聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

唐史論斷

7 min read

Text ID
KR2o0004
Date
1040–1056
Dynasty
宋

Tángshǐ lùnduàn 唐史論斷

Verdicts on the History of the Tang

by 孫甫 (Sūn Fǔ, 998–1057)

About the work

The Tángshǐ lùnduàn is the surviving 3-juan residue of Sūn Fǔ’s larger historical project, the lost Tángshǐ jì 唐史記 (also titled Táng jì 唐紀) — a 75-juan annalistic recasting of the Five Dynasties’ Jiù Tángshū 舊唐書. Sūn began the work in Kāngdìng 1 (1040) in objection to what he and his contemporaries saw as the Jiù Tángshū’s prolixity, omissions, and improprieties of style; he completed the 75-juan annal in Jiāyòu 1 (1056) and finished a draft preface; he died the following year. The 92 selected verdicts (lùn 論) attached to the principal events of his annals — the moralised judgements modelled on the Chūnqiū tradition — circulated separately under the title Tángshǐ lùnduàn; the Tángshǐ jì itself was taken into the imperial palace after Sūn’s death and disappeared from public circulation, surviving only as raw material for KR2j0001 Zīzhì tōngjiàn 資治通鑑 (Sūn’s nephew Sūn Chá 孫察 transmitted a copy to Sīmǎ Guāng).

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Tángshǐ lùnduàn in three juàn was composed by Sūn Fǔ of the Sòng. Sūn, zì Zhīhàn 之翰, was a native of Yángdí 陽翟 (Hénán). He was promoted jìnshì and rose through the offices of Right Remonstrator (Yòu zhèngyán 右正言), Lecturer at the Tiānzhāng Pavilion (Tiānzhānggé dàizhì), Hébĕi Fiscal Intendant (Hébĕi zhuǎnyùn shǐ), and Reader-in-Waiting; his career is given in his Sòngshǐ biography. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí records that Sūn, considering Liú Xù’s 劉昫 Tángshū (i.e. the Jiù Tángshū) prolix and slipshod and frequently improper in form, recast it in annalistic (biānnián 編年) style; he began in Kāngdìng 1 (1040), completed the work in Jiāyòu 1 (1056), and produced a Táng jì 唐紀 in seventy-five juàn. To events whose moral lessons (shànè 善惡) were sufficiently distinct to serve as exemplars, he attached verdicts (lùn); these number ninety-two.

After Sūn’s death the Táng jì was called for and detained in the palace; his nephew Sūn Chá once made a copy and sent it to Sīmǎ Guāng, but it remained rare in the world. Only the Lùnduàn circulated independently. In Shàoxīng 27 (1157) it was cut to woodblocks at Jiànzhōu (Sìchuān); when the Shǔ blocks were lost, in the Duānpíng yǐwèi year (1235) Huáng Zhǔn 黃準 reprinted the work in Dōngyáng. The Sòng Yìwénzhì records two juàn; the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo records ten juàn; the present text is in only three juàn — clearly the work was originally extracted from the Táng jì and circulated separately, not in its old binding, and the disparate juan-counts reflect arbitrary divisions, not different texts. At the front is Sūn’s own preface; appended at the end are Sīmǎ Guāng’s colophon, the funerary epitaph and biographical record by Zēng Gǒng and Ōuyáng Xiū, Sū Shì’s reply to Lǐ Zhì 李廌, and Zhāng Dūnyí’s 張敦頤 postface — all praising the work in the strongest terms. Even Zhū Zǐ (Zhū Xī) said its discussions outdo the Tángjiàn.

(The Sìkù WYG copy adds: Zhū Xī’s Yǔlèi praises the Tánglùn as concise and incisive, “as if discussing matters one had personally experienced,” but reservations: “the principle does not reach the level of the Tángjiàn”; and again, Lǚ Zǔqiān’s late opinion was that the Tánglùn surpasses the Tángjiàn in being closer to actual circumstance, though “the great framework is not yet rectified” — so the work is highly valued for its precise grasp, with regret for its imperfect pursuit of pure rectitude. Sūn was self-confident throughout his life on questions of moral standing, and his analyses occasionally fall into one-sided extremity; but on the underlying causes of order and disorder his exposition is firm and well-grounded, and the work should be read alongside Fàn Zǔyǔ’s Tángjiàn for mutual verification — Qiánlóng 42, 8th month, respectfully revised and submitted by Jǐ Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; reviser Lù Fèichí.)

