Biéběn Shíliùguó Chūnqiū 別本十六國春秋
Variant Recension of the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Sixteen Kingdoms attributed to 崔鴻
About the work
The Biéběn Shíliùguó Chūnqiū, in 16 juàn, is the variant text printed by 何鏜 Hé Táng in his Míng-period HànWèi cóngshū 漢魏叢書 — circulating before the 100-juàn recompilation of 屠喬孫 Tú Qiáosūn and 項琳 Xiàng Lín (KR2i0005). Each of the sixteen kingdoms gets a single juàn, listing only the 58 ruling pretenders and omitting biographies of subordinate officials; in form it is purely zǎijì 載記 (annals of pretenders). It is far short of the 102 juàn reported for 崔鴻 Cuī Hóng’s lost original. Crucially, it does not employ Jìn / Sòng reign-names — diverging from Liú Zhījī’s Shǐtōng report on Cuī Hóng’s structural choice — which makes its pretensions to be the original Cuī Hóng text untenable. The Sìkù editors regard it, no less than the 100-juàn recompilation, as a posthumous reconstruction of materials drawn from the Jìnshū Zǎijì and TángSòng lèishū; they retain it as a separate witness for comparative scholarship.
Tiyao
By imperial mandate. The old text is also attributed to Cuī Hóng of the Wèi. It is found in Hé Táng’s 何鏜 HànWèi cóngshū. Its appearance precedes Tú Qiáosūn’s edition; its provenance is likewise unknown. Sixteen kingdoms, each a separate lù 錄: the book records only the fifty-eight pretenders’ biographies; the subordinate officials get no biographies. In form it is wholly that of a zǎijì. That it is not Cuī Hóng’s 102-juàn original needs no demonstration. Comparison with the Jìnshū Zǎijì gives largely-overlapping material; but it does not reckon dates by the Jìn / Sòng calendar, and so contradicts the Shǐtōng’s explicit characterization of Cuī Hóng’s method. Could it not be the work of some idle hand who took lèishū citations and the Jìnshū Zǎijì and assembled them into this counterfeit? Yet the Chóngwén zǒngmù 崇文總目 records a Shíliùguó Chūnqiū lüè 十六國春秋略 in two juàn, anonymous; Sīmǎ Guāng’s Tōngjiàn kǎoyì also cites a Shíliùguó Chūnqiū chāo 抄. It may therefore be the case that the present 16-juàn book is in fact a later abridgment of Cuī Hóng’s original; that too cannot be ruled out. Tú Qiáosūn’s 100-juàn book has already been shown to be a contrivance; this is the same sort of doubtful matter, which we none the less retain — both kept for the reader’s reference.
Abstract
The Biéběn is the older of the two surviving Míng-period reconstructions of the lost Shíliùguó Chūnqiū of 崔鴻 Cuī Hóng (478–525). It first appeared in 何鏜 Hé Táng’s HànWèi cóngshū 漢魏叢書 (the standard 1592 Wànlì edition is the most familiar; a Yuán-period precursor is occasionally posited but cannot be confirmed). The dating notBefore 1300, notAfter 1500 in the frontmatter reflects the broad range within which this 16-juàn recension may have been assembled — at the latest by the 1592 Hé Táng printing — without committing to a more precise terminus. The 16-juàn recension differs from the 100-juàn recompilation of 屠喬孫 and 項琳 (KR2i0005) on two principal counts: it covers only the 58 ruling pretenders (omitting all subordinate officials and the biǎo / zàn / xù apparatus); and it does not date events by the Jìn / Sòng calendar. The latter divergence from Liú Zhījī’s testimony is decisive: Cuī Hóng’s original certainly did use Jìn / Sòng reign-names. The Sìkù editors’ suggestion that the 16-juàn book may descend from the anonymous Shíliùguó Chūnqiū lüè in two juàn listed in the Chóngwén zǒngmù — a Sòng-period abridgment cited also as Shíliùguó Chūnqiū chāo in Sīmǎ Guāng’s Tōngjiàn kǎoyì — is the most plausible scholarly hypothesis. The Biéběn is therefore best read as a SòngYuán abridgment-tradition that was finally edited and printed by Hé Táng in the late 16th century. Its primary value today is as a comparison to the 100-juàn Tú/Xiàng recompilation, exposing what each editor judged worthy of inclusion.
Translations and research
- See the references at KR2i0005 (which apply to both the 100- and 16-juàn recensions).
- Tāng Qiú 湯球. Shíliù-guó Chūnqiū jí-bǔ 十六國春秋輯補. The standard scholarly recovery of the Cuī Hóng original.
- Chén Cháng-qí 陳長琦 and Zhōu Qún 周群. 2005. “Shíliù-guó Chūnqiū sǎn-yì kǎo-lüè” 十六國春秋散佚考略. Xué-shù yán-jiū 學術研究 7: 95–100.
- Honey, David B. “Shiliuguo chunqiu 十六國春秋”. In EMCT, 2015.
- No complete English translation.
Other points of interest
The presence of two competing Míng reconstructions (the 16-juàn HànWèi cóngshū version and the 100-juàn Tú/Xiàng version) is itself evidence of the high scholarly demand the lost Cuī Hóng book continued to generate in the late Míng — a period of intense activity in classical-text reconstruction (cf. the parallel reconstructions of Shàngshū dàzhuàn and other lost canonical works in the same era).