On Lu Mingshan And His Book Brief Points Of Agriculture And Silkworm

Lu Mingshan, born in Gaochan Ui(?)ur Kingdom of Yuan Dynasty, moved to Dadu(capital of Yuan Dynasty) with his family at his early age. While living in the place of Han nationality gathered, he became interested in the cultures of Han nationality, therefore, received a very good education since he was young. He used Lu, a word from his father's name, as his family name, while his given name was Tiezhu. As he grew up, he was indued the official as a biceechi(clerks for the Emperor of Yuan Dynasty), and then Liwen(a judge). After his father died, he acted as the top official in Anfeng Lu, Taiping Lu, Chizhou Lu, Quzhou Lu, Guiyang Lu and Jingzhou Lu. As a local official of Yuan Dynasty, he had done a lot to the local people, thus was praised by them. In a word, he was an excellent local official of Yuan Dynasty. Meanwhile, he was an excellent agronomist, because he wrote an agronomy book christened Brief Points of Agriculture and Silkworm, which was one of the three famous agronomy books of Yuan Dynasty. This agronomy book was easy to read and understand, thus it was very popular with the peasants, therefore, handed down hitherto.In this dissertation, the author makes use of the correlative theories and methods of history and ethnology to discuss the extraction, officialcareer of Lu Mingshan, and to study the background, contents, style and editions of the book.This dissertation consists of three parts, they are as follows,Chapter one, on the basis of the existing information, combining some chorography and corpus of Yuan scholars, the author analyses the extraction of Lu Mingshan, especially complements the information of his son Lu Yuanqi. In addition, the author discusses Lu Mingshan's official career and makes some testifying work according to the two inscriptions, and concludes the probable years of birth and death on the basis of existing information.Chapter two, the author recounts the changes of the name of the book, and testifies the initial name of the book. In addition, the author combs the changes of the editions, and makes some testifying work on some editions.Chapter three, the author analyses the backgrounds of the book, and then makes some comparisons between the book and the other two agronomy books of Yuan Dynasty, finally discusses the style and the agronomy thoughts of the book.