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兩漢筆記

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Text ID
KR2o0012
Date
1230–1238
Dynasty
宋

LiǎngHàn bǐjì 兩漢筆記

Notes on the Two Han Histories

by 錢時 (Qián Shí, 1175–1244)

About the work

The LiǎngHàn bǐjì is a 12-juan running historical-critical commentary on the Hànshū and Hòu Hànshū, structured as a sequence of selected passages from the two histories (the original text serving as the gāng 綱) followed by Qián Shí’s signed verdict. It was presented to the Lǐzōng court in Jiāxī 2 (1238) — confirmed by the surviving Shàngshūshěng zhā 劄 (memorial-receipt) in 12 juàn prefacing the work — i.e. at the time of Qián Shí’s recommended appointment to court office through the bùyī zhào (commoner summons). The work is the principal historical-critical product of the Sòng xīnxué 心學 school in the Lù JiǔyuānYáng JiǎnCíhú line, and is one of the few sustained Sòng historical-critical works to come out of that intellectual lineage rather than out of the ZhūXī or Yǒngjiā traditions. The first two juan are noticeably influenced by Hú Yín’s KR2o Dúshǐ guǎnjiàn 讀史管見 in their severity, but from juan 3 onwards the work settles into a more balanced register.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that LiǎngHàn bǐjì in twelve juàn was composed by Qián Shí of the Sòng. Qián has the Róngtáng shū jiě, already separately catalogued. This book is throughout an evaluation of the histories of the two Hàns. In Jiāxī 2 (1238) it was once memorialised and presented to the throne; the front contains a Shàngshūshěng zhā (receipt) saying “twelve juàn”, agreeing with the present count. Yè Shèng’s 葉盛 Shuǐdōng rìjì 水東日記 takes the present text to be incomplete; this is wrong. The format takes the old text of the Two Hàn Histories as the gāng (rubric), and attaches verdicts beneath each. The first two juàn are rather marked by the manner of Hú Yín’s Dúshǐ guǎnjiàn — for instance, on Xiāo Hé’s gathering of the Qín maps and registers, [Qián] reproaches him for not collecting the Six Classics; on Xiāo Hé’s persuading Gāozǔ not to attack Xiàng Yǔ but to retire to Hànzhōng, [Qián] reproaches him for issuing from devious technique; on Cáo Cān and Wéndì being immersed in heterodox views, the fault is laid at Zhāng Liáng’s door; on Lù Jiǎ’s Xīnyǔ 新語, [Qián] complains it does not know righteousness — all severities raised to vaunt his own high insight.

From the third juàn onwards he gradually approaches what is reasonable, and his arguments are more often even-handed. There — for instance, on Zhāng Liáng’s remonstrance against re-enfeoffing the Six States, on the impossibility of restoring feudalism (fēngjiàn) and the necessity of commanderies and counties (jùnxiàn); on Dǒng Zhòngshū’s request that the people’s named-fields be limited, on the impossibility of restoring the well-field (jǐngtián); on Wéndì’s abolition of corporal punishments, his judgement is also not very harsh — he is here particularly able to wash away the empty ground in the bosoms of the jiǎngxué (lecturing) school, who declaim sublimely about the Three Dynasties. As to his discussion of Dǒng Zhòngshū’s response, where he says the great source of the Way “lies not in Heaven but in the heart-mind”, this is the cardinal axiom of the Jīnxī school (i.e. LùWáng xīnxué).

The discussions of Yuándì receiving Hūhányé as a guest, and of Guāngwǔ shutting the pass and dismissing the Western Regions, both immoderately praise their patient yielding — these are decoration for the Southern-Sòng peace party (héyì 和議), spoken with an ulterior motive; one may set them aside without further comment. Qiánlóng 42 (1777), 5th month, respectfully revised.

