Hòu Hànshū 後漢書
The Book of the Later Han by 范曄 (Fàn Yè, 398–445), with the eight zhì by 司馬彪 (Sīmǎ Biāo, ?–306) (= Xù Hàn shū 續漢書 of the Western Jìn); commentary on the jì and zhuàn by Tang Crown Prince 李賢 (Lǐ Xián, 654–684); commentary on the zhì by 劉昭 (Liú Zhāo, fl. early 6th c.); Qing collation notes (kǎozhèng) by 陳浩 (Chén Hào, 1696–1771).
About the work
The third of the Twenty-Four Histories, in 120 juǎn (10 běnjì + 80 lièzhuàn by Fàn Yè + 30 zhì by Sīmǎ Biāo), covering the Eastern Hàn dynasty from Guāngwǔdì 光武帝’s restoration in 25 CE to the abdication of Hàn Xiàndì 漢獻帝 in 220. Composite authorship: Fàn Yè 范曄 of the LiúSòng compiled the jì and zhuàn in 432–445, drawing on the dozens of earlier Eastern-Hàn-period histories (Liú Zhēn 劉珍, Cài Yōng 蔡邕, Xiè Chéng 謝承, Xuē Yíng 薛瑩, Sīmǎ Biāo 司馬彪, Huà Jiào 華嶠, Xiè Shěn 謝沈, Yuán Hóng 袁宏, etc., known collectively as the “Twelve Eastern-Hàn Histories”); the zhì are taken bodily from Sīmǎ Biāo’s earlier Xù Hàn shū 續漢書 (8 treatises in 30 juǎn), since Fàn Yè had assigned the zhì to Xiè Zhān 謝瞻 but never received the manuscript before his execution. The eight zhì with Liú Zhāo’s 劉昭 sub-commentary were attached to the Fàn Yè text by imperial commission of the Northern Sòng Chóngxūn era (1024) on the proposal of Sūn Shì 孫奭. Lǐ Xián’s commentary on the jì and zhuàn (presented in 676) is the standard reading apparatus.
Tiyao
The Hòu Hànshū — běnjì in 10 juǎn, lièzhuàn in 80 — was compiled by Fàn Wèizōng 范蔚宗 of the Sòng, with notes by the Tang Crown Prince Zhānghuái 章懷太子 [Lǐ] Xián. Wèizōng’s particulars are in his Sòngshū biography; Xián’s in his Tángshū biography. The Suí zhì lists the work in 97 juǎn, the new and old Tángshū zhì in 92, the Sòng zhì in 90 (matching the present text). The text has come down through the ages without loss. The Jiù Tángshū zhì further records “Crown Prince Zhānghuái’s commentary on the Hòu Hànshū, 100 juǎn”; the present text is in 90 juǎn, with ten of those subdivided into zǐjuǎn. So at the time the Crown Prince’s commentary was made, the work was first consolidated into 90 juǎn to make a round number; the Tángshū counts the zǐjuǎn as 100, while the Sòng lumps the zǐjuǎn back as 90 — the same text in either case.
The Suí and Táng zhì both also list separately Wèizōng’s Hòu Hànshū lùnzàn in 5 juǎn; only the Sòng zhì drops it. We may suspect that the lùnzàn circulated separately before the Tang and were redistributed into the body of the work by Sòng hands. Yet the Shǐtōng 史通, Lùnzàn chapter, says: “After Sīmǎ Qiān’s Zì xù, he wrote each chapter again with a zàn of its essence; Bān Gù changed this into a verse form and called it shù; Wèizōng changed Gù’s shù-name and called it zàn. Gù’s general shù are gathered into one chapter so that the threads run in order; Wèizōng’s, however, are attached chapter by chapter at the end of each, with the chapter-headings broken from them — disjointed and out of sequence. To insist on a lùn per chapter is itself excessive; to follow the lùn with a zàn compounds the trespass — like a literato writing a tomb-inscription that closes its preface with a míng, or a Buddhist preacher concluding the dharma with a gāthā.” This indicates that Tang readers already had Fàn’s lùnzàn attached at the end of each chapter, just as today. The separate listing in the zhì of the dynastic histories must therefore reflect bibliographic, not textual, separation.
