Wèishū 魏書
The Book of [Northern] Wèi by 魏收 (Wèi Shōu, 506–572) by imperial commission of Northern Qí Wéndì; Qing collation notes by 孫人龍.
About the work
The tenth of the Twenty-Four Histories, in 114 juǎn of original text — divided in the present 130-juǎn edition into 12 jì, 92 lièzhuàn, and 10 zhì (most subdivided into multiple zǐjuǎn). Covers the Northern Wèi (Tuòbá Wèi) dynasty (386–534) and its Eastern Wèi successor (534–550) down to the founding of the Northern Qí (550). Composed under Northern Qí Wéndì 文宣帝 by Wèi Shōu 魏收 in the Tiānbǎo 天保 era (550–559), with the principal text completed by 554. The work is the first dynastic history of a non-Hàn imperial house written in Hàn historical form, and the only surviving complete first-hand source for the Tuòbá Wèi.
The Wèishū is also the most controversial of the zhèngshǐ on grounds of bias. Its supposed selectivity in praise and blame earned it the contemporary nickname Huì shǐ 穢史 (“the foul history”); two later supersession projects — Wèi Dàn’s 魏澹 Hòu Wèi shū (Suí, 92 juǎn) and Zhāng Tàisù’s 張太素 Hòu Wèi shū (Tang, 100 juǎn) — were undertaken to replace it but neither survived complete. Sòng-period bibliographic confusion between Wèi Shōu, Wèi Dàn, and Lǐ Yánshòu’s Běi shǐ required the careful Northern-Sòng restoration of Liú Shù 劉恕 and Fàn Zǔyǔ 范祖禹, who reconstituted 29 missing chapters from the surviving fragments of Wèi Dàn and from the Běi shǐ.
Tiyao
By Wèi Shōu of the Northern Qí, by imperial commission. Shōu’s submission memorial gives 12 jì and 92 lièzhuàn, totalling 130 juǎn. The present edition is from the Northern-Sòng collation by Liú Shù and Fàn Zǔyǔ. Their preface states that the Suí Wèi Dàn re-compiled the Hòu Wèi shū in 92 juǎn, and the Tang’s Zhāng Tàisù produced a Hòu Wèi shū in 100 juǎn; both are now lost. Wèishǐ now relies solely on Wèi Shōu’s text; missing or incomplete chapters number 29 and are noted at the end of each respective chapter — but they did not specify which book they used to fill the gap.
(The tíyào then enters into long detailed analysis of the Sòng-Northern collation: the Chóngwén zǒngmù says only one juǎn of the Tàizōng jì of Wèi Dàn survived, and two juǎn of zhì by Zhāng Tàisù; Chén Zhènsūn cites the Zhōngxīng shūmù saying Wèi Shōu’s text lost the Tàizōng jì, replaced from Wèi Dàn; the Tiānxiàng zhì in 2 juǎn lost, replaced from Zhāng Tàisù. — Examining the Tàipíng yùlǎn citations of Hòu Wèi shū imperial annals: most are from Wèi Shōu’s text but with phrasing simplified; the Tàizōng jì there matches the present text from start to finish, with only some additional phrases (Yǒngxīng 4, banquet of officials at the Western Palace; Tàicháng 8, building the perimeter of the Western Palace 20 lǐ); the Běi shǐ has these passages but the prose differs entirely from the yùlǎn citations. Either the yùlǎn added them, or the patcher took Wèi Dàn’s text and abridged. The yùlǎn further cites a Hòu Wèi shū differently from Wèi Shōu — including notably Western-Wèi jì (Xiàowǔ, Wéndì, Fèidì, Gōngdì), suggesting it is taking from Wèi Dàn (whose Hòu Wèi shū uniquely treated Western Wèi as the orthodox succession). The patched juǎn 13 Huánghòu zhuàn matches yùlǎn in word but with truncations, ending with the five Western-Wèi consorts — also Wèi Dàn supplement. So Wèi Dàn’s text down to the Northern Sòng was not yet reduced to a single juǎn; the Sòng-era patchers drew on it. Where Wèi Dàn was also missing, they drew on the Běi shǐ — hence the Chóngwén zǒngmù’s remark that “Wèi Dàn’s Wèi shǐ, Lǐ Yánshòu’s Běi shǐ, are mixed with Wèi Shōu’s, the juǎn numbers in great confusion.” The two juǎn of Tiānxiàng zhì are demonstrably Tang work because of Tang taboo on Tàizōng’s name.)
