Wǔdài Huìyào 五代會要
Essential Documents and Regulations of the Five Dynasties by 王溥 (撰)
About the work
The Wǔdài Huìyào in 30 juǎn is the only surviving work of its kind for the Hòu Liáng, Hòu Táng, Hòu Jìn, Hòu Hàn, and Hòu Zhōu—the five short-lived North-Chinese regimes that occupied the half-century between Táng and Sòng. Compiled by Wáng Pǔ 王溥 (922–982) on the same plan as his Táng Huìyào and presented to the throne together with it in 961, it gathers the institutional record of those five dynasties—edicts, ritual debates, fiscal protocols, official titles—from the Veritable Records (shílù) of the successive courts, much of which is preserved in no other source. It is the indispensable supplement to Ōuyáng Xiū’s Xīn Wǔdàishǐ 新五代史, whose moralizing annalistic framework deliberately excluded most institutional detail.
Tiyao
By Wáng Pǔ of the Sòng. The Five Dynasties were a half-century of unceasing warfare; institutions were eroded, and there was no leisure to restore the old administrative norms. Even so, the laws and protocols of those fifty years were roughly preserved in the Veritable Records of each court. Wáng Pǔ accordingly searched these old chronicles, classified the material section by section, and gathered it into this compilation, presenting it together with the Táng Huìyào in Jiànlóng 2 (961); by edict it was deposited in the Historiographical Office.
Later Ōuyáng Xiū, in compiling the Wǔdàishǐ, included only the treatises on Astronomy and Geography (Sītiān, Zhífāng); other matters he passed over. Subjects such as the temple-system debates of Duàn Yóng 段顒 and Liú Xù 劉昫 of the Jìn, or Wáng Pǔ’s [Wáng Pǔ 王朴] musical reforms under the Zhōu, all of major consequence to the institutional record, are passed over only in cursory form. The very origins of imperial book-printing in the ChángXìng era (930–933)—the foundation of all later government printing and a high mark of cultural administration—Ōuyáng deleted entirely. For these things one is wholly dependent on Wáng Pǔ’s compilation, which has rescued an enormous amount of vanished testimony. In the section on tax, Wáng Pǔ records that Emperor Shìzōng of Zhōu, while reading Yuán Zhěn’s 元稹 (zì Wēizhī 微之) Chángqìng jí 長慶集, saw therein the Jūntián biǎo 均田表 (memorial on equal-field allocation) and ordered it copied onto plain silk and distributed to all circuits; Ōuyáng Xiū’s Wǔdàishǐ, however, says that Shìzōng “saw Yuán Wēizhī’s Jūntián tú 均田圖,” treating the chart as Yuán Wēizhī’s own composition—a serious error which only Wáng Pǔ’s work allows us to correct. Thus Ōuyáng’s history aims at moral judgment, in the spirit of the Chūnqiū; this work aims at exact institutional record, in the spirit of the Zhōu guān. The two complement each other. No reader of the Wǔdàishǐ can do without this volume.
Abstract
The Wǔdài Huìyào was presented to Sòng Tàizǔ 太祖 in the first month of Jiànlóng 2 (961), simultaneously with the Táng Huìyào. Wáng Pǔ had been Yòupúyè under the Hòu Zhōu and was then Tóng píngzhāngshì under the Sòng, so he had immediate working access to the Veritable Records of all five regimes—a circumstance the Sìkù editors stress when explaining the work’s exceptional source-density.
The work is by far the principal source for the institutional history of the Five Dynasties. Wilkinson (Chinese History: A New Manual, §51.1, Box 263) describes Wáng’s two huìyào together as “officially compiled in those dynasties”—as opposed to the later antiquarian huìyào of the Qīng—which makes them documentary primary sources rather than secondary digests. Particular Wǔdài Huìyào sections preserve unique evidence: the ChángXìng era (930–933) origin of imperial woodblock printing of the Classics under Hòu Táng Mǐngzōng 明宗 (juǎn 8); the music-reform debates of Wáng Pǔ 王朴 (the late-Zhōu mathematician, not the compiler) preserved in juǎn 5–6; and a corrected account of Hòu Zhōu Shìzōng’s reading of Yuán Zhěn that exposes Ōuyáng Xiū’s misreading of biǎo (memorial) as tú (chart).
The single date 961 is set as both notBefore and notAfter for the same reason as for the Táng Huìyào. The work’s genesis lies in Wáng’s prior tenure under the Zhōu, but the recension that has survived is the one he presented under the Sòng.
Translations and research
The standard punctuated edition is Wǔdài Huìyào 五代會要, Shànghǎi gǔjí, 1978, with subsequent reprints (in Scripta Sinica). Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §51.1 (Box 263), notes that Wáng “excerpted sources not found in either the Jiù Wǔdàishǐ or in the Xīn Wǔdàishǐ”—a verdict echoed in the standard Chinese institutional histories. Important specialist work includes Tāng Jiànzhāo 陶建昭, Wǔdài Huìyào jiàozhèng 五代會要校證 (Shànghǎi gǔjí, 2008), which collates the work against the Cèfǔ yuánguī 冊府元龜 and the Yùhǎi 玉海; and a series of articles by Mǎ Yǒngyì 馬泳沂 on the textual transmission. No full Western translation exists.
Other points of interest
The Wáng Pǔ of this catalog (the compiler) and the Wáng Pǔ 王朴 of juǎn 5–6 (the Hòu Zhōu music reformer, zì Wénbó 文伯) are different individuals and should not be conflated; the homonymy is a recurrent source of confusion in the secondary literature.