(Published in Basic Education Research in February 2003)
China has a large number of ancient books and records, and history books are one of them. In the long-term development and evolution process, these historical records have formed a variety of styles, just like wonderful flowers and colorful.
Historical books in the pre-Qin period can be divided into narrative style (such as Shangshu, Guoyu and Warring States Policy) and chronological style (such as Chunqiu and Zuozhuan), national style (such as Guoyu and Warring States Policy) and chronological style (such as Chunqiu and Zhushu annals). However, some of these history books are short in length, some are scattered and unsystematic, and their scale and system are still immature.
The real maturity of history books began in the Han Dynasty. Since the Han Dynasty, the system of China history books (excluding unofficial history's notes) can be roughly divided into three types: biographical style (divided into general history and dynastic history), chronological style (divided into general history and dynastic history) and biographical style. If we look at its characteristics, each has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Biographical style originated from Sima Qian's Historical Records (the first biographical general history). This style takes people as the center and reflects historical events by telling their life stories. For example, biographies, aristocratic families and biographies in Historical Records are all biographies. Therefore, the greatest feature of biographies is that the narrative of historical figures' life stories is concentrated and clear.
Since the publication of Historical Records, most of China's historical books have been written in this way. The twenty-five histories from Historical Records to Draft of Qing History (except Historical Records, which are general history, the others are dynastic history) can be described as the unity of biographies. Biographies are favored by historians and should also be attributed to their reasonable arrangement style. Taking Historical Records as an example, it consists of five parts: biography, biography, book and table. This subject takes the deeds of emperors as the key link and narrates historical events in chronological order; Some of the contents in "Family" take the deeds of dynasties or vassal States as the key link and describe historical events in chronological order. Tables are divided into world tables, chronologies and monthly tables, which are concise memorabilia arranged by generation and year in tabular form to make up for the lack of discipline and narrative. The book records the evolution of laws and regulations, including etiquette (Book of Rites), music (Le Shu), military (calligraphy), calendar (almanac), astronomy (book of heavenly officials), sacrificial ceremony (amenorrhea), water conservancy (book of rivers) and water conservancy. As a result, this history book is not only complete in style, comprehensive in coverage and grand in scale; And outline, dotted, reasonable layout, so that under one hundred generations, "historians can't change their laws, scholars can't abandon their books" (Zheng Qiao's Tongzhi Kao). In Hanshu (the first dynastic history), the "aristocratic family" was abolished and incorporated into biographies, calling "biographies" as disciplines, changing "books" into "records" and adding syllables of geographical records and artistic records. Since then, although other biographical history books have added items because of the differences in the characteristics of the times or the personal values of historians, most of them have not jumped out of the style pioneered by Hanshu. Biographical history books since Hanshu, with Ji as the key link and biography and record as the goal, have been elaborated, thus forming a relatively systematic and complete history book system supplemented by behavior points and points. In this way, to understand the context of historical development, we can find clues in history; To master the specific process of the occurrence and development of characters' deeds or events, we can learn the details in biographies; In order to obtain the contents of astronomy, geography, economy and culture, you can consult the relevant items in the chronicle (the chronicles of the Three Kingdoms are divided into Wei, Shu and Wu chronicles, and there are only biographies in the chronicle, so the style is unique). In short, the comprehensive style, clear outline and complementary points, lines and surfaces are the second biggest advantages of biographical history books.
Thirdly, biographical history books mainly focus on biographies of people, but they can also be found in other people's legends, and sometimes they complement each other, making the stories of people richer and the images fuller. For example, in Biography of Xiang Yu, after Xiang Yu burned Epang Palace to return to the East, he wrote: "Wang Xiang made people pregnant with the king. Wang Huai said, "As promised." Is to respect the king as the righteous emperor. In Biography of Emperor Gaozu in Historical Records, he wrote: "Xiang Yu made people repay Wang Huai. Wang Huai said, "As promised. Dissatisfied with Pei Gong's refusal to go west, he saved Zhao in the north, which was later recognized by the world. Nai said,' I'm pregnant with the king, and my family's good ears are not successful, so how can we get an appointment! If the world is calm, the general should also register. "I pretend to respect the king as the righteous emperor, but I don't need his life." It is with the supplement in Biography of Emperor Gaozu that we understand Xiang Yu's dissatisfaction with Wang Huai at that time, the vanity of respecting Wang Huai as the righteous emperor, and his arrogance of boasting about conquest.
