Jiankang Record Reading Notes

Jiankang Shilu written by XuSong during the Tang Dynasty, is a significant ancient record of historical facts of over four hundred years, the Six Dynasties, namely, the Sun Wu Dynasty, the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the Song Dynasty, the Qi Dynasty, the Liang Dynasty and the Chen Dynasty. The work, including 20 volumes, collected data from various sources. Apart from the most historical materials collected from those historical books written in biographical style, the most valuable things are the many rare chorographic materials preserved in this book, which are of better reference value for researching the history of Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties as well as the history and geography of the Nanjing District. However, it is a pity that for quite some decades people have not attached too much importance to all these precious data. Nowadays, there are two popular editions on the market--one guided and checked by Zhang Chenshi (the China Press, published in 1986), and the other by Meng Zhaogeng and Sun Shuqi (Shanghai Ancient Books Press, published in 1987), two of which all absorbed the research results of our forefathers, achieved considerable successes in terms of the emendation and adjustment to Jiankang Shilu, and provide great convenience for scholars all over the world to study and make use of this book. Nevertheless, emendating this work is just like sweeping the fallen leaves, which are still falling as being swept. Thus, we could not accomplish the whole task at one stroke. There may be something lost or lack of thorough consideration in previous editions, but it must be improved to the most satisfactions by more emendating. Even popular editions have some questions open to discussion in respect of emendation, punctuation and so on. Having long examined Jiankang Shilu, I constantly learned something, and then wrote some articles, which have examination of the mistakes hi the original work, careful selection of annotations to ancient Chinese words, identification and correction to these mistakes, and deliberation on theories formulated by earlier scholars, etc. Now I selected some typical examples, assisted with research outline of Jiankang Shilu, and finally compiled the article Jiankang Shilu Notes on Collation. I dare not praise myself for discovery but hope that I could serve as a modest spur to induce someone to come forward with his valuable contributions, and I expect that more and more scholars will come together to attention to Jiankang Shilu.