Zhao Yi’s Contributions To The Study Of The Histories In Song, Liao And Jin Dynasties

Zhao Yi is a renowned historian, writer and poet during the Qing dynasty. Zhao Yi’s Notes on the Twenty-Two Histories、Qian Daxin’s Twenty-Two Histories Test and Wang Mingsheng’s The Seventy Histories are known as the reigns of three big test history books. The Twenty-four Histories is systematically studied by Notes on the Twenty-two Histories from Shih Chi to History of Ming. It comments on the methods of historical research, examines the historical events, reviews on the political losses and the gains through all the ages and their laws of development. His reading notes entitled Series of Textual Researches, which was written when Zhao Yi was taking care of his parents, and some other literature works, including Poets of Ou Bei, Records of Contributions in Qing Dynasty, Notes of Yanbao, Anthology of Ou Bei and so on all touch upon something about the reviews on history books and historical events in which the researches on History of Song Dynasty, History of Liao Dynasty and History of Jin Dynasty account for the majority of the whole reviews. Zhao Yi has made his own points and summaried his achievements, which has provided us with a brand-new perspective in this study. This dissertation attempts to make a comprehensive and broad-ranging investigation concerning Zhao Yi’s studies on History of Song Dynasty, History of Liao Dynasty and History of Jin Dynasty.Except the parts of introduction and conclusion, the body part of this dissertation falls into three chapters, which devotes to the analysis, comment and summary of this dissertation. In the first chapter, it mainly makes a full analysis on the Zhao Yi’s contributions to the compilation of histories in Song, Liao and Jin dynasties and stylistic rules and layout in that particular time. Zhao Yi gave a detailed observation on the process of compilations, the source material, the compiling method and stylistic rules involving histories in Song,Liao and Jin dynasties. He summarized their success and analyzed the shortcomings in this notes. Chapter two mainly devotes to the Zhao Yi’s review on the contents in the histories of Song, Liao and Jin dynasties. He has made a careful analysis and textual research on these three history books, summing up the main features of them and analysed the successes and failures and attempted to find out the potential reasons. Chapter three is mainly about the Zhao Yi’s remarks on the historical events and his conclusions in Song, Liao and Jin dynasties. Zhao Yi has payed particular attentions to the significant events happened during ups and downs of a dynasty, which is embodied in his history research on the vital events in Song, Liao and Jin dynasties. In addition, he made detailed remarks on the political’ rises and falls and some historical figures in that period, examining the advantages and disadvantages of that system, especially something about the relationship between the peace time and the time in war, which deserves our conclusion and study.In short, Zhao Yi has made a deep and detailed study on the three official history books in Song, Liao and Jin dynasties, involving the review on the source material of these history books, the compiling method, the gain and loss of stylistic rules, the summary of the significant history events and discussions on the political gains and losses. Zhao Yi’s research on the history of Song, Liao and Jin dynasties is very typical and representative. Besides, his study also serves as a penetrating judgment and inspiring perspectives for the later generations who work on the study of history.