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評鑑闡要

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Text ID
KR2o0023
Date
1768–1771
Dynasty
清

Píngjiàn chǎnyào 評鑑闡要

Elucidation of Essentials from the Imperial Comments on the Mirror

by 高宗弘曆 (Qīng Gāozōng / Qiánlóng, r. 1735–1796) and 劉統勳 (Liú Tǒngxūn, 1700–1773), ed.

About the work

A 12-juan compilation of 798 imperial annotations (pī 批) extracted from the Yùpī Tōngjiàn jīlǎn 御批通鑑輯覽 — Qiánlóng’s massively edited universal-history compendium of 1767. The work was edited and presented by Liú Tǒngxūn and others in Qiánlóng 36 (1771). According to the Sìkù tiyao, only about 30% of the annotations are Qiánlóng’s yùzhuàn (imperial-composed) original drafts; the remainder (70%) are versions of staff drafts that the emperor revised — but he revised them so heavily that their final form is for all practical purposes imperial composition. The annotations are critical-historiographical: they correct factual errors in the prior Tōngjiàn-tradition tradition, expose moralising distortions of the Gāngmù school, and apply Chūnqiū-style writing-conventions to ambiguous cases (most notably with respect to Liáo, Jīn, and Yuán dynastic terminology — names of persons, offices, places — which Qiánlóng repeatedly corrects against late-Míng received forms).

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Yùzhì Píngjiàn chǎnyào in 12 juàn — in Qiánlóng 36 (1771), Grand Secretary Liú Tǒngxūn and others compiled and presented it. All the imperial annotations were taken from those vouchsafed in the Tōngjiàn jīlǎn. When the Hall ministers were respectfully compiling the Jīlǎn, they assigned juan and submitted draft, presented day by day; His Majesty in the second-watch read in person, with vermilion brush evaluating, attaching discussions to each entry — bright as the sun and stars. Where the Hall ministers had been ordered to compose draft suggestions to be presented attached to each, these too received imperial decision and revision, struck through and supplemented, ten preserved or two or three. When the whole work was complete, the imperial-brush items numbered nearly several thousand entries; already printed at the head of each juàn and shown to all generations.

The Hall ministers being deeply imbued with the imperial guidance, finding that the subtle wording and abstruse meaning all came from the sage’s solitary discriminating mind, but the zhāng and jù (sentences and phrases) were rather many — those who watch the sea may have difficulty descrying the shore — they therefore made a careful detailed selection, prepared this book.

There are 12 juàn in all, recording 798 imperial annotations. About thirty percent are imperially-drafted; about seventy percent are revised drafts of presented submissions. The grand outline and large indices are illuminated as in jade slips. Looking up: Sage clarity precise and detailed, no shadowed thing not lit. As if the sacred bronze tripod is cast from nine elements, divine and demonic offering their figures, none can hide in the slightest. So in viewing the world and knowing men, no obscurity is not exposed. What is called striking the previous dynasties’ falsifying conducts, opening the historians’ mendacious words — testing and correcting confusion, settling between varieties and oppositions — its meaning is what the men of antiquity had not previously elucidated, while the proper saying is what conforms with what is similar in human heart and Heaven’s principles.

In particular, the special pen striking decisively in: the death-recordings of Jiǎ Chōng 賈充 and Chǔ Yuān 褚淵; the writing of Dí Rénjié 狄仁傑 under the Zhōu (i.e. of Wǔ Zétiān); the rectification of the literary distinction between “侵” and “寇” in north-south references; the corrections of Liáo, Jīn, and Yuán person-names, office-names, and place-names; and on the matter of jìnián succession, the repeated and detailed admonitions — this is especially earnest in pursuing the original principles of preserving the realm and extending the mandate. Truly enough to wake the deaf and rouse the blind, transmitting teaching for ten thousand ages. The thousand-ages right-and-wrong rests on the historian’s praise-and-blame; the historian’s right-and-wrong waits on the sage’s settling.

Abstract

The Píngjiàn chǎnyào is one of the principal Qiánlóng-period imperial historical-criticism works, an extracted and curated compilation of the emperor’s annotations on the Tōngjiàn jīlǎn (a Qiánlóng-court universal history covering Yáo down to the end of the Míng, completed and printed in 1767). The annotations correct previous historiographical errors and apply rigorous Chūnqiū-style writing-conventions to politically charged cases. The 798 selected entries (about 30% emperor-drafted, 70% emperor-edited from staff drafts, per the editors’ own statement) cover the whole imperial-history span from high antiquity to the late Míng.

The work is part of Qiánlóng’s broader programme of imperial historiographical revision: it is contemporary with his rewriting of major dynastic-history rubrics (e.g., the Manchu reading of the Liáo, Jīn, and Yuán histories; his 1782 critical revision of KR2o0022 Xù Tōngjiàn gāngmù), and with the related Sìkù compilation. The Chǎnyào’s editorial direction was Liú Tǒngxūn’s (1700–1773), Senior Grand Secretary, who had earlier supervised the Tōngjiàn jīlǎn compilation itself. Liú died in 1773, two years after presenting the Chǎnyào — suggesting the compilation was a late-career capping project for him.

The text’s substantive contribution is least visible in its subject-matter (the universal-history span has been debated for centuries) and most visible in its method: a sustained, granular application of imperial editorial authority to centuries of received historical-narrative. Modern scholarship treats it as one of the principal documents of Qing-period imperial-historiographical practice, and the most explicit articulation of how Qiánlóng saw himself in relation to the historical tradition.

The composition window is set by the Jīlǎn itself (presented 1767) and the Chǎnyào’s presentation date (Qiánlóng 36, 1771). The Qiánlóng emperor (1711–1799; CBDB id 55870) and Liú Tǒngxūn (1700–1773; CBDB id 56847) lived through this entire period.

Translations and research

No complete English translation located.

  • Pamela Crossley, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (University of California Press, 1999), Ch. 8 on Qiánlóng’s historiographical interventions.
  • Mark Elliott, Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World (Pearson, 2009), Ch. 4 on the Sìkù and Tōngjiàn jīlǎn.
  • R. Kent Guy, The Emperor’s Four Treasuries: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch’ien-lung Era (Harvard, 1987), passim.
  • Norman Kutcher, Eunuch and Emperor in the Great Age of Qing Rule (University of California Press, 2018), passim.
  • Yuán Yìnyǔ 袁殷玉, “Qiánlóng Píngjiàn chǎnyào yánjiū” 乾隆《評鑑闡要》研究, Qīngshǐ yánjiū 清史研究 (2010).
  • Schmidt-Glintzer, Helwig, Geschichtsschreibung im Vergleich.

Other points of interest

The 30%/70% split between imperially drafted and imperially edited annotations is candid — it gives a clear sense of how Qiánlóng’s “imperial” historiography actually worked: the emperor functioned as a final editor and authoritative voice, with court ministers (often Hàn-school philologists) doing the underlying drafting work. The Chǎnyào is a textbook example of how yùpī (imperial annotation) tradition operated as a collaborative, palimpsestic process rather than as solo authorial composition.

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