Empresses and consorts selections from Chen Shou's Records of the Three States with Pei Songzhi's commentary |
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PEI SONGZHI AND HIS COMMENTARY |
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 | 5 Records of the Three States Empresses and consorts |  |
PEI SONGZHI AND HIS COMMENTARY
Pei Songzhi was born into an important and influential family whose
home of record was Wenxi [OMITTED] prefecture in Hedong [OMITTED].[51] Like
many northerners, the Peis had moved south early in the fourth century
cannot be sure where Pei was born, it would not have been at Wenxi.[52]
By the time he was eight, he is said to have been thoroughly versed
in the Confucian Lun yu [OMITTED] [Conversations] and the Mao version
of the Classic of Poetry, as well as widely read in other works. At twenty
he was made a general of the palace (dian zhong jiangjun [OMITTED]),
and beginning early in the Yixi [OMITTED] reign period (405-418), Pei served
first as prefect (ling [OMITTED]) of Guzhang [OMITTED] in Wuxing [OMITTED] commandery,[53]
then as gentleman of the masters of writing for the Ministry of
Sacrifices (shangshu cibu lang [OMITTED]). Later he served as master
of records of Si province [OMITTED] under Liu Yu [OMITTED], the future founder
of the Liu Song [OMITTED] dynasty (420-479), and was then made viceattendant-clerk
(zhizhong congshi shi [OMITTED]).[54] When Liu
conquered Luoyang, Pei Songzhi was put in charge of the province.
No doubt due to Liu's high regard for him, Pei was transferred back
to Jiankang [OMITTED], where he held a series of offices, including those of
forerunner of the heir apparent (shizi xianma [OMITTED]), administrator
(neishi [OMITTED]) of Lingling [OMITTED],[55] and erudit of the National University
(guo zi boshi [OMITTED]). In 426, Pei was one of sixteen grand commissioners
ordered to tour various parts of the realm. In this capacity
he went to Xiang province [OMITTED]. After returning to court, he served
as a gentleman-in-attendance of the Palace Writers (zhongshu shilang
[OMITTED]) and senior impartial and just of both Si and Ji [OMITTED] provinces,
and was made marquis of Xi district [OMITTED].[56]
As we have observed, Records of the Three States constitutes a major
achievement, especially considering Chen Shou's political and
intellectual environment and the materials with which he had to work.
But there were criticisms of his history, and among these was the
complaint that there were too many omissions. As Leban writes,
Despite Chen Shou's position and the availability of contemporary
source material, great gaps still existed in certain parts of the record,
most particularly with regard to Shu, but also evident in the
sometimes overly terse reports on the activities of individual
personalities and the vagueness with which events are dated both in
the annalistic chapters and the biographies. The very excitement
generated by the original SKC [San guo zhi] accounts further
engender a thirst for greater detail, frustration with which must have
been felt even by early readers.[57]
This charge of excessive brevity has some merit and is still made
today; one would simply like to know more about many matters.
Examples of great concern to the economic historian are Chen's lack
agricultural colonies (tun tian [OMITTED]) and the new method of levying
land taxes according to acreage rather than yield. Both were extremely
important administrative changes and the antecedents of major fiscal
institutions in later dynasties, most notably the Tang. But Chen
mentions the first only in passing, and the second not at all.[58] Were
it not for Pei Songzhi's commentary and the Later Han History, we
might completely misunderstand the origins of these two important
institutions.
Fortunately, thanks perhaps to the combination of excitement and
frustration mentioned by Leban, Pei's work exists. Emperor Wen [OMITTED]
(r. 424-453) of the Liu Song dynasty was motivated by the terseness
of Chen's text to order Pei Songzhi to write a commentary to Records
of the Three States. Pei performed his assigned task masterfully. His
contribution lies not only in providing information that helps to clarify
issues in the original history but also in preserving many works that
might otherwise have been lost.[59] Quoting from more than one hundred
fifty works from Wei-Jin times alone, his commentary constitutes a
resource no less important than Chen's. Until recently it was widely
believed that the commentary was, in fact, nearly three times the length
of Chen's original work.[60]
The completed commentary was finished and submitted to the
throne on 8 September 429. The emperor, with considerable foresight,
deemed it an "imperishable" contribution.[61] In 437, Pei Songzhi retired
from office but was then appointed grand palace grandee (tai zhong
dafu [OMITTED]) and concurrent erudit of the National University. He
was also charged with continuing and completing He Chengtian's [OMITTED]
[OMITTED] Guo shi [OMITTED] [National History] but died of illness before it was
done.
