Tōngjiàn jìshì běnmò 通鑑紀事本末
The Comprehensive Mirror Arranged Topically by 袁樞 (撰)
About the work
The genre-founding Tōngjiàn jìshì běnmò in 42 juǎn is Yuán Shū’s 袁樞 (1131–1205) rearrangement of Sīmǎ Guāng’s 司馬光 Zīzhì tōngjiàn 資治通鑑 (KR2k0001) into 239 self-contained topical narratives, each given its own title, beginning at the partition of Jìn 晉 in 403 BCE and ending with Zhōu Shìzōng’s 周世宗 conquest of the Huáinán 淮南 in 959. By gathering the dispersed entries of an event together while keeping each episode in chronological order, Yuán broke open the limitations of pure annalistic form (biānnián 編年) and biographical-annal form (jìzhuàn 紀傳), creating a third major form of Chinese historiography, the jìshì běnmò 紀事本末 (“topically arranged history”). The text was first printed at Yánzhōu 嚴州 in Chúnxī 淳熙 1 (1174), and by Chúnxī 3 (1176) Xiàozōng 孝宗 had ordered ten further copies struck from official blocks and sent to leading frontier commanders with the remark that “the way of governance is wholly contained in this book” 治道盡在是矣.
Tiyao
(Translated from the Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào; the Wényuān gé witness in the Kanripo set is from the Sìbù cóngkān impression, whose front matter carries Yáng Wànlǐ’s 1174 preface but no SKQS tíyào.)
The Tōngjiàn jìshì běnmò in 42 juǎn was composed by Yuán Shū of the Sòng. Shū, zì Jīzhòng, was a man of Jiàn’ān. In the early years of Xiàozōng he sat the Ministry of Rites examination and placed first in the cífù paper. He rose through office to Vice Director of the Ministry of Works, served as prefect of Jiānglíng with the title of Editor of the Right-Civility Hall, and was later appointed superintendent of the Tàipíng Xīngguó Palace. His career is recorded in his biography in the Sòngshǐ. — Now: when Liú Zhījǐ 劉知幾 of the Táng wrote his Shǐtōng 史通 to set out historical models, he listed the Six Schools at its head and reduced them under the Two Forms; from Hàn times onward, history has had only the annals-biography and chronicle methods, and the two have alternated by addition and subtraction. Yet the annals-biography form often disperses a single event over several chapters, leaving guest and host indistinguishable; and the chronicle form often spreads a single event across several juǎn, so that beginning and end are hard to track. Yuán Shū then conceived a new design: taking Sīmǎ Guāng’s Zīzhì tōngjiàn he distinguished its topics and arranged them by category, giving each event its full beginning and end and a heading of its own, and within each piece arranging the entries by year and month, complete from start to finish. Beginning with the partition of Jìn by the three houses and closing with Zhōu Shìzōng’s southern campaign on the Huái, it embraces the events of several thousand years; the warp and weft are clear, the headings full, the whole sweep visible at a glance — making the annals-biography and chronicle forms run together as one. Truly something not seen in earlier antiquity. — Wáng Yīnglín’s 王應麟 Yùhǎi 玉海 records that in Chúnxī 3 (1176), 11th month, the Vice Councillor Gōng Màoliáng 龔茂良 reported that the topical chronicle compiled by Shū was profitable to learning, and an edict ordered Yánzhōu to print ten copies, with a fair manuscript first to be presented. Yuán Shū’s biography in the Sòngshǐ further records that Xiàozōng read it and gave it praise, bestowed it on the Eastern Palace, and divided copies among the commanders along the Yángzǐ, saying: “The way of governance is wholly contained in this book.” Zhū Xī 朱熹 too praised the work, saying that in its sections, headings, and the joints of beginning, end, division, and unity it concealed everywhere a subtle intention, and that in interweaving Sīmǎ Guāng’s book it belonged to the lineage of the Guóyǔ 國語. For though what Shū assembled does not depart from the original wording of the Tōngjiàn, his selection and pruning are worked with extreme rigour, far above the various Tōngjiàn zǒnglèi 通鑑總類 sort of book, which merely splits and snatches. Later writers like Chén Bāngzhān 陳邦瞻 and Gǔ Yìngtài 谷應泰 followed in his track, but for thoroughness of plan and absence of leakage or padding all stand below this work.
Abstract
The Tōngjiàn jìshì běnmò is the foundational work of the jìshì běnmò genre, in which the dispersed materials of a chronicle are reassembled into self-contained topical narratives without altering the underlying text. The book grew out of Yuán Shū’s frustration, while a junior official, with the difficulty of following any single thread of action through the Zīzhì tōngjiàn’s strict year-by-year scheme. Working from Sīmǎ Guāng’s text alone — without adding new sources — he extracted the entries belonging to each major event or sequence, retitled them, and ordered them serially. The result, presented to the throne by way of Gōng Màoliáng 龔茂良 in 1175 and printed at Yánzhōu in Chúnxī 1 (1174), runs from the partition of Jìn at the beginning of the Tōngjiàn in 403 BCE to the campaigns of Zhōu Shìzōng on the Huái in 959. Yáng Wànlǐ’s 楊萬里 preface of Chúnxī 1, preserved at the head of the Sìbù cóngkān witness, recommends the work as offering “the source of the disease and the prescription for the cure” of historical understanding. Endymion Wilkinson (Chinese History: A New Manual, ch. 50) credits Yuán Shū with creating the third major Chinese historiographical genre — jìshì běnmò tǐ 紀事本末體 — alongside annals (biānnián) and annals-biography (jìzhuàn), and notes the punctuated Zhōnghuá edition (1964, 12 vols.) as the standard modern reference text.
Translations and research
- Tōngjiàn jìshì běnmò, punctuated edition, 12 vols., Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1964 (often reprinted). The standard modern Chinese reference edition.
- Wilkinson, Endymion. 2018. Chinese History: A New Manual, 5th ed. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Asia Center, ch. 50 (jìshì běnmò tǐ).
- Beasley, W. G., and E. G. Pulleyblank, eds. 1961. Historians of China and Japan, Oxford University Press, contains discussion of Yuán Shū’s role in the development of historical writing.
Other points of interest
The work’s success spawned an entire bibliographic class in the Sìkù (jìshì běnmò lèi 紀事本末類, here KR2c), with Sòng, Yuán, Míng, and Qīng successors taking each dynastic history as their basis (Chén Bāngzhān’s Sòng/Yuán and Gǔ Yìngtài’s Míng sequels in this same division), and the Qīng fānglüè 方略 campaign histories (KR2c0009 et seq.) classified under it as well.