Shìběn 世本
Genealogical Origins compiled by 王謨 (輯, i.e., reconstructed from scattered quotations)
About the work
The Shìběn 世本 is one of the most important lost genealogical works of ancient China: an archive of the descent lines of royal houses, aristocratic lineages, and clan origins from the legendary Three Sovereigns through the Warring States period. The original text — used by Sīmǎ Qiān 司馬遷 as a source for the Shǐjì 史記 genealogical tables — was already fragmentary in the Hàn and was entirely lost by the Southern Sòng. The file in the Kanripo corpus (KR2d0025) is the reconstructed edition (jíběn 輯本) assembled by the Qīng evidential scholar Wáng Mó 王謨 (1732–1817), one of eight Qīng-era reconstructions later collected in the Shìběn bāzhǒng 世本八種 (Commercial Press, 1957). The text is a continuous single file without juan divisions as transmitted here.
Prefaces
No preface survives in the received KR file.
Abstract
The Shìběn 世本 (“Genealogical Origins”) is a pre-Qín / early-Hàn compilation recording the lineages (shìxì 世系) of the legendary and historical royal houses, the descent lines of aristocratic families (xìng 姓 and shì 氏), the origins of clan surnames, and a catalogue of inventors (zuò piān 作篇) crediting specific culture-heroes with the invention of writing, music, warfare, and crafts. The Hànshū yìwén zhì 漢書藝文志 registers it in fifteen piān under the title Shìběn without specifying an author; the Suíshū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志 lists it in three juǎn attributed to Zhào of Zhào (Warring States, though this attribution is conventional). The embedded commentary material in the Kanripo text (by Sòng Zhōng 宋衷, Sòng Zhòngzǐ 宋仲子, Sùn Shì 孫氏, and others) establishes that the work was circulating in the Hàn with glosses; Sòng Zhōng 宋衷, the most frequently cited commentator, is an Eastern-Hàn scholar. The Sòng-dynasty scholar Yáng Quán 楊泉 (Wùlǐ lùn 物理論) stated that “during the Chǔ-Hàn interregnum someone with a taste for the past compiled the Shìběn, beginning at the Yellow Thearch and extending through the late Hàn,” while Guǎngchuān shūbá 廣川書跋 (preserved in the supplementary section of the Kanripo text) confirmed that Zuǒ Qiūmíng and other Spring-and-Autumn authors already drew on materials that the Shìběn subsequently systematised.
By the Southern Sòng the text had been lost in continuous form; only quotations in encyclopaedias, standard histories, and other transmitted works survived. The Qīng kǎojù 考據 enterprise of jíyì 輯佚 (recovery of lost texts from surviving quotations) produced multiple independent reconstructions. Wáng Mó 王謨 (1732–1817, jìnshì 1778), a Jiāngxī native known for his textual recoveries (including the Hàn Táng dìlǐ shūchāo 漢唐地理書抄 and the Hàn Wèi yíshū chāo 漢魏遺書鈔, published 1798), assembled the present edition by collating quotations from a wide range of transmitted works. The Kanripo file preserves the following sections as demarcated in the text itself:
- 《三皇世系》 (Lineages of the Three Sovereigns): Tàihào Fúxī 太昊伏羲氏, Yándì Shénnóng 炎帝神農氏, and the Yellow Thearch’s line
- 《五帝世系》 (Lineages of the Five Emperors)
- 《夏世系》 (Xià royal lineage)
- 《商世系》 (Shāng royal lineage)
- 《周世系》 (Zhōu royal lineage)
- 《春秋列國公侯世系》 (Spring-and-Autumn state lineages)
- 《世本謚法篇》 (Section on posthumous titles)
- 《世本作篇補遺》 (Supplementary entries for the Inventions section)
- 《世本論述補遺》 (Supplementary notes on the text, with bibliographic quotations)
- 《世本雜錄》 (Miscellaneous notes, including citations from Lóng Yīng’s 龐英 Wénchāng záluò and Xià Sǒng’s 夏竦 Gǔwén sìshēng yùn)
The text as preserved includes interlinear annotations attributed to Sòng Zhōng, Sòng Zhòngzǐ, and Sùn Shì (孫氏). Wang Mo’s edition covers material comparable to the content of the other eight editions in the Shìběn bāzhǒng collection, though each reconstructor drew on different sources and made different choices about which passages to include.
The original Shìběn is discussed by Wilkinson (Chinese History, §7.1.2) as an “archive of Warring States descent lines” used by Sīmǎ Qiān and already partially corrupted by the Hàn. The eight Qīng reconstructions were published together as Shìběn bāzhǒng 世本八種 (Shanghai: Shāngwù yìnshūguǎn, 1957; repr. in Scripta Sinica). The ICS concordance is No. 47.
Dating note: The received text is Wáng Mó’s Qīng-era compilation, assembled after his jìnshì examination of 1778 and completed before his death in 1817. The original Shìběn content dates from the late Warring States to early Western Hàn (approximately 3rd–2nd c. BCE), but since no pre-Qīng continuous text survives, the date bracket follows the received recension.
Translations and research
- Shìběn bāzhǒng 世本八種. Shanghai: Shāngwù yìnshūguǎn, 1957 (repr. in Scripta Sinica). Collects eight Qīng reconstructions including Wang Mo’s.
- Nienhauser, William H., Jr., et al. The Grand Scribe’s Records, vol. 1 (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994). Uses Shìběn material in genealogical context.
- Wilkinson, Endymion. Chinese History: A New Manual, §7.1.2 (ICS 47).