明史紀事本末

Míngshǐ jìshì běnmò 明史紀事本末

The Míng History Topically Arranged by 谷應泰 (撰)

About the work

The Míngshǐ jìshì běnmò in 80 juǎn / 80 sections is the principal jìshì běnmò-format history of the Míng, completed in Shùnzhì 15 (wùxū, 1658) — eighty-one years before the official Míngshǐ itself was promulgated in 1739. The author, Gǔ Yìngtài 谷應泰 (1620–1690), was at the time Provincial Education Commissioner (Tíxué qiānshì 提學僉事) of Zhèjiāng. The book recounts in topical order some eighty principal events and causes célèbres of the dynasty’s three centuries: the founding under Tàizǔ, the Jìngnán 靖難 usurpation by the Yǒnglè emperor and the contested fate of the Jiànwén 建文 emperor (the famous 遜國 / 從亡 entries, which follow the Míng-loyalist zhìshēn lù 致身錄 line that the Jiànwén emperor escaped to Yúnnán); the Tǔmù 土木 disaster of 1449 and the Bĕijīng siege; the Chénghuà-era eunuch ascendancy; the Hóngzhì 弘治 restoration; the dispute over the Wǔzōng 武宗 succession; the Yǔyáng (sub. Liàoning border) wars; the Wàn-lì-era Korean campaign and the Qīnghé 清河 / Sǎ’ěrhū defeat; the Zhōnghú 钟鈇 (Eunuch and Easterner Party) factional wars; the great rebellion of Lǐ Zìchéng; the founding of the Southern Míng; and the falls of Hóngguāng 弘光, Lǔwáng, and Lóngwǔ 隆武. Each section is closed with a lùn in parallel-prose 駢偶 form modelled on the Jìnshū 晉書. The work’s principal source-base was the manuscript Shíkuì cángshū 石匱藏書 of Zhāng Dài 張岱, which Gǔ purchased in transcription for 500 taels of silver — the Sìkù tíyào preserves Shào Tíngcǎi’s note on this fact in the Sīfù táng jí 思復堂集; the work also drew on Tán Qiān’s 談遷 Guóquè 國榷 and Zhāng Dài’s Liè zhuàn 列傳. The catalog meta records the date “1617,” which appears to be a typo (the work cannot be earlier than the author’s jìnshì of 1647); the standard date of the preface and of the work’s completion is 1658, followed here.

Tiyao

The Míngshǐ jìshì běnmò in 80 juǎn was composed by Gǔ Yìngtài of our (Qīng) dynasty. Yìngtài, zì Gēngyú, was a man of Fēngrùn; jìnshì of Shùnzhì dīnghài (1647); rose to Provincial Education Commissioner (tíxué qiānshì) of Zhèjiāng. — The book follows the yìlì of Yuán Shū’s Tōngjiàn jìshì běnmò and arranges the canonical regulations and major events of the entire Míng, divided into eighty sections, each set out beginning to end. — At the time, the Míng shǐ had not yet been engraved and there was no decisive zhézhōng; therefore in the matter of the Jìngnán affair he gave full weight to the Cóng wáng zhìshēn lù 從亡致身錄, taking the Jiànwén emperor’s xùnguó (abdication-and-flight) as fact, and recording the YúnnánGuìzhōu wandering in the fullest detail. He further did not know that the Yīān 懿安 empress had died a martyr, and instead reported her bowed-head and cap-pulled walk into the Chéngguó duke’s mansion — both not free of the errors of the wild-history hearsay. — Yet the ranking and arrangement of events is moderate in detail and omission, the sequence orderly, the entire dynasty’s record exact and thorough; each piece is followed by a lùn duàn (judgement), in the manner of the Jìnshū, run in parallel prose, the words inflected up and down, the citations exact: especially well-turned and detailed. — Examining: in Shào Tíngcǎi’s Sīfù táng jí, Míng yímín zhuàn, it is recorded that Zhāng Dài of Shānyīn had once compiled the records of the Míng dynasty into the Shíkuì cángshū, and that Yìngtài, in writing the Jìshì běnmò, paid five hundred ounces of silver to ask for a transcription, and that Dài kǎiránì gave it to him. It also says that, although the late-Míng wild histories were many, and the tǐcái (composition-form) wanting, the quánshū (full-and-rounded) rare to find — only Tán Qiān’s annals and Zhāng Dài’s biographies have full běnmò — and Yìngtài drew them in together to make his Jìshì. From this we may say that this compilation made full use of the best materials, and gathered the strengths of others to bring his book to roundness; the yònglì (working effort) too may be called diligent. — Reverently collated, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 9th month. Chief compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Senior collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The Míngshǐ jìshì běnmò has the unusual distinction, among the jìshì běnmò corpus, of having been written before the official Míngshǐ it nominally arranges — the official Míngshǐ was not promulgated until Qiánlóng 4 (1739), eighty-one years after Gǔ Yìngtài’s preface. Gǔ Yìngtài, drawing on Zhāng Dài’s manuscript Shíkuì cángshū together with Tán Qiān’s Guóquè, was therefore working from materials no longer accessible in their original form once the official Míngshǐ was canonised. As Wilkinson notes (§65.2.3), Gǔ is consequently treated by modern Míng-history scholarship as having made one of the largest single contributions to the writing of Míng history: this is the only one of the major jìshì běnmò works that adds source material to the historical record rather than simply re-arranging an existing standard history. The Yǒnglè-emperor sections are particularly important for preserving alternative accounts of the Jiànwén emperor’s fate and of the post-Tǔmù political settlement. The 80 lùn in parallel-prose form give the work an unusually high literary register and ensured its long Qīng-period circulation as a model of historical biàntǐ writing.

The work’s principal source-critical caveat — flagged by the Sìkù compilers themselves and by all subsequent critical literature — is its uncritical adoption of the romanticised zhìshēn lù 致身錄 tradition for the Jiànwén-emperor flight; this is the single most-discussed chapter of the Jìshì běnmò and remains the principal element of Gǔ’s narrative subsequent scholarship has had to discount.

Translations and research

• Míngshǐ jìshì běnmò. Punctuated edition, 4 vols., Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1977 (and reprints; the standard reference text). Earlier Shāngwù 商務 edition, 10 vols., 1935–37.
• Wakeman, Frederic E. 1985. The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Uses the Jìshì běnmò extensively.)
• Wǎ Sī (Howard Goodman). 2010. Xun Xu and the Politics of Precision in Third-Century AD China. Leiden: Brill. (Brief: contains a passim assessment of the jìshì běnmò genre’s seventeenth-century efflorescence.)
• Mote, Frederick W., and Denis Twitchett, eds. 1988. The Cambridge History of China, vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty. Cambridge University Press. (Repeatedly cites the Jìshì běnmò.)
• Hummel, Eminent Chinese, biography of Gǔ Yìngtài and of Zhāng Dài.
• Wilkinson, Chinese History, §65.2.3 — the essential entry for this work.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù compilers’ note on Gǔ’s purchase of Zhāng Dài’s Shíkuì cángshū manuscript for 500 taels — Zhāng Dài, in penniless retirement, “kǎirán (graciously) gave it” — is one of the more poignant pieces of seventeenth-century scholarly history preserved in the jìshì běnmò corpus. The 80 lùn in parallel prose — the most extended formal application of biàntǐ historical evaluation in any jìshì běnmò — were widely anthologised and were the Jìshì běnmò’s principal vector of later-Qīng circulation, even when the underlying narrative was replaced by the official Míngshǐ.

Links

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mingshi_Jishi_Benmo
• Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11103691