Yuán shǐ 元史
The History of the Yuán by 宋濂 (Sòng Lián, 1310–1381) and 王禕 (Wáng Yī, 1322–1373) et al., by imperial commission of Míng Tàizǔ Zhū Yuánzhāng; Qing collation notes by 王祖庚.
About the work
The twenty-third of the Twenty-Four Histories, in 210 juǎn (47 jì, 53 zhì, 6 biǎo, 97 lièzhuàn — though the catalog meta gives 210 and the tíyào breaks down differently). Covers the Mongol Yuán dynasty (1271–1368, with substantial back-coverage of the pre-1271 Mongol khanates from Genghis Khan onward). Compiled in two stages by Sòng Lián 宋濂 and Wáng Yī 王禕 as joint chief editors, by imperial commission of Míng Tàizǔ Zhū Yuánzhāng issued only months after the Míng founding: stage one in Hóngwǔ 2 (1369), 2nd–8th month at Tiānníngsì in Nánjīng (188 days), drawing on the Yuán shíǔ through Níngzōng (the thirteenth Yuán emperor); stage two in Hóngwǔ 3 (1370), six months, after Ōuyáng Yòu 歐陽佑 and others had been sent to the former Yuán capital Bĕi-píng to collect material on the final Shùndì reign. Total compilation time: approximately 12 months across the two stages — among the fastest of any zhèngshǐ. Notoriously error-prone: known for duplications (the same person twice given biographies under variant transliterations), thinness of zhì, and gaps in the jì during 1241–1264 (when no shílù survived).
Tiyao
By Sòng Lián et al., by imperial commission of the Míng. Hóngwǔ 2 (1369), the thirteen Yuán shíǔ having been obtained, an edict was issued to compile the Yuán shǐ, with Lián and Wáng Yī as supervising editors; in the 2nd month the office was opened at Tiānníngsì; in the 8th month the work was complete — but Shùndì’s reign material was still wanting. So Confucian scholar Ōuyáng Yòu etc. were sent to Bĕi-píng to collect the surviving material; the next year, in the 2nd month, the historiographical office was reopened, and after six months the work was complete. Total: 47 juǎn of jì, 53 of zhì, 6 of biǎo, 97 of lièzhuàn. The work was just promulgated and already publicly criticised; later cross-checking has revealed yet more lapses.
(The tíyào gives examples from Gù Yánwǔ’s Rì zhī lù and Zhū Yízūn’s Pùshūtíng jí: Zhào Mèngfǔ etc.’s biographies fully record ancestral honoraria — zhìmíng style — without trimming; Héqú zhì says “Gěng cānzhèng”, Jìsì zhì says “Tián sītú” — using àndú (file) language without editorial polish; Zhū Yízūn enumerates duplicate biographies — same person twice under different chapters, with cross-references to specific juǎn — clear marks of haste. But the Yuán shǐ’s misalignment is not in the speed of finishing but in the haste of beginning. By later centuries, Yuán-period preserved books are no fewer than one or two hundred — shuōbù and wénjí — collated against the zhuàn, divergences abound — the criticism of insufficient kǎodìng is unanswerable. Yet at the time, the historiographical office reopened only two or three years after the Yuán fell — what we now call ancient books were then contemporary works of living men, of which some were unwritten, some written but not finished, some finished but not published — there was no way to gather all the shuō and weigh variants. Xú Yīkuí’s Shǐfēng gǎo preserves a letter to Wáng Yī during the reopening: “Recently those who discussed history could surpass rìlì — rìlì is the gēndǐ of history. Even qǐjūzhù set its dates by jiǎzǐ. The Yuán did not establish rìlì; nor did it establish qǐjūzhù. Only the Zhōngshū had a Shízhèng kē with one wénxué yuàn in charge, who would forward affairs to the shǐguǎn, and at dynasty-change the Guóshǐyuàn would compile the shíǔ from what had been forwarded — its handling of historical affairs is itself sketchy. By chance Yú Jí 虞集 in the Tiānlì era used the Liù diǎn method to compile the Jīngshì dàdiǎn, and so a dynasty’s institutions and canons were prepared. Hence the prior office’s compilation, having both the thirteen shíǔ and the Jīngshì dàdiǎn to consult, finished after struggle. Shùndì’s 26 years had no shíǔ available, and no source-text either; we depended only on collected interviews to fill it out — I fear the events may not be settled, the words may not be smooth, the start-and-end may not be coherent.” So this work’s looseness, before any draft began, Xú Yīkuí had already foreseen. Not entirely Lián’s fault.)
(The tíyào enumerates structural defects: Sāngōng and Zǎixiàng split into two biǎo; Lǐ and Yuè combined into one zhì and Jìsì and Yúfú split into two; lièzhuàn leads with the Shìlǎo (Buddhists and Daoists) followed by Fāngjì — none matching earlier zhèngshǐ practice. The Yìwén zhì is dropped and the entries scattered into the lièzhuàn — making works whose authors lack biographies impossible to verify. Jì between Dìngzōng and Xiànzōng three years are missing — surely not literally three blank years in the shíǔ — clearly an oversight. The Yáo Suì biography preserves his discussion of literary style in unintelligible form; checking against the Yuán wén lèi shows the ascription of statements to the wrong speakers — disorderly. — These are inexcusable.
