聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

唐創業起居注

8 min read

Text ID
KR2b0006
Date
618–626
Dynasty
唐

Táng chuàngyè qǐjūzhù 唐創業起居注

Court Diary of the Founding of the Táng (full title 大唐創業起居注 Dà Táng chuàngyè qǐjūzhù) by 溫大雅 (Wēn Dàyǎ, 572–629, zhuàn 撰)

About the work

A 3-juan day-by-day chronicle of the 357-day campaign by which Lǐ Yuān 李淵 (later Táng Gāozǔ 唐高祖) raised the standard of revolt at Tàiyuán in Dàyè 13 / 617, marched on Chángān, and ascended the throne as the Táng founder in Wǔdé 1 / 618. It is the only surviving Táng-period qǐjūzhù 起居注 (court diary) and the unique contemporary documentary witness to the Táng founding — composed by the very official, Wēn Dàyǎ, who as jìshì cānjūn in Lǐ Yuān’s military secretariat had drafted the campaign’s proclamations and despatches.

Tiyao

Dà Táng chuàngyè qǐjūzhù, 3 juǎn. (Zhèjiāng Provincial Governor’s submitted copy.) By Wēn Dàyǎ of the Táng. Dàyǎ, zì Yànchǒng, was a man of Qí in Bīngzhōu. He held office as Lǐbù shàngshū and was enfeoffed as Duke of Lí. His career is fully treated in his Táng dynastic biography. The Táng zhì and the Sòng zhì both list this book in 3 juǎn; only the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo gives 5. The present text: the upper juǎn records the 48 days from the raising of the Yì qí (righteous standard) to the marching out; the middle juǎn records the 126 days from Tàiyuán to the capital; the lower juǎn records the 183 days from regency to ascending the throne. The figure agrees with Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiě tí citation of “the events of 357 days.” Beginning, middle, and end are all preserved with no lacuna; there can be no question of two further missing juǎn. The Tōng kǎo must have garbled “three” into “five.”

According to Dàyǎ’s biography, when Gāozǔ raised troops he was drawn into the jìshì cānjūn office, in charge of literary documents and despatches. The book therefore preserves what he himself heard, saw, and recorded; its testimony is to be taken as true. Compared with the Gāozǔ běnjì: where the běnjì records that, after Liú Réngōng was defeated by the Türks and Yángdì had Gāozǔ shackled and conveyed by post-station, this book gives Gāozǔ side-on confidentially saying to the King of Qín [Lǐ Shìmín], “The Suí destiny is at its end. Our family is to take up the fúmìng in succession. The reason I have not raised troops earlier is that you brothers had not yet assembled. Now we suffer this single Yǒulǐ trial; you brothers must muster the Méngjīn host.” On the běnjì’s account the rising came from the King of Qín; on this book’s account it came from Gāozǔ. Again: this book records the Suí Shǎodì in the 4th month of summer issuing the abdication edict yielding to the old residence; the běnjì attaches it to the 5th month wùwǔ. Such discrepancies recur frequently. The “Eldest Son” mentioned throughout the book is Jiànchéng; the “Second Son” is Tàizōng; the latter is given no special distinction whatever.

Hú Zhènhēng’s postface holds: At the time the brush was laid down, Jiànchéng was just then Crown Prince — therefore in mention of recruitment of worthies and storming of cities, he is invariably paired with Tàizōng. Probably so. Or alternatively: in Zhēnguān 17 (643), when Jìng Bō, Fáng Xuánlíng, Xǔ Jìngzōng and others compiled the Gāozǔ Shí lù, in seeking to credit the founding-merit to Tàizōng alone, they could not have left the original record entirely uncolored.

Looking at what Dàyǎ actually conceals: only the single matter of palace-maid private service. As to the styling of “subject” toward the Türks: he uses qǐ 啓 (memorial) rather than shū 書 (letter), keeping the wording dim. As to Yángdì’s commission to him as Tàiyuán dào ānfǔ dàshǐ, he records that Gāozǔ privately rejoiced in this appointment, taking it as a Heaven-given opportunity. As to Yángdì’s order to attack the Türks, he records that Gāozǔ privately said to others, “Heaven perhaps means to confer it upon me.” All these he records straight from the events without embellishment. So in every place where this book diverges from the Táng dynastic history, it may be that this book is the actual veridical record — that is not to be excluded.

