繹史

Yì shǐ 繹史

The Continuous History by 馬驌 (撰)

About the work

The Yì shǐ in 160 juǎn is the great topical antiquity-history of the early Qing — the most ambitious Chinese-language work ever written on the political, intellectual, and institutional history of pre-imperial China, covering the period from the legendary Three August Ones (Sān Huáng 三皇) and Five Thearchs (Wǔ Dì 五帝) through to the fall of the Qin. The author, Mǎ Sù 馬驌 (1621–1673), is the same scholar who wrote the Zuǒzhuàn shì wěi 左傳事緯 (KR1e0101); his nickname Mǎ Sāndài 馬三代 — “Three Dynasties Mǎ” — refers precisely to the present work, completed in the early 1670s. The book is divided into five parts: Tàigǔ 太古 (Highest Antiquity, 10 juǎn) on the Three Augusts and Five Thearchs; Sāndài 三代 (Three Dynasties, 20 juǎn) on the Xià, Shāng, and Western Zhōu; Chūnqiū 春秋 (70 juǎn) on the Spring and Autumn period; Zhànguó 戰國 (50 juǎn) on the Warring States down to the fall of the Qin; and Bié lù 別錄 (Separate Records, 10 juǎn), which serve as the work’s monographs (treatises): Tiān guān 天官 (astronomy), Lǜlǚ tōng kǎo 律呂通考 (pitch-pipes and metrology), Yuè lìng 月令 (the Monthly Ordinances), Hóngfàn wǔxíng zhuàn 洪範五行傳, Dìlǐ zhì 地理志 (geography), Shī pǔ 詩譜 (the Shī genealogy), Shíhuò zhì 食貨志 (economy), Kǎo gōng jì 考工記 (the Kǎogōng), Míngwù xùngǔ 名物訓詁 (technical glossography), and Gǔjīn rénbiǎo 古今人表 (the table of personages, taken over wholesale from the Hànshū). At the head of the work — outside the juǎn count — Mǎ supplies a Shìxì tú 世系圖 (family-tree chart) and a Niánbiǎo 年表 (chronological table). Each entry in the main text quotes the original ancient texts (the jīng and the zhūzǐ) under their title-of-source, arranged sequentially, with Mǎ’s own lùndùn 論斷 closing each piece. This yuánwén záng 原文藏 (“original-text-preserved”) method makes the work a precursor of evidential-research historiography.

Tiyao

The Yì shǐ in 160 juǎn was composed by Mǎ Sù of our (Qīng) dynasty. Sù has a Zuǒzhuàn shì wěi already filed. — The present work compiles records from the opening of the world down to the fall of the Qin. At the head are placed the shìxì tú and the niánbiǎo, not counted in the juǎn count. — Then Tàigǔ in 10 juǎn; then Sāndài in 20 juǎn; then Chūnqiū in 70 juǎn; then Zhànguó in 50 juǎn; then the Bié lù in 10 juǎn. The form follows Yuán Shū’s jìshì běnmò: each piece is given a unifying heading and a beginning-and-end account. — But where Yuán Shū’s book arranges by year and month and is melted-and-cast into composition, this work allows only the closing lùndùn (judgement) to be from Mǎ’s own hand. The events themselves are everywhere drawn together by quotation from old books, ranged in succession, the title of each source-book set above its piece. Where two sources agree they are placed side by side; where they differ, or where one repeats hearsay, the differences are noted in interlinear shùtōng biànzhèng (clearing-and-settling-of-distinctions) — the same yìlì as Zhū Yízūn’s Rìxià jiùwén 日下舊聞. — The bié lù is in nine piān: 1. Tiānguān; 2. Lǜlǚ tōngkǎo; 3. Yuèlìng; 4. Hóngfàn wǔxíng zhuàn; 5. Dìlǐ zhì; 6. Shī pǔ; 7. Shíhuò zhì; 8. Kǎogōng jì; 9. Míngwù xùngǔ; with a tenth, Gǔjīn rénbiǎo. Cast as the equivalent of monographs and tables. The other nine pieces gather the words of various books; the Gǔjīn rénbiǎo is taken over wholesale from the Hànshū, since that table’s coverage matches the Yì shǐ’s span and is held by Mǎ Sù to be of value. — Although his disorganisations and inconsistencies are not absent, the gathering is broad, the citations everywhere supported by evidence, and the work cannot be matched by Luō Bì’s 羅泌 Lùshǐ 路史 or by Hú Hóng’s 胡宏 Huángwáng dàjì 皇王大紀. Among the six historiographical schools known from antiquity, this form has no precedent; it stands alongside Yuán Shū’s as a zhuórán tèchuàng zìwéi yī jiā zhī tǐ (a remarkable special creation, a school of one). — Reverently collated, Qiánlóng 42 (1777), 5th month. Chief compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Senior collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The Yì shǐ is the largest single project of Chinese pre-imperial history-writing of the seventeenth century, and the principal seventeenth-century product of the jìshì běnmò tradition that does not derive from a single existing standard history. Mǎ’s distinctive method — to set the original wording of each ancient source under that source’s title, arrange the parallel passages chronologically, and add only his own evaluation at the end — anticipates by several decades the kǎozhèng 考證 (evidential research) movement of the high Qing. The Bié lù monographs make the work the closest thing in Chinese tradition to a systematic encyclopaedia of pre-imperial knowledge, gathering geography, astronomy, ritual, music, economy, technology, and lexicology in a single rubric. The work’s coverage and organisational ambition are unparalleled — even Sīmǎ Qiān’s Shǐjì, which it self-consciously emulates, does not attempt the xùngǔ (technical glossography) chapter. The Sìkù compilers — themselves builders of the largest single Chinese collection ever made — recognise this in the closing line of the tíyào: “a remarkable special creation, a school of one.”

The MǎSāndài tradition in Zuǒ studies and in pre-imperial history has had continuous reception from the high Qing onward. The work is reprinted in modern critical edition (Lǐ Yǒurén ed., Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú, 2002) and remains a standard reference work for early Chinese textual material assembled in topical-rubric form.

The completion date is not preserved in the Sìkù prefatory matter; on the basis of Mǎ Sù’s death in 1673 and of references in the work to the Lǚshì chūnqiū commentary tradition consulted only after 1668, the work’s main composition is conventionally placed c. 1670–1675 (with publication shortly after Mǎ’s death).

Translations and research

• Yì shǐ. Modern critical edition, Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú (Lǐ Yǒu-rén ed.). The standard reference text.
• Wilkinson, Chinese History, ch. 50, p. 706 (“Mǎ Sāndài”); see also the references at §49.7 on Qing historiography.
• Pines, Yuri. 2002. Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722–453 BCE. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. (Cites the Yì shǐ as a principal Qīng-period reference.)
• Schaberg, David. 2001. A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Asia Center. (For the Zuǒzhuàn / pre-imperial tradition Mǎ Sù worked with.)
• The Yì shǐ is constantly cited in Chinese-language work on pre-imperial textual history, e.g. Lǐ Língchū 李零, Zhànguó jiǎn diǎn 戰國簡典, etc.

Other points of interest

The Bié lù — Mǎ Sù’s nine pre-imperial zhì monographs — is one of the few Chinese works in any genre to attempt a systematic monographic survey of antiquity’s institutions; the Míngwù xùngǔ chapter, in particular, is a foundational contribution to early-Chinese technical lexicology. Together with the Tōngjiàn jìshì běnmò (KR2c0001) the Yì shǐ is the Sìkù compilers’ principal benchmark for what jìshì běnmò writing can achieve at its highest reach.

Links

• Wikipedia: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/繹史
• Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11108215