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資治通鑑目錄

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Text ID
KR2b0010
Date
1066–1084
Dynasty
宋

Zī zhì tōng jiàn mù lù 資治通鑑目錄

Index to the Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance by 司馬光 (Sīmǎ Guāng, 1019–1086, zhuàn 撰)

About the work

A 30-juan parallel index and chronological-astronomical synchronisation table for the Zī zhì tōng jiàn (KR2b0007). Presented to Shénzōng with the Tōng jiàn in Yuánfēng 7 / 1084. The third member, with the Kǎo yì and the Shì lì (KR2b0008–0009), of Sīmǎ Guāng’s apparatus to his master-work.

Tiyao

Zī zhì tōng jiàn mù lù, 30 juǎn. (Held in the home of Lù Xíxióng, Guānglù sì qīng.) By Sīmǎ Guāng of the Sòng. This book too was presented with the Tōng jiàn — the “general listing of event-headings, prepared for ready reference” of the memorial of presentation. The method: years as warp, states as woof; year-period and reign-name set above, and the corresponding Tōng jiàn juǎn number set below. Above this is added Liú Xīsǒu’s Cháng lì on qì, shuò, and intercalary months, together with the seven-luminary irregularities (eclipses, planet conjunctions) recorded across the standard histories. Among these are inserted the most pointed of the book’s wordings. The order is precise and articulated.

The Tōng jiàn is comprehensive and vast, the volume immense. Guāng feared readers would weary in the searching. So during the very compilation, he extracted the principal headings and combined them into this work, that the two should run together, the threads being made easy to follow. The form wholly imitates the Year Tables, using the old method of the Shǐjì and the Hàn shū. The marking-out of Tōng jiàn juan numbers — that one may know which event is in which year, and which year in which juan — uses the mù lù form together with the year-table form: this is Guāng’s own innovation.

The Tōng jiàn is the zǒng huì (general assembly) of jì, zhì, and zhuàn; this work is in turn the zǒng huì of the Tōng jiàn. As to the planetary occultations and the like, recorded in the Tiānwén zhì of each dynastic history, the Tōng jiàn by convention does not record them; here they are all set out in the upper register — supplementing what the master-work omits. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiě tí says that Guāng feared his master-work’s vastness was hard to grasp, and that the Mù lù lacked beginning and end; in his late life he composed the Tōng jiàn jǔyào lì in 80 juǎn; the manuscript was at Cháo Yuèzhī’s Daoist-school household; in the early Shàoxīng era, Xiè Kèjiā Rénbó obtained it and presented it. The text is now lost. The Dúshū zhì further records a Tōng jiàn jié wén in 60 juǎn, said to be Guāng’s own abridgement; also lost. Only this book, by attaching to the Tōng jiàn, has survived — still adequate to serve as the gānglǐng (organising headlines) of the master-work.

Abstract

The Tōng jiàn mù lù is the third of Sīmǎ Guāng’s three companion works to the Tōng jiàn itself. It is structurally a year-table after the Shǐjì / Hàn shū model, but with two distinctive innovations: (1) cross-reference cells giving the corresponding Tōng jiàn juǎn number for each event, making the index navigable in either direction; and (2) an upper register carrying Liú Xīsǒu’s 劉羲叟 Cháng lì 長曆 (long-cycle calendar) computations of solar terms, lunar phases, and intercalary months, together with the seven-luminary anomalies recorded in the dynastic Tiānwén zhì. The latter material is by editorial decision excluded from the running text of the Tōng jiàn; the Mù lù therefore supplements as well as indexes.

In Sīmǎ Guāng’s design — articulated in his memorial of presentation — the four works (zhèng wén, Kǎo yì, Shì lì, Mù lù) form an integrated system: the master text for narrative, the Kǎo yì for source-criticism, the Shì lì for editorial principle, and the Mù lù for chronological orientation. The Mù lù was integrated with the Tōng jiàn in transmission and survives intact in the WYG; two other SīmǎGuāng abridgements — the Tōng jiàn jǔyào lì 通鑑舉要曆 in 80 juǎn and the Tōng jiàn jié wén 通鑑節文 in 60 juǎn — are both lost, as the Sìkù tíyào notes.

The work is methodologically important as the prototype of the gāng / mù 綱目 (outline / detail) historiographical bipartition that Zhū Xī subsequently institutionalised in the Tōng jiàn gāng mù: where Zhū Xī took the indexing principle and re-cast it as a moral-evaluative summary, Sīmǎ Guāng’s original conception was purely chronological and informational. The dividing-line between the two conceptions is the principal historiographical fault-line of the late-Sòng and Yuán-period Tōng jiàn lineage.

Translations and research

No standalone translation. The Mù lù is treated together with the Tōng jiàn in the literature listed under KR2b0007. Charles Hartman, The Making of Song Dynasty History (CUP, 2021), discusses its methodological significance.

Other points of interest

The Liú Xīsǒu Cháng lì embedded in the upper register is an important transmission witness for Sòng-period mathematical-astronomy work; Liú Xīsǒu (1018–1060) was the Northern Sòng court astronomer whose calendrical computations underpin not only this index but also much of the Sòng shǐ Tiānwén zhì.

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