Xiàndì Chūnqiū 獻帝春秋
Annals of Emperor Xian
About the work
A fragmentary historical text recording events and anecdotes from the reign of Emperor Xian of Han 漢獻帝 (r. 189–220 CE), the last Han emperor, through the fall of the dynasty. The received text is very brief — a series of disconnected passages covering incidents from the Yellow Turban uprising to the Wei-Wu conflicts — and represents a reconstruction assembled from citations preserved in later encyclopedias and histories rather than a continuous original. The authorship is given as anonymous (闕名) in the Kanripo catalog; some bibliographic traditions attribute the work to 袁暐 Yuán Wěi, an Eastern Han official who served at court during Emperor Xian’s reign, though this attribution is disputed and the text as received likely reflects later editorial compilation.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
Abstract
The Xiàndì Chūnqiū 獻帝春秋 is a collection of historical fragments concerning the reign of Emperor Xian 獻帝 (r. 189–220 CE). The text was not included in the Sìkù quánshū and has no standard bibliographic tiyao. Some traditional catalogs attribute the work to 袁暐 Yuán Wěi, an Eastern Han official, but the attribution remains uncertain. The Suíshū Jīngjízhì 隋書·經籍志 does not list this title, and the work was evidently already lost or fragmentary before the Tang. What survives was assembled from quotations in the Sānguózhì 三國志 and its annotations, the Hòu-Hànshū 後漢書, and Tang-Song encyclopedias such as the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽. The received Kanripo text is extremely brief (ca. 136 lines), consisting of scattered anecdotes about Emperor Xian’s relationship with Cao Cao 曹操, the eunuch faction, and the collapse of Han central authority. It records, inter alia, the famous anecdote of Cao Cao’s discomfiture before Emperor Xian, and passages about the Yuan Shao-Dong Zhuo confrontation.
The composition dates to the period ca. 189–220 CE if the original attribution to a Han-era author is accepted; the received text, a later reconstruction, cannot be dated more precisely than “before the Song period.” The work is best understood as a fragmentary source of yíshì 逸事 (surviving anecdotes) from the late Han rather than a systematic annalistic chronicle.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Links
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