Wǔguó Gùshì 五國故事
Stories of the Five Kingdoms by anonymous
About the work
The Wǔguó Gùshì, in 2 juàn, is an early-Sòng anonymous miscellany on the southern Five-Dynasties regional regimes — covering Wú 吳 (under the Yáng family), Southern Táng 南唐 (under the Lǐ family), Former and Latter Shǔ 蜀 (under Wáng / Mèng), Southern Hàn 南漢 (under the Liú family), and Mǐn 閩 (under the Wáng family). The “five kingdoms” reckoning collapses Wú and Southern Táng into one (since they shared territory) and groups the two Shǔ regimes together. The Sìkù editors place its composition in the early Sòng (the entry on Liú Shèng 劉晟 of Southern Hàn observes the avoidance of the Sòng Xuānzǔ taboo — fixing it in the Sòng — and the Southern-Táng entries note “I once asked a Jiāngnán jiùcháoshì 朝士 about this,” placing it in the early Sòng while jiùchén of Lǐshì were still alive). The book is gossipy and anecdotal, in the xiǎoshuō manner of KR2i0009, but preserves several events not in the standard histories.
Tiyao
The compiler is unnamed. The Southern-Hàn entry gives the personal name of 劉晟 Liú Shèng with one character avoided — that character violated the Sòng Xuānzǔ 宣祖 taboo — placing the writer in the Northern Sòng. The Southern-Táng entry says, “I once questioned a Jiāngnán cháoshì 朝士 about this,” placing the writer still in the early Sòng, when 李煜 Lǐ Yù’s jiùchén 舊臣 were still alive. On Southern Hàn the writer styles it Péngchéngshì 彭城氏 (i.e., the Liú of Péngchéng) and on 留從效 Liú Cóngxiào of Southern Hàn / Mǐn writes the surname as Lóu 婁; Qiántáng Lì Bāo’s 厲鶚 colophon takes this as evidence that the writer was a WúYuè native who entered the Sòng and was avoiding the Wǔsù 武肅 (= 錢鏐 Qián Liú) taboo. But under the Mǐn entry 王延翰 Wáng Yánhàn’s wife is given as Bólíngshì 博陵氏 (i.e., the Cuī of Bólíng), so why would he avoid 崔? The era is too distant to determine. The book records the events of Yángshì Wú 楊氏吳, Lǐshì NánTáng 李氏南唐, Wángshì / Mèngshì Shǔ 王氏 / 孟氏蜀, Liúshì NánHàn 劉氏南漢, and Wángshì Mǐn 王氏閩 — five kingdoms in name but, by territorial reckoning, four states (since Wú and Southern Táng share territory) and, by ruling-family reckoning, six (counting Wáng and Mèng of Shǔ separately). It is unclear whether the Yáng / Lǐ pair, or the Mèng / Wáng pair, is the one being merged. Zhèng Qiáo’s Tōngzhì lüè lists it under Bàshǐ 霸史; in fact it is xiǎoshuō 小說 in style. The records are very fragmentary. Material such as 徐知誥 Xú Zhīgào’s zhì jìn huángpáo 斥進黃袍 episodes are not in the standard histories. 李煜 is recorded as the second son of 李璟 but in the standard histories is the sixth — small discrepancies. Bózhèng (broad evidence-gathering) does not despise the trivial. There is a Wànlì preface by Tàichángsì shàoqīng 太常寺少卿 Yú Yìn 余寅, who criticizes the book for adding 偽 (“usurper”) to four of the kingdoms’ names but not to Shǔ. In fact the book does write 僞蜀王建 and notes 孟知祥 as jiànyuán 僭偽 — it never fails to mark them as usurpers. The opening zǒnggāng 總綱 marks the two Shǔ as qiánShǔ / hòuShǔ; adding wěi would force qiánwěiShǔ / hòuwěiShǔ or wěiqiánShǔ / wěihòuShǔ — both clumsy, hence the omission. Gōngyángzhuàn 公羊傳 calls this principle “bì bù chéngwén 避不成文” (avoid forms that do not parse). To say “the Shǔ are not labeled wěi” is to miss the point. Under the Southern-Hàn entry on 劉龑 Liú Yǎn — wěiHàn xiānzhǔ 偽漢先主 — the original name was 巖, then 俊, then Yǎn 龑; the zì of Yǎn is Yǎn 儼. There is no such character; Yǎn invented it as a lóngtiān 龍天 compound to puff himself up. The book fùbùshū 不書 — does not write the character — refusing the manufactured glyph. Yú Yìn cites the Tángshū’s preservation of 武則天 Wǔ Zétiān’s invented Zhào 曌 to argue against this — but Yú is wrong: the Tángshū writes the character because it was Wǔ Zétiān’s actual name, while Yǎn is a glyph for a sound, not a name proper.
Abstract
The Wǔguó Gùshì is the work of an anonymous Northern-Sòng compiler. The internal evidence — taboo avoidance for Sòng Xuānzǔ (= Zhào Hóngyīn 趙弘殷, r. posthumously named ancestor) and the writer’s reference to “a jiùcháoshì of Jiāngnán” — fixes composition in the early Northern Sòng (probably the late 10th or early 11th c.). The frontmatter dating notBefore 970 / notAfter 1010 captures the constraints. The book is essentially a xiǎoshuō / anecdotal-history work in the manner of 龍袞’s KR2i0009, retailing court gossip and dramatic episodes from the southern Five-Dynasties regimes. Its principal scholarly value is the preservation of unique anecdotes: 徐知誥’s “zhì jìn huángpáo 斥進黃袍” episodes (refusal of the imperial yellow robe by Lǐ Biàn before his accession), the family politics of the Mǐn ruling house, and Southern-Hàn details on the eccentric 劉龑 Liú Yǎn (note: the name is sometimes given as 劉龕 with the lóngtiān compound, an invented glyph). Lì Bāo’s 厲鶚 hypothesis that the author was a WúYuè native is, as the Sìkù editors note, undermined by the book’s own usage; authorship cannot be determined.
Translations and research
- Standard modern Chinese edition: in Wǔ-dài shǐ-shū huì-biān 五代史書彙編 (Hangzhou, 2004).
- Schafer, Edward H. 1954. The Empire of Min. Tokyo: Tuttle. — Major English study of the Mǐn kingdom, drawing on the Wǔ-guó Gù-shì.
- Schafer, Edward H. 1957. “The History of the Empire of Southern Han”. Asiatische Studien 13.
- Hugh R. Clark. 2009. “The Southern Kingdoms between the T’ang and the Sung”. In Cambridge History of China vol. 5, pt. 1.
- No standalone English translation.
Other points of interest
The book’s “five kingdoms” framework (different from the more common shíguó “ten kingdoms” of KR2i0021) reflects an early Sòng way of classifying the southern regional regimes — by ruling family rather than by territory. The argument over whether Wú/S-Táng or W-Shǔ/H-Shǔ is the merged pair is the editorial puzzle the Sìkù editors flag.