Xiāoshì Xù HòuHànshū 蕭氏續後漢書
The Xiāo Continuation of the Hòu-Hànshū by 蕭常 (compiler)
About the work
A 44-juǎn (with appended 4-juǎn Yīnyì 音義) recasting of Chén Shòu’s 陳壽 Sānguó zhì 三國志 (KR2a0010), reorganised so as to recognise ShǔHàn 蜀漢 (Liú Bèi 劉備, the Zhāoliè 昭烈 Emperor) rather than Cáo Wèi 曹魏 as the legitimate inheritor of the Hàn 漢 dynasty. The structure is jìzhuàn: 2 juǎn of imperial annals (Zhāoliè and the Last Lord 少帝 Liú Shàn 劉禪); 2 juǎn of chronological tables (the Jiàn’ān 建安-onward enfeoffments and the Zhāngwǔ 章武-onward WúWèi tables); 18 juǎn of Shǔ biographies; 11 juǎn of Wú zàijì 載記; 9 juǎn of Wèi zàijì; plus 1 juǎn of Yìlì (editorial principles) and 4 juǎn of phonetic-and-meaning glosses (Yīnyì). The work is the consummation of a project conceived by the compiler’s father Xiāo Shòupéng 蕭壽朋 and brought to completion over twenty years of labour by Xiāo Cháng 蕭常, xiānggòng jìnshì of Lúlíng 廬陵; it was presented to court in Qìngyuán 慶元 6 (1200) with a preface by Zhōu Bìdà 周必大, then in retirement as Yìguógōng. The work shares its title with the better-known Xù HòuHànshū of Hǎo Jīng 郝經 (KR2d0013, 90 juǎn, mid-13th c.); the catalog distinguishes them by surname-prefix.
Tiyao
Submitted by your servants, etc. The Xù HòuHànshū in 49 juǎn was compiled by Xiāo Cháng of the Sòng. Cháng was a man of Lúlíng, a xiānggòng jìnshì. His father Shòupéng had, when ill, been disturbed by Chén Shòu’s Sānguó zhì — its making Wèi the imperial line and demoting Shǔ — and had wished to revise it; he died before completing the book. Cháng, on his father’s wish, wrote this work, taking Zhāoliè as the legitimate inheritor: imperial annals in 2 juǎn, chronological tables in 2 juǎn, biographies in 18 juǎn, with Wú and Wèi as zàijì in 20 juǎn; further, separately, a Yīnyì in 4 juǎn and an Yìlì in 1 juǎn. To the Shǔzhì he adds 42 biographies and removes 4; he transfers ten biographies from the Wèizhì into the Hàn; he removes 20 from the Wúzhì and 89 from the Wèizhì, drawing extensively on Péi Sōngzhī’s commentary as source. The biographies he adds are also drawn from Péi’s commentary, with occasional matter unaccounted for there. For events before Jiàn’ān, he relies on Fàn Yè’s HòuHànshū; for events after Jiàn’ān, he can no longer add. — His main concern is in shūfǎ (historiographical method), not in additional facts. Yet his Yìlì is finely judged and observes shǐfǎ commendably: the various Wèi and Wú ministers, properly attached to the zàijì of those two states, but each whose conduct distinguished him — like Mèng Zōng 孟宗 and Chén Biǎo 陳表 — is separately put in the Xiàoyǒu 孝友 biographies; like Dù Dé 杜德 and Zhāng Tì 張悌 in the Zhōngyì 忠義; like Guǎn Níng 管寧 and Wú Fàn 吳範 in the Yǐnyì 隱逸 / Fāngjì 方技 — actually following the Jìnshū model. Again, on Cáo Cāo’s enfeoffment as Duke of Wèi and award of the Nine Honours, the Chén history all writes “the Son of Heaven commanded the Duke” — but here he writes “[Cāo] himself made [himself]”; following Fàn Yè’s HòuHànshū basic annals. The other expansions and excisions are likewise mostly careful. Only: the Chén history’s Liú Bèi biography says he was enfeoffed as Lùchéng tínghóu of Zhuōxiàn, but Cháng in the Zhāoliè annals says only Lùchénghóu. The Chén history under Jiàn’ān 14 has Wèi Yán 魏延 as Inspector-General; Cháng says “Yán was promoted to Suppress-Distance General” — which Péi’s commentary does not record either, so we cannot tell whence Cháng got it. But Cháng’s strength was not in textual investigation; this is probably an accidental slip rather than a separate authority. When Cháng completed this work, he submitted a memorial — listing only basic annals, tables, biographies, and zàijì — without mentioning the Yīnyì; only Zhōu Bìdà’s preface mentions it. Perhaps after the book was finished he subsequently compiled and attached it. Third month, Qiánlóng 44 (1779). Chief compilers, etc.
