On the significance of imperial examination system to Zhao and Song literati and literature?

Nowadays, people often associate the imperial examination system with rigidity, stereotyped writing and backwardness, and think that the imperial examination system is the main cause of cultural decline. This may be the case in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, but for the Song Dynasty, the imperial examination system was definitely a progressive system. The imperial examination system promoted the development of Zhao and Song literati and the great prosperity and development of Song Wenhua.

(1) The imperial examination system in Song Dynasty was perfect and fair.

Politics in the Tang Dynasty was aristocratic politics in disguise, which was maintained on the premise that aristocratic families used the loopholes in the imperial examination system to control politics and block the channels for scholars from poor families to rise. The "White Horse Disaster" that happened in 905 AD was, to a certain extent, a concentrated outbreak of contradictions between the bottom elite (scholars from poor families) and aristocratic families. And we know that Huang Chao is also a scholar.

Song Taizu was well aware of the disadvantages of the imperial examination system in Tang and Five Dynasties, so his reform of the imperial examination system first strengthened the fairness of selecting candidates, and severely cracked down on and excluded the interference of powerful families in selecting candidates. The Song Dynasty abolished the "public recommendation" and "public volume" of the Tang Dynasty, and implemented the system of "affixing names (titles)" and "copying numbers". In the grading examination, Song Taizu added the palace examination after the provincial examination of the state capital and the provincial examination of the Ministry of Justice. The main purpose is to curb the disadvantages of the powerful children asking for help:

In the past, most surnames were taken by potential scholars, so I tried it myself and tried my best to correct its disadvantages. ("Song Shi chooses me")

If you have children of power, you need to retake the exam. In the Song Dynasty, the scholar was released as an official without the examination of the official department, which was also a measure to eliminate the interference of aristocratic families. After Han Yu graduated from the Tang Dynasty, he tried three times and was not admitted to the official department. He wandered in Beijing for ten years, and some people waited longer. In the Song Dynasty, after graduating from junior college, he was released, that is, he was divorced from his civil service status and was soon directly awarded an official position.

(2) There were a large number of literati in Song Dynasty, and the literati group grew.

Song Taizong's reform of the imperial examination system greatly increased the number of people who took the imperial examination, and made the scholar-officials group large-scale. Song Taizu put forward the idea of reusing civil servants, but in fact, he failed to fully implement this policy, because the main task of his era was to unify the war, and because the country's financial resources were insufficient, it was still necessary to reduce manpower. So there are not many scholars. In terms of quantity, taking Jinshi as an example, during the Taizu period, there were 187 Jinshi in the *** 15 list. According to the average number of scholars in each list, it is not as good as the Tang Dynasty (20).

This number expanded rapidly in the era of Emperor Taizong. When Emperor Taizong was in office, he recruited 1.487 people, with an average of 1.86 people per list. The most frequent is the Chunhua three-year list, and 353 people were rated as Jinshi. Song Taizong described his train of thought:

If I want to ask Toshihiko in the examination room, I must dare to draw five out of ten and stop at one or two, which can also be a cure. ("Song History, Selected Records, Me")

In the Song Dynasty, the trend of recruiting talents and scholars rose on a large scale, and the total number of recruiting talents and scholars at the end of the Song Dynasty was compared with that of the previous dynasty:

In the Song Dynasty, * * * held 1 18 general examinations, and the total number of scholars in literature, martial arts and other subjects reached more than100000, nearly 18 times of the total number in the Tang and Five Dynasties, and 24624 in the Ming Dynasty.

It can be seen that the selection of scholars in the imperial examination in the Song Dynasty was people-oriented and strengthened the strength of the literati group.

(3) "Everything is inferior, but reading is high"-what is really said is the Song Dynasty.

The Song Dynasty also expanded the objects of taking scholars in the imperial examination, with a wide range of objects. Candidates, regardless of family background, property or education, are eligible to take the exam as long as they are not children of urban industry and commerce, monks and Taoists, unfilial and high-ancestors who have committed capital crimes. With a large number of taxi drivers, the channels of social mobility in Song Dynasty were very broad and smooth. Most people with lofty ideals have the opportunity to enter the upper class of society through fair competition. The Song Dynasty paid special attention to procedural fairness, and the imperial examination system compensated the losers through Cohen and special approval, which played a very good role in maintaining social stability.

Under the standardized imperial examination system in Song Dynasty, studying as an official basically became the only way to gain social status and resources. As a result, the social status and prestige of scholars are increasing day by day, and the imperial examination background has become the most striking qualification in society. "Special gift" replaced the title in the past and became a means for the emperor to commend outstanding talents in various fields.

