Tàizōng huángdì shílù cán 太宗皇帝實錄殘
Surviving Fragment of the Veritable Records of the Tàizōng Emperor by 錢若水 (撰)
About the work
The surviving fragment, in twenty juàn, of what was originally an eighty-juàn official Veritable Records (shílù 實錄) of the second Sòng emperor Tàizōng 太宗 (Zhào Jiōng 趙炅, r. 976–997). The work was commissioned in Xiánpíng 1 (998) by Zhēnzōng 真宗 and completed in Xiánpíng 5 (1002), with Qián Ruòshuǐ 錢若水 (960–1003) as chief compiler. Of the original 80 juàn — sixty of which had been lost already by the late Sòng — the Sìbù cóngkān 四部叢刊 transmits twenty juàn (originally numbered 26–45 and 76–80 in the source’s enumeration). The standard catalog notice is in 《直齋書錄解題》 juàn 4 and in 《宋史·藝文志》.
Abstract
This is one of the very few Sòng shílù texts to survive in any form. The compilation belongs to the early Zhēnzōng court’s program of fixing the historical record of the founding period: the Tàizǔ shílù had been compiled in two recensions (the first under Lǐ Fǎng 李昉 in 980, revised by Wáng Yǔchèng 王禹偁 and Lǚ Méngzhèng 呂蒙正 in 991–992); the Tàizōng shílù was Qián Ruòshuǐ’s principal labour as Imperial Diarist. The surviving portion is editorially significant because it preserves day-by-day court entries for crucial episodes of Tàizōng’s reign — including the Yōngxī campaigns against the Liáo, the Northern Hàn conquest aftermath, and the great civil-service appointments of the Tàipíng xīngguó and Yōngxī eras. The fragment was used by Lǐ Tāo 李燾 in compiling the Xù zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān 續資治通鑑長編 and is repeatedly cited in the Sòng shǐ. The SBCK base-text descends from a Sòng manuscript transmitted in Japan (Sēntián clan 森田家); modern punctuated editions are based on this Sìbù cóngkān witness.
Translations and research
- Aoyama Sadao 青山定雄, “Sō Taishō shōroku zankan ni tsuite 宋太宗實錄殘卷について,” Tōyō gakuhō (1939). Foundational study of the textual history of the surviving fragment.
- Yán Yǒng-chéng 燕永成 has a series of papers on Sòng shí-lù textual history that treat this fragment.
- Wang Gungwu, The Structure of Power in North China during the Five Dynasties (Stanford UP, 1963) — incidental but important use of the shí-lù materials for the early Sòng.
Other points of interest
The fragment is one of only two pre-Yuán shílù texts to survive at all (the other being the Shùnzōng shílù of Hán Yù). Its editorial method — entries arranged by date, with embedded biographical notices on deceased officials and full quotation of imperial edicts — established the model that all subsequent dynastic shílù would follow.
Links
- Wikidata: 太宗皇帝實錄
- Wilkinson 2018 §47.5 (on Sòng shílù).