Wèi Shōu’s reputation as the writer of “huì shǐ” 穢史 (“a foul history”) rests on a series of Northern-Qí complaints recorded in his Běi Qí shū biography: that he reduced the record of [Ěrzhū Róng’s] son’s evil because the son had bribed him with gold (— but examining the work, Róng’s atrocities are not concealed; the lùn’s remark “should the moral grace and integrity be cultivated, what need to praise HánPéngYīHuò?” is read as ironic praise; commentators have missed the point); that Yáng Yīn and Gāo Dézhèng’s families’ rise in Northern-Qí circles led him to write favourable biographies for them (— but the lineages Yáng ChūnYáng Jīn and Gāo YǔnGāo Yòu were prominent men of the Wèi era and could not in principle have been omitted). Lǐ Yánshòu’s Běi shǐ, working a generation later from preserved Northern-Qí materials, follows Wèi Shōu’s text closely — would Lǐ Yánshòu also have flattered Yáng Xiūzhī? Further charges — that Lǔ Tóng holding the rank of Yítóng but having his merits unrecorded; that Cuī Chuò who was only a gōngcáo gets the leading biography in his juǎn — also will not stand against detailed examination. Wèi Shōu was personally a man of light and unsteady character — his reputation insufficient to convince the world — and the Wèi and Qí periods being recent, with descendants alive, every family wanted its forefather honoured: dispelled or not, they united in attack. But on a fair reading, no man is a Nánshǐ or a Dǒnghú; we cannot insist his every word is unbiased. Yet examined comparatively against other texts, his record is not seriously divergent from the truth. The “huì shǐ” charge is itself excessive.
(The tíyào concludes with Lǐ Yánshòu’s evaluation, preserved in the Běi shǐ biography of Wèi Shōu: “He compiled the Wèi history, gracefully and with structure, copious yet not weed-grown; his intent was on the shí lù — and surely he had something to show for it.” Wèi Dàn’s text is now lost; Wèi Shōu’s stays in the zhèngshǐ — perhaps because once grudges and grievances run their course, the truth becomes plain. Wèi Shōu’s narrative is rich and detailed; his tiáo lì is not tight, and Wèi Dàn’s xùlì corrects him on many points; the Běi shǐ does not include Wèi Dàn’s text but does preserve his xùlì, in no way concealing Wèi Shōu’s deficiencies — fair judgement.)
Abstract
The Wèishū is the principal source for the Northern Wèi (386–534) — the great non-Hàn dynasty of the Tuòbá 拓跋 clan that unified the north for a century and a half and pursued from Tàihé 18 (494) the celebrated Hànhuà 漢化 (sinicization) policy under Xiàowéndì 孝文帝. Wèi Shōu 魏收 (506–572) was a Northern-Qí Zhōngshū lìng and the Northern Qí court’s leading literary figure. He received imperial commission from Qí Wéndì in 551 and presented the completed work in Tiānbǎo 5 (554).
The work’s principal historiographical innovations are: (1) the integration of the entire Tuòbá pre-imperial period (the Xù jì 序紀 juǎn covering twenty-eight ancestors back to the legendary Chéngdì 成帝) into the dynastic history; (2) the Shìlǎo zhì 釋老志 (juǎn 114 in the original numbering) — the first systematic zhèngshǐ treatise on Buddhism and Daoism, source for Northern-Wèi religious history including the Yúngāng cave-temples and the Sān Wǔ zhī huì 三武之禍 of the Tàiwǔ persecution of 446; (3) the Guānshì zhì 官氏志 — the first zhèngshǐ treatise on the conversion of Tuòbá clan-names to Hàn-style two-character surnames under Xiàowéndì.