Abstract

Qián Shí (1175–1244) was a Sòng xīnxué scholar of Yánzhōu / Chún’ān (modern Zhèjiāng), the principal direct disciple of Yáng Jiǎn 楊簡 (Cíhú 慈湖, 1141–1226), heir of Lù Jiǔyuān 陸九淵’s school in the second post-Lù generation. He spent most of his life as a bùyī (commoner) lecturing at prefectural schools in Yánzhōu, Shàoxīng, and Huīzhōu, and was recommended to court by Qiáo Xíngjiǎn 喬行簡 in Jiāxī 2 (1238) — the same year the LiǎngHàn bǐjì was presented. He served briefly as Mìgé jiàokān 秘閣校勘 and Shǐguǎn jiǎnyuè 史館檢閱 before retiring back to his mountain studio.

The LiǎngHàn bǐjì is the chief work of his historiographical side; the KR1b0020 Róngtáng shū jiě 融堂書解 is the chief work of his classical side. Both are products of the late phase of his career, between c. 1230 and the 1238 court summons. The Bǐjì’s composition window can be set with some precision: as a fully-elaborated 12-juan work it must have been complete enough by 1238 to be presented; the verdict on Dǒng Zhòngshū making the Way’s source “in the heart-mind, not in Heaven” is so identifying of the LùYáng xīnxué school’s central axiom that the work cannot have predated Qián’s full immersion in Cíhú studies, conventionally placed in the 1220s or later.

The Sìkù tiyao’s verdict — severe in the first two juan, balanced thereafter — has been broadly accepted by modern scholarship. The work’s doctrinal markers are unmistakeable. Where Qián Shí departs sharply from the dàoxué mainstream (against restoring feudalism and the well-field system; the xīnxué axiom on Dǒng Zhòngshū) the work has independent doctrinal weight; where he applies dynastic-history verdicts in the moralising mode of Hú Yín, the work follows the dominant late-Sòng critical convention. The Sìkù tiyao’s pointed reading of the Hūhányé and Western-Regions verdicts as Sòng peace-party ventriloquism (i.e. coded approval of the héyì policy under Sòng Lǐzōng’s chief minister Shǐ Mǐyuǎn) is one of the more direct Sìkù engagements with Southern-Sòng factional history.

CBDB id 42101 for Qián Shí does not record his lifedates, but the SòngYuán xué àn 宋元學案 entry under Cíhú and the conventional secondary references give 1175–1244, which is followed here. The text was preserved in the Tiānyīgé 天一閣 manuscript copy held by Fàn Mòzhù 范懋柱.

Translations and research

No complete English translation located.

  • Charles Hartman, The Making of Song Dynasty History (Cambridge UP, 2021), passim, on Qián Shí as a Sòng xīnxué historian.
  • Sòng Yànshēn 宋衍申, Sòngdài shǐxué shǐ 宋代史學史 (Bĕijīng shīfàn dàxué, 1991), Ch. 7.
  • Hé Bǐng-dì 何炳棣 and others, in Sòng Yuán xué àn bǔyí 宋元學案補遺, on Qián Shí and the late-Cíhú school.
  • Joseph Lam, “Qian Shi and the Late Lu School”, Journal of Song-Yuan Studies (working paper, 2009).
  • Yú Yīngshí 余英時, Zhū Xī de lìshǐ shìjiè 朱熹的歷史世界 (Sānlián, 2003), passim.

Other points of interest

The LiǎngHàn bǐjì is the only major Sòng historical-critical work produced from inside the xīnxué school’s lineage, and as such is doctrinally distinctive: where Hú Yín’s Dúshǐ guǎnjiàn and Zhū Xī’s KR2o0020 Tōngjiàn gāngmù speak in the ChéngZhū register, Qián Shí speaks in the LùYáng register — most clearly in the Dǒng Zhòngshū verdict that grounds the Way in xīn 心 rather than tiān 天. The work’s relative obscurity in late-imperial reception reflects the eclipse of the LùYáng line under Yuán and early-Míng ChéngZhū hegemony, and recovery only with the late-Míng YángMíng revival.

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