中興小紀

Zhōngxīng xiǎo jì 中興小紀

Small Annals of the Restoration by 熊克 (Xióng Kè, 1132–1204, zhuàn 撰)

About the work

A chronicle of the Southern Sòng restoration period — from Gāozōng’s Jiànyán 1 / 1127 (the dīngwèi abdication and Crossing-South) to the close of the Shàoxīng era / 1162 — composed by Xióng Kè in his private capacity. Originally in 40 juǎn; the transmitted text is the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery, repackaged by the Sìkù editors into nominally 40 juǎn (the catalog meta) but in early printings often into 10 juǎn (the Sìkù base).

Tiyao

Zhōngxīng xiǎo jì, 40 juǎn. (Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery copy.) By Xióng Kè of the Sòng. Kè, zì Zǐfù, of Jiànyáng. Under Xiàozōng he held office up to Qǐjū láng concurrent with appointment to the Hànlín secretariat; he served outside as prefect of Tāizhōu. His career is in the Sòng shǐ Wényuàn zhuàn. The compilation orders the events after the Crossing-South, beginning at Jiànyán dīngwèi (1127), ending at Shàoxīng rénwǔ (1162), year as warp and month as woof, finished in a single book.

The Sòng system: for any successive-court state-history, the rì jì (daily notes) are composed first; the captioning xiǎo jì is to mark this off from official documents. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiě tí says of Kè’s compositions that they are often sketchy and contradictory, and not commensurate with the title of “good historian.” Yuè Kē’s Tíng shǐ also picks out his account of the Jīn Hǎilíng’s southern invasion: he in error placed the Xūnfēngdiàn discussion together with the Wǔdédiàn discussion in Shàoxīng 28, combining them as one. Apparently a contemporary reporting on contemporary events — eyes and ears cannot encompass everything, judgments are not yet settled — naturally falls short of Lǐ Xīnchuán’s book, which compiled later when records had become detailed. Yet his upper drawing on court archives and lower consulting private records, with stitching and connecting, is everywhere logical; with respect to Xīnchuán’s book, this remains “the leading-stream that opens the path.” Beginning is hard to do well; one cannot judge by a single standard.

The Sòng shǐ Yìwén zhì records, beyond this, Kè’s Jiǔcháo tōng lüè in 168 juǎn; the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserves only 11 juǎn, beginning and end fragmentary, no usable foundation; only this book remains a complete text. The original juan-numbering, however, was combined by the dàdiǎn editors; the old listing cannot be recovered. We have approximately year-and-month, and following the Sòng shǐ’s original numbering, fix it again at 10 juǎn. (The catalog meta retains the original 40-juan figure on its own authority.)

Abstract

The Zhōngxīng xiǎo jì is the principal contemporary chronicle of the Southern Sòng restoration, written by a participant in the events. The “small” of the title (xiǎo 小) is the formal opposite of the official court qǐjūzhù and shí lù — Xióng Kè composed this as a private supplement, not under imperial commission, drawing on a combination of court archive material to which he had access through his Hànlín appointment and on private records and diaries (notably those of his contemporaries in the Lǐ Xīnchuán research circle).

The work covers exactly the Zhōngxīng period of dynastic restoration: from the Jiànyán 1 / 1127 dīngwèi abdication of Qīnzōng under Jin pressure and the simultaneous enthronement of Gāozōng at Yìngtiānfǔ (Shāngqiū), through the long and difficult military and diplomatic crises of the 1130s and 1140s (including the rise and fall of Yuè Fēi 岳飛, the Shàoxīng peace of 1141 with the Jīn, and the death of Qín Huì in 1155), down to the close of Shàoxīng in 1162 and the abdication of Gāozōng to Xiàozōng. The xiǎo jì is therefore a primary source for the post-Crossing-South century, and an essential check on the much later Sòng shǐ (1343–1345) and on the closer-but-still-derivative Jiànyán yǐlái xìnián yào lù of Lǐ Xīnchuán (KR2b0024).

The work survived only via the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery; the original juan-numbering is uncertain. The catalog meta gives 40 juǎn (following the Sòng shǐ’s nominal figure), the Sìkù editors compromised at 10. The standard modern edition is the Beijing Zhōnghuá Shūjú edition by Zhū Yǐjūn 朱易均 (1990).

For dating: the work begins to be cited by other Southern-Sòng scholars from the 1180s onwards, and was certainly complete before Xióng Kè’s death in 1204. The dating bracket here is set to the post-Shàoxīng period of likely composition, roughly 1162–1190.

Translations and research

No Western-language translation. Chinese:

• Zhū Yǐ-jūn 朱易均, Zhōng xīng xiǎo jì 中興小紀, 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhōnghuá, 1990) — punctuated critical edition.
• Lǐ Xìn-fēng 李新峰, “Zhōng xīng xiǎo jì sī xiǎng yán jiū” 中興小紀思想研究, Sōng shǐ yán jiū lùn cóng 12 (2010): 78–94.
• Charles Hartman, The Making of Song Dynasty History (CUP, 2021), index s.v. Xióng Kè / Zhōng xīng xiǎo jì.

Other points of interest

The work is one of three principal post-Crossing-South Southern-Sòng biānnián chronicles — alongside Lǐ Xīnchuán’s Jiànyán yǐlái xìnián yào lù (KR2b0024) and the so-called Sòng shǐ quán wén (KR2b0032) — that together constitute the documentary backbone of any historical reconstruction of the period.

Links

• Wikidata Q11084101
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào 0103502.
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §49.5.