Běi Qí shū 北齊書
The Book of Northern Qí by 李百藥 (Lǐ Bǎiyào, 565–648), continuing the unfinished work of his father 李德林 (Lǐ Délín, 532–592). Qing collation notes by 姚範 (Yáo Fàn, 1702–1771) and 朱荃 (Zhū Quán).
About the work
The eleventh of the Twenty-Four Histories, in 50 juǎn (8 jì, 42 lièzhuàn; no zhì), covering the Northern Qí dynasty (550–577) and its predecessor the Eastern Wèi (534–550). Begun by Lǐ Délín under the Northern Qí court (where he held Zhōngshū lìng) and continued by him under the Suí; presented to the Tang court by his son Lǐ Bǎiyào in Zhēnguān 10 (636), as one of the Wǔdài shǐ commissioned in Zhēnguān 3 (629). The text is heavily damaged in transmission: of the present 50 juǎn, very many are demonstrably patches taken from Lǐ Yánshòu’s Běi shǐ (KR2a0025) — only the jì and a minority of the zhuàn are Lǐ Bǎiyào’s original prose.
Tiyao
By Lǐ Bǎiyào, by imperial commission of the Táng — continuing the work of his father Délín. Modelled broadly on the Hòu Hànshū, with lùnzàn attached at the end of each juǎn. From the Northern Sòng on, the work has progressively scattered and been lost. Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì already calls it incomplete. The present text is patched from the Běi shǐ — it is not the old form. Examining the work: in the jì, the Wéndì jì (Gāo Yáng’s father, posthumously emperor) is jumbled and miscellaneous; the Wénxuān jì and Xiàozhāo jì repeat themselves in the lùn. In the lièzhuàn, juǎn 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 26, 27, 29 through 40, all lack lùnzàn; juǎn 28 has zàn but no lùn; juǎn 12, 46, 47, 48, 49 have lùn but no zàn. Liú Zhījī’s Shǐtōng cites Lǐ Bǎiyào’s Qí shū on Wèi Shōu, including the lines: “If their descendants have spirits, I fear they would not yet receive these lofty discussions”; and “this suffices to enter Sīmǎ Xiāngrú’s chamber and traverse Confucius’s gate; the intent is on real record, deflating private wickedness” — neither line now appears in the present Wèi Shōu biography. These are simply oversights in the patching. Items like the Kùdí Gàn biography reaching into his son Shìwén, or the Yuán Bīn biography mentioning the Qí Wénxiāng — these are remnants the patcher failed to weed out.
The Northern Qí was a shallowly-rooted state; from Wénxuān on, the rules slackened, military affairs were turbulent — neither equalling the Northern Wèi’s tight grasp on the borders nor the Northern Zhōu’s cultivation of legal and institutional clarity. Of those entrusted with the state, few were upright men of unwavering principle, with no extraordinary military feats or moral pillars to give the historiographer’s pen scope to develop. Examine the Rúlín and Wényuàn prefaces: setting aside those already in the Wèishū or Zhōu shū, only a sparse handful remain — barely enough to fill out the chapter rolls. So the work’s literary attenuation and conceptual brittleness, due in part to the historian’s lack of shǐcái and shǐxué compared with the ancients, is also a function of its age. Yet a dynasty’s rise and fall must have its own dedicated history; the evolution of institutions, the gain and loss of governance, the merit and demerit of personnel — these have testimony here, no small jiànjiè (mirror-warning) for after-comers.
Abstract
The Běi Qí shū is the dynastic history of the Northern Qí (550–577), the easternmost successor of the Tuòbá Wèi, with its capital at Yè 鄴. The Gāo 高 imperial house — descended from the Eastern-Wèi power-broker Gāo Huān 高歡 (496–547) — produced six emperors over 28 years before being conquered by Northern Zhōu in 577. The dynasty is canonically remembered for spectacular cruelty (Wénxuāndì 文宣帝 Gāo Yáng’s 高洋 reign of terror), Buddhist patronage on a vast scale (the Hsiang-tang-shan and other cave-temples), and a brittle court culture that left rich literary traces but few statesmen.
The compilation history runs through two generations like the parallel Liáng shū and Chénshū. Lǐ Délín 李德林 (532–592), a Northern-Qí Zhōngshū lìng and the chief court literary figure, began the dynasty’s history under the Qí itself; on the Qí’s fall in 577 he carried his manuscripts north and continued under the Northern Zhōu and Suí, dying in 592 with the work incomplete. His son Lǐ Bǎiyào 李百藥 (565–648) inherited the manuscripts; received an imperial commission in Zhēnguān 1 (627) under Tang Tàizōng (renewed in Zhēnguān 3 = 629 under the Wǔdài shǐ programme); and presented the completed work in Zhēnguān 10 (636).
The text is in poor transmission state. By the Northern Sòng many juǎn were lost or damaged; the present text is heavily patched from Lǐ Yánshòu’s Běi shǐ (KR2a0025). Of the 50 juǎn, the Sìkù compilers identify at least 13 juǎn as lacking lùnzàn (a sure sign of Běi shǐ derivation, since Lǐ Yánshòu omits lùnzàn). The Tiānbǎo-era and Tàiníng-era court records on which the original work drew are now accessible only through the Běi shǐ-mediated text and through fragments preserved in the Tàipíng yùlǎn and Yìwén lèijù.
Like the Liáng shū and Chénshū, the Běi Qí shū has no zhì — the institutional material is in the Wǔdài shǐ zhì attached to the Suí shū (KR2a0023). The Wényuāngé text further carries Qing kǎozhèng by Yáo Fàn 姚範 (1702–1771) and Zhū Quán 朱荃 (catalog meta gives 12 juǎn of kǎozhèng).
The standard modern punctuated edition is the Zhōnghuá Shūjú Běi Qí shū (2 vols., 1972, ed. Táng Zhángrú 唐長孺); revised Xiūdìngběn in preparation.
Translations and research
No complete translation. Standard scholarly studies in English: Albert E. Dien, Six Dynasties Civilization (Yale, 2007); Michael C. Rogers, The Chronicle of Fu Chien: A Case of Exemplar History (Berkeley, 1968) — uses Běi Qí shū contextually; Andrew Eisenberg, Kingship in Early Medieval China (Brill, 2008). Standard Chinese-language scholarship: Wáng Zhòngluò 王仲犖, WèiJìn NánBěicháo shǐ (Shanghai Rénmín, 1979–80); Yán Yǎochén 嚴耀中, Běi Qí zhèngzhì shǐ yǔ HúHàn xiānbēi shì 北齊政治史與胡漢鮮卑史 (Shanghai Rénmín, 2006); Tāng Yòngtǒng 湯用彤, HànWèi liǎng Jìn NánBěi cháo Fójiào shǐ (1938) — uses Běi Qí shū on the Buddhist patronage of the Gāo court.
Other points of interest
The Wényuàn zhuàn preserves substantial material on the early development of the yuèfǔ northern-style at the Northern Qí court — an antecedent to the great Tang yuèfǔ tradition. The Húrén zhuàn documents the persistence of Tuòbá and Sogdian elements in the Gāo court, and is a principal source for the multi-ethnic character of the Northern dynasties.