Abstract

The Táng chuàngyè qǐjūzhù is the unique surviving early-Táng court diary. It is a primary documentary source for the Táng founding (May 617 to June 618) by the man who personally drafted Lǐ Yuān’s despatches during the campaign. The text covers (1) the 48 days from the raising of the standard at Tàiyuán to the army’s setting out; (2) the 126 days of the march on the Suí capital Dàxìng (later Chángān); and (3) the 183 days from Lǐ Yuān’s regency under the Suí Yáng Yòu 楊侑 to his enthronement.

The work is the principal documentary check on the Táng Gāozǔ shílù 唐高祖實錄 (compiled in Zhēnguān 17 / 643 under Fáng Xuánlíng, Jìng Bō, and Xǔ Jìngzōng) and the corresponding běnjì of the Jiù Táng shū and Xīn Táng shū. As the Sìkù tíyào notes — and as the modern scholarly consensus following Howard Wechsler, Charles Hartman, and Bingham confirms — Wēn Dàyǎ’s diary consistently presents Lǐ Yuān as the prime mover of the Táng founding and assigns no special primacy to Lǐ Shìmín; the post-Xuánwǔmén (626) court historiography under Tàizōng systematically inverted this picture, producing the dominant later tradition that Lǐ Shìmín had pushed his hesitant father into rebellion. Where the qǐjūzhù and the dynastic histories diverge — most spectacularly on the question of who initiated the rebellion, but also on the chronology of edicts and the relative role of the elder son Jiànchéng — the qǐjūzhù is generally taken to preserve the more authentic record.

The work was probably finalised between Wēn’s promotion to the Huángmén shìláng post (after 618) and the Xuánwǔmén incident (626) that made Tàizōng emperor and triggered the historiographical sanitisation; certainly before Wēn’s death in 629. The dating bracket here is 618–626. The work was extant continuously from the Táng but was rare; the Sìkù base text is the Zhèjiāng provincial submission. The standard modern critical edition is Niú Zhìgōng 牛致功 (annotated translation), Dà Táng chuàngyè qǐjūzhù jiào yì 大唐創業起居注校譯 (Sānqín, 1986; rev. 2007).

For the editorial classification: the Sìkù biānnián category contains, traditionally, only this and Mù tiānzǐ zhuàn as survivors of the qǐjūzhù genre — and the Sìkù editors, following the Suí zhì example with the Mù tiānzǐ zhuàn moved to xiǎoshuō, retain only the Táng chuàngyè among diaries proper, and bracket it under biānnián (see the biānniánlèi head-note translated under the KR2b0001 entry).

Translations and research

  • Hsu Chao-ying [Xǔ Cháo-yīng], The Authentic Account of the Founding of the Tang Dynasty — Hsu’s 1968 Ph.D. dissertation (Princeton) is the only Western-language complete translation; never published as a book.
  • Howard J. Wechsler, “The Founding of the T’ang Dynasty: Kao-tsu (reign 618–626),” in Denis Twitchett, ed., The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3, Sui and T’ang, pt. 1 (CUP, 1979), 150–187 — uses the qǐ-jū-zhù as the primary corrective.
  • Woodbridge Bingham, The Founding of the T’ang Dynasty: The Fall of Sui and Rise of T’ang. A Preliminary Survey (American Council of Learned Societies, 1941; repr. 1970) — the foundational Western-language study, pioneering the use of the qǐ-jū-zhù over the dynastic histories.
  • Niú Zhì-gōng 牛致功, Dà Táng chuàng-yè qǐ-jū-zhù jiào yì 大唐創業起居注校譯 (Xī’ān: Sānqín, 1986; rev. 2007) — standard punctuated critical edition.
  • Niú Zhì-gōng, Wēn Dàyǎ yǔ Dà Táng chuàng-yè qǐ-jū-zhù 溫大雅與大唐創業起居注 (Sānqín, 2003).
  • David McMullen, State and Scholars in T’ang China (CUP, 1988), §3 — discusses the work in the context of Tang state historiography.

Other points of interest

The systematic privileging of Lǐ Yuān in the qǐjūzhù is now generally accepted as the closer-to-historical picture; the Xīn Táng shū’s competing image of a hesitant founder pushed by his second son is widely understood to be Tài-zōng-period propaganda. This single textual situation is paradigmatic of the larger Tang-history-writing problem and is, alongside the Cèfǔ yuánguī and the Zī zhì tōng jiàn, the principal kǎojù battleground of early-Táng historiography.

Graph View

Backlinks