Siku Quanshu – Collection and Exclusion | Great Four 四库全书：收与不收的辩证法

四库全书：收书与禁书的辩证法
Siku Quanshu: The Dialectic of Collection and Exclusion

收书约3470种，禁毁约3000种 · 记忆的筛选从未中性
About 3,470 Titles Collected, About 3,000 Banned · The Selection of Memory Is Never Neutral

English

I have a photocopied edition of the Siku Quanshu General Catalogue at home. It is thick, heavy, and rarely opened.

I first learned about this work in a history class. The teacher said that during the Qianlong era, a great book was compiled that collected all the classics under heaven, the largest series in ancient China. At the time, I thought this was a magnificent cultural project. Years later, I came across a small booklet about “literary inquisition” at a used book stall, and for the first time learned another figure: while books were being collected, approximately 3,000 titles were banned, destroyed, or expurgated.

About 3,470 titles collected; about 3,000 titles banned and destroyed. These two figures, placed side by side, silenced me for a long time.

I am not here to criticize Qianlong. An emperor in eighteenth-century China, doing what he believed was beneficial to imperial stability—within the historical logic of that time, this was almost inevitable. What I want to ask is something else: when we say “traditional Chinese culture” today, which tradition are we talking about? Is it the set that passed through the Siku Quanshu‘s filter, or the entirety that includes those burned, expurgated, and banned voices?

The compilers of the Siku Quanshu were not simple book-burners. They did preserve—many rare and unique editions survive today only because they were included in the Siku. But they also deleted. Any text touching on the distinction between Chinese and barbarian, criticizing the monarch, or recording the true history of the Ming-Qing transition was altered or removed. This is no secret; scholars at the time knew it, and researchers today know it even better. The problem is that most ordinary people do not know.

I sometimes wonder where those excluded books went. Some were burned, some were locked deep in the palace, some scattered among the people and slowly lost. Their voices were not refuted; they were simply denied the qualification to speak. They are not the losers of a debate; they are the absent who never had a chance to debate.

This leads me to a more general question: when any civilization shapes its own “classics,” does it always accompany some form of “exclusion”? In the formation of the Western “canon,” a similarly large number of texts were marginalized. This is not unique to China; it is a common dilemma of human beings organizing their memory.

The question is whether we are still aware that this filtering is happening. When we open a volume of “Chinese classics,” can we ask one more question: why did this book survive? Which books did not survive? Who decided what deserves to be remembered?

I do not have a definitive answer. As an ordinary reader facing the Siku Quanshu, the most honest posture is neither to marvel solely at its scale nor to condemn simply the force involved in its making. What we should recognize is this: every civilization, in organizing its collective memory, cannot avoid choices and exclusions. Which texts survive and which gradually fade away—there is never a neutral outcome in this process.

The dialectic of collection and prohibition did not end when the copying was finished. We may not be able to recover all the lost texts, but we can always retain the capacity for a clear-eyed awareness of this filtering mechanism: to keep asking which voices were left out, and to remain aware that any cultural canon we inherit may itself be an incomplete text.

中文

我家里有一本《四库全书总目提要》的影印本，很厚，很重，很少翻开。

第一次知道这部书，是在历史课上。老师说，乾隆年间编了一部大书，收尽了天下典籍，是中国古代最大的丛书。那时候我觉得，这是一件伟大的文化工程。很多年后，我在一个旧书摊上翻到一本讲”文字狱”的小册子，才第一次知道另一个数字：在收书的同时，被禁毁、删改的书籍，大约有3000余种。

收书约3470种，禁毁约3000种。这两个数字放在一起，让我沉默了很久。

我不是要批判乾隆。一个皇帝，在18世纪的中国，做他认为对帝国稳定有益的事，这在当时的历史逻辑里，几乎是必然的。我想追问的是另一件事：当我们今天说”中国传统文化”时，我们说的究竟是哪一套传统？是经过四库全书筛选过的那一套，还是包括那些被烧掉、被删改、被禁毁的声音在内的全部？

四库全书的编纂者不是简单的焚书者。他们确实在保存 – 很多孤本、珍本因为被收入四库而得以流传至今。但他们也在删除。凡是涉及华夷之辨、批评君主、记载明清之际真实历史的文字，都被改动或剔除。这不是秘密，当时的学者就知道，今天的研究者更清楚。问题是，大多数普通人不知道。

我有时候会想，那些被排除的书去了哪里。有些被烧了，有些被深锁在宫廷里，有些则散落在民间，慢慢失传。它们的声音不是被反驳，而是被取消了发言的资格。这不是一场辩论的输家，这是连辩论机会都没有的缺席者。

这让我想到一个更普遍的问题：任何文明在塑造自己的”经典”时，是否都伴随着某种”排除”？西方的”正典”形成过程中，同样有大量文本被边缘化。这不是中国独有的现象，这是人类整理记忆时的共同困境。

问题是，我们是否还意识得到这种筛选正在发生。当我们打开一本”国学经典”时，我们能否多问一句：这本书为什么留下来？哪些书没有留下来？谁决定了什么值得被记住？

我并无确切答案。作为普通读者面对《四库全书》，最真诚的姿态，既不是一味赞叹它的规模，也不是单纯谴责其中的强制力量。我们应当认清：每一种文明整理集体记忆时，都无法避开选择与排除。哪些文本得以留存，哪些慢慢湮没，从来不存在中立的结果。

收书与禁书的辩证法，在缮写工作结束之后依旧延续。我们或许无法复原所有散佚典籍，但始终保有清醒觉知这份筛选机制的能力：持续追问哪些声音被遗漏，并时刻明白，我们所承接的任何文化正典，可能本身就是一份不完整的文本。

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