The perfection of the imperial examination system also made the social elites develop the consciousness of competition and equality, which also played a certain role in the development of Song Wenhua. As Mr. Chen Zhihua pointed out:

Scholars in Song Dynasty accepted this kind of open selection concerning their future and destiny in their youth. After entering politics or teaching, you can express your opinions and "arouse different opinions" when you encounter big talk. It is very natural for them to bring the sense of competition and the spirit of equality into academic research.

(4) The reform of imperial examination system in Song Dynasty promoted academic prosperity.

The fierce academic contention in the Song Dynasty was one of the driving forces of Song Wenhua's prosperity. The change of academic thought brought by the development of Song studies also promoted the change of the form and content of imperial examinations. Or take Jinshi as an example. At first, its examination content is:

Every reader tries to write a poem, a poem, a paper, formulate five strategies, post ten posts in The Analects of Confucius and make ten comments in The Spring and Autumn Annals or The Book of Rites. ("Song History, Selected Records, Me")

"Tiejing" and "Mo Yi" are the main contents of examinations in various subjects, which are purely rote learning, similar to cloze or dictation today, and were not taken seriously in the early Song Dynasty. Therefore, Jinshi is characterized by poetry, fu, theory and strategy. In the period of Emperor Taizong, there were three questions about poetry, fu and theory, and in the period of Zhenzong, there was an additional strategy, that is, poetry and fu were first tried, theory was second tried, and strategy was third tried. However, until the time of Zhenzong, poetry and fu played an extremely important role in the admission, because both the interpretation test and the ritual test were eliminated one by one, and the poetry and fu test was the first. Poetry does not pass, and strategists cannot participate.

The reason why the imperial examination took this form in the early Song Dynasty was that the literary atmosphere at that time still followed the Tang and Five Dynasties, and the poems were popular in Kunxi style, while the articles were mainly elegant and elegant, pursuing gorgeous words. It is acceptable to regard it as a reward, but it is not as practical as the strategy and theory of China's ancient literature. However, before the rise of the ancient prose movement, both examiners and students were familiar with this poetic style, so although some ministers advocated re-strategizing, they did not put it into action.

In the third year of Tiansheng (1025), Zhigong ranked Ye as the second champion in that year. In the fifth year of Tiansheng (also known as Liu Yun's official career), it was formally stipulated that the selection criteria of strategy and theory were to change the previous practice of one elimination after three competitions were completed before admission.

Qian, a great parallel prose writer, started the imperial examination reform by winning the leaves with strategy, while Qian supported Ouyang Xiu, Mei and others to launch the ancient prose movement in Luoyang, which shows that the revival of ancient prose is the proposition of people of insight.

In the fourth year of Qing Dynasty (1044), Fan Zhongyan took charge and reformed the imperial examination system again. Fan Zhongyan had long been dissatisfied with Ci Fu and Mo Yi, and thought:

The national design takes scholars by ci fu and philosophers by mo yi. Scholars are generous and inclined to the right path. Although they are rich in Korea, they are all knowledgeable, and the world is in danger and short of people.

"Tiejing" and "Mo Yi" are subjects that students memorize according to the annotations of Han and Tang Dynasties, which is not conducive to talent cultivation. With the participation of Ouyang Xiu and others, the policy formulated is: three tests for scholars, "first policy, later theory, later poetry and fu, taking the test as going, but only sticking to the classics and meaning." Scholars who are righteous and willing to try ten methods "("Selected Records of Song History I "). Get rid of the classics and ink meaning, and let the literati play their meaning.

Righteousness is the examinee's exertion of the meaning of scripture, which is the characteristic of Confucian classics in Song Dynasty. Although this reform ran aground because of the failure of the Qingli New Deal, in the second year of Jiayou (1057), Ouyang Xiu presided over the tribute and launched the spirit of taking scholars in the ancient prose movement, and the style of writing in the Song Dynasty finally improved.

It is worth mentioning that Ouyang Xiu presided over this tribute, which not only admitted Su Shi, Su Zhe and Ceng Gong, among the eight masters of ancient Chinese prose, but also admitted Cheng Hao and Zhang Zai, among the five sons of Neo-Confucianism in the Northern Song Dynasty, and Lv Huiqing and Ceng Bu who participated in Wang Anshi's political reform. It can be described as an historic event.

The third imperial examination reform in Northern Song Dynasty was during Wang Anshi's political reform. This reform abolished all subjects of Ming Classics, and local areas were merged into Jinshi. The meaning of poetry, classics and ink is cancelled, and the theory of strategy is retained, and all tribute students have to test righteousness. This is the peak of the imperial examination reform in the Northern Song Dynasty, so Mr. Chen Zhihua pointed out:

"From the standpoint of Song studies, the former marks the end of article study's rule in the imperial examination field since the Tang Dynasty, while the latter represents the victory of Song studies in the dispute between exegetics and Sinology."

(This article is a question and answer for Zhihu)