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Encyclopédie des historiographies : Afriques, Amériques, Asies

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Nathalie Kouamé
, 
Éric P. Meyer
, 
Anne Viguier

R

Records of the Three Kingdoms (The) (Sanguo zhi)

Histoire des Trois Royaumes (L’) (Sanguo zhi)

Chen Jianmei

Résumé

L’Histoire des Trois Royaumes (Sanguo Zhi 三國志) écrite par Chen Shou 陳壽 pendant la dynastie des Jin occidentaux 西晉 (266‑316) évoque l’histoire de trois régimes de l’histoire de la Chine qui ont coexisté de 220 à 280. L’auteur de cette histoire fut d’abord sujet du royaume de Shu puis sujet de la dynastie des Jin occidentaux, ce qui signifie que son travail fut une histoire de son temps. Cette histoire s’est avérée être un excellent travail. Les contemporains de Chen Shou l’ont loué pour son talent historiographique et ont reconnu la valeur de son récit. Le seul défaut que l’on ait trouvé à cette histoire est sa brièveté, raison pour laquelle Pei Songzhi 裴松之 en fit un commentaire détaillé sur ordre de l’empereur Wen 文帝 des Liu‑Song en 429. Dès lors, ce que l’on appelle les Annotations sur lHistoire des Trois Royaumes (Sanguo zhi zhu 三國志注) devint une part intégrale de l’Histoire elle‑même.

Texte intégral

Introduction

1The Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo zhi 三國志), composed by Chen Shou 陳壽 (233‑297), is regarded as the official and authoritative historical text of the period of Three Kingdoms (220‑280) in Chinese history. It contains mainly the histories of the three rival states of Cao Wei 曹魏 (220‑266), Shu Han 蜀漢 (221‑263) and Sun Wu 孫吳 (222‑280), but also deals with the history of the late Eastern Han dynasty dating from the outbreaking of Yellow Turban Rebellion 黃巾之亂 in 184, and consequently the tangled warfares between the warlords. The Records of the Three Kingdoms, together with the Records of the Historian (Shiji 史記), the History of Han (Han Shu 漢書) and the History of Later Han (Houhan Shu 後漢書), form the early four histories 前四史 of the Twenty‑Four standard Histories (Ershisi shi 二十四史), and are considered as the best of the corpus.

The Author Chen Shou

  • 1 Fang Xuanling 房玄齡, 1974, Jinshu 晉書 [History of the Jin], Zhonghua shuju, Beijing, p. 213 (...)

2The author of the Records of the Three Kingdoms is Chen Shou, who was a native of Anhan 安漢 (present‑day Nanchong 南充, Sichuan 四川) in the state of Shu 蜀. Chen Shou served the regime of Shu Han as the Secretary of Guange (Guange lingshi 觀閣令史) in charge of literature archives. After Shu Han was conquered by Cao Wei, which was soon replaced by the Western Jin Dynasty 西晉 (265‑317), Chen Shou was recommended by Zhang Hua 張華 (232‑300) and appointed as Editor of the imperial archives (zhuzuo lang 著作郎). He began compiling the Records after Jin conquered Sun Wu 孫吳 and reunified China. Although Chen Shou was an official historian, the Records were initially compiled as a private work. After his death, Fan Yun 范䪳 submitted the work to Emperor Hui of Jin 晉惠帝 (reign 259‑307) stating that Chen Shou wrote it in a way of admonition, which was beneficial to edification and morality, and hopefully his book could be officially adopted and transcribed. Emperor Hui 惠帝 took Fan Yun’s advice and ordered the governor of Henan Prefecture 河南尹, together with the county magistrate of Luoyang 洛陽令, to go to Chen Shou’s house to copy his book1. With these efforts, the Records were so preserved and handed down that it was at last taken as an official account of the Three Kingdoms period.

Compiling Background and Style

3The Records of the Three Kingdoms contains 65 scrolls (juan 卷) distributed in three parts which are :

  • the Book of Wei (Weishu 魏書) containing 30 juan;
  • the Book of Shu (Shushu 蜀書) containing 15 juan ;
  • and the Book of Wu (Wushu 吳書) containing 20 juan.

4Before Chen Shou started compiling his work, both the states of Wei and Wu had already had their own official or private histories, such as the Book of Wei (Weishu 魏書) by Wang Shen王沈 (d. 266), the Weilüe 魏略 “Brief History of Wei” by Yu Huan 魚豢, and the Book of Wu (Wushu 吳書) by Wei Zhao 韋昭 (204‑273). These works were the base on which Chen Shou composed the Weishu 魏書 and the Wushu 吳書 of the Records. However, since the State of Shu didn’t set the post of official historian, and therefore lacked documents about its history, the Shushu was composed by Chen Shou mainly according to the primary documents collected by himself, as well as his personal memories of his early life in the State of Shu. Due to this reason, the Shushu is the briefest one among the three parts in the Records.

5As same as the existing official histories such as the Shiji 史記 and the Hanshu 漢書, the Records of the Three Kingdoms was written in annals‑biographies style (jizhuanti 紀傳體) including annals (ji 紀) and biographies (zhuan 傳), but it does not include tables (biao 表) and treatises (shu 書).

6As a subject of the Jin Dynasty, which was the successor of Wei Dynasty, Chen Shou referred to the rulers of Wei as “Emperors” and wrote “imperial annals” (ji 紀) for them, while he reffered to the rulers of Shu and Wu as simply “Lords” and composed for them mere “biographies” (zhuan 傳). This indicates that Jin was the legitimate inheritor of the Mandate of Heaven from Wei 魏.

