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竹書紀年

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Text ID
KR2b0001
Date
1550–1580
Dynasty
梁

Zhúshū jìnián 竹書紀年

Bamboo Annals nominally annotated by 沈約 (Shěn Yuē, 441–513), but the received “current-text” (jīnběn 今本) recension is a late-Míng reconstitution probably assembled around the Tiānyī gé 天一閣 of Fàn Qīn 范欽 (1506–1585) ca. 1570.

About the work

A two-juan annalistic chronicle nominally beginning with the legendary Yellow Thearch and continuing through the Three Dynasties down to King Xiāng of Wèi 魏襄王 (r. 318–296 BCE). The text is divided into a “Five Thearchs and Three Dynasties” half (often called Wǔdì běnjì 五帝本紀 + Xià / Shāng / Zhōu jì) and a “King Xiāng of Wèi” half. The transmitted jīnběn 今本 (“current text”) in 2 juan, printed by the Sìkù editors, is now known to be a Míng-dynasty reconstitution and not the genuine third-century recovery from the Jíjùn tomb (汲冢, 281 CE); it is nevertheless the main vehicle through which the work is read in the Sìkù tradition.

Tiyao

Bamboo Annals, 2 juan. The old text bills itself as the lost text from the Jíjùn tomb. According to Shù Xī’s biography in the Jìnshū, in Xiánhé 7 of the Jìn (332 CE — read 281 CE; the date in the WYG tiyao is itself slightly garbled) men of Jíxiàn opened the tomb of King Xiāng of Wèi and recovered seventy-five juan of ancient writings, among which were thirteen piān of bamboo annals. The text now circulating, captioned “annotated by Shěn Yuē,” agrees with the entry in the Suí zhì. Gù Yánwǔ’s textual scholarship is famously rigorous, and his Rì zhī lù repeatedly cites it as authority. Yet on careful examination it does not seem to be the Jíjùn original.

For example: after the eastward removal of King Píng of Zhōu, the chronicle records only matters of Jìn 晉; after the partition of Jìn into the three houses, it records only matters of Wèi 魏 — clear evidence that Wèi inherited the Jìn court historiography. Yet the affair of Duke Líng of Jìn at Peach Garden, which Dǒng Hú recorded in writing as preserved in the Zuǒ zhuàn and which Confucius singled out for Zhào Dùn’s praise, is in the present text still pinned on Zhào Chuān as the assassin who acted in the cover — this is not the old Jìn record. The biography of Shù Xī states that the Zhúshū records “Xià lasted longer than Yīn; Yì usurped Qǐ’s position and was killed,” none of which appears in the present text. Du Yu’s commentary to the Zuǒ zhuàn on the line about King Xié 攜王 cites Fú Qián’s view making him Bófú; the sub-commentary further cites Shù Xī making him Bópán; the present text gives the Yúyóu 余由 explanation. Were the Zhúshū original to have contained this, neither commentator could have failed to see it — so this is not the recension Shù Xī or Du Yu had.

Guō Pú in his commentary on the Mù tiānzǐ zhuàn cites the Jìnián in seven places; collated against the present text, only three agree, and three of the others Pú cites as Jìnián but they appear in his commentary — Pú could hardly have provided notes to his own citations, and the three are run together into one passage with no syntactic continuity; one passage about Mù tiānzǐ meeting Xī Wáng Mǔ is not in the present text — so this is not Guō Pú’s recension. The Suí jīngjí zhì records that the Jìnián uses the Xià calendar, taking the jiànyín month as the year-head; the present text from the Chūnqiū period onwards follows the Zhōu calendar with the months matching the Classic — so this is not the Suí-period recension. The Shuǐ jīng zhù cites the Zhúshū in seventy-six places, all using Jìn-state dating like the Chūnqiū’s use of Lǔ-state dating; the present text everywhere subordinates Jìn dates to Zhōu, and lacks several of Lì Dàoyuán’s citations — so this is not the recension Lì Dàoyuán saw.

