Wèi-Jìn Shìyǔ 魏晉世語
Conversations of the Wei-Jin Period by 郭頒
About the work
A fragmentary miscellany of anecdotes (yíshì 逸事) recording sayings, episodes, and character sketches from the Three Kingdoms and Western Jin eras, composed by 郭頒 Guō Bān of the Jin dynasty. The received text consists of passages recovered from citations in the Sānguózhì 三國志 commentary by Péi Sōngzhī 裴松之 (429) and other early medieval sources; it no longer circulates as an independent work and is accessible only through these embedded quotations. The Kanripo edition appears to be a collected reconstruction.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
Abstract
The Wèi-Jìn Shìyǔ 魏晉世語 was composed by 郭頒 Guō Bān, a Jin-dynasty scholar whose dates are unknown. The work recorded anecdotes about prominent figures of the Wei and Jin periods — officials, military leaders, and literary men — in the shìshuō 世說 (conversations/anecdotes of the age) mode that was popular during the Wei-Jin era. The text is cited extensively by Péi Sōngzhī in his 429 CE annotation of the Sānguózhì; Pei quotes it alongside the Wèishū 魏書, Wèilüè 魏略, and other Wei-Jin sources. The work was evidently still available in the Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties periods but was subsequently lost. The present text is a reconstruction assembled from these citations. CBDB records郭頒 (id 428072) without confirmed dates.
The anecdotes in the received text include accounts of court politics under Emperor Mingdi of Wei 魏明帝, the political careers of Liu Fang 劉放 and Sun Zi 孫資 (controllers of the imperial secretariat), and portraits of figures such as Zhong Hui 鍾會 and Du Yi 杜夷. The work is an important source for the social and political history of the Wei-Jin transition.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The text is discussed incidentally in studies of the Sānguózhì and its annotations.
Links
- Wikidata: no dedicated entry located