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前漢紀

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Text ID
KR2b0003
Date
198–200
Dynasty
漢

Qián Hàn jì 前漢紀

Annals of the Former Hàn by 荀悅 (Xún Yuè, 148–209, zhuàn 撰)

About the work

A 30-juan annalistic condensation of Bān Gù’s Hàn shū 漢書 (KR2a0014), compiled at the order of Hàn Xiàndì 漢獻帝 in Jiàn’ān 3 (198 CE) and presented in Jiàn’ān 5 (200 CE). Xún Yuè rearranged the jìzhuàn tǐ 紀傳體 material of the Hàn shū into chronological biānnián 編年 form following the model of the Zuǒ zhuàn — the inaugural large-scale Chinese demonstration that a major dynastic history could be re-cast as a chronicle. Liú Zhījī 劉知幾 (Shǐ tōng 史通, Liù jiā and Èr tǐ chapters) made it the head of the Zuǒzhuàn family of histories.

Tiyao

Hàn jì, 30 juǎn. (Anhuī Provincial Governor’s submitted copy.) By Xún Yuè of the Hàn. Yuè, zì Zhòngyù, was a man of Yǐngyīn. Under Xiàndì he held office as Mìshū jiān shìzhōng 祕書監侍中. The Hòu Hàn shū attaches his biography to that of his grandfather Xún Shū. The biography records that Xiàndì was fond of literature; finding Bān Gù’s Hàn shū prolix and difficult to compass, he ordered Yuè to recast it in the Zuǒ zhuàn style as a Hàn jì in 30 piān — terse in wording yet detailed in event, with abundant felicities of judgment. Zhāng Fán’s Hàn jì likewise praised it for “using event to clarify praise and blame, attaining canonical concision, and circulating widely.”

The Táng Shǐ tōng of Liú Zhījī, in his “Six Schools” chapter, set Yuè’s work at the head of the Zuǒzhuàn family; in his “Two Forms” chapter he noted that “from age to age it has been treasured, beyond what its own biography records — the Bān and Xún forms compete for first place.” Such was his esteem that Táng-period civil examinations included Yuè’s Jì together with the Shǐjì and Hàn shū as a single category.

The Wénxiàn tōng kǎo records Lǐ Tāo of the Sòng’s colophon: “Yuè in composing this Jì did not depart from Bān’s text, yet often pruned and polished it; the memorials of Jiàn dàfū Wáng Rén and Shìzhōng Wáng Hóng are absent from Bān entirely.” It also records that Sīmǎ Guāng in editing the Zī zhì tōng jiàn, where he treated the affair of the Tàishànghuáng and the Wǔfèng jiāo Tàizhì month, in every case set Bān aside and followed Xún. Probably when Yuè wrote, Bān’s text had not yet become corrupt. He further notes that on Jūnlán, Jūnjiǎn, Duānruì, Xìngyù, Kuān, Jìng and the like, where Yuè differs from the Hàn shū, the early scholars preserved both readings. Wáng Zhì’s postface to the Liǎng Hàn jì further says that Xún and Yuán’s two Jì, in regard to the court’s gāngjì, ritual and music, criminal and political administration, the marks of order and chaos, success and failure, loyalty and depravity, right and wrong, in their pointed exposition exhaust the matter, in their repeated argument achieve clarity and continuity, instructing the present age and bequeathing rule to all later ages — so even Sòng readers held the work in highest regard.

For instance: in the matter of the Húguān sānlǎo Mào, the Hàn shū gives no surname; Yuè says Lìnghú. In the matter of Zhū Yún’s request for the shàngfāng sword, the Hàn shū writes “horse-felling” 斬馬; Yuè writes “horse-cutting” 斷馬 — confirmed by Táng Zhāng Wèi’s verse “would obtain a shàngfāng horse-cutting sword, to take Zhūmén nobles’ heads,” showing the Hàn shū graph in error. Such textual aids are not few. Recently Gù Yánwǔ in his Rì zhī lù draws on Yuè only for the imperial-seal letter of Xuāndì to Chén Suì and the third-year Yuánkāng edict ennobling the marquis of Hǎihūn, both of which correct three or four characters of the Hàn shū; for the rest, he objected that Yuè’s narrative was dry and at points incomplete in beginning and end, and that minor divergences favored Bān — perhaps an over-correction. Gù further wrote that Yuè in narrating Wáng Mǎng’s affair from Shǐjiànguó 1 onwards uses “his second year, his third year” through “his fifteenth year” to mark him off from the legitimate succession, while suppressing Mǎng’s Tiānfèng and Dìhuáng reign-titles. Gù’s tone is doubtful, but rather than saying “wholly excised” he says “wholly suppressed,” seeming to fault him with carelessness. He misses the point: Bān’s Hàn shū gave Mǎng a separate zhuàn, naturally permitting his false reign-titles; Yuè’s Jì arranges by Hàn-system year-numbering — how could it admit non-legitimate reign-period names? This too is no settled criticism, and not a fault to be charged against Yuè.

