Research on who the father of Li Bai is has never stopped, but no one has ever been able to give a definite answer with strict logic, complete chain of evidence and convincing evidence.
There is a view that Li Bai's father was named Li Ke. The evidence is Fan Chuanzheng's "Tang Zuo Supplements and Preface to the Tombstone of Hanlin Scholar Li Gongxin". In addition, quite a few researchers believe that the records of Li Bai's life experience in Li Yangbing 's " Thatched Cottage Collection Preface" and Fan Chuanzheng's "Tang Zuo Supplements and the Preface to the Tombstone of Hanlin Scholar Li Gongxin" are contradictory and full of loopholes.
But, do you know? The latest research shows that Fan Chuanzheng actually wrote it very clearly in "The Preface to the Tombstone of Li Gongxin, a Hanlin Scholar from Tang Zuo", but experts made serious mistakes in their interpretation, which led to the wrong conclusion.
What on earth is going on? Let's take a look together.
Li Bai is like
Fan Chuanzheng has this sentence in the article: "My father was a guest, and his town was named after him." This sentence has become the evidence that Li Bai's father was called Li Ke, and it is also the only evidence.
After careful consideration, the meaning of this sentence is actually: Li Bai's father lived in a foreign country and fled from his hometown, which is the place of household registration, so he took the name "Ke".
Obviously, what Fan Chuanzheng wanted to express was: Li Bai's father was named "guest", which was something he had to do because he lived in a foreign country after escaping from his hometown.
It can be seen from this that Fan Chuanzheng’s original text is actually: “The father’s guest came to visit his town, so he named it after his guest.” “The guest came to visit his town as a guest” is actually an inverted sentence pattern of “the visitor came to visit his town as a guest”, and the purpose Emphasizing on escaping from hometown in the form of living in a foreign land. The text does not confirm that Li Bai's father was Li Ke or called Li Ke, which is very different from the original text we see today.
What's going on?
It turns out that in ancient times, there were no punctuation marks like the ones we see today. The punctuation marks we see were all added by experts themselves when modern publishing houses changed to the now popular horizontal printing.
At this point, we finally discovered the truth of the matter: Fan Chuanzheng's article "The Preface to the Tombstone of Hanlin Scholar Li Gongxin in the Collection of Tang Zuo" actually wrote very clearly that Li Bai's father changed his name to Li Ke after he fled, but , when experts were interpreting it, they made serious mistakes in sentence segmentation and punctuation because they did not fully understand the author's meaning, and thus they came to the wrong conclusion.
Moreover, the wrong sentence fragment we saw today has a huge loophole: Could it be that Li Bai's father fled before he was even named? Or maybe Li Bai's father never had a name before he fled?
Obviously, this is impossible!
Li Bai is the idol of Chinese literati
So, what was the name of Li Bai’s father before he fled? What is your identity? Why flee? The problem is back to the starting point again.
Who would introduce Li Bai's life experience in this way under the premise that there is already a record in the "Preface to the Thatched Cottage Collection"? Fan Chuanzheng, who has a "family connection" with Li Bai's family, obviously knows the details of Li Bai's family, and it is even more impossible to write like this!
So, why did Fan Chuanzheng not introduce Li Bai's father in more detail, but only provided his name after he fled? Li Ke's information?
Because Li Yangbing's "Preface to the Thatched Cottage Collection" has already been introduced in detail, and Li Bai's special life experience was a sensitive political topic at the time, there was no need for Fan Chuanzheng, a local administrator, to take political risks and repeat what others said. past content. What's more, those obscure records in "Preface to the Thatched Cottage Collection" have reached an insurmountable level!
However, although Fan Chuanzheng did not repeat the experience of Li Bai's father, he confirmed in the article that Li Bai's father took his family back to Guanghan in the first year of Shenlong and became a foreigner in Guanghan County. The story of the surname Li, the allusions involved in Li Bai's mother's pregnancy, and the origin of Li Bai's name are all briefly described, which are basically consistent with the description in the "Preface to the Thatched Cottage Collection", which is equivalent to confirming the relevant records in the "Preface to the Thatched Cottage Collection".
Fan Chuanzheng’s achievements are actually far more than that. In two other places, Fan Chuanzheng also used allusions to convey very important information proving that Li Bai was a member of the royal family. Unfortunately, this information has been ignored by researchers.
