Dú Shǐjì shí biǎo 讀史記十表
Reading the Ten Tables of the Records of the Grand Scribe by 汪越 (Wāng Yuè, jǔrén 1705) with supplements by 徐克范 (Xú Kèfàn)
About the work
A specialised study, in 10 juǎn, of the ten chronological tables (biǎo 表) of the Shǐjì (KR2a0001) — the Sāndài shìbiǎo 三代世表 through the Hàn xīng yǐlái jiāngxiàng míngchén niánbiǎo 漢興以來將相名臣年表 — addressing the textual difficulties, scribal errors, and kǎozhèng problems of the tables in detail. The first systematic monograph specifically on the Shǐjì biǎo. Composed by Wāng Yuè in the early Kāngxī era and supplemented by his fellow-villager Xú Kèfàn during Wāng’s lifetime — an unusual circumstance, since most such accretions are posthumous.
Tiyao
By Wāng Yuè of the present dynasty, supplemented by Xú Kèfàn. Yuè, zì Shītuì 師退, jǔrén of Kāngxī yǐyǒu (1705); Kèfàn, zì Yáomín 堯民, both natives of Nánlíng 南陵 (the WYG text reads 南陽, evidently a typographical slip). The work has a hòujì 後記 recording that, when Yuè had completed it, he sent it to Kèfàn with a letter saying: “I have a Reading the Ten Tables of the Shǐjì; I had asked friends everywhere to weigh in, but not one of them was willing to verify it against Sīmǎ Qiān’s original tables from start to finish, against my conclusions — I cannot fathom why. I beg you to examine it minutely, point out errors and lacunae, that I may emend it; and if you have supplements to make on points of meaning, write them in too — eventually I will have it cut for printing.” Antiquity has many supplementations of earlier works, but they are usually after the original author’s death; this one alone is supplemented contemporaneously and through consultation, so the collation is unusually careful and the work is genuinely useful for those reading the Shǐjì.
The hardest task in historiography is the tables and treatises. The text of the tables runs warp and woof together, broken in places, joined in others, capable of being studied but not of being read aloud — and so students rarely look at them. Liú Zhījī’s 劉知幾 examination of the proper canons of the zhèngshǐ genre is the most exhaustive, and yet even he advanced an argument for abolishing tables. The rest may be inferred. Wāng Yuè and his colleague alone arranged the old text and probed its hidden meaning. Though their characteristic stroke-by-stroke method, working in the Chūnqiū exegetical manner, sometimes overreaches, their corrections of error and patching of lacunae are extensive. Their entries marked cún yí 存疑 (preserved as doubtful) likewise correct contradictions in the Shǐjì; this is far more useful than the kind of work that hugs a single text and defends it down to the last hair.
(Submitted Qiánlóng 46, 12th month, 1781. Chief compilers Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; chief collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
The work is one of the first major Qing kǎozhèng-era monographs on the Shǐjì biǎo. It treats each of the ten tables in sequence (one juǎn per table): Sāndài shìbiǎo 三代世表, Shí’èr zhūhóu niánbiǎo 十二諸侯年表, Liùguó niánbiǎo 六國年表, Qín Chǔ zhī jì yuèbiǎo 秦楚之際月表, Hàn xīng yǐlái zhūhóu niánbiǎo 漢興以來諸侯年表, Gāozǔ gōngchén hóu zhě niánbiǎo 高祖功臣侯者年表, HuìJǐng jiān hóu zhě niánbiǎo 惠景間侯者年表, Jiànyuán yǐlái hóu zhě niánbiǎo 建元以來侯者年表, Wángzǐ hóu zhě niánbiǎo 王子侯者年表, Hàn xīng yǐlái jiāngxiàng míngchén niánbiǎo 漢興以來將相名臣年表. Each juǎn opens with the relevant section of Sīmǎ Qiān’s zìxù 自序, followed by the table and explanatory headings, then by Wāng’s commentary points (àn 案 entries) and Xú Kèfàn’s bǔ 補 notes. The general introduction (zǒnglùn 總論) reprints with annotation the prefatory remarks of Sīmǎ Qiān’s Tàishǐ gōng zì xù on the purpose of each of the ten tables.
The tradition of the Shǐjì biǎo had been a particularly difficult corner of the Shǐjì tradition; Liú Zhījī 劉知幾 (661–721) had argued for abolishing tables altogether (Shǐtōng 史通, Biǎolì 表歷). Wāng Yuè’s project, building on the Late Ming commentaries of Líng Zhìlóng 凌稚隆 (Shǐjì pínglín 史記評林) and on Qing kǎozhèng practice, treats the tables as a serious philological-historiographical genre and is the principal predecessor of the great Qing studies — Liáng Yùshèng 梁玉繩, Shǐjì zhìyí 史記志疑 (1787), and Qián Dàxīn 錢大昕, Niàn’èr shǐ kǎoyì 廿二史考異, juǎn 1–2.
The Sìkù dating year is 1705 (the year of Wāng’s jǔrén); the catalog meta gives this as the work’s date. The completion is best assigned to the late Kāngxī era (1705–1715, after the jǔrén and probably before Xú’s death). Both compilers were natives of Nánlíng 南陵 (in modern Anhuī, then under Tàipíngfǔ 太平府).
Translations and research
No translation. The work is one of the standard secondary sources cited in Michael Loewe’s “The tables of the Shiji and the Han-shu” (in his The Men Who Governed Han China, Brill, 2004, 208–78); also surveyed in Michael Nylan, “Mapping time in the Shiji and Hanshu tables,” EASTM 43 (2016): 61–122; and in Michael Nylan and Mark Csikszentmihalyi, eds., Technical Arts in the Han Histories (SUNYP, 2021). The Zhōnghuá Shūjú 1981 punctuated edition (in 2 vols., paired with Liáng Yùshèng’s Shǐjì zhìyí) is the standard modern text.