The Notes And Commentaries On The History Of The Ming Dynasty:Biographies Of The Upright And Law-abiding Officials

The History of The Ming Dynasty:Biographies of the Upright and Law-abiding Officials inherits the official authorized history tradition of previous dynasties and writes biographies for local officials who had made great achievements. But some records has its own deficiencies such as the excessively brief content, improper organization and even false records. Based on this condition, this thesis will make detailed notes and commentaries on The History of The Ming Dynasty:Biographies of the Upright and Law-abiding Officials combined with other existing historical materials. The text will be divided into two sections.The first part mainly studies The History of The Ming Dynasty:Biographies of the Upright and Law-abiding Officials. Firstly, the paper discusses the biographical principle of selecting officials and the characteristics of times reflected from the books. The upright and law-abiding officials in the biographies meet the standards that they insist on serving the people, bring hidden treason and crime to light, show the upright and outspoken characteristics, build schools, transform the outdated social tradition and emphasize hardworking and thrifty, manners and filial piety and benevolence and righteousness. At the same time, they also embody their own times characteristics as follows:all of them come from the government officials at the county level; they are selected in various ways; the majority of them are the residents of JiangXi province; they are appointed by the support of people and stay in the office for a long time. The second part analyses the version evolution and historical value of The History of The Ming Dynasty:Biographies of the Upright and Law-abiding Officials. The thesis makes a detailed comparison about the three different versions of The Biographies of the Upright and Law-abiding Officials. It can be found that the book of Zhang Tingyu is similar to that of Wang Hongxu. Conclusion can be made that most records of Zhang Tingyu’s edition comes from Wang Hongxu’s, except that it adds the upright and law-abiding officials of Duan Jian and Chen Youxue in his book. However, there are great differences between Wang Hongxu’s version and Wan Sitong’s. The former cut more than forty thousand words of latter’three parts down to just about ten thousand words and deleted all of the officials from Wan Li Dynasty to the end of Ming Dynasty recorded in Wan Sitong’s book. The research on this biographies can help truly know the personal and group characteristics of officials in Ming Dynasty and their governing idea and analyze the views of the authors, namely historians of Qing Dynasty, on the Upright and Law-abiding Officials. At the same time, it can facilitate the understanding of the local customs of Ming dynasty, the land tax and the judicial lawsuit, providing rich historical materials for knowing the local govern of Ming Dynasty.The last part analyses the shortages of The History of The Ming Dynasty:Biographies of the Upright and Law-abiding Officials.The deficiencies of the biographies include three aspects. Firstly, the content of the biographies is too simple to make readers have a better understanding of the accident. Secondly, some records do not conform to the historical reality. Finally, the biographical principle of selecting officials is single.The second section will make detailed notes and commentaries on The History of The Ming Dynasty:Biographies of the Upright and Law-abiding Officials based on existing historical materials of Ming Dynasty,including corpus, biography, the table of year, novel, local Chronicles and so on. The most important one is The Record of Ming Dynasty, which records almost all achievements about the upright and law-abiding officials. Corpus as well as biographical historical materials keep records of all things about the officials. Tables of time are the most detailed materials to record the historical accidents of someone’s life and the time sequence of that is clear. Local chronicles is the records of local officials achievements and the basic historical evident to test achievements of local officials governance. Novels provide a more detailed reference materials.The notes and commentaries include:first, making an excellent supply for the too simple records; Second, correcting the wrong records about this biographies; Third, exploring the source of historical materials and the evolution of it in all kinds of editions; Fourth, testing the time when the thirty upright and law-abiding officials were born and die, and the process of changing official positions about them. Last, explaining the locations and figures who are associated with the upright and law-abiding officials.