| This dissertation provides a study and translation of Wei Hsun's (fl. 802) Liu Pin-k'o chia hua lu (A Record of Adviser to the Heir Apparent Liu (Yu-hsi's) Fine Discourses, hereafter Chia-hua lu), a one-chuan T'ang dynasty (618-907 A.D.) work. The accounts transcribed in this text were written from memory circa 821 A.D. (and edited in Chia-hua lu in 856) by Wei Hsun after his studies with Liu Yu-hsi in Pai-ti-ch'eng, a strategic military point in Szechwan Province. The historical anecdotes in this text provide biographical information on many important T'ang historical figures which the official histories overlook.;This dissertation consists of six parts. Chapter One, "Introduction," provides a preliminary examination of Chia-hua lu and sets out the goals of this dissertation.;Chapter Two, "The Text," introduces the complicated textual history behind Chia-hua lu in order to familiarize the reader with the problems of the extant versions of this text.;Chapter Three, which is further divided into two sections, accomplishes two tasks. In section one I analyze Liu Yu-hsi's life, making use of his biographies in both the Chiu T'ang shu (Old T'ang History, hereafter CTS) and Hsin T'ang shu (New T'ang History, hereafter HTS) and other sources, such as Tzu Liu-tzu tzu-chuan, his autobiography. In section two I supply as much biographical and bibliographical information as possible on Wei Hsun, the compiler of this work.;In Chapter Four, "Annotated Translation," I translate and annotate in detail the Chia-hua lu. Because, as already mentioned above, the editions of Chia-hua lu contain a number of variants and require extensive annotation, I make use of the basic modern critical studies of the text, Lo Lien-tien's "Liu Pin-k'o chia-hua lu chiao-pu chi k'ao-cheng" (A Collation and Textual Criticism of Liu Pin-k'o's chia-hua lu) and T'ang Lan's "Liu Pin-k'o chia-hua lu te chiao-chi yu pien-wei" (A Textual Criticism and a Study of Authentication in Liu Pin-k'o chia-hua lu) in my translation, but use as my base text the Ku-shih wen-fang hsiao-shuo which was first published during the Chia-ching reign period (1522-1565) by Ku Yuan-ch'ing (1487-1566).;In Chapter Five, "Concluding Remarks," I assess the historical value of the text, especially in light of other sources on the men and women it portrays, and draw some conclusions on the value of this genre as a biographical source in general.;The last section consists of the bibliography divided into primary, secondary, and general sources. In the Appendix, I provide the original text of the Chia-hua lu as it appears in the Ku-shih wen-fang hsiao-shuo and the original texts for Liu Yu-hsi's biography found in the CTS and HTS. |