Title and Editions

7Both historical documents and early woodblock printed editions of Song 宋 (960‑1279) and Yuan 元 (1279‑1368) dynasties demonstrate that the original name of the Records is Guozhi 國志, Records of the Kingdoms. The mistake in the title was supposed to be caused by the loose handling of historical records soon after the Records of the Kingdoms came into being, while the error of material books was seen from Wu Guan 吳琯’s Xishuang Tang 西爽堂 edition during the reign of Wanli 萬曆 Emperor (1573‑1620) of Ming Dynasty. This mistake was continued by Mao Jin毛晉’s Jigu Ge 汲古閣 edition at the end of Ming Dynasty and amplified in Wuying Dian 武英殿 edition in the early Qing Dynasty (1644‑1912). As the primary modern edition, Zhonghua Book Company edition of 1959 (revised in 1982) finally made the false title Records of the Three Kingdoms popular (Xin Deyong, 2013).

8Prior to Song and Yuan woodblock editions, there are six kinds of surviving fragments of manuscripts discovered in Dunhuang 敦煌 and Turpan 吐魯番, among which four fragments were inferred to be from Jin 晉 dynasty.

9Two books represent the results of collation and research on the Records during the twentieth century: one of which is Collection of Annotations on the Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo zhi Jijie 三國志集解) accomplished by Lu Bi 盧弼 in 1936; the other is Supplementary Annotations on the Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo zhi buzhu 三國志補註) by Yi Peiji 易培基 published in 1955 by Taibei Yiwen Publishing House.

Pei Songzhi’s Annotations

10Even though the Records was highly acclaimed since it was published, it seemed too brief to the readers even at that time. In view of this weakness, Emperor Wen 文 (reign 424‑453) of Liu Song (420‑479) commissioned Pei Songzhi 裴松之 (370‑449) to write annotations to the text. Pei Songzhi commenced doing this work in 428 and completed it in 429. When he submitted his annotations, Emperor Wen praised his work as "immortal".

11Under the title of Annotations to the Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi zhu 三國志注), Pei Songzhi initiated a new annotating style by supplementing historical facts and historical figures, presenting different materials of the same events, providing detailed explanations to the geographical names and pronunciation to unfamiliar words in the original, quoting the historical criticism of the historians such as Sun Sheng 孫盛 etc. In regard to historical events and figures, as well as Chen Shou's opinions, he added his own commentary by making rational judgment to the contradictory statements of different sources, correcting the ridiculous text and clarifying ambiguous materials.

12In his annotations, Pei Songzhi collected lots of various sources, including those previously rejected by Chen Shou. Today, most of the original books cited by Pei Songzhi are lost, but fragmentary materials from these books are preserved thanks to his annotations. In this respect, the Annotations to the Records of the Three Kingdoms is not only of historical value, but also of literature value. On the contrary to the shortcoming of the Records, which is too brief, Pei Songzhi’s Annotations has been criticised to be too wordy. Regardless of these comments, Pei Songzhi’s annotations, together with Chen Shou’s original, is undoubtedly the precious fundamental historical documents for the period of the Three Kingdoms. Actually, it has become an integral part of the Records in modern editions. The added materials in the annotations made the characters more vivid and legendary, which also provided the base for the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi 三國演義) written by Luo Guanzhong 羅貫中 in the 14th Century, as well as the Japanese historical novel the Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sangoku shi 三國志) by Yoshikawa Eiji 吉川英治 in 1940.

Bibliographie

Books

Cutter Robert Joe & Crowell William Gordon (trad.), 1999, Empresses and consorts: Selections from Chen Shou's Records of the Three States with Pei Songzhi's Commentary, University of Hawai'i press, Honolulu, 312 p. [0824819454]

De Crespigny Rafe, 1970, The Records of the Three Kingdoms: A Study in the Historiography of San‑kuo chih, Australian national university, Centre of oriental studies, Canberra, 99 p. [9780708101674]

Wu Jinhua 吳金華, 2000, Sanguo zhi congkao 三國志叢考 [Textual Research on Sanguo zhi], Shanghai guji chubanshe, Shanghai.

Papers and Contributions to books

Chen Jianmei 陳健梅, 2001, “Pei Songzhi shengzu nian kao” 裴松之生卒年考 [Textual Research on the Year of Birth and Death of Pei Songzhi], Zhongguo shi yanjiu 中國史研究, 90 (2), p. 52.

Hu Baoguo 胡寶國, 2001, “Sanguo zhi Pei zhu yanjiu” 《三國志》裴注研究 [A Study on Pei Songzhi’s Annotations on Sanguo zhi], Zhongguo shehui kexue yuan lishi yanjiu suo xuekan 中國社會科學院歷史研究所學刊, 1, p. 103‑120.

Ma Zhijie 馬植傑, 1991, “Lun Chen Shou Sanguo zhi” 論陳壽《三國志》 [On Chen Shou’s Sanguo Zhi], Lanzhou daxue xuebao 蘭州大學學報, 19 (3), p. 108‑115.

Xin Deyong辛德勇, 2013, “Chen Shou Sanguo zhi benming Guozhi” 陳壽《三國志》本名《國志》說 [Guozhi as the Original Name of the Sanguo Zhi], Wenshi 文史, 104 (3), p. 5‑48.

Zhou Yiliang 周一良, 1989, “Sanguo zhi jieti” 《三國志》解題 [An Introduction to the Sanguo zhi], Shixue shi yanjiu 史學史研究, 56 (4), p. 25‑26.

Notes

1 Fang Xuanling 房玄齡, 1974, Jinshu 晉書 [History of the Jin], Zhonghua shuju, Beijing, p. 2138.

Auteur

University of Zhejiang, Hangzhou

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