Péi Sōngzhī 裴松之
Zì Shìqí 世期. Native of Wénxǐ 聞喜 in Hédōng 河東 (modern Wénxǐ, Shānxī). Member of the great Hédōng Péi historical lineage; father of 裴駰 (Péi Yǐn) and grandfather of Péi Zǐyě 裴子野 (469–530, author of the Sòng lüè 宋略). Active under Eastern Jìn and LiúSòng.
Career: held a long succession of mid-rank posts under both Jìn and Sòng — Yǒngjiā tàishǒu 永嘉太守, Guózǐ bóshì 國子博士, Tàizhōng dàifu 太中大夫, Bùbīng xiàowèi 步兵校尉, ending with Sīzhōu cìshǐ 司州刺史. His scholarly reputation rests almost entirely on a single work.
In Yuánjiā 5 (428) Sòng Wéndì 宋文帝 commissioned Péi to annotate Chén Shòu’s Sānguó zhì (KR2a0012). Péi’s commentary, presented on 1 August Yuánjiā 6 (429), is unique among the zhèngshǐ commentaries: rather than a primarily lexical or geographical apparatus in the manner of Yán Shīgǔ on the Hànshū or Lǐ Xián on the Hòu Hànshū, it is a historiographical supplementation. Péi quotes in extenso from over 200 Han-Wei-Jin works (most now lost), and in his own preface specifies six functions: supplementing omitted material; supplying missing biographies; expanding thinly-documented careers; collating variants; weighing divergent judgements; cross-referencing related figures. Péi’s commentary is approximately equal in length to Chén Shòu’s text and is the single most important pre-Tang witness to fourth-century-and-earlier Three Kingdoms historiography. It preserves substantial fragments of Wáng Chén’s 王沈 Wèi shū, Wéi Zhāo’s 韋昭 Wú shū, Yú Pǔ’s 虞溥 Jiāngbiǎo zhuàn, Sūn Shèng’s 孫盛 Wèishì chūnqiū, Yú Huán’s 魚豢 Wèi lüè, and dozens of other lost works.
Sòng Wéndì’s celebrated reaction on receiving the commentary, “Cǐ wèi bù xiǔ yǐ” 此為不朽矣 (“This is now immortal”), is preserved in the Sòngshū. His biography is in Sòngshū 64.