A Study On The Old History Of The Five Dynasties

The Old History of the Five Dynasties (OHFD) was formerly known as "Liang Tang Jin Han Zhou Book ". After Ou Yangxiu’s " the New History of the Five Dynasties" was spread,it was also known as "OHED". The book has150volumes.It is the basic materials for the study of the history of the FIVE GENERATION. But the book is full of frustrations. After the Jin Dynasty,it was gradually submerged because of the popularity of "the New History of the Five Dynasties". The master copy of it can’t even be saw during Qian Long in the Qing Dynasty. Shao Jinhan and others collected and arranged the materials from the "Yongle Encyclopedia", collected and arranged the other books for the survival materials on OHFD.All the materials is only about seven-tenths or eight-tenths. This paper attempts to proceed from the basic material, make a more comprehensive study of "OHFD", analyze the compilation process, structure and value of documents, analyze the related problems. The full text is divided into introduction, main body and appendix. The introduction part, mainly discusses the research purpose, research status.The main body is divided into five chapters.The first mainly discusses about the original aim of the compilation of OHFD, and through the search, I believe it was to set up an authorized version of value system:what was true, what was right and what should be encouraged or avoided. Research in this chapter shows that the work spanned between April,973and the leap October of the next year (with minor revisions continuing). The life and academic achievements of its many contributors (especially Xue Juzheng) are also studies and show that the OHFD didn’t confine itself to the real record of the five dynasties as its sole data source, but extended to literature of the period, and to personal experiences and hearings of the contributors themselves.On the basis of former researches, the second chapter explores the characteristics of style and form of OHFD and its shortcomings on this aspect. A brief summary of its content shows that its description of the middle-area dynasties was much detailed; in comparison, kingdoms and dynasties locating in other areas of modern China were rather rough. From OHFD, we can also see the dominant attitude and view of the contributors:a kingdom’s fate was influenced by two factors, the heaven’s will and human’s maneuvering; loyalty to one’s king should be encouraged; a king should be wise and just.a fatuous and self-indulgent emperor should be criticizedThe third chapter mainly analyzes OHFD’s spreading and its different versions, and on this basis, it claims that the true reason why it failed to survive was not the fact that Emperor Zhang of Jin dynasty saw to its deletion from the official academy as people used to believe, but the success of Ouyang Xiu’s History of the Five Dynasties, which, by criticizing the frivolity of the dominant Wudai society, satisfied the spiritual need of the feudal society then. Plus, Ouyang’s personal academic achievement also made a certain contribution to it. This chapter compared all versions in circulation of OHFD, particularly pointing out the achievements and deficiencies of the versions of Qingji and Zhonghuashuju; it also praises the breakthrough of A collection of the scattered materials from OHFD, a new version.Chapter fourth mainly deals with OHFD’s value both historically and literally and concludes that the book is historically very important even now as it has recorded lots of information of the Wudai society in all aspects, such as politics, economy, military and customs. In addition, since it was written and edited based on the daily record of the courts, it has restored many decrees and ordinances in their original form, some of them have been cited in other works,which can help scholars with their proofreading work.In the meanwhile, I find the book is also filled with many prophecies and superstitious things, false statements, and disorder in historical events. Also,its judgment of historical figures is sometimes found to be unfair, even to its own standard.The fifth chapter mainly comments on OHFD’s thought. This paper analyzes OHFD’s royalism, loyalty and filial piety.The author argues that conception that imperial power had a divine origin was shown in the book in three aspects:1) the divinity determined the possibility of a successful coronation;2) the loss of an empery was the outcome of the loss of divine favor, as well as the failure of immortal endeavor;3) the empery could also be abdicated.The loyalty concept of OHFD means a lot in the period:it should be paid not only to the emperors of the five dynasties, but also to rulers of smaller, but relatively independent regimes, and to lords of their "lords". As for those who were said to embody the virtue, they include those subjects who were loyal to one dynasty, and those who served several successive emperors, or any person who was recognized for their loyal behavior. To reinforce people’s loyalty, the article finds out, the imperial government rewarded the loyal deeds both materially and spiritually, on the other hand, any rebellious act would be suppressed cruelly.The paper explored into the various ways of strengthening the filial piety in the five dynasties, as well as the evaluations at all levels praise offered in OHFD to those practicing filial piety. The conclusion is that though there is no definite preference between loyalty and filial piety when the two couldn’t be settled in any agreement, it does believe that to fulfill one’s filial duty, the law could be temporarily overlooked.Finally, on the basis of the above analysis, I summarized the full text.