First, when describing Li Bai's birth, Fan Chuanzheng used the title "Xianfu Jun" for Li Bai's father.
"Fu Jun" means the honorific title for the deceased in the inscription. This is common usage. Liu Zongyuan, who was a Jinshi scholar one year earlier than Fan Chuanzheng and the second most successful scholar, also used the title "Fujun" when writing his epitaph. But in Fan Chuanzheng's epitaph, he first used "father". When he wrote about Li Bai's birth, he used neither "father", "father" or "Xiankao", nor "Fujun", but "Father". "Xianfujun", this is a bit unconventional. Because "Fujun" is also an allusion, referring to the prefect in the Han Dynasty, which is equivalent to the official position of governor in the Tang Dynasty.
Shixian
In order to facilitate everyone's understanding, let's first review the life experiences of Li Bai's father, King Ji and Li Shen. For Li Bai's father, he was born three times and died three times in his life: once in 628 AD, he was born in Tang Taizong Li Shimin's palace. In 689 AD, he was Wu Zetian expelled from the royal family with the surname Li and exiled. Politically, he "died" once; at the same time, his surname was changed to "虺" by Wu Zetian, and he was born a second time. In the first year of Shenlong, when he changed his surname back to Li, the "虺" He died at the same time, which was his second death; the third time was in 705 AD, when he privately changed his surname back to Li, which was his third birth.
What had the greatest impact on the rest of his life was that in the first year of Shenlong , the "dead" Li Shen was restored to his surname of Li, his official position was restored, and he was buried in Zhaoling with ceremony. Because from that moment on, he no longer had any relationship with that Ji Wang Li Shen, the former governor, and the prince and grand master. He could never go back to the past.
In 701 AD, when Li Bai was born, he was still Li Shen, the former king of Ji, governor, and prince.
After understanding these unimaginable and understandable experiences of Li Bai's father, and then looking at the title "Xianfu Jun" used by Fan Chuanzheng, we can easily understand that although there is a difference in one word, it means something else, and there is a lot of meaning. So profound. It actually alludes to the former governor-Li Bai's father, King Ji Li Shen, who was arrested and imprisoned while serving as the governor of Beizhou.
The position of "prefect" was no longer used in Tang Dynasty . Fan Chuanzheng used "Xianfujun" to imply that Li Bai's father was "the former governor". In this way, you don’t have to worry about being found out or being implicated. His purpose is obviously to prove with the records in "Preface to the Thatched Cottage Collection". From this point of view, Fan Chuanzheng should know the inside story.
If this wording is very rare and can be understood by most people, then the second part can be regarded as an explicit statement. That is, Fan Chuanzheng used "pointing to Tianzhi to restore the surname" to describe the process of Li Bai's father giving Li Bai the surname Li, instead of "pointing to the plum tree" to restore the surname.
Tianzhi is also an allusion. Li Bai personally used it in "The Great Bell Inscription of Huacheng Temple"! It refers to the descendants of the royal family!
Therefore, for those who understand the allusion of "Tianzhi", this sentence is very straightforward, that is, "pointing to the descendants of the royal family and restoring the surname Li"; while for those who do not know this allusion, it is the same as Li Zhizhi is no different. This really corresponds to the saying: It's terrible to be uneducated, and you can't understand the words in black and white.
Here, Fan Chuanzheng once again borrowed an allusion to hint: Li Bai is a member of the royal family!
Obviously, Fan Chuanzheng is proving the reliability of "The Preface to the Thatched Cottage Collection". This once again proves that Fan Chuanzheng definitely knows the inside story, but for some unknown reason, he cannot explain it clearly.
From this, it can be inferred that Li Yangbing must also know the inside story. In fact, probably all the middle and senior officials know the inside story, but they don't dare to say it openly.
So, what was it that made people at that time so afraid of telling Li Bai’s life experience?
The portraits of Li Bai and Du Fu
This requires understanding the formation process of the royal clan of the Tang Dynasty with the surname Li, as well as the social and political situation at that time.
We have already made it clear that Li Bai's father was Li Shen, the tenth son of Emperor Taizong Li Shimin of the Tang Dynasty and King of Ji. We know his special life experience. Now, let's briefly review the history of the formation of the Tang Dynasty royal family surnamed Li.
