Sòngcháo Shìshí 宋朝事實
Institutional Records of the Sòng Dynasty by 李攸 (撰)
About the work
A privately compiled institutional history of the Northern Sòng (and partially of the early Southern Sòng) by Lǐ Yōu 李攸 (zì Hǎodé 好德, fl. 1119–1149). Originally in 60 juǎn; the surviving received text is the 20-juǎn recension reconstructed by the Sìkù editors from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典. It preserves enthronement decrees, southern-suburb amnesty edicts, ritual diagrams, and many institutional fragments not found in the Sòngshǐ treatises—particularly on imperial-clan office-conversion (zōngshì huàn guān), the suburban-sacrifice arrow-test (kānjiàn), and the music and palace-court diagrams of the Northern Sòng.
Tiyao
By Lǐ Yōu of the Sòng. The Wénxiàn tōngkǎo writes the name as Lǐ Jí 李伋, but Yōu’s zì is Hǎodé—a name drawn from the Hóngfàn (hǎodé “good virtue”); written as 伋 the meaning is incongruent. The Sòngshǐ yìwénzhì also writes “Lǐ Yōu,” confirming that the Tōngkǎo is a transmission error. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí notes only that Yōu held the rank of Chéngyì láng and gives no place of origin. The Jiāngyáng pǔ records that he edited the Xīshān tújīng and Jiǔyù zhì in the early Zhènghé era (1111–1118); was summoned by the prefect of Lúzhōu, Sūn Yìsǒu (text defective here in the original); and on completing the work was promoted three offices. Zhāng Jùn, on entering court, urged Yōu to come with him, but he declined on family grounds. Xīshān belonged to Chéngdūfǔ and Lúzhōu to Tóngchuān circuit—Lǐ Yōu was therefore a Shǔ man. The mention of “Zhāng Jùn entering court” must refer to Shàoxīng 4 (1134), when Jùn was recalled from SìchuānShǎnxī as Pacification Commissioner.
According to the Jiāngyáng pǔ the work originally ran from Jiànlóng (960) down to Xuānhé (1119–25), in 60 juǎn. Thirty juǎn were circulated in his lifetime; the other thirty he submitted to the throne later, but his words offended Qín Huì 秦檜, who suppressed the manuscript without reply. The catalogues of Cháo and Chén both record 30 juǎn, agreeing with the pǔ. Zhào Xībiàn’s Dúshū fùzhì and the Sòngshǐ yìwénzhì, however, give 35 juǎn. The present text contains the enthronement decrees of Gāozōng and Xiàozōng of the Southern Sòng and the southern-suburb amnesty edicts of the Shàoxīng era, with reign-dates extending to Shàoxīng—evidently with later additions reaching into early Southern Sòng.
Yōu was thoroughly versed in administrative precedent. After the Jìngkāng sack the imperial archives were dispersed, and he applied himself with urgency to gathering what survived; he made the institutional record of the dynasty visible whole. His effort was zealous and exhausting. The work preserves enthronement and southern-suburb amnesty decrees of every reign; Tàizōng’s autograph epitaph of Zhào Pǔ; the Xījīng Chóngfúgōng jì, Jǐnglíngxīgōng jì, Dàshèng yuè jì; many of which are missing from the Sòng wénjiàn, Míngchén bēizhuàn, Wǎnyǎn jí, Bòfāng dàquán, and other compilations. So too the system of imperial-clan office-conversion, missing from the Sòngshǐ Zhíguān zhì; the protocol of arrow-testing at the suburban sacrifice, not detailed in the Lǐzhì; the diagrams of the Tàimiào and the Chóngníngmiào; the diagrams of the Zǐchén and Jíyīng halls for longevity-feasts and the second-seating ceremonies; the twelve-rest court-music gōngjià gǔchuī diagrams—all things that other records of Sòng administration leave incomplete. Many discrepancies in event, date, and degree of detail can be cross-checked productively against the Dōngdū shìlüè, the Xù Zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān, and the Sòngshǐ. Likewise, the work’s record of the sixteen prefectures ceded by Shí Jìn to the Khitan—divided into “Shānqián” and “Shānhòu” of the northern frontier—corrects the error in Xuē Jūzhèng and Ōuyáng Xiū’s Wǔdàishǐ histories which call them simply “the sixteen Shānhòu prefectures.” Likewise, on Hòu Zhōu Shìzōng’s seizing of three frontier passes, the inclusion of Yūkǒuguān corrects the omission in the same two Wǔdàishǐ, which mention only Wǎqiáo and Yìjīn.
