In the early years of the Tang Dynasty, there was a super fierce man named Li Yanshou. This Li Yanshou was a historian who spent his entire life writing history books.
The reason why he is fierce is not because he has done anything earth-shattering, but because of the twenty-four histories of ancient China as a canonical history, he participated in the compilation of the four canonical histories! Moreover, there are two of them, which he completed independently!
Friends who are familiar with Chinese history know that ancient China has always had the habit of systematically recording history, which is also an advantage of our nation. It is precisely because we are accustomed to recording the history of previous dynasties that our history is complete, which is one of the fundamental reasons why our civilization can be preserved and passed down.
As for other civilizations, such as a country next door that likes to play motorcycle stacking, people do not have this habit, so their civilization has many faults. Even Marx said they had no history at all.
The first canonical history of China is the "History of History" written by Ma Qianxiu of the Taishi Company during the Western Han Dynasty. The "Chronicle of History" records all the history from the time of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors to the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Since the appearance of the "Chronicle of History", successive Dynasties in China have formed a conventional rule: after the demise of one dynasty, the next dynasty must revise the history of the previous dynasty to ensure the historical integrity of our civilization.
Therefore, after the fall of the Western Han Dynasty, in the Eastern Han Dynasty, Ban Gu wrote a "Book of Han"; after the End of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the Later Three Kingdoms Era, the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and the "Book of later Han" appeared successively.
Normally, only after the demise of one dynasty, the historians of the next dynasty are likely to participate in the revision of the history books of the previous dynasties. Therefore, under normal circumstances, a historian can only participate in the revision of a canonical history. Moreover, being able to participate in the revision of the correct history is already the highest honor of the ancient Chinese historians.
However, when it came to Li Yanshou, the situation became completely different.
Li Yanshou not only participated in the revision of the four canonical histories, but also two of them were completed independently by himself! Looking at the entire ancient history of China, this is a record of no one before and no one after.
What kind of person is this Li Yanshou? Why was he able to participate in the revision of the four canonical histories?
If we want to clarify this matter, we have to start with Li Yanshou as a person.
Li Yanshou ( 李延寿 ; pinyin : Li Yanshou ) , date of birth and death is unknown. Li Yanshou was born in the Li clan of Longxi, and this Li of his, and the Li of the Tang Dynasty royal family, were indeed a Li. The Tang Dynasty royal family, the Li clan, was also from the Li clan of Longxi. However, the two sides have separated from a long time ago, not a branch.
Li Yanshou's father, whose name is more interesting, is called Master Li. The name may seem more like an honorific title today. But for Master Li, he is surnamed Li, a famous master, and the word Junwei.
Like Li Yanshou, his father, Master Li, was a historian.
Master Li was born at the end of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and when Master Li was 4 years old, the Sui Dynasty was founded. Master Li's ancestors had been officials for generations, his great-grandfather had served as a general of the Northern Wei Dynasty, his grandfather had been the Northern Qi Taishou, and his father had served as the commander of Luoyang County. In today's terms, Master Li is a proper official N generation.
It is precisely because he was born in such a family that Master Li received a good education from an early age. However, after Master Li became an adult, he seemed to have little interest in becoming an official, but was very interested in writing history books.
This hobby of Master Li laid the foundation for the fate of the two generations of the Li family to devote themselves to the compilation of historiography.
In Chinese history, the Sui Dynasty was a very short-lived dynasty that lasted only 37 years before ending. But for Master Li, being able to live in the Sui Dynasty was actually his luck. Because after the establishment of the Sui Dynasty, the rulers of the Sui Dynasty were particularly interested in the matter of revising history books.
As we all know, among the twenty-four histories, the "History of History", "Book of Han", "Book of Later Han", and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", the first four canonical histories, are also called the 'first four histories'. Compared with the next twenty canonical histories, the first four histories are slightly different. In addition to the highest evaluation, there is another important reason, that is, these four history books are all written by private individuals.
Because it was written by private individuals, the influence of the current ruler on the compilers was relatively small and relatively more reliable.
Among the first four histories, the last to be completed is the Book of the Later Han Dynasty, written during the Liu Song Dynasty during the Southern and Northern Dynasties. At the same time that the Book of the Later Han Dynasty was written, China had already entered the era of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and the confrontation between the North and the South for hundreds of years and the successive years of war and chaos made it difficult to compile history books.
Therefore, during the entire Period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, several major regimes took turns to appear, and they were busy unifying the world, and they did not have time to spend a lot of effort to revise history. As for private history revision, although it has never stopped during this period, because of years of war and the division of the north and the south for many years, the history books written by private individuals have also had great limitations.
Therefore, after the establishment of the Sui Dynasty, looking back at the correct history of the Southern and Northern Dynasties era, it can only be chaotic.
The founder of the Sui Dynasty, Emperor Yang Jian of Sui, was a very ambitious emperor, and his political achievements during his reign were indeed outstanding. As the terminator of the entire Southern and Northern Dynasties era, Yang Jian felt that these chaotic history books should also focus on it. Therefore, under Yang Jian's arrangement, the Sui Dynasty began to organize large-scale historical revision work.
This is a groundbreaking event in the entire history of China.
Before the Sui Dynasty, the previous histories were compiled privately. Although many dynasties before the Sui Dynasty also had the habit of recording history, the history of zheng was compiled by future generations privately.
But starting with the Sui Dynasty, the revision of the canonical history changed from private work to state engineering. The state began to organize professionals to compile the history of the previous dynasty. Later Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, without exception, all followed this tradition.
It was precisely because the Sui Dynasty attached great importance to the revision of history that Master Li was also able to engage in this noble work. During this period, Master Li's life also experienced many and many things. But because Master Li's life experience is not the focus of our discussion today, we will ignore it for the time being. Interested friends, you can directly read the 100th volume of the "Northern History" in the Twenty-Four Histories, which has a biography of Master Li.
After the Sui Dynasty officially began to revise history, Master Li really had a place to play. However, the good times did not last long, and later because of various changes, Master Li lost his job.
Speaking of this, friends who are familiar with the Twenty-Four Histories will find a question: Since the Sui Dynasty has begun to set up a special institution to revise the history of the previous dynasty, why is it that none of the Twenty-Four Histories was written in the Sui Dynasty?
The answer is actually very simple, because the Sui Dynasty was too short.
The entire Sui Dynasty only existed for thirty-seven years, and in the previous seven or eight years, basically every year there was a war, so the world was unified. Later, after Yang Guang took the throne, he had nearly seven or eight years to fight wars everywhere. In this way, the time of relative peace is very rare.
And the work of revising history is relatively large. For example, the Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1912, but the revision of the Qing History was not completed until today. The People's Republic of China approved a project to revise the History of the Qing Dynasty in August 2002. It was not until 2021 that the revision was finally completed and it was about to be printed. Even with the current national strength, it took a full twenty years to revise the history of the previous dynasty, so if the Sui Dynasty wanted to revise the history of the previous dynasty, and it was to revise the history of several previous dynasties, this difficulty can naturally be imagined.
Revising history is not simply a copy of the historical records of predecessors. