Compendium of Documents for Revising the Records of the Grand Historian

Author: Xu Shu
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-04-01
Features: ★16-inch hardcover, 1st edition, 1st printing, published by Beijing Library Press (the predecessor of National Library Press). Historians of Chinese history cannot afford to abandon the official histories of past dynasties. However, due to the interference of rulers, the limitations of compilers in talent, learning, and insight, and other reasons, there are indeed many issues in the compilation of these histories. To address this, ancient Chinese historians have done a great deal of work. Broadly speaking, there are four main categories:
1. Annotations, such as the Three Commentaries on the Records of the Grand Historian, Explanation of Pronunciation in the Tangshu, and Annotations and Supplements to the History of the Five Dynasties;
2. Supplements, such as the supplementary tables to the History of the Later Han, History of the Jin, and History of the Liang, the supplementary chronicles to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, History of the Liang, and History of the Chen, and Supplementary Examinations of the History of the Five Dynasties;
3. Corrections, such as Identifications of Errors in the Records of the Grand Historian, Rectifications of the History of the Han, and Corrections to the Geographical Treatise of the History of the Han;
4. Examinations, such as Examinations of the History of the Jin, Supplementary Evidence for the History of the Northern Qi, and Examinations of the History of the Yuan. These works can be collectively referred to as "corrections and supplements." Through the efforts of numerous historians, the works on the "Twenty-Four Histories" have grown to a considerable scale. Even from the perspective of historical bibliographies alone, there are no fewer than hundreds of such works. In the mid-1930s, the Kaiping Bookstore published the Supplement to the Twenty-Five Histories, compiling over two hundred forty such corrected and supplemented works into one collection, thereby greatly facilitating scholars. Their pioneering contribution is truly undeniable. However, the Supplement only covered tables and chronicles of each history; the corrected and supplemented works for the annals and biographies remained scarce. To address this, the Beijing Library expanded the scope of its collection in 1996 beyond the Supplement, compiling and publishing the Corrections and Supplements to the Twenty-Four Histories, which included over one hundred sixty works. The principles of our selection are as follows:
1. All corrected and supplemented works related to the "Twenty-Four Histories" that were compiled or published before 1949, including manuscripts, handwritten copies, early printed editions, and photocopied editions, are within the selection range;
2. To avoid duplication, works already included in the Supplement to the Twenty-Five Histories are not selected for this collection;
3. The selected works are published in photocopied form, with no changes made to their content or text;
4. The source texts of the selected works are prioritized as manuscripts, handwritten copies, first printed editions, and complete editions.