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三國志

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Text ID
KR2a0012
Date
280–297
Dynasty
晉

Sānguó zhì 三國志

Records of the Three Kingdoms by 陳壽 (Chén Shòu, 233–297), with the great commentary (zhù 注) of 裴松之 (Péi Sōngzhī, 372–451); Qing collation notes by 李龍官 (Lǐ Lóngguān).

About the work

The fourth of the Twenty-Four Histories, in 65 juǎn (Wèi 30, Shǔ 15, Wú 20). Composed by Chén Shòu of the Western Jìn after the conquest of Wú in 280, complete by his death in 297. Treats the period 220–280 (with extensive retrojection into the late Eastern Hàn for the foundation narratives of all three kingdoms). The Wèizhōu line is treated as the legitimate one — Chén was a Jìn official, the Jìn took the throne by Wèi succession — but the Shǔ and Wú are given parallel structural treatment without subordination. The work has only jì and zhuàn: no biǎo and no zhì. The Wèizhì běnjì begin with Cáo Cāo 曹操 (rather than Cáo Pī’s formal accession), modelled on Sīmǎ Qiān’s Qín běnjì and Xiàng Yǔ běnjì.

The defining feature of the Sānguó zhì tradition is Péi Sōngzhī’s commentary, presented to Sòng Wéndì in Yuánjiā 6 (429). Péi’s zhù is unique among the zhèngshǐ commentaries in being not principally textual or geographical but historiographical-supplementary: he quotes 200+ earlier works (most now lost) verbatim to (1) supply variant accounts, (2) supplement omitted material, (3) reconcile contradictions, and (4) record alternative judgements. Péi’s commentary is roughly the same length as Chén’s text and is the single most important source for fourth-century-and-earlier historiography of the Three Kingdoms; it preserves substantial fragments of Wéi Zhāo 韋昭’s Wú shū, Wáng Chén 王沈’s Wèi shū, Yú Pǔ 虞溥’s Jiāngbiǎo zhuàn, Sūn Shèng 孫盛’s Wèishì chūnqiū, Yú Huán 魚豢’s Wèi lüè, etc.

Tiyao

By Chén Shòu of the Jìn, with notes by Péi Sōngzhī of the Sòng. Shòu’s particulars are in his Jìnshū biography; Sōngzhī’s in his Sòngshū biography. The work consists of Wèi zhì in 30 juǎn, Shǔ zhì in 15, Wú zhì in 20. It treats Wèi as the legitimate succession; only with Xí Záochǐ’s 習鑿齒 Hàn Jìn chūnqiū did the alternative view, treating Shǔ as the legitimate, first arise. From Zhū Xī down, no one has agreed with Chén Shòu against Xí Záochǐ.

But examined by reasoning, Shòu’s error is unanswerable; examined by political circumstance, Xí Záochǐ’s making Hàn the imperial line was easy and natural — for in Záochǐ’s day the Jìn had crossed the Yangtze and its situation resembled that of Shǔ; to fight for the legitimate succession of a partial polity is congenial to one’s own age. Chén Shòu, by contrast, was personally an official of Jìn Wǔdì; Jìn Wǔdì had succeeded by Wèi succession; to make Wèi spurious was to make Jìn spurious. Could that have been published in Chén’s own day? — Just as the Sòng founder rose to power in a way close to Cáo Wèi (and the Northern Hàn and Southern Tang resembled Shǔ), so Northern Sòng Confucians all avoided the issue and did not call Wèi spurious; but after Gāozōng, in the partial peace of the south-east, with Shǔ-like geography while the central plain (i.e. Wèi territory) had passed entirely to the Jīn, Southern Sòng Confucians began to rise in numbers to “make Shǔ imperial”. All this must be judged in its context; one cannot apply a single yardstick.

(The tíyào then notes a structural defect: Chén modelled his “Wèi” běnjì on Sīmǎ Qiān’s Qín běnjì, opening with Cáo Cāo rather than Cáo Pī’s formal accession — less elegant than the Wèi shū of Wáng Chén, which opens correctly with Cáo Pī. The tíyào then turns to Péi Sōngzhī’s commentary, presented in the Yuánjiā era, identifies its six functions — citation of opinions to weigh judgements; collation of accounts to detect divergences; supplementation of detail in extant biographies; supply of biographies omitted; supply of biographical detail for persons mentioned but not separately treated; subjoining of related figures by category. The tíyào notes the fault of “loving the strange and the broad” — over a dozen places where the commentary recounts ghost-and-supernatural anecdotes (e.g. on Húmǔ Bān 胡母班 in the Yuán Shào biography; on Zhōng Yáo 鍾繇 with the female ghost in the Lùshì yìlín; on Jiǎng Jì 蔣濟’s son becoming a Tàishān underling in the Lièyì zhuàn) — all “harmful to the canons of historiography”. Péi’s original intention seems to have been an Yīng Shào-style Hàn shū-type philological commentary (the tíyào enumerates a string of yīnzì, gùshí, and jīngshǐ citations in the early juan), but he did not carry it through evenly — hence the unevenness of “with or without, full or scant”. Yet the work’s net contribution to the recovery of Six-Dynasties bibliography is unmatched: many works no longer transmitted survive in head-to-tail extracts in Péi’s notes, unlike the partial extracts in Lì Dàoyuán’s Shuǐjīng zhù or Lǐ Shàn’s Wén xuǎn zhù. Hence kǎozhèng-school scholars draw inexhaustibly from Péi, and citations of Péi exceed citations of Chén himself.)

