Old Book of Tang

"Book of Tang" redirects here. For other uses, see Book of Tang (disambiguation).

Old Book of Tang
Traditional Chinese	舊唐書
Simplified Chinese	旧唐书
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Jiù Tángshū Southern Min Hokkien POJ Kū Tông-su (col.) Kiū Tông-su (lit.)
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	唐書
Simplified Chinese	唐书
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Tángshū Wade–Giles T'ang-shu

The Old Book of Tang, or simply the Book of Tang, is the first classic historical work about the Tang dynasty, comprising 200 chapters, and is one of the Twenty-Four Histories. Originally compiled during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, it was superseded by the New Book of Tang which was compiled in the Song dynasty, but later regained acceptance.

Structure

The Old Book of Tang comprises 200 chapters.

History

The book began when Later Jin's founding emperor Shi Jingtang ordered its compilation in 941. The original chief editor was Zhao Ying ([趙瑩] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language tag: zh-han (help)), who was also the chancellor then. However, by the time of its completion, Liu Xu had become chancellor and taken over the work of organisation; as a result he was credited as chief editor when the work was presented in 945 to Emperor Chu of Jin.

Being a relatively quickly compiled work of official history, the Old Book of Tang was a compilation of earlier annals, now lost; it further incorporates other monographs and biographies, using as sources (for instance) the Tongdian of Du You. These sources were often directly copied from records and earlier histories, and the result would be severely criticised during the Northern Song; Emperor Renzong of Song, for example, called the book "poorly organised, burdened with unimportant details, wanting in style and poorly researched". These errors even included duplicated biographies of characters.

Because of these criticisms, in 1044 a new history of the Tang dynasty was commissioned; with Ouyang Xiu and Song Qi as editors, the New Book of Tang was then produced. After the New Book was presented, the original Old Book of Tang went out of print, and over centuries it became very rare. It was during the Ming dynasty when the remaining copies were gathered and the book was once again published, eventually becoming canonised as one of the Twenty-Four Histories.

References

Works cited

• Twitchett, Denis (2002). The Writing of Official History Under the T'ang. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-52293-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kaneko, Shūichi (1994). "唐書 (とうじょ)". Encyclopedia Nipponica (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Retrieved 2017-01-31. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)

External links

• The Old Book of Tang at the Chinese Text Project.