The Shǐ tōng cites Zhúshū: “King Wén killed Jì Lì”; the present text writes Wéndīng 文丁. It cites Zhúshū: “Duke Huán of Zhèng was the son of King Lì”; the present text simply says “the king conferred command on Prince Duōfù to dwell at Luò in the twenty-second year of Xuān, and Prince Duōfù was made Duke of Zhèng in the second year of Yōu,” with no mention of King Lì — so this is not the recension Liú Zhījī saw. The Wén xuǎn commentary cites Zhúshū in five places; the present text has only the one about Tài Jiǎ killing Yī Yǐn — so this is not the recension Lǐ Shàn saw. The Kāiyuán zhànjīng cites Zhúshū in four places, none in the present text — so this is not the recension Qútán Xīdá saw. The Shǐjì suǒyǐn cites: “Duke Chū of Jìn fled to Chǔ in his 23rd year, then Duke Zhāo’s grandson was set up as Duke Jìng”; the present text writes “Duke Chū died.” It also cites about Qín fighting Wèi at Yànmén, the meeting of Huìwáng’s later 11th year with Qí at Píngé, the 13th-year meeting at Zhēn, Duke Huán of Qí, the queen-mother of Duke Xuān of Qí, Sòng Yì Chénggān’s deposing the lord and self-establishing, Chǔlǐ Jí’s siege of Pú — seven items, all absent from the present text — so this is not the recension Sīmǎ Zhēn saw. The Gǔliáng zhuàn sub-commentary cites Zhúshū jìnián on the glued-boat affair of King Zhāo of Zhōu to refute the Lǚ shì chūnqiū; the present text only says “the king died” with no glued-boat episode — so this is not the recension Yáng Shìxūn saw.

The Yuánfēng jiǔyù zhì cites Zhúshū on the Yīn Sīmǎ defeating Prince Yì of Yān at Wǔyuán — not in the present text, so not what Wáng Cún saw. The Lù shǐ cites Zhúshū that King Wǔ of Zhōu was 54 years old, refuting the Shìjì figure of 93 — but the present text gives 93. Its commentary cites Zhúshū on the 69th year of Hòu Bùjiàng of Xià to refute the Shì jì figure of 59 — but the present text writes 59. The Lù shǐ further cites the eighth year of King Huìchéng of Liáng raining bones at Chìbǐ, and a zhù citation on the social-altar splitting in the last year of Xià Jié — neither in the present text, so not what Luó Mì or Luó Píng saw. The Zhànguócè commentary cites Zhúshū on Wèi rescuing Zhōngshān and blocking Xūkǒu — not in the present text, so not what Bào Biāo saw. The Guǎngchuān shū bá cites Zhúshū on Duke Mù of Qín taking Língqiū in his eleventh year — not in the present text, so not what Dǒng Yōu saw.

Although the present text does in many places agree with citations of the Zhúshū, the lines about “the chén lights not gathering at Fáng” in the Yǐn zhēng and “I once studied with Gān Pán” in the Yuè mìng both come from Méi Zé’s gǔwén Shàngshū, post-Western-Jìn material that ought not to predate the Zhúshū. Could it be that, like the Shíliù guó chūnqiū, this is a Míng-dynasty patchwork? Beyond the Shěn Yuē-attributed notes there is also small interlinear annotation of unknown authorship; the entry on “in the middle of Yīn, XiǎoGēng” cites “Yuē examines: the Shǐjì writes TàiGēng” — this too should be Yuē’s. But the Yuánhé jùnxiànzhì records that Wèi only first established Hǎizhōu in Wǔdìng 7, and that Suí Yángdì only first established Wèixiàn — and the note on “Shùn at Míngtiáo” cites “the present-day Hǎizhōu,” and the note on “the eleventh year of Qǐ of Xià banishing Wǔguān” cites “the present-day Dùnqiū Wèixiàn” — these cannot be Yuē’s words. The notes are also lavish only on the Five Thearchs and Three Dynasties and sparse elsewhere; the Five Thearchs and Three Dynasties material is wholly transcribed from the Sòng shū Fúruì zhì — Yuē could not have already written it for the dynastic history, then transcribed it unchanged into this commentary. So the commentary is a forgery too. Since it has been current since the Míng we record it for the sake of completeness, but the forgery is in the end not to be concealed. Qiánlóng 42 (1777), ninth month, respectfully collated. Editor-in-chief Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xíxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; chief proofreader Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The Zhúshū jìnián is canonically described as the earliest Chinese annalistic history independent of the Chūnqiū tradition: a court chronicle of the state of Wèi 魏 (and its parent Jìn 晉) recovered in 281 CE from the tomb at Jíxiàn 汲縣 — probably that of King Xiāng of Wèi 魏襄王 (r. 318–296 BCE). The recovered text, originally on bamboo strips, was transcribed by Xún Xù 荀勖, Hé Qiáo 和嶠, and Shù Xī 束晳 between 281 and 295. The original was extant in 13 (or 12) juan into the Suí period (the Suí zhì lists it) but was reduced to fragments by the Southern Sòng. (See Wilkinson §48.1.2.)