However, biography, as a style of history books, also has its insurmountable disadvantages. First of all, this defect is manifested in the fact that the selection of materials is sometimes stretched, and one thing is valued and another thing is lost. The specific narrative of historical events in biographies is generally scattered in biographies, so it is difficult to give a comprehensive, complete and centralized account of some historical events, and sometimes the ins and outs of events are not clear. On the contrary, for some major historical events, when writing the main characters related to them, you can't skip what you have to write, which will inevitably cause the same event to appear repeatedly in the biographies of different characters (although the description angles and details are different). Taking the story of the "Hongmen Banquet" written in Historical Records as an example, the most detailed description of the specific process of this incident is Biography of Xiang Yu, but it all appears in Biography of Emperor Gaozu, Family History of Hou Shi and Biography of Fan Kuai Tengguan, with only a slight difference in details, emphasis and words. Chen Shou disdains the arrangement of historical records, and his History of the Three Kingdoms is famous for its concise writing. However, this defect is inevitable. As for Battle of Red Cliffs, the biographies of Zhou Yu, Lu Su and Monroe are the most detailed, but the same historical event is also scattered in the biographies of other characters. Wei Zhi Wu Di Ji: "Going to Chibi is not conducive to preparing for war. During the great epidemic, Stowe died and led the army back to prepare Jingzhou and Jiangnan counties. " "Biography of the First Emperor of Shu": "The former master sent Zhuge Liang to bind Sun Quan himself, and authorized Zhou Yu and other tens of thousands of water troops to join forces with the former master and fight with Tsao Gong in Chibi, breaking it and burning his ship. Ancestors and Wujun went hand in hand, catching up with Nanjun. Sometimes, when he fell ill and the northern army died, Tsao Gong brought him back. " "Zhuge Liang Chuan Shu Zhi": "The power is great, that is, sending 30,000 water troops such as Zhou Yu, Cheng Pu and Lu Su to help Liang Yi and reject Cao Gong. Cao Gong was defeated in Chibi and led his troops to Nanjun. " "Wu Zhuan": "Prepare Xiakou, so that Zhuge Liang has the right to send Zhou Yu and others. At the right time, Tsao Gong gained a new reputation and the situation was very prosperous. All the negotiators were afraid of the wind and advised them to meet him. However, refusing to have the same rights as Sue. Yu and Pu are the left and right governors, each with 10,000 people, neck and neck. When they met in Chibi, they defeated Cao. Gong burned the rest of the ships, withdrew, and the number of foot soldiers suffered from the epidemic, and most of the dead. I'll catch up with Nanjun, and Cao Gong will return to the north, leaving Cao Ren to guard Jiangling and Xiangyang. " Although the above contents complement each other, most of them are repetitive and repetitive, which is cumbersome and violates the principle of saving pens in history books. However, this is a problem that biographical history books, which are regarded as official history by historians of past dynasties, generally cannot overcome.
Chronological style is a historical book style that arranges historical events with chronological clues. Early chronological history books include Chunqiu, Zhushuzhi and Zuozhuan (all general history). Yue copied Hanshu, changed the biographical style to chronological style, and wrote it. Since then, the chronicles of dynastic history have been combined with biographies. Sima Guang's Zi Tong Zhi Jian began in the 23rd year of Zhou Weilie (403 BC) and ended in the 6th year of Zhou Shizong's showing virtue in the Five Dynasties (959 AD), with a calendar of *** 16 dynasties 1362, which is an unprecedented chronicle of ancient China. Later, books such as The Mirror of Li Dao's Continuing Senior Affairs in Southern Song Dynasty and The Mirror of Bi Yuan's Continuing Senior Affairs in Qing Dynasty were written in this way.
Chronological history books are compiled according to the sequence of events' occurrence, development and ending, taking years as the classics and historical events as the latitude. The materials are arranged in order to avoid repetition and fragmentation, and it is easy to see the relationship between events in the same period. However, in the chronicle, several events in the same period are often uneven in level, and the notes are inevitably out of line, and sometimes the beginning and end are incoherent. There is even a case where one thing is divided into several volumes, which brings great inconvenience to the reference, so that Sima Guang compiled a Catalogue of Zi Jian for future reference after completing Zi Jian, and Zhu even compiled a Compendium of Zi Jian to make it clear. In addition, this style is mainly a narrative of political events, which is consistent with time, and it is difficult to grasp the life of the characters, and it is also difficult to understand the legal system, culture and economic development at that time.
Yuan Shu, a historian in the Southern Song Dynasty, compiled Zi Tong Zhi Jian into a book, which is called the end of Tong Jian Chronicle, creating a genre of historical chronicle and forming a three-body parallel situation. Later, History of Song Dynasty (written by Bang Chen in Ming Dynasty), Chronicle of Yuan Dynasty (written by the same author) and Chronicle of Zuo Zhuan (written by Qing Gu Ying Tai) came out one after another, which broke through the limitation that Chronicle of Tong Jian only wrote political and military events and expanded its content to official imperial examinations and military affairs.
According to these events, the Chronicle focuses on relevant thematic materials and compiles them in categories. Each article has its own title, the beginning and end are very detailed, all parts are clear, the notes are complete, and the beginning and end are clear. Although this style avoids some shortcomings of biographical style and chronological style, the titles are relatively independent and the coherence between titles is poor.
Human history is a dazzling and colorful river. It seems not easy to show the main tributaries, ripples and pearl sediment of this long river to future generations perfectly. No wonder historians of all ages have tried their best to find a solution once and for all. It seems that the compromise can only be multi-body coexistence and complement each other.