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通鑑問疑

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Text ID
KR2o0006
Date
1078–1093
Dynasty
宋

Tōngjiàn wènyí 通鑑問疑

Queries on the Tongjian

by 劉羲仲 (Liú Xīzhòng, fl. late 11th c.)

About the work

The Tōngjiàn wènyí is a slim 1-juan work of Northern-Sòng Tōngjiàn scholarship, compiled by Liú Xīzhòng — eldest son of Liú Shù 劉恕 (1032–1078), one of the three principal Zīzhì tōngjiàn compilers (Liú Shù took charge of the Three Kingdoms through Suí and the Five Dynasties drafts under Sīmǎ Guāng). The book preserves two streams of material: first, a record of the historiographical disputes (lùnnán zhī cí 論難之詞) between Liú Shù and Sīmǎ Guāng during the Tōngjiàn compilation, evidently drawn from Liú Shù’s papers and notes; and second, a set of eight specific yí 疑 (queries) on Tōngjiàn points that Liú Xīzhòng himself addressed to 范祖禹 (Fàn Zǔyǔ), the Táng-portion compiler, with Fàn’s annotated answers preserved at the end. The work is a primary documentary source for how the Tōngjiàn was actually built and what disagreements lay buried under Sīmǎ Guāng’s eventual editorial decisions.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Tōngjiàn wènyí in one juàn was composed by Liú Xīzhòng of the Sòng. Xīzhòng was a native of Yúnzhōu (筠州, Jiāngxī), eldest son of Mìshū chéng Liú Shù; the Sòngshǐ gives his name in the appended portion of his father’s biography. The history records only that seven years after Shù’s death the Tōngjiàn was completed and that, in posthumous recognition of Shù’s labour, his son Xīzhòng (the Sòngshǐ and Guǐxīn zázhì both write 義仲, transmissional errors which we correct here) was appointed Resident at the Suburban Sacrifices Hall (Jiāoshè zhāiláng 郊社齋郎). Beyond this his career is not detailed.

The Sòngshǐ says that when Sīmǎ Guāng was put in charge of the Zīzhì tōngjiàn, Yīngzōng commanded him to select scholars from the Guǎngé to compile it with him. Sīmǎ Guāng replied: “Of literary scholars in the Guǎngé there are indeed many; but of those especially expert in historiography, I know only Liú Shù.” He thereupon called Shù to be a member of the bureau, and whenever knotty source-disputes arose, would defer to Shù. Shù was outstandingly precise in the matter of corrections to the events from the WèiJìn period onward. The present book is the gathered record of Shù’s disputations with Guāng. The closing remark — “in this present time even the Chūnqiū is suspended, how much more so this book?” — suggests the work was completed after the Xīníng era. Shào Bówēn’s Wénjiàn lù says: in the Tōngjiàn the Shǐjì and the Former and Later Hàn sections were assigned to Liú Bān; the Táng to the Five Dynasties to Fàn Zǔyǔ; the Three Kingdoms through the nine dynasties down to Suí to Liú Shù — so the matters discussed here are all from the Three Kingdoms through to the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

The discussions are all rigorously precise, and the Sòngshǐ’s statement that Shù was so steeped in historiography — “from the Senior Historian’s records down to the close of the ZhōuXiǎn era, in private records and miscellaneous accounts there was nothing he had not seen; thousands of years of events, in major and minor matters alike, lay before him as if pointed out on his palm” — is no empty saying. The Tōngjiàn takes the Wèi as legitimate (dì Wèi 帝魏); Zhū Zǐ in compiling the Gāngmù changed this to taking the Shǔ as legitimate (dì Shǔ 帝蜀); the school of jiǎngxué 講學 thinkers held this to be a vindication of the great rectifying principle, continuing the Chūnqiū. But on reading this present book we find that Liú Shù had already proposed treating Shǔ on the analogy of Eastern Jìn, as the legitimate succession; he argued strongly with Sīmǎ Guāng on this point, but was overruled. So not only Xí Záochǐ 習鑿齒 and Liú Zhījǐ had earlier broached this question — even during the Tōngjiàn’s compilation it was raised. Appended at the end is Xīzhòng’s letter to Fàn Zǔyǔ: he says his father, while in the bureau, only sorted source-events into a chángbiān (long draft); the right-and-wrong, the rejections and acceptances, were all the work of Sīmǎ Guāng’s editorial brush; and Xīzhòng never met Sīmǎ Guāng, and did not fully know the underlying reasons of the fánlì’s right-and-wrong decisions; Fàn Zǔyǔ also having served on the Tōngjiàn, he therefore set down his queries and presented them. Eight matters are raised. Fàn’s reply, with full analysis, is appended; on receiving it Xīzhòng deeply repents the impertinence of his queries and adds his own self-rebuke — fearing that lesser men would, like himself, fall into errors and slights against the Way — for which reason he records the whole exchange so that posterity may consult it. His ability both to bring his father’s merits to light and not to disguise his own faults gives a glimpse of how the simplicity and directness of the old worthies still survived among the Sùshuǐ (= Sīmǎ Guāng’s circle) followers. Qiánlóng 42 (1777), respectfully revised.