According to Lǐ Tāo’s colophon, by the Tiānshèng era of the Sòng there was no longer a sound text. The Míng edition of Huáng Jīshuǐ also has occasional corruptions. In the Kāngxī era Jiǎng Guóxiáng and Jiǎng Guózuò of Xiāngpíng combined-printed the Liǎng Hàn jì with Yuán Hóng’s Hòu Hàn jì, appending a Liǎng Hàn jì zìjù yìtóng kǎo in 1 juan; the present edition uses this for collation, somewhat improving on the older texts.

Abstract

The Qián Hàn jì is the foundational chronicle (biānnián) re-arrangement of an existing jìzhuàn dynastic history. According to Hòu Hàn shū j. 62 (which preserves Yuè’s biography appended to that of his uncle Xún Shuǎng), the work was commissioned in Jiàn’ān 3 (198 CE) by Hàn Xiàndì, who was unsatisfied with the prolixity of Bān Gù’s Hàn shū and wanted its substance recast in the Zuǒ zhuàn form he found more accessible; presentation was in Jiàn’ān 5 (200 CE), making it one of the very last products of the (nominal) Hàn court. Yuè was at that time Mìshū jiān shìzhōng 祕書監侍中 in the imperial library at Xǔchāng, then under Cáo Cāo’s effective control.

The work spans the Western Hàn from Gāozǔ’s reign through Píngdì and the Wáng Mǎng usurpation. Yuè’s principal sources were the Hàn shū itself (whose narrative he condenses by a factor of roughly five, retaining about 180,000 of the 800,000-character original) and earlier court archives no longer extant. As the Sìkù tíyào notes, in several places (Tàishànghuáng affair, Wǔfèng jiāo Tàizhì dating) Yuè preserves a reading independent of and arguably better than the received Hàn shū; Sīmǎ Guāng followed him in the Zī zhì tōng jiàn. Yuè’s chronological re-arrangement also creates new historiographical effects, e.g. the systematic side-by-side juxtaposition of central-court politics, imperial astrology, and frontier affairs that became canonical in Sīmǎ Guāng’s Tōng jiàn eight centuries later.

The work’s importance was recognised early. The Táng exam system grouped it with the Shǐjì and Hàn shū as a single category. Liú Zhījī (Shǐ tōng) classed it as the founding member of the Zuǒ zhuàn family of histories alongside the Hàn shū as the founding member of the BānMǎ family. The work was paired in transmission with Yuán Hóng’s 袁宏 Hòu Hàn jì (KR2b0004); the standard combined edition is the Kāngxī-period printing of Jiǎng Guóxiáng 蔣國祥 and Jiǎng Guózuò 蔣國祚 (1685) with appended collation notes (Liǎng Hàn jì zìjù yìtóng kǎo 兩漢紀字句異同考, 1 juan), the basis of the Sìkù transmitted text. (See Wilkinson §44.4.1.)

Translations and research

  • Chen Chi-yun [Chén Qǐyún], Hsün Yüeh (A.D. 148–209): The Life and Reflections of an Early Medieval Confucian (Cambridge UP, 1975) — biographical and intellectual study; treats the Hàn jì and the Shēn jiàn together.
  • Chen Chi-yun, Hsün Yüeh and the Mind of Late Han China: A Translation of the Shen-chien with Introduction and Annotations (Princeton UP, 1980) — translation of the Shēn jiàn but with substantial commentary on Xún’s historiographical method.
  • Zhāng Lièhé 張烈和, Liǎng Hàn jì 兩漢紀 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2002, Èrshísì shǐ wài bǎibù) — the standard punctuated critical edition of the combined Qián and Hòu Hàn jì.
  • Yáng Yìxiāng 楊翼驤, Zhōngguó shǐxué shǐ 中國史學史 (Hebei jiaoyu, 2000), vol. 1 ch. on the Hàn jì.
  • Cao Bing 曹冰, Xún Yuè jí qí Hàn jì yánjiū 荀悅及其漢紀研究 (Sichuan daxue, 2008).

Other points of interest

The Hàn jì is the first systematic exercise in Chinese historiographical recasting — the re-arrangement of an existing major history into a different formal mould without independent research — and as such anchors the entire downstream tradition of biānnián chronicles, culminating in the Zī zhì tōng jiàn. Sīmǎ Guāng explicitly credited Xún Yuè as a methodological predecessor.

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