According to literature records:
In the third year of Wude, that is, in 620 AD, Tang Gaozu Li Yuanzun named Li Er the first ancestor, and built a large number of buildings, palaces and temples in Luyi, his ancestral home. The cause was that a Taoist priest named Ji Shanxing reported to Li Shimin that he had met an immortal with white hair and white beard on Yangjiao Mountain, who called himself "Lao Dan" and said he was the distant ancestor of the current emperor. Li Shimin reported to Tang Gaozu Li Yuan, so Tang Gaozu Li Yuan granted Ji Shanxing the title of "chaosan doctor" and went to Yangjiao Mountain to build temples and offer sacrifices, and the next thing happened.
Soon after, Emperor Taizong Li Shimin of the Tang Dynasty issued an edict to compile the "Chronicles of the Clan of the Tang Dynasty", officially recognizing the ancestors and returning them to the clan, saying: "My original lineage originated from the foot of the pillar."
Tianbao In the second year of Tianbao, that is, 743 AD, Li Longji issued an edict to change Ziji Palace to Taiqing Palace.
In the same year, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty Li Longji pursued Li Hao as the Xingsheng Emperor and considered himself the eleventh grandson of Li Hao. From then on, Li Hao officially became the ancestor recognized by the Tang Dynasty royal family.
As for Li Yanyun, the ancestor of Li Bai who recognized his ancestor and returned to the clan, Li Yanyun reported to Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty that he and the emperor belonged to King Wuzhao of Liang. Enter genealogy .
Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty agreed to this application, issued the "Edict Ordering Li Yanyun and Others to Become the Official Register of the Sect", and approved Li Yanyun's memorial. This edict is included in " Complete Tangwen ".
It can be seen from the edict that Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty requested that starting from Li Bao, the grandson of King Wu Zhao of Liang, the four descendants scattered in Jiangjun, Guzang, Dunhuang, Wuyang and other places should be included in the scope of Zongzheng's management , for compilation.
It can be seen from this that the management of genealogy in the Tang Dynasty was very strict and required the emperor's personal approval.
The emperor's words are golden words. Therefore, no matter where a person with the surname Li is, they cannot casually say that they are the emperor's surname Li. Pretending to be a relative of the emperor is a serious crime of deceiving the emperor and beheading him.
Since the emperor agreed to let Li Bai join the royal family with the surname Li, it means that the emperor has recognized Li Bai's true identity and acknowledged that he is the tenth son of Emperor Taizong Li Shimin and the son of King Ji Li Shen; however, he allowed Li Bai to restore his clan status through Li Yanyun's branch , which means that although the emperor recognized Li Bai's royal status, he could restore Li Bai's true life experience. The reason is very simple:
The old emperor has announced that Li Shen is dead, but now he is still alive. So where is the dignity and respectability of the old emperor? Where is the face of the court?
They have already buried the dead Li Shenshi in Zhaoling, but Li Shen is still alive! Who is the remains buried in Zhaoling? Wouldn't it become the biggest joke among emperors in history?
Where is the dignity of the royal family? Where is the face of the court?
In this case, the only way is to sacrifice Li Bai's true life experience in exchange for the royal family's face. This is the result that everyone would choose.
Since all officials already know that Tang Xuanzong has asked Li Bai to restore the royal clan's surname Li through Li Yanyun, who dares to say that Li Bai is the son of Li Shen, the tenth son of Tang Taizong and King Ji? Although everyone knows that it is indeed true, but so what?
Therefore, although everyone sympathizes with Li Bai's experience, there is nothing they can do. Thinking about it this way, probably all the officials at that time knew Li Bai's true identity, but no one could say it. And this is the real reason why everyone keeps it secret and Li Bai's true identity has never been clarified.
In order to prove that his father is his father and his grandfather is his grandfather, Li Bai waited hard for more than 1,400 years!
is dead! Tang Dynasty.Today, we no longer need to fear the golden words of the Tang Dynasty emperor, nor do we need to worry about being beheaded; nor can we deny the records of the parties based on our own subjective wishes or judgments, and on the grounds of so-called "evidence" that is impossible to find.
Let us return to rationality and use the records of the parties involved and the content clues of the text itself as evidence to give Li Bai a true life experience and give him his real father and grandfather!