The text printed in the WYG is the “current-text” recension (jīnběn Zhúshū jìnián 今本竹書紀年) in 2 juan, an entirely different artefact: probably reconstituted by Fàn Qīn 范欽 (1506–1585) of the Tiānyī gé 天一閣 ca. 1570 from quotations in lèi shū and commentaries together with later padding. The Sìkù editors already suspected its authenticity (see the tíyào above); Qián Dàxīn 錢大昕 (1728–1804), Wáng Guówéi 王國維 (1877–1927; Jīnběn Zhúshū jìnián shū zhèng 今本竹書紀年疏證, 1916) and the Qing kǎojù tradition pronounced it a Míng forgery. A separate scholarly project to reconstitute the genuine gǔběn Zhúshū jìnián 古本竹書紀年 (“ancient-text version”) from pre-Sòng citations was undertaken by Zhū Yòucéng 朱右曾, Wáng Guówéi, and Fāng Shīmíng 方詩銘, culminating in Fāng Shīmíng & Wáng Xiūlíng 王修齡, Gǔběn Zhúshū jìnián jí zhèng 古本竹書紀年輯證 (1981; rev. 2005). More recent revisionist work by Shào Dōngfāng 邵東方, David Nivison, and Edward Shaughnessy argues that the jīnběn preserves more authentic chronological data than the Qing critics allowed; the question is unresolved.

The dating bracket here (1550–1580) reflects the date of the received WYG recension (Fàn Qīn era), not the date of the lost original third-century recovery, in keeping with the catalog rule that frontmatter dates the received recension. The Shěn Yuē attribution is preserved in the catalog as found, but the Sìkù editors and later scholarship judge it spurious.

The work is a foundational source for pre-Hàn chronology — particularly for the conquest of Shāng (whose date the jīnběn gives as 1050 BCE, close to the 1046 BCE figure adopted by the PRC XiàShāngZhōu Duàndài Gōngchéng 夏商周斷代工程, 2000) and for early Warring States history, where it preserves king-lists and event-records not found elsewhere.

Translations and research

  • James Legge (annotated translation of the jīnběn), The Chinese Classics, vol. 3 (1865), Prolegomena, ch. 4 — superseded but historically important.
  • Edward L. Shaughnessy, Rewriting Early Chinese Texts (SUNY, 2006), chs. on the Zhúshū jìnián; and “The Current ‘Bamboo Annals’ and the Date of the Zhou Conquest of Shang,” EC 11/12 (1985–87): 33–60.
  • David S. Nivison, The Riddle of the Bamboo Annals (Airiti, 2009).
  • Shào Dōngfāng 邵東方, Zhúshū jìnián jiěmí 竹書紀年解謎 (Airiti, 2007); Zhúshū jìnián yánjiū lùngǎo 竹書紀年研究論稿 (Airiti, 2009); 2014/2015 reprint volumes covering 1980–2000 and 2001–2013 research (Guǎngxī shīdà, 64 articles total).
  • Wáng Guówéi 王國維, Jīnběn Zhúshū jìnián shū zhèng 今本竹書紀年疏證 (1916; punctuated repr. 1955).
  • Fāng Shīmíng 方詩銘 & Wáng Xiūlíng 王修齡, Gǔběn Zhúshū jìnián jí zhèng 古本竹書紀年輯證 (Shanghai Guji, 1981; rev. 2005).
  • Liú Guāngténg 劉光騰, Qīnghuájiǎn Xìnián yǔ Zhúshū jìnián bǐjiào yánjiū 清華簡繫年與竹書紀年比較研究 (Zhōng-Xī, 2015).

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tíyào is one of the most painstaking textual demonstrations in the entire Sìkù — the editors pile up ten distinct collation tests against pre-Sòng citations and conclude in each case that the present text fails to match. It remains a model of kǎojù method in compressed form. The “Shěn Yuē” notes are now generally accepted as Míng-dynasty fabrication.

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