Li Deyu Chronicle’s Collation And Annotation

You Shou(1906-1994), with the style name, Jie Mei, born in a scholarly family in Xiapu County in Fujian Province once studied with Hu Xiaoshi and had profound accomplishment in history, archaeology, oracle, classical literature, calligraphy and so on.Li Deyu Chronicle kept a general record of deeds of Li Deyu and his father, important events inside and outside the royal court on a yearly basis, Pan Town movements, political achievements of successive prime ministers and the like in chronological order from the Zhenyuan three years(787) when Li Deyu was born to Dazhong three years(849) when Li Deyu died in Zhuya County. The Chronicle did not include the epitaph Li Deyu wrote for his wife, Lady Liu. You Shou singled out the inconsistent parts in Book of Tang, New Book of Tang and History as A Mirror and made his own textual research. The argumentative writing in the Chronicle can be summarized into three aspects which are Li Deyu biography, Li Jipu biography and Yian Queen Mother Guo.The Chronicle was hand written in vertical version and complex font. The article scrutinizes the Chronicle sentence by sentence and transformed the vertical version in complex font into horizontal version in simplified character. For uncertain words, the article leaves an open question. Since the Chronicle was photocopied to book directly from the handwriting of You Shou and no other version was available to compare and proofread, research-proofreading and self-proofreading are most adopted in the Chronicle which indicates collation by referring to Book of Tang, New Book of Tang, History as A Mirror, Ce Fu Yuan Gui etc. or by comparing preceding and following passages in the Chronicle context. The annotations in Chronicle are mainly to name, toponymy, official position and other proper nouns. Figure annotations generally introduced dates of birth and death, secondary personal name, ancestral home, official position, posthumous title and so on. Most of these contents are from the biographies in Book of Tang and New Book of Tang. Toponymy annotations are to position a certain place in Tang administrative regions. Annotations for official position are to explain an official’s specific duties in Tang Dynasty.