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通鑑總類

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Text ID
KR2h0002
Date
1180–1208
Dynasty
宋

Tōngjiàn zǒnglèi 通鑑總類

Topical Compendium of the Comprehensive Mirror by 沈樞 (compiler)

About the work

Tōngjiàn zǒnglèi is a 20-juàn topical re-arrangement of Sīmǎ Guāng’s 司馬光 司馬光 Zīzhì tōngjiàn 資治通鑑 KR2b0011, compiled in the late Southern Sòng by Shěn Shū 沈樞 (zì Chíyào 持要, posth. Xiànmǐn 憲敏) of Déqīng 德清 in his retirement years. Following the model of the early-Sòng Cèfǔ yuánguī 冊府元龜, Shěn Shū breaks the Tōngjiàn’s annalistic narrative apart and redistributes its episodes across 271 thematic sections (mén 門), each headed by a topic phrase, with episodes within each section arranged in chronological order from the Warring States down to the end of the Five Dynasties; Sīmǎ Guāng’s editorial yuē 曰 verdicts are interspersed where they belong. It is, in effect, a “Tōngjiàn by topic” — a finder-aid for scholars too pressed for time to read the parent work straight through.

Tiyao

Your servants and others respectfully report. Tōngjiàn zǒnglèi in twenty juàn was compiled by Shěn Shū 沈樞 of the Sòng. Shū, zì Chíyào, was a man of Déqīng. He took the jìnshì during the Shàoxīng era (1131–1162), rising in office to Tàizǐ zhānshì 太子詹事 and Guānglù qīng 光祿卿; his posthumous title was Xiànmǐn 憲敏. The book was put together at the time of his retirement: he took the events and incidents of Sīmǎ Guāng’s Zīzhì tōngjiàn, and in imitation of the manner of the Cèfǔ yuánguī divided them into 271 sections, each section headed by a topic phrase, with the items beneath arranged chronologically from earliest to latest. Sīmǎ Guāng’s own discussions are interpolated where appropriate.

The sections he draws are perhaps over-finely cut: outside the “Reward and Punishment” section he sets up a separate “Demotion and Censure” and “Merits and Awards” section; outside “Imperial Affines” 外戚 a separate “Noble Affines” 貴戚; outside “Personal Favorites” 近習 a separate “Imperial Favourites” 寵倖; outside “Recluses” 隱逸 a separate “Lofty Aloofness” 高尚; outside “Stored-Up Goodness” 積善 a separate “Hidden Virtue” 陰德; and so on, in more cases than can be listed. Again, the affair of Ān Chóngróng’s 安重榮 memorial of presumptuous ambitions, no more than a piece of insolent over-reaching, he sets up under a separate heading “Usurpation” 僭竊, which is hardly an apt classification. From Eastern Zhōu down to the Five Dynasties, dynastic rises and falls are not few, yet he selects only Shēn Chè’s 申徹 argument that Yān must perish and Huáng Hóng’s 黃泓 argument that Yān must be restored — these two items alone — and erects a “Rise and Fall” section over them: this is too sparse altogether.

Yet the Tōngjiàn is so vast that one cannot easily read it through at a sitting. Sīmǎ Guāng himself once said that only Wáng Shèngzhī 王勝之 had ever read it from start to finish, and that everybody else fell asleep over it after a few juàn. A volume that picks out the essence of the work and divides its events by topic, making it easy for the antiquarian to look things up — though crude in execution, it is no obstacle to allow it a place on the shelf.

Reverently collated and presented, fourth month, forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng (1781).

Chief editors: your servants Jǐ Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General collator: your servant Lùfèi Chí 陸費墀.

Abstract

The work was printed at Cháoyáng 潮陽 by Shěn Shū’s youngest son, then magistrate there, and a preface was supplied by Lóu Yuè 樓鑰 樓鑰 (1137–1213) in 嘉定元年 (1208), as the postscript to the WYG witness preserves. By that date Shěn Shū had been dead some time (Lóu refers to him throughout as 故詹事光祿沈憲敏公). According to Lóu Yuè, Shěn Shū lived to over ninety, retired with his faculties intact, was a man of unobtrusive personal habits, and worked on the compilation right up to the end of his life. Lóu had befriended Shěn during a tour as prefect of Yǒngjiā 永嘉, where he found the older man enjoying his retirement, and had read the manuscript before its blockprinting. The 1208 preface is therefore the firmest terminus ante quem for the compilation; the terminus post quem must lie somewhere after Yuán Shū’s 袁樞 袁樞 Tōngjiàn jìshì běnmò 通鑑紀事本末 (presented at court 1175), which Lóu Yuè names as the exemplar of a recent fashion for re-arrangements of the Tōngjiàn. The simplest defensible bracket is therefore ca. 1180–1208, with the bulk of the work belonging to the older Shěn Shū’s last decade or two.

The compilation method is straightforwardly cèfǔ yuánguī-style, but the tíyào committee’s reservations about its proportions are the standard ones: the categories are unevenly cut, redundant headings are multiplied, and some sections (notably “Rise and Fall”) are too thin to justify their place. The Wénxiàn tōngkǎo 文獻通考 of Mǎ Duānlín 馬端臨 already lists the work as 20 juàn and so is sometimes cited for its filiation; but the count of 271 mén in the WYG witness matches Lóu Yuè’s preface (“分為二百七十一門”) and is therefore reliable.

The Tōngjiàn zǒnglèi is the second of the three great Southern Sòng “re-arrangements of the Tōngjiàn” — Yuán Shū’s narrative-by-event jìshì běnmò, Shěn Shū’s topical zǒnglèi, and Zhū Xī’s 朱熹 moral-historical Tōngjiàn gāngmù 通鑑綱目 KR2b0014 — and is the only one of the three to organize Sīmǎ Guāng’s material by content category. As such, despite the Sìkù’s reservations, it is a much-used reference even today and is one of the canonical Sòng worked examples of historical category-classification.

The compiler’s lifedates are not in CBDB; the index year there is 1115. The Wilkinson manual treats shìchāo as a class in §49.6.1 and characterizes such category-rearrangements of the Tōngjiàn as a major mid- and late-Sòng genre.

Translations and research

No substantial secondary literature in Western languages located. In Chinese-language scholarship, the work is regularly cited in studies of the textual transmission of the Zīzhì tōngjiàn and of the late-Sòng vogue for Tōngjiàn-derivatives; see e.g. Cài Hànbō 蔡涵墨 (Charles Hartman) and Chén Xuělín 陳學霖 on Southern Sòng historiography. A complete photolithographic reproduction is held by the Internet Archive (multiple juàn under digital IDs 06059596–06059601 etc.), and ctext.org carries a full transcribed text.

Other points of interest

Lóu Yuè’s preface is one of his more personal: in concluding he describes his own old-age friendship with Shěn Shū’s son and laments that he is included merely “to let later gentlemen know what their elders’ learning was like” (使知前輩之學問). The preface is, in effect, an elegy as much as a pre-printing notice.

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