Zī zhì tōng jiàn kǎo yì 資治通鑑考異
Variant Readings to the Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance by 司馬光 (Sīmǎ Guāng, 1019–1086, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A 30-juan apparatus to the Zī zhì tōng jiàn (KR2b0007) recording, item by item, the variant accounts in Sīmǎ Guāng’s primary sources and his reasoning for each editorial decision — the first systematic source-criticism apparatus in Chinese historiography by an author commenting on his own work. Presented to Shénzōng together with the Tōng jiàn itself in Yuánfēng 7 / 1084.
Tiyao
Zī zhì tōng jiàn kǎo yì, 30 juǎn. (Anhuī Provincial Governor’s submitted copy.) By Sīmǎ Guāng of the Sòng. This work was presented together with the Tōng jiàn in Yuánfēng 7. Gāo Sìsūn’s Wěilüè records that in compiling the Tōng jiàn Guāng often took an event from three or four source-locations and wove them together. The Wénxiàn tōng kǎo records the testimony of Sīmǎ Kāng [Guāng’s son]: among the sources, Sīmǎ Biāo, Xún Yuè, Yuán Hóng, Cuī Hóng, Xiāo Fāngděng, Lǐ Yánshòu, the Tàiqīng jì, the Táng lì and the like. Hóng Mài’s Róngzhāi suíbǐ picks out the Héluò jì, Wèi Zhènggōng jiàn lù, Lǐ sīkōng lùn shì, Zhāng Zhōngchéng zhuàn, Liánggōng píng Cài lù, Yèhóu jiāzhuàn, Liǎngcháo xiàntì jì, Hòu shǐ bǔ, Jīnluán mì jì, Péngmén jìluàn, Píng Yǎn lù, Guǎnglíng yāoluàn zhì — a sample only of many.
In such material, hearsay and divergence are abundant — the unofficial historians delight in fabrication, and the standard histories themselves are not all reliable records. Guāng, having selected the credible to follow, then collated the variants and made this separate book to set right errors and dispel future doubt. Earlier Chén Shòu wrote the Sān guó zhì and Péi Sōngzhī annotated it, exhaustively citing the contradictory texts and adjudicating to a single conclusion — the most exemplary procedure. But no historian had ever composed a separate book to expose his own grounds for rejection or acceptance — beginning with Guāng. Subsequently Lǐ Tāo’s Xù tōng jiàn cháng biān and Lǐ Xīnchuán’s Jiànyán yǐlái xìnián yào lù both inherited this principle, although in their cases the kǎo yì notes are scattered beneath each entry — slightly differing in form but identical in substance. Down to Chén Jīng, Wáng Zōngmù, Xuē Yìngqí and others, in seeking to continue Guāng’s work, they failed to gather the old material widely; relying merely on the standard histories supplemented by other books, frequent self-contradictions arose, and right and wrong could not be decided — the kǎoyì method having been neglected, leaving deposit of dispute in their own books and rooms of doubt for posterity. Even here, e.g., on the appointment-and-dismissal of Guān Bō under Táng, Guāng cites only the Jiù Táng shū and not the Xīn Táng shū annals or year-tables to reveal its error — small slips not all avoided. Yet for the bulk of the work, “I dare not warrant the contradictions” — Guāng himself said it; that is no charge against the whole.
The work originally circulated separately from the Tōng jiàn. When Hú Sānxǐng made the yīn zhù, he scattered it beneath the entries — but with some omissions. The present text is an early-Míng single printing, preserving Guāng’s original juan-numbering, recorded here for the sake of preserving the old form.
Abstract
The Zī zhì tōng jiàn kǎo yì is the foundational instance of an author publishing his own source-critical apparatus alongside the work it supports. Sīmǎ Guāng describes his three-stage compositional method — cóng mù 叢目 / cháng biān 長編 / zhèng wén 正文 — in his memorial of presentation, and the Kǎo yì is the residue of stage 2: where his many primary sources told contradictory stories about a single event, he records all the variants and explains his choice. The genre-precedent is Péi Sōngzhī’s Sān guó zhì zhù, but Sōngzhī was annotating someone else’s text; Sīmǎ Guāng was annotating his own.
The work was originally a separate 30-juan publication and was so transmitted from the Northern Sòng. When Hú Sānxǐng compiled the Yīn zhù commentary on the Tōng jiàn (completed 1295), he distributed the Kǎo yì notes beneath the Tōng jiàn entries to which they referred — though, as the Sìkù tíyào notes, with some omissions. The standalone WYG text printed here preserves Sīmǎ Guāng’s original organisation. Lǐ Tāo’s Xù Zī zhì tōng jiàn cháng biān (KR2b0019) and Lǐ Xīnchuán’s Jiànyán yǐlái xìnián yào lù (KR2b0024) explicitly adopt the kǎo yì method scattered through the running text. The Sìkù editors note that later “continuators” of Sīmǎ Guāng (Chén Jīng, Wáng Zōngmù, Xuē Yìngqí) failed to apply the kǎo yì method properly and so produced inferior work.
The Kǎo yì preserves several hundred citations to Sòng-era and earlier unofficial histories that are otherwise lost — Hóng Mài counted twelve in a single sample paragraph of the Róngzhāi suíbǐ, and the actual total runs into the hundreds. As a record of the Sòng-period historiographical landscape it is unique. The standard modern study is the apparatus by Hú Yùdà 胡玉達, Tōng jiàn kǎo yì jiào kān jì 通鑑考異校勘記 (Beijing: Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1956 along with the Tōng jiàn edition).
Translations and research
No standalone translation. The Kǎo yì is treated together with the Tōng jiàn in the studies listed under KR2b0007; particularly relevant are Pulleyblank, “Chinese Historical Criticism” (1961); Charles Hartman, The Making of Song Dynasty History (CUP, 2021); and Xiao-bin Ji, Politics and Conservatism in Northern Song China (CUHK, 2005).
Other points of interest
The Kǎo yì is the model for all subsequent Chinese annotated chronicles, and is one of the principal documents on which modern source-critical readings of the Tōng jiàn depend. Its routine preservation of source-citations from now-lost works (e.g. Jīnluán mì jì, Yèhóu jiā zhuàn, Héluò jì) makes it an essential primary witness for Sòng-period book-history.
Links
- Wikidata Q11084085
- ctext.org: Tongjian Kaoyi
- Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào 0103102.
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §49.5.