Shǐjì yíwèn 史記疑問
Doubts on the Records of the Grand Scribe by 邵泰衢 (Shào Tàiqú, fl. early 18th c.)
About the work
A short work, in 3 juǎn (the Sìkù tíyào and the catalog meta both give “1 juǎn” in their headers but the WYG submission text gives 3), of biànwěi and kǎozhèng notes on internal contradictions, narrative implausibilities, and chronological errors in the Shǐjì (KR2a0001). Originally bound together with the same author’s Tángōng yíwèn 檀弓疑問 KR1d0073 (on the Lǐjì’s Tángōng chapter); the Sìkù editors split the two and placed each under its appropriate division.
Tiyao
By Shào Tàiqú of the present dynasty. Tàiqú is the author of the Tángōng yíwèn etc., already catalogued. The Shǐjì assembled multiple sources to make a single work; its citations are vast, and contradictions could not be entirely avoided. Bān Gù long ago objected to the work’s general orientation, and Liú Zhījī picked at its violations of compositional canon; even the gaps and incoherences in its narrative were repeatedly noted by earlier scholars, but no one had yet written a dedicated work prying out its missteps.
Tàiqú alone draws together divergences and renders judgement on each by reasoning. Examples: he holds the Gāozǔ běnjì’s account of Liú Bāng’s untroubled return to Pèi after releasing the convicts to be implausible; the Liúhóu shìjiā’s account of generals plotting in whispers on the sandbank to be unreliable; the Lǐ Líng zhuàn’s claim that with arrows exhausted Líng’s troops still killed more than ten thousand Xiōngnú to be hyperbole. From the Gōngchén biǎo (which records that Lǚ Zé 呂澤 had died by the ninth year of Hàn) he refutes the Liúhóu shìjiā’s record of Lǚ Zé acting in the eleventh year — Zé could not have been alive. By and large all his arguments cross-check the data and find the gap between two sources, so his conclusions are mostly precise and unmovable, of much help in dispelling the perplexities of Shǐjì readers — quite unlike Wú Zhěn’s 吳縝 critique of the Xīn Tángshū (KR2a0028), which works only at the character-and-phrase level.
This work was originally bound with the Tángōng yíwèn; we have now placed the Tángōng yíwèn under the Jīngbù and this work under the Shǐbù, that each may stand with its proper category.
(Submitted Qiánlóng 46, 1st month, 1781. Chief compilers Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; chief collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
A biànwěi (discrepancy-criticism) tract on the Shǐjì, in 3 juǎn, working chiefly by cross-checking internal contradictions across chapters (biǎo against zhuàn, běnjì against shìjiā) and against received historical reasoning. Composition window: Shào Tàiqú is documented as active in the early-Yōngzhèng to mid-Qiánlóng period (his appointment as Qīntiānjiàn zuǒjiànfù 欽天監左監副 by recommendation falls in the late Kāngxī or early Yōngzhèng era). The completion is best assigned to ca. 1720–1740, well before the work’s submission to the Sìkù in 1781.
The work belongs to the same intellectual lineage as Sīmǎ Zhēn’s Suǒyǐn (KR2a0003) and Wú Rénjié’s Liǎng Hàn kānwù bǔyí (KR2a0011), but is the first Qing-era work to focus specifically on the Shǐjì’s internal narrative inconsistencies (rather than its textual variants or its glossing). It is a direct precursor of the great Qing systematic Shǐjì kǎozhèng monographs: Wāng Yuè’s Dú Shǐjì shí biǎo (KR2a0005), Liáng Yùshèng’s Shǐjì zhìyí 史記志疑 (1787, 36 juǎn), and Qián Dàxīn’s Niàn’èr shǐ kǎoyì 廿二史考異 (1782, 100 juǎn).
The Sìkù editors’ favourable verdict — that Shào works at the level of historical reasoning rather than mere “character-and-phrase” criticism — explicitly contrasts him with Wú Zhěn 吳縝, author of the Xīn Tángshū jiūmiù (KR2a0028) and Wǔdài shǐ zuǎnwù (KR2a0031). The Shǐjì yíwèn thus offers an early-Qing model for the kind of historiographical-judgement work that the great kǎozhèng historians would soon produce on a much larger scale.
Translations and research
No translation. Cited in passing in modern histories of Shǐjì scholarship: Zhāng Dàkě 張大可, Shǐjì wénxiàn yánjiū 史記文獻研究 (Mínzú Chūbǎnshè, 1999); Yáng Yànqǐ 楊燕起, Shǐjì yánjiū zīliào suǒyǐn hé lùnwén zhuānzhù tíyào 史記研究資料索引和論文專著提要 (Lánzhōu Dàxué Chūbǎnshè, 1989). The work has not received a critical modern edition; the WYG text remains the standard.