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通鑑地理通釋

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Text ID
KR2b0011
Date
1280–1296
Dynasty
宋

Tōngjiàn dìlǐ tōngshì 通鑑地理通釋

Comprehensive Geographical Explanations to the Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance by 王應麟 (Wáng Yīnglín, 1223–1296, zhuàn 撰)

About the work

A 14-juan systematic geographical apparatus to the Zī zhì tōng jiàn (KR2b0007), composed in Wáng Yīnglín’s late life — that is, after the fall of the Southern Sòng (1279) — at his retreat near Níngbō. It is the principal geographical companion to the Tōng jiàn in the WYG and one of the finest products of Wáng’s encyclopedic kǎojù method.

Tiyao

Tōngjiàn dìlǐ tōngshì, 14 juǎn. (Jiāngsū Provincial Governor’s submitted copy.) By Wáng Yīnglín of the Sòng. Yīnglín’s Zhōuyì Zhèngshì zhù is already on record. This work takes the Tōng jiàn’s place-names — variant-readings and historical sequence being the most tangled — and the locations of strategic frontiers and chokepoints, where the placement of forces is sufficient to be a touchstone of the success or failure of statecraft, and arranges them by topical category, completing them in a single compilation. He begins with the dynastic provinces; then the dynastic capitals; then the rivers and mountains of the Ten Circuits; then the dynastic strategic geographies; and ends with the eleven Héhuāng prefectures of the Táng, the sixteen prefectures of the Shí Jìn, and the sixteen prefectures of YānYún. The book originally has 14 juǎn; the Sòng shǐ biography gives 16 — likely a printing error.

The citations are vast, the verifications clear; and his sequence of dynastic divisions, occupations, battles, and assaults each receives its essential point — most useful in historical study. The original has no preface; later hands transferred Wáng’s own postface to the front. The phrase “in the orange-mature month of shàngzhāng zhíxú” is the eighth month of gēngchén (1280), Yuán Shìzǔ Zhìyuán 16 — three years after the Sòng’s fall. Apparently he uses Tao Qián’s principle of “writing only the jiǎzǐ.” Where the book has Zǐshèn 梓愼, it is written Zǐjǐn 梓謹 — likewise observing the Sòng taboo.

Abstract

The Tōngjiàn dìlǐ tōngshì is one of two great geographical apparatuses to the Tōng jiàn, paralleling Hú Sānxǐng’s interlinear glosses on geography embedded in the Yīn zhù. Where Hú’s apparatus is line-by-line, Wáng’s is topical: it groups all the geographical material from the Tōng jiàn under unified rubrics — administrative units, capitals, mountains and rivers, strategic terrain, frontier defence — and treats each rubric with the full historical sweep of place-name change and military-political significance.

The dating is anchored by Wáng’s own postface (transferred by a later editor to the front of the book), which is dated to “the orange-mature month of shàngzhāng zhíxú” — the eighth month of gēngchén, that is, Yuán Zhìyuán 16 / 1280. As the Sìkù tíyào notes, this is three years after the fall of the Southern Sòng (1279); Wáng follows Táo Qián 陶潛 in writing only the cyclical signs (jiǎzǐ) and refusing to acknowledge the Yuán reign-period — a quiet but unmistakable statement of yí mín 遺民 (“survivor-subject”) refusal. The text was therefore certainly written, or at least finalised, between 1280 and Wáng’s death in 1296; the dating bracket is set accordingly. Wáng also preserves the Sòng imperial taboo on Xiàozōng’s name 慎 (writing 謹 for 慎 in the personal name Zǐshèn), again as a yí mín gesture.

The structure: (1) historical dynastic-province geography (歷代州域); (2) historical capitals (歷代都邑); (3) the rivers and mountains of the Táng Ten Circuits (十道山川); (4) historical strategic geographies (歷代形勢); (5–14) the frontier loss-and-recovery narratives — the eleven Héhuāng prefectures (河湟十一州) lost to the Tibetans under the Táng, the sixteen prefectures (河西十六州) ceded by Shí Jìngtáng of the Shí Jìn (940s), and the sixteen YānYún prefectures (燕雲十六州). The last three rubrics are politically charged: the systematic catalog of frontier loss is the structural climax of the work and the implicit yí mín commentary on the Mongol conquest.

The work is the principal Sòng-period contribution to the apparatus of the Tōng jiàn and is essential for any geographical reading of Sīmǎ Guāng’s text.

Translations and research

No translation. Substantial discussion in:

  • Zhōu Yī-líang 周一良, Wèi-Jìn Nán-Běi cháo shǐ lùn jí 魏晉南北朝史論集 (Beijing daxue, 1997) — geographic apparatus.
  • Charles Hartman, The Making of Song Dynasty History (CUP, 2021), index s.v. Wáng Yīnglín.
  • Jǐn Quán-fú 金全甫 and others, Wáng Yīnglín xué shù shǐ liào jí 王應麟學術史料集 (Zhèjiāng dàxué, 2016).
  • Zhāng Lì 張禮 [Lìfēi 立非], Wáng Yīnglín Tōngjiàn dìlǐ tōngshì yánjiū 王應麟通鑑地理通釋研究 (Sìchuān dàxué thesis, 2012).

Other points of interest

The work is the textual prototype of the Qing kǎojù tradition of geographical-historical apparatus to dynastic histories — see, e.g., Yáng Shǒujìng 楊守敬, Lìdài yúdì tú 歷代輿地圖 (1906) — and the standard reference for the late-imperial reading of the Tōng jiàn’s frontier history. The fact that its closing rubrics catalogue the cumulative loss of Chinese frontier territory — the very loss that, in 1279, culminated in the fall of the Sòng — gives the work an implicit but unmistakable yí mín political reading.

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