The work’s complex transmission: 29 juǎn were lost or damaged by the Northern Sòng. The Sòng editors Liú Shù 劉恕 (1032–1078) and Fàn Zǔyǔ 范祖禹 (1041–1098), working in Jiāyòu 6 (1061), reconstituted them principally from the surviving portions of Wèi Dàn 魏澹’s Hòu Wèi shū (Suí, 92 juǎn) and from Lǐ Yánshòu’s Běi shǐ (KR2a0025), where Wèi Dàn was also missing. Their additions are not separately marked in the present text; the boundaries between original Wèi Shōu, Wèi Dàn supplement, and Běi shǐ supplement remain a matter of philological reconstruction.
The Wèishū takes the Eastern Wèi (Yè 鄴 capital, 534–550, the Tuòbá line continued through Gāo Huān’s 高歡 puppet emperors) as the legitimate succession of the Northern Wèi, treating the rival Western Wèi (Chángān, 535–557, under Yǔwén Tài 宇文泰) as illegitimate. This was the orthodox view at the Northern Qí court (which succeeded the Eastern Wèi) but was reversed by Wèi Dàn under the Suí (whose Yǔwén imperial line had succeeded the Western Wèi via the Northern Zhōu) — the principal reason for Wèi Dàn’s effort to supersede Wèi Shōu.
The Wényuāngé text further carries Qing kǎozhèng by Sūn Rénlóng 孫人龍 (catalog meta gives 48 juǎn of kǎozhèng). The standard modern punctuated edition is the Zhōnghuá Shūjú Wèishū (8 vols., 1974, ed. Tāng Qiúfǔ 唐求父); revised Xiūdìngběn 8 vols., 2017.
Translations and research
No complete translation. Notable partial translations: James R. Ware, “The Wei Shu and the Sui Shu on Taoism,” JAOS 53 (1933): 215–250 — translation of substantial portions of the Shìlǎo zhì on Daoism; Leon Hurvitz, Wei Shou: Treatise on Buddhism and Taoism (Kyoto, 1956) — the standard English translation of the Shìlǎo zhì; Albert E. Dien, Six Dynasties Civilization (Yale, 2007) — uses Wèishū zhì throughout; Scott Pearce, “Northern Wei,” chapter in The Cambridge History of China vol. 2 (CUP, 2019) — substantial use of Wèishū. Standard Chinese-language scholarship: Lǚ Sīmián 呂思勉, Liǎng Jìn NánBěi cháo shǐ (Shanghai Gǔjí, 1948); Tāng Yòngtǒng 湯用彤, HànWèi liǎng Jìn NánBěi cháo Fójiào shǐ (1938) — extensive use of the Shìlǎo zhì; Tián Yúqìng 田餘慶, Tuòbá shǐ tàn 拓跋史探 (Shēnghuó Dúshū Xīnzhī Sānlián, 2003); Mòu Fāsōng 牟發松, Bā shíjì wēishū yánjiū 八世紀魏書研究 (Wǔhàn Dàxué, 2018).
Other points of interest
The Shìlǎo zhì (juǎn 114 of the original; juǎn 114 of present edition) is the foundational document of Chinese historical writing on religion: it gives a continuous narrative of Buddhism’s reception in China from the Eastern Hàn through the Northern Wèi, including the great Tàiwǔ persecution of 446, the recovery and Yúngāng cave-temple project under Tán Yào 曇曜, and the parallel patronage and persecution of Daoism under Kòu Qiānzhī 寇謙之. The Guānshì zhì, by giving a systematic catalogue of Tuòbá clan-name Hàn conversions, is the principal source for the ethnic-political history of the early Tang and Sòng aristocracy, since most of the great Tang and Sòng aristocratic lineages descended from Tuòbá Wèi originals.