Abstract

Liú Xīzhòng (the correct form, restored by the Sìkù from the Sòngshǐ’s erroneous 義仲) was the eldest son of KR2j0001 Zīzhì tōngjiàn co-compiler 劉恕 (Liú Shù, 1032–1078). He never sat the jìnshì exam in his own right — his only recorded office is the honorific Jiāoshè zhāiláng awarded to recognise his late father’s Tōngjiàn labour after the work’s presentation in 1084. The Tōngjiàn wènyí is therefore a scholar-son’s act of filial piety: gathering up his father’s notes on disputed Tōngjiàn points (especially the great running disagreement with Sīmǎ Guāng over which of the Three Kingdoms states should be treated as legitimate succession), and adding to them his own correspondence with Fàn Zǔyǔ on eight specific points of Tōngjiàn exegesis.

The work’s terminus post quem is fixed by Liú Shù’s death in 1078; its terminus ante quem by the lifetime of Fàn Zǔyǔ (1041–1098), and probably by the Yuányòu period when Fàn was actively in capital service. The closing reference to the Chūnqiū being “suspended” (廢) is usually read as alluding to the post-Yuányòu anti-classical climate under Zhézōng, suggesting a date after 1093. The Sìkù compilers transmit the work from a Tiānyīgé 天一閣 manuscript (preserved by Fàn Mòzhù 范懋柱); the Sòng Yìwénzhì and the Wénxiàn tōngkǎo both list the work, but it had become rare by the late Ming.

The work’s substantive importance is twofold. First, it is the principal extant testimony to the Tōngjiàn’s internal editorial disputes. The fact that Liú Shù argued for treating ShǔHàn as the legitimate succession — anticipating Zhū Xī’s KR2o0020 Tōngjiàn gāngmù by a century — but was overruled by Sīmǎ Guāng, fundamentally reshapes how the late-imperial Gāngmù-versus-Tōngjiàn “legitimacy” debate should be read: not as Zhū Xī’s innovation against Sīmǎ Guāng, but as Zhū Xī’s revival of a position Liú Shù had already argued and lost during the Tōngjiàn compilation itself. Second, the eight queries from Liú Xīzhòng to Fàn Zǔyǔ, with Fàn’s responses, are the most detailed surviving documentation of Tōngjiàn fánlì application — they preserve point-by-point Fàn Zǔyǔ’s reasoning on contested editorial decisions of the late-eleventh century.

CBDB id 20457 records Liú Xīzhòng but with no lifedates. He was born probably in the 1050s or 1060s and was active into the Yuányòu and Shàoshèng eras.

Translations and research

No complete English translation located.

  • Charles Hartman, The Making of Song Dynasty History (Cambridge UP, 2021), Ch. 4 on Liú Shù and the Tōngjiàn compilation; the Wènyí is treated as the principal first-hand witness to the editorial disputes.
  • Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §51.4.1 on the Tōngjiàn compilers.
  • E. G. Pulleyblank, “Chinese Historical Criticism: Liu Chih-chi and Ssu-ma Kuang”, in Historians of China and Japan, eds. W. G. Beasley and E. G. Pulleyblank (Oxford UP, 1961).
  • Cài Chóngbǎng 蔡崇榜, Sòngdài xiūshǐ zhìdù yánjiū 宋代修史制度研究 (Wénjīn, 1991), §5.3.
  • Wáng Dégēng 王德庚, “Liú Shù yǔ Zīzhì tōngjiàn” 劉恕與《資治通鑑》, Shǐxué shǐ yánjiū (1985).
  • Hilde De Weerdt, Information, Territory, and Networks (Harvard, 2016), passim on the Tōngjiàn’s reception.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tiyao’s careful correction of the textual error 義仲 → 羲仲 — citing both the Sòngshǐ and Zhōu Mì’s 周密 Guǐxīn zázhì 癸辛雜識 as sharing the slip, and emending against both — is a notable instance of the Sìkù editors’ textual scholarship in action: they prefer the form transmitted in the work itself (as well as the form that aligns with the brother’s name 劉羲叟, the well-known calendrical scholar) over even consensus among standard sources.

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