Xiè Jǐn’s letter to Dǒng Lún in the Hóngwǔ late years cites that the Yuán shǐ’s errors had received an order to amend — confirms the Tàizǔ himself perceived its limits. As to the Lì zhì preserving Xǔ HéngGuō Shǒujìng’s Lìjīng and Lǐ Qiān’s Lìyì, with Gēngwǔyuán lì — never used — for cross-checking; Dìlǐ zhì with Pān Ángxiāo’s Héyuán kǎo and the Zhū Sī-běn-translated Sanskrit map appended interlinear; Héqú zhì’s northern-water mention of Lúgōuhé and Yùhé, southern-water of Yánguāntānghé, Lóngshān, all with detail on dredging — all useful for kǎogǔ. Read with consultation of other works, and excerpt from its strengths.)
Abstract
The Yuán shǐ covers the Mongol Yuán dynasty (formally 1271–1368, with extensive back-coverage of the Mongol khanates from Genghis Khan’s accession in 1206). Compiled with extraordinary speed under direct edict of the just-victorious Míng founder Zhū Yuánzhāng — the work was issued only months after the Mongol expulsion of 1368 and complete in just over a year of total compilation time, in two campaigns (1369 and 1370) at the Tiānníngsì in Nánjīng. The chief editors were Sòng Lián 宋濂 (1310–1381), the greatest scholar-statesman of the early Míng, and Wáng Yī 王禕 (1322–1373).
The work’s notorious defects — duplication of biographies under variant transliterations of Mongol names; thinness of zhì; three blank years in the jì (between Dìngzōng and Xiànzōng); preservation of unedited àndú (file) language in some chapters; misattributions in the Wényì zhuàn — all reflect (1) the absence of any pre-existing Yuán guóshǐ in the conventional Hàn-style sense (Mongols did not establish rìlì or qǐjūzhù on the Hàn model; the Shízhèngkē of the Zhōngshū sent material to the Guóshǐyuàn irregularly), (2) the Yuán’s own incomplete shílù coverage (the thirteen shílù through Níngzōng plus Yú Jí’s Jīngshì dàdiǎn of Tiānlì 2 [1331] were the principal sources), and (3) the impossibility of gathering material on Shùndì’s 26-year reign — the source-paucity that Xú Yīkuí 徐一夔 had already warned about in his celebrated letter to Wáng Yī. The Sìkù compilers’ detailed defence of Sòng Lián and Wáng Yī as having done what was possible under the constraints is one of the more sophisticated zhèngshǐ kǎozhèng judgements in the Sìkù tíyào tradition.
The Lì zhì preserves Xǔ Héng 許衡 and Guō Shǒujìng 郭守敬’s Lìjīng 曆經 — the foundation of the Shòushí lì 授時曆 of 1281, the most accurate Chinese calendar before the late-Ming Jesuit reforms. The Dìlǐ zhì preserves Pān Ángxiāo’s Héyuán kǎo — the first Chinese geographical investigation of the Yellow River source — and Zhū Sīběn’s translated Sanskrit map. The Héqú zhì documents the Yuán Grand Canal expansion. The Shìlǎo zhuàn — placed unconventionally at the head of the lièzhuàn — is the principal source for Yuán Buddhist and Daoist history.
The Wényuāngé text further carries Qing kǎozhèng by Wáng Zǔgēng 王祖庚 (catalog meta gives 69 juǎn of kǎozhèng). The Yuán shǐ has been the subject of multiple major recompilation efforts: Kē Shàomín 柯劭忞’s Xīn Yuán shǐ 新元史 (1922, 257 juǎn) is the most influential and was eventually incorporated into the canonical Èrshíwǔ shǐ. The standard modern punctuated edition is the Zhōnghuá Shūjú Yuán shǐ (15 vols., 1976, ed. Wēng Dújiàn 翁獨健 et al.).
Translations and research
No complete translation. Substantial partial translations: Francis W. Cleaves’s translations of various early-Mongol biographies (in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 1949–1980); Igor de Rachewiltz, “Some Remarks on the Ideological Foundations of Chinggis Khan’s Empire,” Papers in Far Eastern History 7 (1973): 21–36, and his various other Yuán-shǐ-based studies; Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett (eds.), The Cambridge History of China vol. 6 (CUP, 1994); Christopher P. Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (Facts on File, 2004) — extensive integration of Yuánshǐ material; Morris Rossabi, Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times (Berkeley, 1988). Standard Chinese-language scholarship: Hán Rúlín 韓儒林, Ménggǔ shǐ kǎn 蒙古史劄記 (Shēnghuó Dúshū Xīnzhī Sānlián, 1980); Lú Bì 盧弼 and Pān Yìfǔ 潘益夫 Yuán shǐ jiào kānjì 元史校勘記 (Zhōnghuá, 1985); Wáng Shèntán 王慎坦, Yuán shǐ tàn yuán 元史探源 (Zhōnghuá, 1992).
Other points of interest
The Lì zhì is the principal documentary source for the Shòushí lì, the most accurate pre-modern Chinese calendar (year-length precise to within 26 seconds — an accuracy not equalled in Europe until the Gregorian reform of 1582). The Mongolian-name transliteration problem of the Yuán shǐ is one of the principal motivations for the imperial Sān shǐ Guóyǔ jiě (KR2a0037).