Revised Records of the Grand Historian

Beijing Daily

 

 

On August 17, the revised Records of the Grand Historian was released for the first time at the Shanghai Book Fair. It is the first result of a project tasked on collating ancient books, namely, the revision of the Twenty-Four Histories (punctuated) and A Draft History of the Qing Dynasty. The other components of the project will also be made available in upcoming years. Initiated in 2007, the project marks the first time such a large-scale revision has been undertaken. To learn more about the background of the project—how long it has been underway, and what distinguishes it from the previous edition—CSST spoke with scholars in charge of the revision of the Book of Tang, History of the Five Dynasties, Records of the Grand Historian, and History of Yuan.

 

The first punctuated edition (classical Chinese contains no punctuation) Records of the Grand Historian was collated by renowned historians as Gu Jiegang. Since it was first published in 1959, the edition has gone through many reprints—more than any other volume of the Twenty-Four Histories. “Revising the Records of the Grand Historian does not mean that we are more advanced than our predecessors in our learning and knowledge, but that as time has progressed, new research and technology have become available to us, facilitating an improvement of the collation process,” explained Zhao Shengqun, a professor from the School of Chinese Language and Culture at Nanjing Normal University who is in charge of the group for revising theRecords of the Grand Historian.

 

However, Zhao did point out some key areas where the new collation has improved the previous edition. For instance, the previous punctuated Records of the Grand Historian did not include any additional notes describing of decisions made by the collators; additions and deletions were merely put in brackets and parentheses, making it the exception among the notation for the rest of the Twenty-Four Histories(punctuated). Moreover, apart from its main text, the Records of the Grand Historian also includes theSanjiazhu (The Combined Annotations of the Three Experts, which includes  Pei Yin’s Shijijijie which translates as “Records of the Grand Historian, Collected Annotations”, Sima Zhen’s Shiji Suoyin, which means "Seeking the Obscure in the Grand Scribe's Records”, and Zhang Shoujie’s Shiji Zhengyi). Because of time constrictions in the collation of the previous edition, the collators primarily focused on the main text rather than the edition volumes, resulting in some defects.

 

Speaking on the revisions’ new features, Zhao foremost noted the breadth of past editions from which the collators have drawn. While the Jinling Publishing House edition from the Qing Dynasty was still used as the master copy for this revision, many other editions that had not been previously used were also consulted for more thorough collation. “Among these, the most important are the Jingyou and Huang Shanfu editions. To date, the Jingyou edition is the most important copy from the Song Dynasty; it is now kept in the Fu Ssu-nien Library at Chinese Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. The Huang Shanfu edition is the earliest extant edition that also incorporated the Sanjiazhu. It is regarded as an extraordinary edition. Its intact version is now stored in Japan,” Zhao elaborated. The collators were also able to make use of many ancient editions predating the Song Dynasty that had been unavailable to previous collators. “All of these have provided great convenience for us. For examples, while Zhang Wenhu was able to add some content from Shiji Suoyin when collating the Jinling Publishing House edition, this content was not comprehensive or systematic. For this revision, by contrast, we have made full use of Shiji Suoyin,” Zhao said.
 

 

In addition to having access to a greater variety of editions, Zhao added that modern technology and especially the database of ancient books made collating Records of the Grand Historian much more convenient. Referring to the various editions is far from enough, he explained, noting that the voluminous ancient texts he and his team had at their disposal were instrumental for the latest edition. Notably, the collation group made a thorough examination of all the citations in the Sanjiazhu and discovered many problems that their predecessors would hardly have been able to catch.
 

According to Zhao, the complexity and difficulty of collating the Records of the Grand Historian is well recognized within the scholarly community. In the preface, Sima Qian wrote that the Records form a congruent and systematic narration from the six Confucian classics and their variation, as well as the historical materials from hundreds of schools.” Dating back more than two millennia, the Records itself has absorbed and digested various historical materials; it is the oldest work included in the Twenty-Four Histories. Each member of the collation team conducted a thorough proofreading of at least one edition, recording their opinions and changes they made in their manuscript. The team leader then examined each member’s records piece by piece. The manuscript totals over 3,000 pages; the collation notes alone total over 800 pages.
 

