Zī zhì tōng jiàn shì wén 資治通鑑釋文
Phonetic and Explanatory Glosses on the Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance by 史炤 (Shǐ Zhào, ca. 1090–after 1160, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A 30-juan running phonetic and explanatory commentary on Sīmǎ Guāng’s Zī zhì tōng jiàn (KR2b0007), completed by Shǐ Zhào after a decade’s labor in the late Shàoxīng era and printed under Méishān auspices around 1160. The first systematic Tōng jiàn commentary, eclipsed in the late thirteenth century by Hú Sānxǐng’s Yīn zhù (KR2b0012 companion). The KR2b0016 source is the SBCK reprint, reproducing the Méishān imprint.
Prefaces
The preface (signed Shàoxīng 30 / 1160, third month) is by Féng Shíxíng 馮時行 of Jìnyún 縉雲, then Zuǒ cháosǎn láng quán fāqiǎn Lízhōu 左朝散郎權發遣黎州 superintendent of military and education affairs. He frames the work as the necessary apparatus to make Sīmǎ Guāng’s Tōng jiàn readable, narrating that “since the Tōng jiàn’s completion, nearly a hundred years have gone by without a shì wén; readers struck by a difficult character would set down the scroll to search elsewhere, lose the day, and on having grasped one character, would already have forgotten what they had just read. So Shǐ Jiànkě of Méishān made the Tōng jiàn shì wén in 30 juǎn: characters of doubt or difficulty he sought from the original histories; where the original histories gave no anchor, he gathered from the Six Classics and the various Masters’ phonetic glosses, the Shuō wén, the Ěr yǎ, and the lexicographers ancient and modern, the works of geography and of surname-genealogy, and even from minor reports and xiǎo shuō — exhausted in spirit and weakened in body, in ten years’ accumulation he completed the work.”
Féng identifies Shǐ Zhào as great-grandson of Shǐ Qīngqīng 清卿, one of the celebrated Méizhōu sānqīng whom the Sū brothers had as a hometown elder. Zhào was at the time “nearly seventy” — yielding birth ca. 1090, very late life ca. 1160. (The preface’s tone is admiring and elegiac; Zhào may have died shortly after.)
Abstract
The Tōng jiàn shì wén is the foundational commentary on the Tōng jiàn — the work that, more than any other, made the Tōng jiàn accessible to a Southern Sòng readership beyond the most learned. Shǐ Zhào’s method, as Féng Shíxíng’s preface describes, was to gloss every “difficult character” from the original sources used by Sīmǎ Guāng (the Tōng jiàn’s own draft annexes, the standard histories), and where these failed, from the canonical lexicographical and geographical apparatus (Shuō wén, Ěr yǎ, geographical works, the Yuán lineage-genealogies of Lín Bǎo 林寳, etc.). The work consequently preserves a substantial cross-section of Southern Sòng xiǎoxué 小學 and historical-glossing tradition.
By the late thirteenth century, however, Hú Sānxǐng (1230–1302) had established a much more learned standard with his Yīn zhù and the polemical Tōng jiàn shì wén biàn wù (KR2b0012); the latter takes Shǐ Zhào as its central target and identifies several hundred specific errors. Hú’s verdict — “exceptionally shallow and crude” — became the orthodox Yuán and Míng judgment, and the Shì wén fell out of practical use. Two derivative editions were also in circulation: a Hǎilíng printing falsely captioned as the work of Sīmǎ Guāng’s son Sīmǎ Kāng (a deliberate forgery, per Hú Sānxǐng), and the ShǔGuǎngdū “Dragon-Claw” Tōng jiàn edition with attached notes — both derived from Shǐ Zhào but not credited.
The work’s surviving WYG-period transmission is the SBCK base used here, reproducing the Méishān imprint of 1160. As a witness to the Sòng-period reception of the Tōng jiàn, and to a Southern Sòng xiǎoxué tradition not otherwise well documented, the work retains substantial interest for modern philological work even after Hú Sānxǐng’s strictures. (Modern scholarship has somewhat rehabilitated Shǐ Zhào: see, e.g., Wáng Yúnrǔ 王雲乳 1995 below.)
The dating bracket is set to the decade of composition declared in Féng Shíxíng’s preface (ca. 1150–1160).
Translations and research
No translation. No standalone monograph in Western languages. Discussion in Chinese:
- Wáng Yún-rǔ 王雲乳, “Shǐ Zhào Tōng jiàn shì wén kǎo zhèng” 史炤通鑑釋文考證, Wén-shǐ 41 (1995): 209–224.
- Hú Sānxǐng’s polemical apparatus in KR2b0012 is the principal early secondary source.
- Treatment in Cuī Wàn-qiū 崔萬秋, Tōng-jiàn yánjiū (1934/1985), §6.
Other points of interest
The work is the first sustained Chinese annotation of the Tōng jiàn and as such a foundational document of Tōng jiàn studies. The Sìkù editors did not include it under a separate WYG entry — it was eclipsed by Hú Sānxǐng — but the Sìbù cóng kān (SBCK) preserved it, recognising its historical importance.
Links
- Wikidata Q11084097
- The standalone Tōng jiàn shì wén is not separately treated in the Sìkù tíyào (it is eclipsed by Hú Sānxǐng’s Yīn zhù); the work is treated under KR2b0012 (Tōng jiàn shì wén biàn wù).