In Lǐ Yōu’s day, Jiāng Shàoyú’s Shìshí lèiyuàn and the Jǐnxiù wànhuā gǔ drew heavily on this work; the Sòngshǐ itself adopts much of his text. The original was long lost; what survives is dispersed throughout the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn under various rhyme-headings, broken and fragmentary, no longer revealing the original arrangement. Zhào Xībiàn’s Dúshū fùzhì, however, preserves a list of headings—imperial genealogy, enthronement decrees, sage-learning, imperial compositions, suburban and ancestral sacrifices, Daoism and Buddhism, the Yùdié, princesses, official posts, fiefs and ranks, meritorious-officer co-enshrinement, councilor appointments and dismissals, examination protocols, military and penal affairs, calendar and law, the imperial plough-field, finance, suppression of usurpers, redrawing of prefectures and counties, frontier strategy in Yōu and Yān—evidently the original divisions. We have used this list to reorganize the surviving text into 20 juǎn. Although not the complete original, the framework is preserved and the gist arranged—roughly seventy or eighty percent recovered. Lǐ Yōu also wrote Tōngjīn jí in 20 juǎn, listed in the Sòngshǐ yìwénzhì under gùshì (precedents); this is now lost. He once submitted a memorial to Qín Huì warning him to “ponder peril even amid favor”—candid and uncompromising. The man, then, deserves respect not for his erudition alone.
Abstract
A unique survivor of an originally larger private institutional history. The transmission story is itself documented in the Sìkù tíyào: Lǐ Yōu’s 60-juǎn original was suppressed by Qín Huì 秦檜; circulating in 30-juǎn fragments thereafter, it had vanished by the late Yuán; the Sìkù editors reconstructed a 20-juǎn version from quotations in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn using the headings preserved in Zhào Xībiàn’s 趙希弁 Dúshū fùzhì 讀書附志. Internal evidence (mention of Gāozōng and Xiàozōng enthronement decrees and Shàoxīng-era amnesty edicts) shows the work was either updated by Lǐ Yōu himself in the early Southern Sòng or supplemented by a later hand—so the dating bracket runs from the original Xuānhé-era cutoff (1119) through the latest Shàoxīng material (c. 1149).
The work’s outstanding value is documentary: it preserves enthronement and amnesty edicts, ritual records, court-music diagrams, and clan-office regulations not transmitted elsewhere—including details of the sixteen ceded prefectures of YānYún that correct the Wǔdài shǐ on the Shānqián / Shānhòu division. The Sòngshǐ compilers themselves drew silently on Lǐ Yōu, as the Sìkù editors note.
Translations and research
The standard punctuated edition is Yán Yǒngchéng 嚴永誠, ed., Sòngcháo Shìshí 宋朝事實 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 1955; Cóngshū jíchéng version). Specialist studies on the textual recovery from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn include Wáng Zhènyù 王振宇, “Sòngcháo Shìshí běn-shǔ wèntí xīntàn” (Wénxiàn 文獻 2003.4). The work is regularly cited in modern Northern-Sòng institutional studies (e.g., Wáng Zēngyǔ 王曾瑜, Sòngcháo bīngzhì chūtàn 宋朝兵制初探, Zhōnghuá, 1983) for its unique material on suburban-sacrifice protocol and clan-office conversion.
Other points of interest
Lǐ Yōu’s submission of his anti-Qín Huì memorial—“in favour, think of peril” (jū chǒng sī wēi 居寵思危)—belongs to the small dossier of remonstrance against Qín Huì from inside the Southern-Sòng administrative class.