Qīndìng chóngdìng DàJīn guózhì 欽定重訂大金國志
Imperially Determined and Revised Record of the Great Jīn Kingdom by 宇文懋昭 (compiler), revised by Qiánlóng-era Sìkù editors
About the work
A 41-juǎn (Sìkù chóngdìng recension) dynastic history of the Jurchen Jīn 金 (1115–1234), companion-piece to Yè Lónglǐ’s Qìdān guózhì (KR2d0009) on the Liáo. The work is attributed to Yǔwén Màozhāo 宇文懋昭, a Huáixī 淮西 defector to the southern Sòng court who self-attaches a jìnshū biǎo 進書表 dated to Duānpíng 1.1.15 / 15 February 1234 — only five days after the historical extinction of the Jīn at Càizhōu. The structure is broadly jìzhuàn: 26 juǎn of imperial annals (the nine Jīn rulers); 1 juǎn of biographies of founding meritorious officials; 2 juǎn of biographies in Wénxué hànyuàn 文學翰苑; 3 juǎn of zálù miscellany; 7 juǎn of institutional matter (origins, dress, marriage, foodways, rituals); 1 juǎn of Xǔ Kàngzōng 許亢宗’s Xíngchéng lù (a 1125 envoy report); and 1 appended juǎn of an Yìgǎi guóyǔ jiě 譯改國語解 (Jurchen-term gloss). The Sìkù editors flag the work as substantially adulterated by later (probably Yuán-period) hands: it cites Yuán Hàowèn’s 元好問 Zhōngzhōu jí 中州集 wholesale (a work that was not yet completed at the alleged date of presentation); it refers to the Mongols as “Dàjūn” 大軍 / “Dàcháo” 大朝 (Yuán-period diction, not Sòng); it gives a Sòng emperor’s posthumous title (Lǐzōng 理宗) before he received it; and it openly discusses the deposition of Sòng Níngzōng 寧宗’s heir-apparent in language that no Southern-Sòng author would have written. As with the Qìdān guózhì, the Sìkù version (1784) is an imperially-revised recension, parallel in editorial method to the chóngdìng Qìdān guózhì.
Tiyao
Submitted by your servants, etc. The Qīndìng chóngdìng DàJīn guózhì in 41 juǎn; old copies attribute it to Yǔwén Màozhāo of the Sòng. There is at the front a jìnshū biǎo of Duānpíng 1 (1234), which the author signs as “Huáixī guīzhèng rén, with the new appointment of Chéngshìláng, Gōngbù jiàgé” — yet his lǐguàn 里貫 is not given in detail. The biǎo contains expressions like “secretly surviving on the Huái shore” and “from boyhood reading my father’s books” — but nothing tells us what his father was. The book takes the events of the Jīn from Tàizǔ to Āizōng over 117 years, gathered and arranged: 26 juǎn of basic annals; 1 juǎn of biographies of founding meritorious ministers; 2 of Wénxué hànyuàn biographies; 3 of zálù; 7 of zázǎi institutional matter; 1 of Xǔ Kàngzōng’s Fèngshǐ xíngchénglù. It seems to be material drawn from various books and arranged. The “Yìzōng” 義宗 it refers to is what the Jīnshǐ identifies as Āizōng — the Jīnshǐ says the title was conferred by the Xīzhōu 息州 xíngshěng, while this work says it was conferred by Jīn loyal subjects, contradicting the History considerably. Furthermore: Màozhāo had submitted to Sòng, so he should treat Sòng as “the inner”; yet in the body he sub-notes the Sòng reign-years and even writes of the Future King [Gāozōng] going as a hostage and lists the northward-deported imperial relatives among the captive offerings — particularly improper. So Qián Zēng’s 錢曾 Dúshū mǐnqiú jì called the work “the most shockingly disrespectful to one’s ruler.” Yet the doubts go deeper than this. On detailed inspection: the biǎo is dated 15 January of Duānpíng 1, but the Jīn fell on the 10th of that month — a difference of only five days; how could the book be composed and presented in that time? The minute report of the fall of Càizhōu is so detailed that it is implausible. — Duānpíng falls in Lǐzōng’s reign, but this book directly writes that “the heir-apparent of Sòng Níngzōng could not succeed; his nephew was set up as Lǐzōng in his private quarters” — using the posthumous title and discussing a deposition with no taboo at all. Lǐzōng’s title is given in life, a manifest absurdity. — Although Màozhāo was a Jīn-side defector to Sòng, both states are bluntly named in the body, while only the Mongols are called “Dàjūn” 大軍 and “Dàcháo” 大朝 — language that seems to issue from a Yuán-side writer rather than a Sòng one — yet more inexplicable. — The kāiguó gōngchén biographies are a few terse entries; but the Wénxué hànyuàn biographies number 32 — and on examination the prose is taken wholesale from Yuán Hàowèn’s Zhōngzhōu jí small biographies, lightly abridged. Hàowèn composed that book after the fall of Jīn — so Màozhāo can scarcely have copied his text in advance. All this is very serious doubt. Other matters — the Àiwáng 愛王 disturbance and the like — also accept too much spurious matter; the structure is jumbled and out of order; clearly later hands have intervened in the text and what we have is not Màozhāo’s original — hence the contradictions. We have now respectfully followed the Imperial directives and corrected the text on the precedent of the Qìdān guózhì’s Yìlì, item by item, to bring it into agreement with shǐfǎ. Eleventh month, Qiánlóng 49 (1784). Chief compilers, etc.
