夢溪筆談（又選）梦溪笔谈（又选）

Book 18: Arts and Skills#

The method of building houses is called the Timberwork Classic; some say it was written by Yu Hao. A house has three parts: from the beams upward is the upper part, from the ground upward the middle part, and the steps are the lower part. However long the beam is, the ridge-post is matched to it, and so the rafters are graded: if the beam is eight feet long and the ridge-post three feet five inches, that is the rule for a hall. This is called the upper part. However many feet the pillars are, the platform of the hall is matched to them, and so the rafters are graded: if the pillars are eleven feet, the platform is four feet five inches, and so on. Everything down to the brackets, round rafters and square rafters has its fixed rule; this is called the middle part. Steps are of three grades, steep, level and gentle, and in the palace the imperial litter is the standard. Going up from below, when the front bearers have their arms hanging fully down and the rear bearers have their arms stretched fully up, that is a steep path; when the front bearers hold their poles at the elbow and the rear bearers at the shoulder, that is a gentle path; when the front bearers hold them with hands hanging and the rear bearers at the shoulder, that is a level path. This is called the lower part. The book is in three chapters. In recent years carpentry has grown stricter and finer, and the old Timberwork Classic is mostly not used; but no one has written it again, and that too would be work for a good craftsman.

When the Qian family held the two Zhe, they built a wooden pagoda at the Fantian temple in Hangzhou. When it was two or three storeys high, Lord Qian climbed it and was troubled that the pagoda moved. The master builder said: “The tiles are not on yet; the top is light, and that is why.” So they laid the tiles, and it moved as before. At his wits’ end, he secretly sent his wife to see the wife of Yu Hao, bribed her with a golden hairpin, and asked why the pagoda moved. Hao laughed and said: “That is easy. Just lay the floorboards storey by storey and nail them down hard, and it will not move.” The builder did as he said, and the pagoda stood firm. For the boards nailed above and below bind the whole together, and the six faces are joined like a closed box. When people walk on the boards, the six faces hold one another, and of course it cannot move. Everyone admired his expertise.

Book 20: Wonders#

In the first year of Zhiping, at Changzhou, in the hour before noon, there was a great noise in the sky like thunder: it was a great star, almost as big as the moon, which appeared in the south-east. A little later there was another clap, and it moved to the south-west. With one more clap it fell in the garden of a commoner named Xu in Yixing county. People far and near all saw it; its fire lit up the sky, and the Xu family’s fences were all burnt. When the fire had died down, there was a hole in the ground the size of a cup, very deep. Looking down, they saw the star inside it, glowing. After a long time it slowly grew dark, but it was still too hot to go near. After a longer time they dug out the hole, and at a depth of more than three feet found a round stone, still hot, the size of a fist, one end slightly pointed, the colour of iron and about as heavy. The prefect, Zheng Shen, took it and sent it to the Jinshan temple at Runzhou, where it is still kept in a box and shown to visitors when they come. Wang Wujiu wrote a detailed account of it.

The house of the palace eunuch Li Shunju was once struck by violent thunder. In the west room of the hall, lightning fire came out through the windows and blazed out from the eaves, so that people thought the hall had caught fire and all ran out to escape. When the thunder stopped, the building stood as before, though the walls and the window paper were all blackened. In a wooden cabinet a number of vessels were stored together; the silver of the silver-rimmed lacquerware had all melted and run down to the floor, yet the lacquer was not even scorched. A precious sword of very hard steel had melted to liquid inside its scabbard, and the scabbard was still whole. People will say that fire must burn grass and wood first and only then melt metal and stone; but here the metal and stone had all melted and not one thing of grass or wood was damaged. This is beyond what human feeling can fathom. The Buddhist books say: “Dragon fire blazes when it meets water; human fire is put out by water.” That principle is true indeed. People know only the affairs of the human realm; beyond the human realm, what limit can there be to what happens? To try to fathom the ultimate principle with our petty worldly wisdom and feeling: is that not hard?

Book 21: Strange Happenings#

In recent years, at the Yongning pass in Yanzhou, a bank of the great river fell in, and some tens of feet underground a grove of bamboo shoots was found, several hundred stalks, roots and stems joined together, all turned to stone. A palace envoy happened to pass and took several stalks away, saying he meant to present them at court. Yan prefecture has never had bamboo; these were tens of feet under the earth, and no one knows from what age. Could it be that in a remote antiquity the ground lay low and the air was damp and suited to bamboo? At Mount Jinhua in Wuzhou there are pines turned to stone, and things like walnuts, reed roots, snakes and crabs have all been found turned to stone; but all of those are things the place has always had, and they are not much to wonder at. These, though, are things not found deep in the ground, nor native to the region, and that is what makes them strange.