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Restore the interpretation of history ——Chen Jian's book review of "The Great Tang Mud Plough Prison". Wasby After reading "The Great Tang Mud Plough Prison", my eyes were fixed on that inconspicuous line of text again - this book is based on the tenth episode of "Journey to the West" "Tang Taizong's Underground Mansion Returns the Soul", and after thinking for a while, I named this book review "The Romance of Restoring History". "Tang Mud Plough Prison" is Mr. Chen Yan's first suspense novel with an ancient background, and it is a novel based on the romance of "Journey to the West". As a genre of fiction, "romance" refers to a kind of popular novel that is based on historical biography and artistic processing and performance of wild history. As we all know, "Journey to the West" itself is a romance novel, and there are many fictional elements in it, so will this novel based on the chapters and chapters in it be more illusory? My book review title has given the answer! Reading this book, it is naturally interesting to read it in comparison with the relevant chapters of "Journey to the West". In the tenth episode of "Journey to the West", Tang Taizong's longevity has reached the end of his life and he has fallen into the underworld. Judge Cui Jue tampered with the book of life and death without permission, added 20 years of yang life to Taizong, and sent him back to Yang. Sent directly to the Chaosheng Guidao Gate, Judge Cui said: "Your Majesty to the yang world, don't forget to do a water and land conference, and surpass the ownerless soul." If there is no voice of resentment in the Yin Division, the Yang World will enjoy the celebration of peace. All the bad things can be changed one by one, and the people of the world will be good, and you will be disciplined for a long time, and the country will be forever. ” Everyone knows the later story, and naturally Tang Taizong held a water and land conference and recruited senior monks from all over the country. Among the eminent monks, the Tang monk Chen Xuanzang presided over the teaching of the Hinayana teachings, and the so-called Hinayana teachings of Eastern Buddhism "do not allow the dead to ascend to heaven", and the Daxi Tianzhu Daleiyin Temple has Mahayana Buddhism Sanzang where the Buddha comes, "can solve the knot of a hundred grievances, and can eliminate the disaster of no reason." It can be seen from this that although Tang Seng went to the West to learn scriptures in "Journey to the West" in order to purify all sentient beings, the fundamental purpose is to "follow the work of dogs and horses, seek the true scriptures with His Majesty, and pray for the eternal stability of my king's country." ” However, according to historical records, this is not the case, Xuanzang was not ordered to go to the West to learn scriptures in the thirteenth year of Zhenguan, but secretly set off from Chang'an ten years in advance, the purpose was simply to seek Buddhism and answer questions. "Tang Mud Plough Prison" restores the true appearance of "Tang monks learning scriptures". As a historical suspense novel, the biggest feature of "The Great Tang Dynasty Mud Prison" is that it gives people a strong sense of realism, which comes from the historical facts of the early Tang Dynasty involved in the novel, the Buddhist culture at that time (including the introduction of the Mud Plough Prison), social folklore and other content; On the other hand, the author reasoned and imagined based on these historical materials, and used them to spy on the hidden truths behind history, which may seem illusory, but may be more real and reliable than the history written by the victors as we know it. Therefore, both truth and illusion are the most real, which makes people neither easy to deny nor dare to believe easily, hovering between the confusion of belief and unbelief, giving people more room to think. Taking the fifteenth chapter of "The Great Tang Mud Plough Prison" "This Night, the Soul Enters the Netherworld" as an example, the sense of reality is so strong that the reader, like Tang Taizong, thinks that the mud plough prison (that is, the eighteen layers of hell) in the novel is real. Hell is a religious statement, it is illusory, not objective, but Tang Taizong in the novel was designed, entered the so-called underworld, and really traveled to the underworld, but this underworld is not the real underworld, but artificially created, and after he "returned to the yang", the underworld was destroyed, and he could not find conclusive evidence that it existed, so it gave people the feeling of being both real and illusory, which is also the author's cleverness. In fact, I prefer works with ancient backgrounds to suspenseful mystery novels with modern backgrounds, because the existence of modern criminal investigation technology makes the case solving and mystery solving in the former story more dependent on technology than on people themselves. In ancient times, there was no fingerprint identification and DNA identification, only the post-mortem examination technology was still somewhat technical, and it was not until the appearance of Song Ci's "Collection of Grievances" in the Southern Song Dynasty that the prototype of forensic science theory was formed. Therefore, the judgment of cases in ancient times basically relied on the meticulous observation and superb logical reasoning ability of the person who decided the case. It can be said that suspense mystery novels with ancient backgrounds strip away the elements of technology used to solve cases, and highlight two other important factors, namely characters and stories. Sometimes these characters are real in history, and the story in the novel is simply some unsolved historical mystery or so-called established history. History and suspense reasoning are sometimes inseparable, and even historical novels and suspense mystery novels (and even historical science fiction novels, such as Qian Lifang's "Providence" and "Mandate of Heaven") still have something in common in creation. As Mr. Chen Sun-sin, a Japanese-Chinese writer, pointed out in his article "The Joy of Reasoning": "Isn't the so-called mystery novel a hybrid of historical data and the author's reasoning and fiction? He also said, "Based on historical materials, recombining, taking care of historical materials, and adding the author's reasoning, isn't this the basic way to write historical novels?" ” There may be many answers to unsolved historical mysteries, but what is recorded in the official history may not be true, what is said in the wild history and legends may not be false, and the so-called established history may not be the only correct answer. Therefore, writers are happy to write suspenseful mystery novels about history, especially ancient historical backgrounds. Among these works, the works about the Tang Dynasty can be said to be the most numerous and the most classic, such as: Gao Luopei's "The Case of Di Gong of the Tang Dynasty", Chen Sunchen's "Chang'an Diary: He Wangdong's Detective Collection", Ban Ye Lang's "Chang'an Murder Fu" and so on. And now, I'm going to add a book to this classic book list - "Datang Mud Plough Prison". "Datang Mud Plough Prison" truly restores the turbulent scene of the early Tang Dynasty, emperors, famous monks, talents, and powerful ministers have appeared on the stage, and the century-old Buddha Movement and the Tang Dynasty have been placed at both ends of the scale, which is more important? How should Xuanzang choose? The novel restores romance to "history", allowing us to get a glimpse of the truth of history through the fog of legends. In the early morning of November 23, 2011 Written in Shanghai