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元史紀事本末

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Text ID
KR2c0008
Date
1606–1606
Dynasty
明

Yuánshǐ jìshì běnmò 元史紀事本末

The Yuán History Topically Arranged by 陳邦瞻 (撰)

About the work

The Yuánshǐ jìshì běnmò in 4 juǎn / 27 sections is Chén Bāngzhān’s 陳邦瞻 single-handed sequel to the joint Sòngshǐ jìshì běnmò (KR2c0007) of the previous year; together the two works form the Wànlì-era continuation of Yuán Shū’s enterprise into the post-Sòng period. The book draws principally on the official Yuánshǐ 元史 and on Shāng Lù’s 商輅 Xù Tōngjiàn gāngmù 續通鑑綱目 — both criticised by the Sìkù compilers for thin coverage of Yuán affairs — and adds little fresh material. Among the 27 topical headings: the rise of the Mongol khans, the Yuán statutes and law-codes (with one entry, on the law of Zhìyuán, supplied by the late-Wànlì scholar Zāng Mòxiū 臧懋修 of Guī’ān, marked bǔ 補 in the text), the examination system, the school institutions, the Grand Canal and grain transport (cáoyùn 漕運), the river-works (hé qú 河渠), the recovery of Dàdū by the Míng founder, and the death of Hán Lín’ér 韓林兒 (where Chén’s account is faulted by the Sìkù tíyào for following the convenient pre-Míng line that Liào Yǒngzhōng 廖永忠 sank Hán in the Guāzhōu crossing on his own initiative). The book also notably ends Yuán history at Shùndì’s flight to Yìngchāng 應昌, leaving Xú Dá’s recovery of Dàdū and Tuōtuō Bùhuā’s continued resistance for the Míngshǐ — a partition the Sìkù compilers also regret.

Tiyao

The Yuánshǐ jìshì běnmò in 4 juǎn was composed by Chén Bāngzhān of the Míng. It carries 27 sections in all; under the section “Definition of the law-code” appears the marker 補 (“supplied”), this entry having been added by Zāng Mòxiū of Guī’ān. — The Míng compilation of the Yuánshǐ was completed in only eight months, hastily and roughly. Later Shāng Lù and others, in compiling the Xù gāngmù, did not extend their citation broadly, and on Yuán affairs much remains undetailed. The materials selected here go no further than these two books, and the work cannot equal the breadth of his Sòngshǐ jìshì běnmò. Further, on matters spanning the YuánMíng transition Bāngzhān considered them all to belong to the Míng national history, and the events of Xú Dá’s breaking of Dàdū and of Shùndì’s encampment at Yìngchāng are passed over without entry. Yet the early Yuán beginnings he had already placed in the Sòng book; while taking the loss of Yānjīng and the northward flight of the Yuán emperor as belonging to the Míng book — by this method the great outlines of the rise and fall of an entire reign all sink and go unnoted. As measured against the historian’s rules, this is hard to defend. — As to the death of Hán Lín’ér in Zhìzhèng 26 (1366), it was Liào Yǒngzhōng who drowned him at Guāzhōu Crossing; the Hóngwǔ-era prince of Níng’s Tōngjiàn bólùn had already plainly recorded the fact, the conventional cover (because Tàizǔ had once received Hán’s reign-name) being that the affair was assigned to Yǒngzhōng, in the manner of Xiàng Yǔ and Emperor Yì. Bāngzhān covers it further, recording only “the day of his death” — particularly a bent brush. — Of Kūkū Tèmù’ér 庫庫特穆爾 (Köke Tämür / Wáng Bǎobǎo): after Shùndì’s northern flight he laboured for the Yuán in hope of recovery, repeatedly raising arms; Tàizǔ called him a “true man among the Bāpài” (巴拜真男子), better than Cháng Yùchūn; the consort of Prince Qín, Tàizǔ’s son, was his daughter. Bāngzhān, however, says only that “his end is unknown” — also a slip from fact. — Yet on the matters of Yuán-period astronomy and calendrical method, the regulations of the examinations and the schools, and the management of grain transport, river-works, and the major polity, the disposition is most thorough: Bāngzhān’s record on these heads is clear and detailed. On the rest of the period’s order and disorder he is at least able to give the great outlines and to seize the principal threads. The work may yet serve as a useful mirror. — Reverently collated, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 4th month. Chief compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Senior collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The work was completed in 1606, the year after Chén Bāngzhān’s Sòngshǐ jìshì běnmò. The two books together gave readers of the early seventeenth century the only continuous topical-history coverage of the SòngYuán transition. Chén’s Yuán book is much the smaller of the two — 4 juǎn against 28, 27 sections against 109 — reflecting both the brevity of the Yuán dynasty and the thinness of the source base. The Sìkù compilers’ assessment is mixed: they fault the work’s evasive treatment of the death of Hán Lín’ér and its silence on Köke Tämür’s career after 1368, and they criticise the periodisation that lets Yuán end with Shùndì’s flight (rather than at the recovery of Dàdū or the death of Köke Tämür); but they praise the strong sections on Yuán institutions — calendar, examinations, schools, grain transport, river-works — which they describe as the work’s clearest contribution. The book remains a useful entry-point into the Yuán narrative because it imposes topical structure on the Yuánshǐ’s scattered materials. Wilkinson (§64.2 #7) cites it as the standard jìshì běnmò treatment of the Yuán, alongside the much later Lǐ Yǒutáng 李有棠 Liáoshǐ jìshì běnmò and Jīnshǐ jìshì běnmò of 1893.

Translations and research

  • Yuánshǐ jìshì běnmò. Punctuated edition, Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1979.
  • Mote, Frederick W., and Denis Twitchett, eds. 1988. The Cambridge History of China, vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 1; and vol. 6, Alien Regimes and Border States. (Cite Chén’s Yuán book as one of the principal Míng-period reorganisations of Yuán material.)
  • Wilkinson, Chinese History, §64.2 #7; ch. 50.

Other points of interest

Zāng Mòxiū’s 臧懋修 single supplied entry on the Zhìyuán-era law-codes is one of the few clearly attributable third-party additions in the genre, marked in the running text by the character bǔ 補.

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