 

This revision took into account variation in how different works within the Twenty-Four Histories have been collated and disseminated in the past. When collating the Records of the Grand Historian, for instance, Zhao and his team paid close attention to variation between editions, while collation of the Book of Tang relied on a completely different edition as its master copy compared with previous revisions. Experts collating theHistory of Yuan conducted extensive additional research and fact gathering.
 

Chen Gaohua, head of the group collating the History of Yuan and a member of CASS’s Presidium of the Academic Divisions, asserted that “although it has been published for merely over three decades, a particularly detailed and highly sophisticated level of collation has gone into the punctuated History of Yuan.” Chen advised that further progress would be dependent on carefully integrating new research in historiography and new historical findings into the collation process.
 

The scholars collating the Twenty-Four Histories do not view their task as one of researching historical facts, however. They believe that it is very important to respect the authority of the standard official histories and to keep faithful to the original text while collating.
 

“This time, much of the collation work for the History of Yuan has been devoted to examining historical facts,” Chen Gaohua said. “In fact, when collating the punctuated History of Yuan, the experts could not reach an agreement on whether we should just focus on textual proofreading, or whether we should check the historical details. These are hardly separable processes though, and therefore are causing some difficulty for today’s work,” he explained.

 

Chen noted that collation should be done with discretion, and the future work should give more weight to restoring the original text while also referring to new historical findings as much as possible. We should be able to judge the historical facts as well. In some cases, even if there are errors in the original text, we can never change them freely. Instead, we can add the correct information in the notes in an effort to stay true to the original text.
 

Chen Shangjun, a professor from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Fudan University, is responsible for the collation of the Book of Tang, the History of the Five Dynasties, and New History of the Five Dynasties. Chen iterated that we should distinguish collation from examining historical facts; he believes that the results of scholars’ historical research do not have to be adopted when collating. While collation of ancient books can include historical research, he stresses that the former takes precedence—historical research cannot be equal to collation in the process of collation.

 

To ensure successful completion of this massive revision, Zhonghua Book Company has spent considerable effort, inviting some of the most influential and prominent historians to oversee the process. The famous scholar Ren Jiyu (who passed away in 2009) was invited to lead the whole project, and Feng Qiyong, He Ziquan (deceased in 2011), Rao Zongyi and Dai Yi have served and serve as consultants. In addition, Zhonghua Book Company has established strict guidelines and principles for the procedure to streamline the practice of compilation and collation and account for each step and every decision. Each group is required to keep records and manuscripts of collation at each phase of completion.

“Collating ancient books is a kind of ground-laying work but also a type of  specialized research,” said Zhao Shengqun. “No matter what type of collation it is, it will always embody the collators’ subjective judgment. Even a small piece of the notes on the collation is, to some extent, an academic article; it is the result of finding disparities by comparing texts, and searching for other materials for argumentation. Some do not think collation of ancient books is research; this a abject misunderstanding. High-level collation of ancient books demands a serious degree of erudition and knowledge.”

 

Chen Gaohua expressed similar thoughts, noting that “to punctuate an ancient Chinese book is the most difficult job. A scholar’s academic attainment is best represented in his or her collation of ancient books.”

 

 

The Twenty-Four Histories (punctuated) and A Draft History of the Qing Dynasty published by Zhonghua Book Company from 1959 to 1977 marked a significant achievement in collation of ancient books since the founding of the P.R. China. The edition has been the most widely used both in China and the world. “TheTwenty-Four Histories and A Draft History of the Qing Dynasty have recorded the history of our nation; the value of their collation can never be overstated,” Chen Gaohua asserted.

 

　　

Sun Miaoning is a reporter from Chinese Social Sciences Today.

 

The Chinese version appeared in Chinese Social Sciences Today, No. 484, Aug 5, 2013.

 

Chinese link:

http://www.csstoday.net/xueshuzixun/guoneixinwen/83429.html

 

Translated by Jiang Hong

Revised by Charles Horne