When Fàn compiled the work, he assigned the zhì to Xiè Zhān 謝瞻; after Fàn’s downfall and execution, Zhān bound the zhì in wax-paper to cover his cart, and they were thereafter lost. The present text’s eight zhì in 30 juǎn bear the heading “the Liáng-era Yǎn 剡 magistrate Liú Zhāo, zhù” 注. According to Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí, in the early Qiánxīng of the Northern Sòng (1022), the proposal of Sūn Shì 孫奭, Director of the Imperial Academy, brought about the collation of Liú Zhāo’s annotated edition of Sīmǎ Biāo’s Xù Hàn shū zhì with Fàn Yè’s text into a single edition. The Suí zhì lists Sīmǎ Biāo’s Xù Hàn shū in 83 juǎn (so too the Tángshū); the Sòng zhì records only Liú Zhāo’s Hòu Hàn zhì annotation in 30 juǎn, dropping Biāo’s text entirely — by Sòng times only the zhì survived from Biāo’s work, and this was used to fill the gap in Fàn’s Hòu Hànshū. The Sòng heading shifts from “Xù Hàn zhì” to “Hòu Hàn zhì”, marking the absorption.
Some claim that Lì Dàoyuán’s 酈道元 Shuǐjīng zhù already cites Sīmǎ Biāo’s Zhōu jūn zhì (suggesting earlier separate circulation), and that Dù Yòu’s 杜佑 Tōngdiǎn cites the Hòu Hànshū and Xù Hàn zhì together as a class — suggesting their merger predated the Sòng — but this seems unproven. Following the merger, all citations were given as “the Hòu Hànshū such-and-such zhì”, and Confucian scholars have often forgotten that these are Sīmǎ Biāo’s. So Hé Zhuō’s Yìmén dúshū jì says: “The eight zhì are the work of Sīmǎ Shàotǒng (= zì of [Sīmǎ] Biāo), based on the transmission of the late-Hàn classicists and presented in the early Jìn; Liú Zhāo’s zhùbǔ has its own general preface, but in some editions Liú’s preface is missing, and so [the Qing scholar] Sūn Chéngzé in his Téngyīn zhájì mistakenly attributed the wording of the Lǚlì zhì preface to Wèizōng.” Hóng Mài’s Róngzhāi suíbǐ already misascribed the eight zhì to Fàn — so the error did not begin with Sūn. We here mark all 30 juǎn of zhì with Sīmǎ Biāo’s name, to dispel the long-standing confusion.
(Submission date and chief compilers as for the other zhèngshǐ.)
Abstract
The Hòu Hànshū is the third of the Twenty-Four Histories. Its principal author Fàn Yè 范曄 (398–445), of the Shùnyáng 順陽 Fàn family, served the LiúSòng court, was implicated in the Yuánjiā 元嘉 22 (445) rebellion of Liú Yìkāng 劉義康, and was executed at age 48 with the zhì still unwritten. Among the dozen-plus competing Eastern Hàn histories of the Wèi–Jìn–Six-Dynasties era, Fàn Yè’s became canonical because of its superior literary style, its judicious selection from prior sources, and its distinctive original prose for the lùn (essay) and zàn (versified appraisal) at the end of each chapter — the latter sometimes regarded as one of the masterpieces of Six-Dynasties parallel prose.
The composition history is unusual. Fàn Yè had assigned the zhì to his fellow-conspirator Xiè Zhān 謝瞻; after Fàn’s execution, Xiè destroyed the manuscripts to evade detection (the tíyào preserves the picturesque story that he wrapped them in wax-paper to weatherproof his cart). For nearly six centuries the Hòu Hànshū circulated without zhì. The lacuna was filled in 1022 (Northern Sòng Qiánxīng 1) by the Imperial Academy proposal of Sūn Shì 孫奭, who supplied them from the only surviving fragment of Sīmǎ Biāo’s 司馬彪 (?–306) Xù Hàn shū 續漢書 — itself originally in 83 juǎn, of which by the Sòng only the 8 zhì in 30 juǎn remained. These came with the early-Liáng commentary of Liú Zhāo 劉昭 (fl. ca. 510), and were attached without alteration. The eight zhì are: Lǜlì zhì 律曆志 (3 j.), Lǐ yí zhì 禮儀志 (3 j.), Jì sì zhì 祭祀志 (3 j.), Tiānwén zhì 天文志 (3 j.), Wǔxíng zhì 五行志 (6 j.), Jùn guó zhì 郡國志 (5 j.), Bǎi guān zhì 百官志 (5 j.), Yú fú zhì 輿服志 (2 j.).
