Collation And Research Of A Chronicle Of The Rise And Fall Of The Imperial Dynasty

A Chronicle of the Rise and Fall of the Imperial Dynasty is a chronicle of the history of emperor Gaozong in the Southern Song Dynasty.There are 76 volumes in existence.The author Xiong Ke was from the Xiong family in Jianyang,and his family had a long history of learning.He was born in 1118 and died between the end of 1191 and 1194.He passed the imperial examination and obtained Jinshi in 1157.He successively served as the chief bookkeeper of Shunchang County,the magistrate of Zhuji County,the jurisdiction of the Academy of Wensi,the editor and reviser of the Academy of national history and the Quanzhi of the bachelor’s Academy.There are 16 works of him has been recorded so far.A Chronicle of the Rise and Fall of the Imperial Dynasty was completed around 1186-1187.The sociaty was under well-ordered administration and highly developed then.There were plenty of official and private historical materials,and chronicle was popular at this time.With the influence of the emperor Song Gaozong and the prohibition of private history record,Xiong Ke completed the chronicle with his rich experience in history compiling.Compared with other chronicle work,A Chronicle of the Rise and Fall of the Imperial Dynasty absorbs the advantages of biographical history books and major events history books,although the book recorded in chronological order,it also paid attention to the coherence of the beginning and the end of events.Xiong Ke laid equal attention to words and events,especially the record of people.He was also good at annotation.A Chronicle of the Rise and Fall of the Imperial Dynasty focused on historical events in political and military aspects.Meanwhile it also spanned economic,culture,education,etiquette,disasters,social relief and other aspects.It mainly referenced official history books,while private historical materials were mainly from the relevant books of ministers in the dynasty during the reign of emperor Song Gaozong,as well as unofficial and oral historical materials.Some public and private catalogues of the Song,Ming and Qing Dynasties has recorded A Chronicle of the Rise and Fall of the Imperial Dynasty.In the Song and Qing Dynasties,it was widely cited in historical books and encyclopedia,and became less in the late Qing Dynasty.The book was first published during the reign of emperor Shaoxi of Guangzong.The existing three manuscripts circulated today are separately collected by National Library of China,Zhejiang Library and Fudan University Library.The manuscript collected by Fudan University Library has only 31 volumes.The three manuscripts were originated from the same text,and the manuscript collected by National Library of China is better than the other two.The contents of A Chronicle of the Rise and Fall of the Imperial Dynasty mutually confirm and supplement the contents of Annual records since the year Jianyan.Some are not contained in Annual records since the year Jianyan,while some are different from Annual records since the year Jianyan,so the book has high historical value.The types of documents cited and the number of citations of a single document in A Chronicle of the Rise and Fall of the Imperial Dynasty are more than that in Recording of Rise and Fall,so its compilling value is higher than Recording of Rise and Fall.When quoting the same document and the same content as that in Annual records since the year Jianyan,the compilling value is higher than Annual records since the year Jianyan.In terms of collation value,the book of A Chronicle of the Rise and Fall of the Imperial Dynasty can help to restore the original appearance and correct errors of books such as ZRecording of Rise and Fall and Annual records since the year Jianyan which have been altered by the editors of Complete Library of Four Branches of Books.The existing three manuscripts have common text defects such as missing words,surplus words,different words,inverted words,repetitive words and so on.I take the collation methods such as proofreading by the book itself,proofreading with other books,reasoning proofreading to correct those errors.On top of that,I take the manuscript collected by the National Library as the sample,and proofread the full text of A Chronicle of the Rise and Fall of the Imperial Dynasty.