Title: THE RELUCTANT HISTORIAN: SUN TI, CHU HSI, AND THE FALL OF NORTHERN SUNG
Abstract: This article examines a specific incident in the historiography of Sung China and the implications of that incident for the general development of Sung historical writing. In the summer of 1167, the great polymath Hung Mai if (1123-1202), then compiler in the State History Institute, asked Emperor Hsiao-tsung 4 (r. 11631189) to order the retired official Sun Ti 3_ (1081-1169) to assist in the compilation of the Ch'in-tsung shih-lu , (Ch'in-tsung Veritable Records). Normally, the compilation of the veritable records was an in-house affair, its documents and activities confined to the properly designated state agencies. In modern terms, Hung Mai's request for Sun Ti's help amounted to a call for an outside consultant. The emperor approved this unusual measure; but a reluctant Sun Ti, then eighty-six years of age, initially resisted the order. He eventually agreed to participate on a limited basis and in the winter of 1167 submitted his manuscript to the history institute. Writing in 1185, less than twenty years after Sun Ti's death, the great Neo-Confucian scholar Chu Hsi K4-(1130-1200) railed against the reluctant historian, labeling him an opportunist and a moral degenerate whose personal failings had contributed directly to the fall of the Northern Sung in 1126-27. Chu Hsi maintained that Sun Ti had taken Hung Mai's ill-advised invitation as an opportunity to introduce distortions into the true history of the period. Chu claimed that Sun's distortions covered up his own complicity in the Northern Sung fall and slandered his old political adversaries. Chu Hsi further charged that the contemporary historian Li T'ao (1 1 15-1184), who had just completed his monumental history of
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 35
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