The ''Book of Jin'' is an official Chinese historical text covering the history of the
Jin dynasty from 266 to 420. It was compiled in 648 by a number of officials commissioned by the imperial court of the
Tang dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...
, with
chancellor
Chancellor ( la, cancellarius) is a title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the or lattice work screens of a basilica or law cou ...
Fang Xuanling
Fang Qiao (; 579 – 18 August 648), courtesy name Xuanling, better known as Fang Xuanling, posthumously known as Duke Wenzhao of Liang, was a Chinese statesman and writer who served as a chancellor under Emperor Taizong in the early Tang dynas ...
as the lead editor, drawing mostly from official documents left from earlier archives. A few essays in volumes 1, 3, 54 and 80 were composed by the Tang dynasty's
Emperor Taizong himself. However, the contents of the ''Book of Jin'' included not only the history of the Jin dynasty, but also that of the
Sixteen Kingdoms
The Sixteen Kingdoms (), less commonly the Sixteen States, was a chaotic period in Chinese history from AD 304 to 439 when northern China fragmented into a series of short-lived dynastic states. The majority of these states were founded by ...
period, which was contemporaneous with the Eastern Jin dynasty.
Compilation
Over 20 histories of the Jin had been written during the
Northern and Southern dynasties
The Northern and Southern dynasties () was a period of political division in the history of China that lasted from 420 to 589, following the tumultuous era of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Eastern Jin dynasty. It is sometimes considered a ...
, of which 18 were still extant at the beginning of the
Tang dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...
. Yet
Emperor Taizong deemed them all to be deficient and ordered the compilation of a new standard history for the period,
[Fang, Xuanling ''ed.''(2002). ''Jinshu'' 晋书. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju 中华书局. Preface, p. 1] as part of a wider six-history project to fill in the gaps between the
Records of the Three Kingdoms
The ''Records or History of the Three Kingdoms'', also known by its Chinese name as the Sanguo Zhi, is a Chinese historical text which covers the history of the late Eastern Han dynasty (c. 184–220 AD) and the Three Kingdoms period (220 ...
, the
Book of Song
The ''Book of Song'' (''Sòng Shū'') is a historical text of the Liu Song Dynasty of the Southern Dynasties of China. It covers history from 420 to 479, and is one of the Twenty-Four Histories, a traditional collection of historical records ...
, the
Book of Qi
The ''Book of Qi'' (''Qí Shū'') or ''Book of Southern Qi'' (''Nán Qí Shū'') is a history of the Chinese dynasty Southern Qi covering the period from 479 to 502, and is one of the Twenty-Four Histories of Chinese history. It was written by ...
, the
Book of Wei
The ''Book of Wei'', also known by its Chinese name as the ''Wei Shu'', is a classic Chinese historical text compiled by Wei Shou from 551 to 554, and is an important text describing the history of the Northern Wei and Eastern Wei from 386 to ...
and the Emperor's own time.
As part of this ambition its treatises cover not only the Jin but also the preceding Three Kingdoms, making up for the lack of such a section in the Records of the Three Kingdoms.
The book was hastily compiled between 646 CE and 648, by a committee of 21 people led by editor-in-chief Fang Xuanling. As some chapters were written by
Emperor Taizong of Tang
Emperor Taizong of Tang (28January 59810July 649), previously Prince of Qin, personal name Li Shimin, was the second emperor of the Tang dynasty of China, ruling from 626 to 649. He is traditionally regarded as a co-founder of the dynasty ...
, the work is sometimes given the honorific "imperially authored".
The Book of Jin had the longest gestation period of any official history, not seeing the light of day until 229 years after the end of the dynasty it describes.
Contents
Legacy
The book has been criticized for being more reflective of the court politics in the Tang dynasty that compiled it, rather than the realities of the Jin dynasty itself.
Despite Fang's team having at their disposal not only the
pre-existing Jin histories, but also a large body of actual Jin primary sources, it appears that the book was primarily based on Zang Rongxu's (臧荣绪) identically-titled ''Jinshu'' from the
Southern Qi
Qi, known in historiography as the Southern Qi ( or ) or Xiao Qi (), was a Chinese imperial dynasty and the second of the four Southern dynasties during the Northern and Southern dynasties era. It followed the Liu Song dynasty and was succe ...
, and further incorporates material from fictionalized novels. The Tang historian
Liu Zhiji
Liu Zhiji (; 661–721), courtesy name Zixuan (), was a Chinese historian and politician of the Tang dynasty. Well known as the author of ''Shitong'', he was born in present-day Xuzhou, Jiangsu, during the Tang dynasty. Liu's father Liu Zangqi and ...
(661–721) accused the editors of generally selecting the sources that had the most vivid and compelling language, rather than the ones that were the most historically reliable.
[Fang (2002). Preface p. 2]
The collaborative nature of the project coupled with the rushed production time unsurprisingly leaves the book with a number of internal contradictions and editorial errors; such as misspelled personal and place names, draft-like and unpolished language, and "cross-references" to non-existent chapters that were presumably planned but never finished in time for publication.
[Fang (2002). Preface p. 3]
In spite of these shortcomings, the Book of Jin is recognized as the most important primary source for the Jin dynasty and Sixteen Kingdoms, because the pre-existing histories and other sources it was compiled from have all been lost – save for a few stray quotations in other works.
Translations
No complete translations are known at this time. The astronomical chapters (11, 12 & 13) were translated by Ho Peng Yoke. Choo translates the biography of
Huan Wen
Huan Wen (桓溫) (312 – 18 August 373), courtesy name Yuanzi (元子), formally Duke Xuanwu of Nan Commandery (南郡宣武公), was a general and regent of the Jin Dynasty (266–420), as well as the leader of Huan clan of Qiaoguo (谯国桓 ...
in volume 98 and the biography of
Sun Chuo
Sun Chuo () (320-377) was a Chinese poet of the Six Dynasties poetry tradition. He was one of the famous participants of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering, along with Wang Xizhi, and a large group of other scholar-poets, in 353 CE, in Shan-yin (now ...
in volume 56. Knapp translates biographies of Liu Yin in volume 88 and
Huangfu Mi
Huangfu Mi (215–282), courtesy name Shi'an (), was a Chinese physician, essayist, historian, poet, and writer who lived through the late Eastern Han dynasty, Three Kingdoms period and early Western Jin dynasty. He was born in a poor farming fam ...
in volume 51.
References
External links
Book of Jin 《晉書》Chinese text with matching English vocabulary
See also
*
Twenty-Four Histories
The ''Twenty-Four Histories'' (), also known as the ''Orthodox Histories'' (), are the Chinese official dynastic histories covering from the earliest dynasty in 3000 BC to the Ming dynasty in the 17th century.
The Han dynasty official Sima Qia ...
*
Eighteen History Books of Jin
{{Wu Hu
Twenty-Four Histories
History books about the Jin dynasty (266–420)
Sixteen Kingdoms
7th-century history books
Tang dynasty literature
7th-century Chinese books