The standard reading commentary on the jì and zhuàn is by the Tang Crown Prince Lǐ Xián 李賢 (the Zhānghuái 章懷 Crown Prince, 654–684), son of Tang Gāozōng and Wǔ Zétiān. Lǐ Xián commissioned a team of Hànlín scholars (Zhāng Dà’ān 張大安, Liú Nàyán 劉訥言 etc.) to compile the commentary, which was presented in Yífèng 1 (676) and closely follows the methods of Yán Shīgǔ on the Hànshū (KR2a0007). Lǐ Xián was demoted, exiled, and forced to suicide by his mother in 684; the commentary outlived the political eclipse of its compiler.
The Wényuāngé text further carries Qing kǎozhèng by Chén Hào 陳浩 (1696–1771); the catalog meta gives 42 juǎn of kǎozhèng. The standard modern punctuated edition is the Zhōnghuá Shūjú Hòu Hànshū (12 vols., 1965, ed. Sòng Yúnbīn 宋雲彬 et al.; revised Xiūdìngběn 12 vols., 2025 forthcoming).
Translations and research
The principal partial English translations: Hans Bielenstein, The Restoration of the Han Dynasty, 4 vols. (BMFEA 26, 31, 39, 51, 1954–79) — the early běnjì and substantial portions of the zhuàn on the restoration; Bielenstein, The Bureaucracy of Han Times (Cambridge, 1980) — based on the Bǎi guān zhì; B. J. Mansvelt-Beck, The Treatises of Later Han: Their Author, Sources, Contents and Place in Chinese Historiography (Brill, 1990) — full study and partial translation of the eight zhì; John E. Hill, Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Routes during the Later Han Dynasty 1st to 2nd centuries CE (BookSurge, 2009) — the Xīyù chapter (juǎn 88); Rafe de Crespigny, To Establish Peace, Being the Chronicle of the Later Han for the Years 189 to 220 AD as recorded in Chapters 59 to 69 of the Zizhi tongjian of Sima Guang, 2 vols. (Australian National University, 1996); Burton Watson, Ban Gu and Hou Han Shu: The Restoration of the Han Dynasty (1986), partial. Major monographs: Cyrille Javary, La Bibliothèque de Pékin et le Livre des Han postérieurs (1995); Wáng Mínshèng 王鳴盛, Shíqī shǐ shāngquè 十七史商榷 (1787) — extensive kǎozhèng on the Hòu Hànshū; Zhōu Tiānyóu 周天遊, Bā jiā Hòu Hànshū jí zhù 八家後漢書輯注 (Tianjin, 1986) — reconstruction of the lost competitor histories; Wáng Xiānqiān 王先謙, Hòu Hànshū jí jiě 後漢書集解 (1915) — the standard premodern collation. The Zhōnghuá Shūjú 1965 edition has been the working scholarly text since publication.
Other points of interest
Fàn Yè’s zàn are among the most celebrated parallel-prose passages of the Six Dynasties; Xiāo Tǒng 蕭統 included several of them in the Wén xuǎn. The structural anomaly of having one author’s zhì (Sīmǎ Biāo) attached to a different author’s jì and zhuàn (Fàn Yè) is a unique feature of the Hòu Hànshū and was the source of considerable Sòng-era confusion (see the tíyào’s detailed correction). The Yìwén lèijù, the Tàipíng yùlǎn, and other early lèishū preserve substantial fragments of the lost competitor Eastern-Hàn histories, partially recovered by Zhōu Tiānyóu’s 1986 Bā jiā Hòu Hànshū jí zhù.