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THE NEW AND THE MULTIPLE
The New and the Multiple
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Sung Senses of the Past
Edited, by
Thomas H. C. Lee
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The Chinese University Press
The Conference in which these papers were presented
was held in January, 199V in the Bahamas. The editor
and authors wish to express their hearty gratitude to
the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International
Scholarly Exchange for its generous supports.
The New and the Multiple: Sung Senses of the Past
Edited by Thomas H. C. Lee
© The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
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system, without permission in writing from
The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
ISBN 962-996-096-6
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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................... vii
Thomas H. C. Lee
1. Mirror for Government: Ssu-ma Kuang’s Thought on
Politics and Government in Tzu-chih t’ung-chien................ 1
Xiao-bin Ji
2. Great Confucian or Mere Strategist? Chia I in the Eyes
of Sung Thinkers....................................................................... 33
Kojima Tsuyoshi
3. Textual Liberties and Restraints in Rewriting China’s
Histories: The Case of Ssu-ma Kuang’s Re-construction
of Chu-ko Liang’s Story............................................................ 61
Hoyt Cleveland Tillman
4. The Philosophical Argumentation by Historical
Narration in Sung China: The Case of Chu Hsi............... 107
Chun-chieh Huang
5. Hu Hung as Historian.............................................................. 121
Conrad Schirokauer
6. History, Erudition and Good Government:
Cheng Ch’iao and Encyclopedic Historical Thinking ... 163
Thomas H. C. Lee
7. History in Sung Classical Learning: The Case of the
Odes (Shih-ching)......................................................................... 201
Achim Mittag
8. Reinventing the Genealogy: Innovation in Kinship
Practice in the Tenth to Eleventh Centuries.................... 237
Hugh R. Clark
9. Historiography in Southern Sung Dynasty Local
Gazetteers..................................................................................... 287
James M. Hargett
10. Local History and Family in Past and Present.................. 307
Peter K. Bol
11. Sung Discourse on the History of Chinese Imperial
Kin and Clans ............................................................................ 349
John W. Chaffee
12. Writing a Comprehensive and Untold History of
Buddhism: Some Aspects of Tsu-hsiu’s
Historiography............................................................................ 375
Chi-chiang Huang
Glossary....................................................................................................415
Bibliography.............................................................................................437
Contributors.............................................................................................467
Index ........................................................................................................471
Introduction
Thomas H. C. Lee
The importance of the Sung dynasty (960-1279) in Chinese
historical thinking and Chinese history in general can scarcely be
exaggerated: This is a time when traditional Chinese civilization
reached its most sophisticated level of maturity and achievement.
Science and technology were at their height, and such great
innovations as the compass, gunpowder, and printing processes
came into use. The Chinese economy also saw an unprecedented
prosperity: The rise of a national market system with the use of paper
currency, credit and incipient urbanization represented the
achievement. Similarly, China’s intellectual history underwent a
significant change: Neo-Confucian (tao-hsueh) thinking emerged to
succeed more than one thousand years of Buddhist domination. The
sophistication in art, including the rise of literati painting, and the
continued development of lively plastic and performance arts, and in
literature, such as rise of the novel, as well as the self-consciousness of
the gentiy class with its Neo-Confucian ideals and worldview,
distinguished the Sung from the previous T’ang dynasty (618-906),
when Buddhism informed its society. The T’ang may indeed be
characterized by a primitive vigor in search of a new Weltanschauung,
but the Sung maturity and elegance marked its culture. The Sung is
therefore a turning point: China was becoming urbane, civilized and
even secular, while at the same time opening the floodgates to the
later decadence and ultimate decay. But for more than two centuries,
it was a time of a confident search for perfection and subtlety that
could reflect a new cultural and intellectual outlook. These changes
are fully reflected in how the Sung viewed the human and especially
the Chinese past.