The memorial that Pei submitted on the completion of his commentary
reveals a good deal about his approach to writing the
commentary:
Formerly, I was summoned and ordered to collect parallel and
divergent accounts regarding the Three States in order to write a
commentary to Chen Shou's Records of the States. The assessments
and arrangement of Chen's book are impressive; it is mostly careful
and aboveboard regarding events. Truly, this is a park for the
sightseer, a welcome history of recent times. However, its defects lie
in its brevity, and sometimes it omits things. I received your decree
to seek out details and have striven for thoroughness. On the one
hand, I have searched out old accounts, and on the other, have
collected what is missing. Note that while the Three States did not
beginning and the Jin at the end, all told about a hundred years. The
records are confused and garbled and always quite contradictory. In
order to fill in the gaps in Chen Shou's account, I have recovered all
those events not set down by Chen of which it is proper to keep a
record. Some of the sources relate the same event, but their language
is contradictory and confused in places; in some, the occurrence of
an event basically differs. When I have been uncertain and unable
to make a decision, I have copied everything down together in order
to provide different versions. Where there are obvious errors or
illogical statements, I have made corrections following each mistake
as a precaution against their inaccuracy. With regard to Chen's minor
slips and whether or not the chronology and facts are accurate, in
quite a few places I have drawn on my own modest ideas to discuss
and debate these matters.[62]
Although he does not explicitly mention it here, Pei also provides glosses
and explanations at various points in his commentary.[63] The obvious
importance of Pei's work notwithstanding, some critics have denigrated
it for such real or perceived faults as superfluity (or, alternatively,
inadequacy) and for altering words in quoted material.
This biographical sketch of Pei Songzhi is based on Ss, 64.1698-1701, and
Miao, San guo zhi daodu, 15-16. Wenxi was in the area of the modern place
of the same name in Shanxi.
Those whose families had fled south to escape incursions of nomadic peoples
from the steppe maintained the fiction of being natives of their family's place
of origin in the North. See Crowell, "Northern Émigrés and the Problems of
Census Registration under the Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties."
Sizhou was a province created by Liu Yu when he captured modern He'nan
from the Later Qin [OMITTED]. It eventually was occupied by the Later Wei [OMITTED].
Jiankang, of course, was at modern Nanjing. Lingling was a commandery with
its seat located at modern Lingling, Hunan.
Miao, San guo zhi daodu, 16. Pei Songzhi's designation as marquis is not
mentioned in his biographies in Shen Yue's [OMITTED] (441-513) Song shu [OMITTED]
[Song History] and Li Yanshou's [OMITTED] (fl. 629) Nan shi [OMITTED] [History of
the South], but Marquis of Xi District is one of the titles he uses in signing
his "Memorial Presenting the Commentary to Records of the Three States."
See Sgz, 1472.
See Sgz, 1.14, 16.489. See also Crowell, "Government Land Policies and
Systems in Early Imperial China," 144-171; Miao, San guo zhi daodu, 2021.
Only 60 to 70 percent of the works quoted by Pei are listed in the
bibliographical treatise of the Sui History. Less than 10 percent appear to have
survived as independent works past the Song (Miao, San guo zhi daodu, 15).
Miao, San guo zhi daodu, 15. Miao cites Yang Yixiang [OMITTED], who says
there are on the order of 200,000 graphs in the text itself and around 540,000
in the commentary (Miao, San guo zhi daodu, 30). This is wildly inaccurate.
The notion that Pei's commentary is longer goes back to Chao Gongwu's [OMITTED]
[OMITTED] (fl. 1151) Junzhai dushu zhi [OMITTED] [Notices on Books from the
Prefect's Studio]. See Chao, Junzhai dushu zhi, 5.4b. For a more reliable count,
see Appendix II.
Miao Yue (San guo zhi daodu, 17) observes that glossarial commentary
comprises quite a bit of the total. But it is not much in evidence in the sections
translated here. For a list of some examples of this type of note, see Miao,
San guo zhi daodu, 18-19. Our impression is that Pei's glossarial and
explanatory notes make up a relatively small percentage of the commentary.
Wu Jinhua [OMITTED] suggests that this is because Pei and his readers were not
that far removed from Chen's period and thus had less trouble with his
language (Wu Jinhua, "Qianyan" [OMITTED] ["Foreword"], 1, in Sgz jiaogu). The
spotty nature of such notes led the editors of the Siku quanshu zongmu [OMITTED]
[OMITTED] [General Bibliography of the Complete Writings of the Four
Treasuries] to speculate that Pei may have set out to write a work similar to
Ying Shao's [OMITTED] (d. ca. A.D. 204) commentary to the Han History. Unable
to complete it, he was loath to take out the glossarial and explanatory notes
and simply left them (Skqszm, 45.17-18). Miao argues that this is needless
conjecture and clearly believes that it detracts from Pei's very real
accomplishments (Miao, San guo zhi daodu, 17).
| 5 Records of the Three States Empresses and consorts | |