Abstract
The DàJīn guózhì is the principal Sòng-Yuán-period synthetic narrative of the Jīn dynasty, predating the official Yuán Jīnshǐ 金史 (KR2a0020, 1344) by a century and supplementing it on a number of specific points. The catalog meta dating (“fl. 1234”) follows the date of the supposed jìnshū biǎo but, as the Sìkù tíyào makes clear, the received form of the text contains substantial later interpolations: the unmistakable use of Yuán-period diction (“Dàcháo” for the Mongols; the use of Lǐzōng’s posthumous title in his lifetime); the citation of materials from Yuán Hàowèn’s 元好問 Zhōngzhōu jí 中州集, which Yuán Hàowèn only began compiling after the Jīn collapse; and the suspicious five-day gap between the destruction of the Jīn at Càizhōu and the date of the biǎo. Modern scholarship — especially the work of Liú Pǔrán 劉浦江 (2013) — has confirmed the Sìkù assessment and pushed the dating of the present recension into the early-to-mid Yuán (perhaps as late as the 1330s). The dating bracket here therefore runs from 1234 (the alleged composition) to ca. 1340 (the latest plausible terminus for the Yuán-period editorial layer). Like its companion Qìdān guózhì, the WYG version is the Qīndìng chóngdìng recension produced by the Sìkù editors in 1784 at the Qiánlóng emperor’s express command, modifying Yè-style breaches of zhèngtǒng doctrine. The standard modern critical edition is Cuī Wényìn 崔文印’s DàJīn guózhì jiàozhèng 大金國志校證 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1986), which surveys all the textual and authenticity questions in detail. Wilkinson (Chinese History) treats the DàJīn guózhì as standard Jīn-side literature alongside the Jīnshǐ and the Sānzhāo Běiméng huìbiān.
Translations and research
- Cuī Wényìn 崔文印, ed. 1986. Dà-Jīn guózhì jiào-zhèng 大金國志校證. 2 vols. Běijīng: Zhōnghuá shūjú. Standard modern critical edition with comprehensive textual notes.
- Liú Pǔ-rán 劉浦江. 2013. “Dà-Jīn guózhì zhēn-wěi kǎo-biàn” 《大金國志》真偽考辨. Zhōngguó-shǐ yánjiū 中國史研究 2013.4: 71–96. The most thorough modern argument that the present text is post-Yuán.
- Franke, Herbert. 1978. “The Chin Dynasty.” In The Cambridge History of China, vol. 6: Alien Regimes and Border States, 907–1368, ch. 3. CUP. Uses the Dà-Jīn guózhì with appropriate caution.
- No substantial dedicated Western-language treatment located.
Other points of interest
The Xǔ Kàngzōng 許亢宗 Fèngshǐ xíngchénglù 奉使行程錄 in juǎn 40 is one of the principal Sòng-period embassy narratives to Jīn (the embassy of Xuānhé 7 / 1125, just before the Jīn invasion of Kāifēng) and is best preserved here — a major source for early Jīn institutional and geographical conditions. The appended Yìgǎi guóyǔ jiě in juǎn 41 is a Jurchen lexical glossary; together with the equivalent in the Qìdān guózhì, it constitutes one of the earliest Hàn-language efforts at lexicographical treatment of the Jurchen language, although in its received form it has been substantially Sinicised. The Qiánlóng chóngdìng recension differs noticeably from the pre-Sìkù exemplars (e.g. those preserved in SòngYuán cóngshū tradition) and should not be used uncritically as a witness to Yǔwén’s text.