Zuìwéi lù 罪惟錄
Record of Crimes Reserved [for Heaven’s Judgement] by 查繼佐 (compiler)
About the work
A 90-juǎn private dynastic history of the Míng (1368–1644) and the Southern Míng (1644–1662) by Zhā Jìzuǒ 查繼佐 (1601–1677), Hǎiníng-based late-Míng / early-Qīng historian and Míng loyalist. Composed in secret under early-Qīng proscription over roughly twenty-five years (ca. 1648–1672), the work consists of zhì 志 (treatises), jì 紀 (basic annals), and substantial lièzhuàn 列傳 — including biographies of the late-Míng martyrs and Southern-Míng figures whose treatment was politically impossible in any Qīng-era public history. The title Zuìwéi lù — literally “Record of Crimes Awaiting [the Adjudication of Heaven]” — is a deliberately self-effacing self-description, reading as both an admission that the author “presumes to record” matters that he should leave to the imperial historians, and a protest that the actual “crimes” are those committed by the new regime. Zhā Jìzuǒ was nearly executed in the Zhuāngshì shǐàn 莊氏史案 of 1663 (the Míngshǐ chāolüè affair, KR2d0016); after that escape he hid the manuscript of the Zuìwéi lù in a sealed wall of his Hǎiníng residence, where it remained undisturbed through the high Qīng. The complete manuscript was rediscovered in the early twentieth century and was first published in 1936 in the SBCK Sānbiān; the original Hǎiníng autograph has since been lost again. The catalog meta gives 九十卷, but the SBCK arrangement publishes the work in 90 juǎn of lièzhuàn alone (with the zhì and jì counted independently); the complete manuscript ran to over 100 juǎn in total.
Tiyao
Abstract
The Zuìwéi lù is the most substantial private history of the Míng dynasty produced under Qīng-period proscription, and one of the principal Hàn-language sources on the Southern Míng — the rump Míng courts at Nánjīng (Hóngguāng 弘光, 1644–45), Fúzhōu (Lóngwǔ 隆武, 1645–46), Shàoxīng (Lǔwáng jiānguó 魯王監國, 1645–53), Zhàoqìng / Yúnnán (Yǒnglì 永曆, 1646–62), and finally the Zhèng family’s Táiwān (1662–1683). Zhā Jìzuǒ had served briefly under the Lóngwǔ court as a Hànlín jiǎntǎo 翰林檢討 in 1645–46 and so had first-hand knowledge of the Fúzhōu court; for the other Southern-Míng courts he gathered evidence from refugees and surviving documents over decades. His treatment of the Sòng dynastic ancestors of the Zhū family in the early juǎn (1–10), of the Hóngwǔ–Yǒnglè reigns in the middle volumes, and of the Wànlì–Chóngzhēn collapse in the later sections is generally judged by modern scholars (Méng Sēn; Lynn Struve) to be more reliable on individual zhuàn details than the imperially-sponsored Qīndìng Míngshǐ 欽定明史 (KR2a0026), which was completed in 1739 under explicit Qīng-court editorial control. The manuscript’s near-total concealment for two-and-a-half centuries means the text is also free from the Qīng-period editorial filtering applied to most other Míng-history materials surviving from the same era.
The dating bracket here runs from ca. 1648 (Zhā’s earliest documented engagement with the project, after his retirement from Southern-Míng service) to ca. 1672 (when he describes the work as substantively complete in a private letter; Zhā continued to revise individual zhuàn up to his death in 1677). Wilkinson (Chinese History, §65.1.4) treats the Zuìwéi lù together with Tán Qiān’s 談遷 Guóquè 國榷 and Wàn Sītóng’s 萬斯同 Míngshǐ gǎo 明史稿 as one of the three principal private Míng histories of the early Qīng, all three of which were used (with appropriate caution) by twentieth-century Míng historians as alternatives to or correctives of the Qīndìng Míngshǐ.
Translations and research
- Yú Yīngshī 余英時. 1979. Fāng Yǐzhì wǎnjié kǎo 方以智晚節考. Táiběi: Liánjīng. Discusses Zhā Jìzuǒ in the broader context of Míng-loyalist historiography.
- Méng Sēn 孟森. 1934. Xīn-shǐ cóng-kān 心史叢刊. Běipíng: Zhōngguó shūdiàn. Foundational treatment of the work’s textual history and the Zhuāng-shì àn.
- Struve, Lynn A. 1984. The Southern Ming, 1644–1662. New Haven: Yale University Press. The standard English-language history of the Southern Míng courts; uses the Zuì-wéi lù as a major source.
- Cuī Jūn 崔軍. 2009. Zhā Jìzuǒ yǔ Zuì-wéi lù yánjiū 查繼佐與《罪惟錄》研究. Běijīng: Rénmín. Standard modern monograph on Zhā Jìzuǒ and the work.
- Zhā Jìzuǒ 查繼佐. 1936. Zuì-wéi lù 罪惟錄. Sìbù cóngkān sānbiān 四部叢刊三編. Shànghǎi: Shāngwù. The first publication of the work, with Zhāng Yuánjì’s editorial introduction.
- Zhā Jìzuǒ 查繼佐. 1986. Zuì-wéi lù 罪惟錄. 4 vols. Sìbù cóngkān reprint, with new editorial apparatus. Hángzhōu: Zhèjiāng gǔjí.
Other points of interest
The episode of Zhā Jìzuǒ’s escape from the Zhuāngshì shǐàn of 1663 — through the intercession of his former pupil, the Qīng eunuch-general Wú Liùqí 吳六奇 — was popularised in twentieth-century wǔxiá fiction by Jīn Yōng 金庸 in the opening chapters of Lùdǐng jì 鹿鼎記 (where Zhā is the historical figure underlying the fictional character “Zhā Yīhuáng”); the same episode is the historical kernel of the more detailed treatment in Méng Sēn’s Xīnshǐ cóngkān. Zhā Jìzuǒ’s literary side — as patron of the Zhājiā bān 查家班 kūnqǔ troupe at Hǎiníng and a noted cí poet — is virtually unknown to Western scholarship.