Traditional Chinese historians, as well as modern Western
interpreters, have considered the Sung to be a major era of Chinese
historical thinking. Great historical works by Ou-yang Hsiu (1007-
1072), Ssu-ma Kuang (1019-1086), Li T’ao (1115-1184), Li Hsin-
ch’uan (1166-1243), Cheng Ch’iao (1104-1162), Chu Hsi (1130-
1200), and Yuan Shu (1131-1205), were produced in this period. It
was also a time when new perspectives on the purpose of historical
writing and the process of historical development were re-examined,
and when the Neo-Confucian moralist view became the accepted
truth. The Sung saw the production of a great variety of history-based
publications that exemplified the contemporary emphasis on the
preservation of historical sources. It has been an important tradition
in China that historical records should be carefully kept, but it
became only more pronounced during the Sung times. The Sung
thinkers also considered moral teaching, which was re-articulated
in Neo-Confucian metaphysics and ethics, as the foundation of
historical thinking. Although this moralist view of history had always
been important to China, the Sung gave it a new impetus and
significance, so that the belief in the unity of sagely actions and the
moral lessons to be had from them became central to the Chinese
people’s idea of the past, an idea that is still shared by many Chinese
thinkers today. Chinese interpreters of the Sung achievements in
historiography admired this search for unity, which also led to the
creation of many new genres of historical writings. The proliferation
of genres of historical writing characterized the Sung sense of the
past, and is undoubtedly the single most evident feature of Sung
historiography.
Government and Private Compilation of Histories
Like the T’ang, the Sung government established a complement of
historiographic bureaus and commissions. Most of these institutes
were in charge of recording the Emperor’s daily activities and court
affairs. They included such as the Imperial Diary Institute (Ch’i-chu
yuan) that was to hold for safekeeping major official documents that
the Emperor received, the Court Calendar Office (Jih-li so) that was
in charge of compiling the records of major governmental events,
and keeping biographies and funeral inscriptions of ranking officials,
the Veritable Records Institute (Shih-lu, yuan) that was in charge of
compiling chronicle histories, the Historiography Institute (Kuo-shih
yuan) for compiling standard histories of the dynasty, and other
archival offices (such as Office of Collected Regulations, Hui-yao so).
In this sense, the characterization, long advanced by Etienne Balazs,
that Chinese official histories were primarily compiled by officials for
officials is quite accurate. The mass compilation and publication of
historical sources was considered the fundamental responsibility of a
good government. The Sung government undoubtedly produced a
great amount of government archives and histories that reflected the
official view about what usually took place in the Court.1
Few of these compilations could be properly called “history,”
from a modern viewpoint. Most of them belong in the raw materials
category, and many have disappeared. More importantly, they reflect
the orthodox official viewpoint. Although few had access to them,
they were circulated privately and indirectly, and so many private
individuals could use materials taken from them to compile their
own unofficial histories. The most famous of the Sung compilations
that was evidendy based on primary sources in official custody that he
nonetheless secured and abridged into a chronicle is Li T’ao’s
famous Draft Manuscript of Continued Comprehensive Mirror for the Aid of
Government (Hsii Tzu-chih t’ung-chien ch'ang-pien)} Although its
sources came from the government historiographic offices, Li T’ao’s
work can be considered a private publication.
Li T’ao’s work was not the only private history written in the
Sung. The tradition of writing contemporary histories had become a
precarious endeavor since the T’ang appointed the first commission,
in 629, officially to compile dynastic histories, which inevitably
reflected the government sanctioned views. Since then, the right
to an orthodox interpretation of the dynasty’s history was the
prerogative of the government, and any private effort to compile
historical works ran the risk of contradicting the officially established
interpretation. Throughout the T’ang, few historians attempted to
compile private histories.
This began to change in the Sung. Not that the Sung government
was not wary of private histories, but the widespread use of printing
technology now made it possible to publish books at a cheaper cost
and to distribute them with relative ease. As a result, many
government documents were widely circulated, and attempts to
control their distribution were often futile. Urbanization and
