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史糾

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Text ID
KR2o0019
Date
1635–1652
Dynasty
明

Shǐjiū 史糾

Correcting the Histories

by 朱明鎬 (Zhū Míngháo, 1607–1652)

About the work

A 6-juan late-Míng evidential-historical critique of the writing-conventions and factual claims in the standard histories from the Sānguó zhì through the Yuánshǐ. Each history is treated separately; the Yuánshǐ receives less critical attention; the Jìnshū and the Wǔdàishǐ are missing from the work — whether by transmission loss or by Zhū Míngháo’s own incompletion of the project cannot be determined. An appended Shūshǐ yìtóng 書史異同 essay and a Xīnjiù Tángshū yìtóng 新舊唐書異同 in 1 juàn differ in format from the main work, suggesting that posterity gathered together fragments and arranged them into the present volume. Zhū’s method is sustained source-comparison: where Pèi Sōngzhī’s 裴松之 Sānguó zhì zhù, Liú Zhījǐ’s KR2o0001 Shǐtōng, Wú Zhěn’s KR2a0028 Xīn Tángshū jiūmiù 新唐書糾謬, and Sīmǎ Guāng’s Tōngjiàn kǎoyì serve as the reference frame, Zhū identifies inconsistencies, internal contradictions, and improprieties of shūfǎ (writing convention) in the surviving texts.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Shǐjiū in six juàn was composed by Zhū Míngháo of the Míng. Zhū, zì Fēngqí 豐芑, was a native of Tàicāng. This compilation collates and corrects the shūfǎ (writing-convention) errors and factual contradictions in the various histories. From the Sānguó zhì above to the Yuánshǐ below, each history is treated as a separate compilation. The Yuánshǐ is treated lightly — Zhū says he is following Zhèng Qiáo’s Tōngzhì and not daring to interpolate into the Tángshū’s precedent. The Jìnshū and the Wǔdàishǐ are also left out; whether by transmission loss or by Zhū’s not having completed his investigation, we cannot now ascertain. Looking at the closing sections — the appended Shūshǐ yìtóng and the Xīnjiù Tángshū yìtóng in 1 juàn — the format differs sharply from the main body; we know these were gathered from his remaining drafts by posterity and bound together.

There are great masses of historical-criticism essays from the Míng period; most are extravagant disputation, set on overturning previous opinion, but unable to verify from beginning to end. Zhū’s name is not famous, but on the histories he is everywhere connecting and threading, getting at their underlying organisation — clearly working from collation of the original texts, with more grounding than other Míng historical-critical writers. His treatment of the Sānguó zhì and the eight succeeding histories mostly addresses errors of writing-convention while also testing factual claims; his treatment of the Tángshū and Sòngshǐ mostly compares variant readings and points out repetitions and lacunae. In execution he often follows Pèi Sōngzhī’s Sānguó zhì zhù, Liú Zhījǐ’s Shǐtōng, Wú Zhěn’s Xīn Tángshū jiūmiù, and Sīmǎ Guāng’s Tōngjiàn kǎoyì.

There are passages where he falls short — for instance, his treatment of the Suíshū’s biography of Princess Lánlíng (who, having endured shame to remarry, finally died in atonement for her second husband — a case taken into the Lièn̆ǚ zhuàn); or his treatment of the Sòngshǐ’s biography of Bāo Huī 包恢, who used corporal punishment to enforce the official-fields law in flattery of Jiǎ Sìdào, and was nevertheless registered under Dàoxué by virtue of yuán chū Zhūzǐ 源出朱子 (Zhū Xī ancestry of his line) — these obvious inversions and errors he too cannot wholly probe out. As to Xú Mèngshēn’s KR2b0030 Sānzhāo běiméng huìbiān 三朝北盟會編, which originally gathered material from various sources without verdict in order to provide source matter for historians, the yì (intent) being to take in everything without rejection or selection — Mèngshēn appended not a single verdict — yet Zhū misreads the chronicle prose as Mèngshēn’s verdicts and roundly attacks them, a particularly ill-considered judgement.

But broadly his cross-collation strikes the right notes; the precise and gathered essentials make up six or seven parts in ten — he can certainly be called a man with his mind on historiography.

Abstract

Zhū Míngháo (1607–1652), zì Fēngqí 豐芑, native of Tàicāng 太倉 (modern Jiāngsū). A late-Míng jǔrén of Chóngzhēn 4 (1631), with no metropolitan-examination success and no significant office. He died at age 46 in Yǒnglì 6 (1652) — the early Southern-Míng period, with the Qing already established in the north. His career was one of fellowship-and-correspondence rather than office: he was a member of the Tàicāng Fùshè 復社 (Restoration Society) circle alongside Zhāng Pǔ 張溥 and the Zhāng / Wú scholars. CBDB id 74191 confirms 1607–1652.

The Shǐjiū is the principal product of his evidential-critical method. The work was compiled probably during the late Chóngzhēn and early Southern-Míng decades — the main composition window being between c. 1635 and his death in 1652. The work was not printed in Zhū’s lifetime; the posthumous compiling-and-binding of his fragments (as the Sìkù tiyao notes) suggests the work survived in family hands and friends’ transcripts until late-seventeenth-century circulation made publication feasible.

The Sìkù verdict — that the work has more grounding than typical late-Míng historical-criticism, with six or seven parts in ten precisely on target — has been broadly accepted. The tiyao explicitly contrasts Zhū with the late-Míng fān àn 翻案 (overturning-the-record) writers like Lǐ Zhì 李贄, whose disputatious style Zhū avoids in favour of patient cross-collation. Modern scholarship places the Shǐjiū alongside Wáng Shìzhēn 王世貞’s Yìyuàn zhīyán 弇苑卮言 and Lǐ Zhì’s Cángshū 藏書 as one of the three principal late-Míng historical-criticism works to anticipate Qing evidential method.

The missing Jìnshū and Wǔdàishǐ sections, and the heterogeneous appended materials, mark the work as posthumously assembled rather than authorially closed. The Sìkù 6-juan recension is the standard form.

Translations and research

No complete English translation located.

  • Charles Hartman, The Making of Song Dynasty History (Cambridge UP, 2021), §7.5 on Zhū Míngháo.
  • Wāng Hóng-jiā 王宏佳, “Zhū Míngháo Shǐjiū yánjiū” 朱明鎬《史糾》研究, Wénshǐ zhī xīng 文史知識 (2007).
  • Yáng Yàn-qiū 楊豔秋, Míngdài shǐxué shǐ 明代史學史 (Tiānjīn rénmín, 1993), Ch. 7.
  • Míng rú xué àn 明儒學案 — entry on Tàicāng / Fùshè scholars.
  • Cynthia Brokaw, The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China (Princeton UP, 1991), passim, on late-Míng intellectual climate.
  • Benjamin Elman, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China (Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1984), §3.4 on late-Míng evidential precursors.

Other points of interest

The work’s evidential method — patient source-comparison rather than disputatious case-overturning — anticipates the major Qing historical-evidential projects (Zhào Yì’s 趙翼 Niàn èr shǐ zhájì 廿二史札記, Wáng Míngshèng’s 王鳴盛 Shíqī shǐ shāngquè 十七史商榷, Qián Dàxīn’s 錢大昕 Niàn èr shǐ kǎoyì 廿二史考異) by a century. Zhū’s relative obscurity reflects the dynastic-transition disruption: he died in the early Southern-Míng period, the Shǐjiū survived in fragments, and his work entered wider circulation only when the Sìkù compilers picked it up.

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