Géchú yìshǐ 革除逸史
Surviving History of the Erasure-and-Removal by 朱睦㮮 (compiler)
About the work
A 2-juǎn annalistic record of the Jiànwén 建文 reign (1399–1402) of the Míng emperor Huìdì 惠帝 — the reign that the usurping Yǒnglè 永樂 emperor formally “erased and removed” (géchú 革除) from the dynastic chronology by assigning its years to the Hóngwǔ 洪武 reign of his father — by the Míng imperial-clan scholar Zhū Mùzhì 朱睦㮮 (1517–1586, zì Guànfǔ 灌甫, hào Xītíng 西亭). Almost certainly identical to (or an alternate title of) Zhū Mùzhì’s Xùnguó jì 遜國記 listed in the Míngshǐ Yìwén zhì. Distinguished from the parallel and contemporaneous Míng treatments of the Jiànwén tradition by its careful and balanced position on the most contentious historiographical question — whether the Jiànwén emperor in fact escaped the Nánjīng palace fire and lived on as a Buddhist monk, only to be received back into the Forbidden City under Zhèngtǒng 正統 — for which Zhū Mùzhì argues the contrary.
Tiyao
Composed by Zhū Mùzhì 朱睦㮮 of Míng. Mùzhì’s Yìxué shí yí 易學識遺 has already been catalogued. This work is an annalistic record of the affairs of the Jiànwén emperor’s one reign. The Míngshǐ Yìwén zhì records Mùzhì’s Xùnguó jì 遜國記 in 2 juǎn but does not list this title. Yet it cannot be that he wrote two separate works on the same matter, both at 2 juǎn; this presumably is the alternate name of the same work. The géchú affair (i.e. the erasure of the Jiànwén reign-name from the dynastic record) was at first prevented from being recorded by the imperial prohibitions; records were rare. At the time, even an event of such gravity left no firm documentation. Once the broader political sentiment had clarified, everyone took as their charge to make manifest the loyalty and righteousness of the Jiànwén-period martyrs; compositions multiplied; the records of the emperor’s “self-effacing flight” (cóng wáng 從亡) and “consecration” (zhì shēn 致身) followed in quick succession. Truth and falsehood were half-and-half, and doubt and trust contended; the matter became a formidable scholarly contest, knot upon knot without rest. Fú Yán 符驗 and Huáng Zuǒ 黃佐 made some clarifications but could not arrive at a definitive judgment. Mùzhì’s own preface alone refutes the claim that the Jiànwén emperor shaved his head and became a Buddhist monk and fled, and that during the Zhèngtǒng era he was received back into the Forbidden City — these are accretions of busybodies. He therefore records the events of the sixth month of Jiànwén 4 (1402) only as: “A fire broke out in the palace; the emperor abdicated his position” — adopting the language of doubt-as-doubt. He may be said to have very ably maintained the equity of both sides.
Abstract
The Géchú yìshǐ of Zhū Mùzhì 朱睦㮮 (1517–1586, zì Guànfǔ 灌甫, hào Xītíng 西亭, master of the Wànjuàntáng 萬卷堂 library at the Kāifēng Zhōu princely seat) is one of the major late-Míng restorations of the Jiànwén 建文 reign of the displaced Míng Huìdì 惠帝 (Zhū Yǔnwén 朱允炆, r. 1399–1402) to the historical record. The Yǒnglè 永樂 emperor’s coup of 1402 erased the four years of Jiànwén from the official chronology by absorbing them retrospectively into the Hóngwǔ reign — the géchú 革除 (“erasure and removal”) of the title — and the writing of accurate Jiànwén-period historiography was politically prohibited until the late Míng. By the mid-16th century, with the prohibition eased, a substantial body of Jiànwén-restoration historiography had emerged, much of it credulously embracing the popular story that the Jiànwén emperor had escaped the Nánjīng palace fire of 1402, taken Buddhist tonsure, and reappeared at court under the Zhèngtǒng 正統 emperor. Zhū Mùzhì’s distinctive contribution is critical balance: he gathers the materials available to him in carefully annalistic form and refuses the Buddhist-monk-survival legend as a popular accretion, recording the 1402 sixth-month events only as “a fire broke out in the palace; the emperor abdicated his position” (gōng zhōng huǒ qǐ, dì xùn wèi 宮中火起，帝遜位), preserving doubt as doubt rather than asserting either survival or death. The Sìkù compilers regard this as the model treatment of the question. The work is presumably the same as the Xùnguó jì 遜國記 in 2 juǎn listed in the Míngshǐ Yìwén zhì under Zhū Mùzhì. Date bracket here is set conservatively from c. 1570 (Zhū Mùzhì’s mature scholarly years) to 1583, the date of his Wǔ jīng jī yí preface and a representative datable point for his late-life output.
Translations and research
- Hok-lam Chan. 1988. “Legitimating Usurpation: Historical Revisionism under the Ming Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–1424).” In Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica.
- Hok-lam Chan. 1976. “The Rise of Ming T’ai-tsu (1368–98) — Facts and Fictions in Early Ming Official Historiography.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 95.4. (Background.)
- Frederick W. Mote and Denis Twitchett, eds. 1988. The Cambridge History of China, vol. 7, ch. 4 (Hok-lam Chan, “The Chien-wen, Yung-lo, Hung-hsi and Hsuan-te Reigns, 1399–1435”).
- Cynthia Brokaw. 1991. The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Background on the late-Míng martyrology cult around the Jiànwén reign.)
- Modern editions of the Géchú yìshǐ are difficult to locate — the most accessible is the Sìkù photo-reprint.
Other points of interest
The Géchú yìshǐ belongs to a substantial late-Míng martyrological literature (alongside the Géchú biānnián 革除編年, the Géchú yíshì jiéběn 革除遺事節本, the Géchú yíshì 革除遺事 — all listed elsewhere in the Sìkù tíyào) which culminated in the rehabilitation of the Jiànwén reign by the Wànlì court in 1595 and ultimately in the formal restoration of the Jiànwén reign-name by the NánMíng Hóngguāng 弘光 court in 1644. Zhū Mùzhì’s distinctive contribution to this tradition is its critical reserve.