Compilation And Textual Criticism On Prefectures During The Tang Dynasty As Described In Book Of The Later Han Annotated By Li Xian

Book of the Later Han(《后汉书》) annotated by Li Xian (hereafter referred to as Zhanghuai’s Annotation) is the earliest annotation of Later Han that has come down to us and it is one of the most famous historical annotations. Its contents include phonetic notations, paraphrasing, emendation and proofs of some related historical facts; as well as geographical names information of Tang Dynasty. Li Xian et al used such information to annotate geographical names of Han corresponded with Tang Dynasty. They are of great value in researching Zhanghuai’s Annotation (章怀注) along with historical geography and geographic names of early Tang.In order to make good use of the information, this paper compiled names of prefectures item by item in there and then verified them with related handed-down documents and archaeological materials, which aimed to find out whether these prefectures really existed in Tang’s administration organization system when Li Xian et al annotated the Book of the Later Han. Through textual research, it is found that these names were not completely accurate. There are problems existing like membership function of some prefectures were disordered, old names were used and errors were found in the text.On the basis of textual research, this article summarized the styles of geographical names in Zhanghuai’s Annotation, confirmed the time when Li Xian et al annotate Book of the Later Han was before Tiaolu second year of Emperor Gaozong (680), excluded the possibility that main source of political information in Zhanghuai’s Annotation was from Kuodizhi (《括地志》), inferred the reason of errors in Zhanghuai’s Annotation about prefectures names were mainly included the carelessness of Li Xian et al and the mistakes made by posterities in making copies, also, this paper illustrated the use of geographical names of Zhanghuai’s Annotation in Tang Dynasty.Geographical names information mentioned in Zhanghuai’s Annotation were rich and valuable. So to further deepen and expand the research will be of great help in researching the historical geography, geographical names and even the whole history of geographical change during the period of Han and Tang dynasties.