Abstract

The Sānguó zhì is the fourth of the Twenty-Four Histories and the only one composed by an author who lived through the period it describes. Chén Shòu (233–297), a former minor official of ShǔHàn under the regime that he himself documents, joined the Jìn court after the conquest of Shǔ in 263 and the founding of the Western Jìn in 265; he served as Zhùzuò láng 著作郎 (Drafter) and Zhì shū jiàn 治書監 in the imperial archive, and on the strength of his earlier Yìbù qíjiù zhuàn 益部耆舊傳 and the access this gave him to ShǔHàn court records, undertook the Sānguó zhì after the conquest of Wú in 280. The work was complete and circulating by his death in 297; Cháng Pú 常璞’s Huá yáng guó zhì and Xí Záochǐ’s Hàn Jìn chūnqiū were later supplements/competitors.

The text-as-we-have-it is inseparable from Péi Sōngzhī’s 裴松之 (372–451) commentary, presented to the LiúSòng emperor Wéndì 文帝 on 1 August Yuánjiā 6 (429). Péi’s preface declares his sixfold method (the tíyào paraphrases): supplement omitted material, supply missing biographies, expand thinly-documented careers, collate variants, weigh divergent judgements, and add cross-references. Péi quotes by name from over 200 earlier works, the great majority of them Han-Wei-Jin histories now lost — the principal source for fourth-century-and-earlier Three Kingdoms historiography is therefore his commentary, not Chén’s bare text. His commentary is approximately equal in length to the main text.

The “Wèi zhèngtǒng” 魏正統 question — whether the legitimate Han succession passes through Cáo Wèi (Chén Shòu) or through Liú Bèi’s ShǔHàn (Xí Záochǐ; Sòng Zhū Xī’s Tōngjiàn gāngmù) — is the great pre-modern controversy of the Sānguó zhì. The Sìkù compilers offer one of the more sophisticated pre-modern treatments of it (translated above): both Chén and Xí are reflecting the political circumstances of their respective centuries.

The Wényuāngé text further carries Qing kǎozhèng by Lǐ Lóngguān 李龍官, with extent indicated as ”# juǎn” in the catalog meta. The standard modern punctuated edition is the Zhōnghuá Shūjú Sānguó zhì (5 vols., 1959, ed. Chén Nǎiqián 陳乃乾; revised Xiūdìngběn, 5 vols., 2024).

Translations and research

The principal partial translations: Achilles Fang, The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms (220–265): Chapters 69–78 from the Tzŭ Chih T’ung Chien, 2 vols. (Harvard, 1952–65) — drawn principally from Sīmǎ Guāng’s Zīzhì tōngjiàn, but extensively from the Sānguó zhì; Rafe de Crespigny, The Last of the Han, Being the Chronicle of the Years 181–220 AD as Recorded in Chapters 58–68 of the Zizhi tongjian of Sima Guang (Australian National University, 1969); de Crespigny, To Establish Peace, 2 vols. (1996), continuation; de Crespigny, Generals of the South: The Foundation and Early History of the Three Kingdoms State of Wu (Australian National University, 1990); Yang Zhouhan, “The Three Kingdoms” entry in EarlyMedievalChineseTexts: A Bibliographical Guide (ed. Chennault et al., IEAS Berkeley, 2015), surveying scholarly translations of individual biographies. No complete translation. Major Chinese-language scholarship: Lú Bì 盧弼, Sānguó zhì jí jiě 三國志集解 (1936) — the standard premodern collation; Wú Jīnhuá 吳金華, Sānguó zhì jiào gǎo 三國志校詁 (1990); Yáng Yìxiāng 楊翼驤, Sānguó zhì rénmíng suǒyǐn 三國志人名索引 (Zhōnghuá, 1980); Hé Zhuō 何焯, Yìmén dúshū jì 義門讀書記 (Qing) — extensive kǎozhèng. On Péi Sōngzhī specifically: Zhāng Zǐxiá 張子俠, Péi Sōngzhī Sānguó zhì zhù yánjiū 裴松之三國志注研究 (Tianjin, 2009).

Other points of interest

The Sānguó zhì is also the seed-text for the great Yuán-Ming vernacular novel Sānguó zhì yǎnyì 三國志演義 — though the novel works largely from later popular elaborations, many of its core characterisations descend through the chain Chén Shòu → Péi Sōngzhī → Sòng huàběn → Luó Guànzhōng. The Péi commentary’s preservation of the Wèi lüè of Yú Huán 魚豢, especially its accounts of the Western Regions and of Roman-era Mediterranean trade, is the single most important pre-Tang Chinese source for early connections between China and the western Eurasian world.

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