies in ancient China.Apparently, copy-making was deeply influenced by the historical background. In any dynasty without exception, the imperial authority would stress its orthodoxy and legitimacy. For this purpose, one of the most important measures they took was to organize people to compile or revise Confucius classic works to establish a set of ideological principles based on Confucius books and their interpretations so that "the classic masterpieces could be inherited and passed down by those copies." As a result, development of making copies was undoubtedly influenced by the official administration and involvement. Attitudes of the copyists were even more important. Since the establishment of imperial examination, for those intellectuals, reading by copying books became the approach to starting their political career. They were bound to copy and duplicate those books by writing to prepare the imperial exam with initiatives. The tools and facilities to carry out copy-making was the factor to produce impact on copies technically.Chapter three mainly discusses the content of copies in ancient China. A brief study is made on content of the copies in time sequence historically from Qin dynasty to Qing dynasty. It indicates that during the transition in history, when the mainstream political and cultural system was yet to establish, and a variety in schools of thought and cultures appeared in society, the content of the copies also showed diversity, reflecting the social fact in this period of history. On the contrary, once a stable political and cultural system was established, homogeneity also showed in content of the copies in this period.In chapter four the initiative and purposes for making copies are analyzed. It is developed from the following six aspects:1) initiative of making copies,2) reason for the imperial agencies'copy-making activity,3) copy-making for private collection or writing,4) copy-making of Buddhist scriptures by writing for religious purpose,5) copy-making of agricultural and medical books by writing,6) copy-making of famous novels in Ming and Qing dynasties. Copy-making was always initiatively motivated by philosophies of "Three Eternity" (Eternal Virtues, Eternal Achievements and Eternal Classics) in federal societies. The reason for imperial agencies'spending such a huge amount of money and labors on copying numerous books by writing was to establish the principles on which the federal empires were operated. The core of historical records for certain a dynasty is the achievements of "three Eternity". Compiling and spreading these books encouraged the intellectuals to contribute to this "high" ideal. On the other hand, to verifying their legitimacy, the federal rulers in history always encouraged copy-making to "inherit and pass down Confucius classics" and the content of those copies sponsored by the imperial agencies all focused on Buddhist scriptures and classics, especially the scriptures as well as their interpretations. While, there are amount of copy makers get the knowledge from copying books, and also copy is one of the most importance reason of culture transmission.Chapter Five discusses the nature of copy-making and its influence from the following aspects:1) the essence of copy-making;2)content repetition; 3) content loss; 4) influence on contemporary intellectual property. While inheriting and passing down the knowledge, copy-making produced a little negative impacts, such as repetition of classics, content loss and mistake in copies.Making the study on ancient copy-making is of great historic and practical significance. First, copy-making spread of knowledge and culture in ancient China and deeply affects all sides of Chinese federal society. In this paper, the main condition of copy activity was firstly researched in system.Second, It is novel in analyzing the initiative and nature of copy-making. This thesis mainly discusses the establishment of copy-making agencies, development of copyists, social and political impact on copy-making and the content change, puipose of copy-making. Based on these discussions, it makes a deep study on its nature and essence.Third, the adverse impact on literature of copy-making was mainly analyzed in this paper.