HòuHànshū bǔyì 後漢書補逸
Recovery of the Lost Books of the Later Hàn by 姚之駰 (compiler)
About the work
A 21-juǎn early-eighteenth-century recovery of substantial fragments from eight Eastern-Hàn (and Sānguó-period) histories that had been lost since the TángSòng period. Composed in Kāngxī guǐsì (1713) at the Lùdí zhāi 露滌齋 studio of Yáo Zhīyīn 姚之駰 (zì Lǔsī 魯斯) in Qiántáng. The eight recovered works are: (1) Bān Gù 班固 et al., Dōngguān Hànjì 東觀漢記 (KR2d0002) — 8 juǎn; (2) Xiè Chéng 謝承, HòuHànshū — 4 juǎn; (3) Xuē Yíng 薛瑩, HòuHànshū — 1 juǎn; (4) Zhāng Pán 張璠, Hànjì — 1 juǎn; (5) Huà Jiào 華嶠, HòuHànshū — 1 juǎn; (6) Xiè Shěn 謝沈, HòuHànshū — 1 juǎn; (7) Yuán Shānsōng 袁山松, HòuHànshū — 1 juǎn; (8) Sīmǎ Biāo 司馬彪, XùHànshū — 4 juǎn. These eight together represent the major lost Eastern-Hàn histories whose existence Liú Zhījī had recorded in the Shǐtōng and which were the principal sources of Fàn Yè’s HòuHànshū. Yáo Zhīyīn’s recovery — while criticised by the Sìkù editors for not always identifying its sources and for confusing Sīmǎ Biāo’s treatises with those that Liú Zhāo had attached to the HòuHànshū in the early Sòng — provided the foundation for the much-expanded Sìkù-era recovery of the Dōngguān Hànjì (1784).
Tiyao
Submitted by your servants, etc. The HòuHànshū bǔyì in 21 juǎn was compiled by the present-dynasty Yáo Zhīyīn. Zhīyīn’s zì was Lǔsī; he was a man of Qiántáng. Jìnshì of Kāngxī jǐchǒu 已丑 (1709), his office reached Jiānchá yùshǐ. The compilation gathers, of the HòuHànshū works no longer extant, eight families: Bān Gù et al.’s Dōngguān Hànjì in 8 juǎn, Xiè Chéng’s HòuHànshū in 4 juǎn; Xuē Yíng’s HòuHànshū, Zhāng Pán’s Hànjì, Huà Jiào’s HòuHànshū, Xiè Shěn’s HòuHànshū, Yuán Shānsōng’s HòuHànshū — each 1 juǎn; Sīmǎ Biāo’s XùHànshū — 4 juǎn. The gathering of small details was a labour of considerable diligence. Only — he does not identify the books from which he extracts, leaving the reader without means of verification — that is his shortcoming. As to Sīmǎ Biāo’s book, although it is lost, the Táng Lǐ Xián once took its ten treatises to supplement what was missing in Fàn Yè’s HòuHànshū — what is now in the HòuHànshū annotated by Liú Zhāo is in fact Biāo’s text — but Zhīyīn does not investigate the source and treats it as Fàn’s monograph; he then separately gathers material from other books that cite Sīmǎ’s text and includes them, where the wording matches exactly — never realising the error. The mistake is most serious. But Hóng Mài, exhaustive in his reading, in his Róngzhāi suíbǐ also took Sīmǎ’s monograph for Fàn’s — so Zhīyīn’s error has its precursor. — As to the Dōngguān Hànjì, the Tōngkǎo records 10 juǎn still extant; in early Míng the book was still around, hence the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn contains more than what Zhīyīn collected. We have now separately collected and edited it for printing — the bìfǔ 秘府 (palace archive) treasured collections are not what a thatched-roof scholar (草茅之士) can see, so it is not for us to fault Zhīyīn for omissions. Sixth month, Qiánlóng 43 (1778). Chief compilers, etc.
Abstract
The HòuHànshū bǔyì is the first systematic effort, in the early-Qīng kǎozhèng mode, to recover the lost dynastic-history corpus of the Eastern Hàn. Yáo Zhīyīn drew his fragments principally from five sources: Liú Zhāo’s commentary on the XùHànshū treatises, Lǐ Xián’s commentary on the HòuHànshū, Yú Shìnán 虞世南’s Běitáng shūchāo 北堂書鈔, Ōuyáng Xún 歐陽詢’s Yìwén lèijù 藝文類聚, and Xú Jiān 徐堅’s Chūxué jì 初學記. The methodological limitations the Sìkù tíyào identifies (failure to cite sources for individual fragments; the confusion of Sīmǎ Biāo’s treatises with the post-Sòng HòuHànshū arrangement) were largely corrected by the Sìkù editors’ own much-expanded recovery of the Dōngguān Hànjì in 1784, which used the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn in addition to the standard sources and added roughly six-tenths of new material to Yáo’s text (see KR2d0002). For the other seven recovered histories, however, Yáo Zhīyīn’s text remained the standard until the late-nineteenth-century projects of Wáng Mó 汪謨 and Jīng Yìnláng 經頣亮 (collected in the Èrshíwǔ shǐ bǔbiān 二十五史補編, 1937). Wilkinson (Chinese History, §59.5, §59.6.2) treats Yáo Zhīyīn’s bǔyì as the first major waystation in the modern reconstruction of the Eastern-Hàn historiographical corpus, and as essential foundation for the standard scholarly editions of the lost Eastern-Hàn histories produced in the twentieth century (notably Zhōu Tiānyóu 周天遊’s Bā jiā HòuHànshū jízhù 八家後漢書輯註, Tianjin gǔjí, 1986).
Translations and research
- Zhōu Tiānyóu 周天遊, ed. 1986. Bā jiā Hòu-Hànshū jí-zhù 八家後漢書輯註. Tianjin: Tianjin gǔjí. The standard modern reconstruction of the lost Eastern-Hàn histories, building on Yáo Zhīyīn’s foundation.
- Wú Shùpíng 吳樹平, ed. 1987. Dōngguān Hànjì jiào-zhù 東觀漢記校注. Zhèngzhōu: Zhōngzhōu gǔjí. Standard modern critical edition of the Dōngguān Hànjì; critical apparatus discusses the Yáo text.
- Cài Méibiāo 蔡美彪. 1985. “Yáo Zhīyīn yǔ Hòu-Hànshū bǔyì” 姚之駰與《後漢書補逸》. Lìshǐ wénxiàn yánjiū 5: 234–251.
- Mansvelt-Beck, B. J. 1990. The Treatises of Later Han: Their Author, Sources, Contents, and Place in Chinese Historiography. Leiden: Brill. Discusses Yáo Zhīyīn’s confusion of the Sīmǎ-Biāo treatises in detail.
Other points of interest
The HòuHànshū bǔyì is one of the earliest exemplars of jíyì 輯佚 (“recovery of lost works”) as a systematic Qīng kǎozhèng method — predating but conceptually related to the much larger Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery projects undertaken under the Sìkù compilation and to the late-Qīng / Republican projects associated with Wáng Mó, Mǎ Guóhàn 馬國翰, and Yán Kějūn 嚴可均. The work is a methodological prototype for the recovery of secondary histories from lèishū citation and from running commentary on standard texts.