Abstract

Sūn Fǔ was a Northern Sòng jìnshì of Tiānshèng 5 (1027), a friend of Fàn Zhòngyān 范仲淹 and a participant in the Qìnglì reform circle. The Sòngshǐ biography (j. 295) records his outspoken remonstrances on Imperial Conduct (shèngdé 聖德) and on government finance, and his appointment in Kāngdìng 1 (1040) to the Hébĕi Fiscal Intendancy at the height of the SòngXià border crisis. It was during this northern posting and the years immediately following that he began the Tángshǐ jì — a self-conscious response to what the early Qìnglì reformers saw as the inadequacy of the Jiù Tángshū as a moral-political resource for contemporary government.

The Lùnduàn preserves the moral apparatus of that lost work. Sūn’s own preface (1052, refined 1056) frames the project explicitly: the Shàngshū and Chūnqiū are the two ancient models — the Shàngshū recording an age of order, the Chūnqiū an age of disorder — and the Táng, having known both, can be patterned on neither in its entirety. Sūn therefore writes annalistically (after the Shílù 實錄 model) but attaches Chūnqiū-style judgements to selected events, “so that the prince may take it up and his ministers consult it, knowing the causes of order and the seeds of chaos, the effects of upright and crooked counsel.” The 92 verdicts cover from Gāozǔ’s accession to the closing decades of the dynasty, with particular density in the TàizōngWǔ ZétiānXuánzōng span and in the late An Lùshān recovery. They are short, opinionated, and addressed in the manner of memorialised remonstrance.

The Tángshǐ jì itself, taken into the palace at Sūn’s death, served Sīmǎ Guāng’s Tōngjiàn compilers as a source — Sūn Chá’s transmitted copy is named in the Tōngjiàn kǎoyì 通鑑考異 — but never re-emerged in independent circulation. It was apparently lost by the late Northern Sòng. The Lùnduàn survived because it had circulated independently from the start, with the 1157 Jiànzhōu and 1235 Dōngyáng prints as the two known Sòng witnesses. The Sìkù’s 3-juan recension is the authoritative late form. Reception was uniformly favourable in the first hundred years: Zēng Gǒng wrote Sūn’s funerary inscription, Ōuyáng Xiū his biographical xíngzhuàng, Sū Shì singled out the work in his reply to Lǐ Zhì. Sòng Dào-school reception was more layered: Zhū Xī admired the precision of the verdicts but felt the underlying moral framework was less coherent than Fàn Zǔyǔ’s KR2o0003 Tángjiàn; Lǚ Zǔqiān, in his late opinion, reversed Zhū’s earlier judgement and ranked the Lùnduàn above the Tángjiàn for its grip on actual circumstance.

CBDB id 15744 confirms Sūn Fǔ’s lifedates as 998–1057.

Translations and research

No complete English translation located.

  • Zhōnghuá shūjú critical-edition publication is anticipated but has not appeared as of 2026; the standard reading text remains the WYG facsimile.
  • Charles Hartman, The Making of Song Dynasty History (Cambridge UP, 2021), notes Sūn Fǔ’s Tángshǐ jì as an early casualty of the Tōngjiàn’s success — its raw materials swallowed into Sīmǎ Guāng’s project, its moral apparatus surviving only as the Lùnduàn.
  • Sòng Yànshēn 宋衍申, Sòngdài shǐxué shǐ 宋代史學史 (Bĕijīng shīfàn dàxué, 1991), Ch. 4.
  • Wang Lì 王立, “Sūn Fǔ jí qí Tángshǐ jì kǎo” 孫甫及其《唐史記》考, Shǐxué shǐ yánjiū 史學史研究 (2008).
  • Cài Chóngbǎng 蔡崇榜, Sòngdài xiūshǐ zhìdù yánjiū 宋代修史制度研究 (Wénjīn, 1991), Ch. 5.
  • Hilde De Weerdt, Information, Territory, and Networks: The Crisis and Maintenance of Empire in Song China (Harvard, 2016), discusses the Lùnduàn’s circulation and reception alongside the Tángjiàn.

Other points of interest

The Lùnduàn is the principal surviving Northern Sòng Qìnglì-era reformist statement on the Táng — one of the few witnesses, at this length, to how Fàn Zhòngyān’s circle read pre-Sòng dynastic history. The catalog records suggest the early Southern Sòng felt this clearly: the 1157 Jiànzhōu reprint coincides with the period when the Yuányòu-faction inheritance was being re-published in defence of the early Southern Sòng’s reformist claims, and the 1235 Dōngyáng reprint with the late Lǐzōng moment when ZhūXī’s school had assumed paramount intellectual authority and was selectively republishing Northern Sòng predecessors who could be construed as ancestors of dàoxué historicism.

Graph View

Backlinks