Abstract
The Xiāoshì Xù HòuHànshū is the principal Southern-Sòng work to give institutional realisation, in jìzhuàn form, to the ZhūXī school’s doctrine of ShǔHàn legitimacy — the doctrine inherited from Xí Zuòchǐ’s lost HànJìn chūnqiū and developed by Zhū Xī in the Tōngjiàn gāngmù. Where Chén Shòu had treated Wèi as the legitimate dynasty in his Sānguó zhì — placing the Wèi annals first and treating Shǔ and Wú as collateral — Xiāo Cháng follows Xí Zuòchǐ in restoring the Hàn lineage to Liú Bèi (as Zhāoliè, “Bright Strong Emperor”) and his successor Liú Shàn (as the Last Lord 少帝). Wèi and Wú are demoted to zàijì (as breakaway regimes). The work is therefore not a history of new facts but a reformatting of the Sānguó zhì and the HòuHànshū under a different zhèngtǒng logic — a methodological exercise that the Sìkù tíyào judges to be performed with care and precision. The dating bracket here is anchored to Xiāo Cháng’s twenty years of work (which the preface reports) and the Qìngyuán 6 (1200) presentation date, supported by Zhōu Bìdà’s preface. The Xù HòuHànshū of Xiāo Cháng was followed in the mid-thirteenth century by Hǎo Jīng’s much larger and very different Xù HòuHànshū (KR2d0013), which works from a Yuán-Mongol vantage on the question of Hàn legitimacy; and by Zhāng Shù’s 章澍 Sānguó zhì biànwù 三國志辨誤. Standard modern punctuated text: Xù HòuHànshū in Èrshíwǔ bièshǐ 二十五別史 (QíLǔ shūshè, 2000). Wilkinson (Chinese History, §49.4) lists Xiāo Cháng’s work among the Sòng gāngmù-aligned histories.
Translations and research
- Sūn Yánchéng 孫言誠 et al., ed. 2000. Xù Hòu-Hànshū (Xiāo Cháng) 續後漢書. Èrshíwǔ bièshǐ 二十五別史 vol. 12. Jǐnán: Qí-Lǔ shūshè. The standard modern punctuated edition.
- Cài Fāngdìng 蔡方鼎. 1999. “Xiāo Cháng Xù Hòu-Hànshū lùn” 蕭常《續後漢書》論. Sòngdài wénhuà yánjiū 8: 156–171.
- Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland. 2009. “One Significant Rise of Chu-ko Liang: Loyalism, Legitimacy, and the Jin-shi-luan Connection.” In The Many Faces of Loyalty, edited by Robert E. Hegel and others. Mentions Xiāo Cháng’s work in the context of Zhū-Xī Shǔ-Hàn legitimist historiography.
- No substantial Western-language treatment of the Xù Hòu-Hànshū itself located.
Other points of interest
The book is the textual realisation of the ZhūXī zhèngtǒng doctrine in Sānguó historiography that became normative in YuánMíngQīng popular literature. Luó Guànzhōng’s 羅貫中 Sānguó yǎnyì 三國演義 (YuánMíng) draws on the same doctrinal framework, and Máo Zōnggǎng’s 毛宗崗 Qīng-period redaction of the Yǎnyì is sometimes thought to derive theoretical apparatus from the ZhūXī line that Xiāo Cháng exemplifies. The work’s distinctive editorial shift of “the Son of Heaven commanded the Duke” 天子命公 (Chén Shòu’s diction at the Nine Honours) into “Cāo made himself [Duke]” 操自為 is a particularly clean example of how zhèngtǒng commitment turns directly into formal rewriting of historical events.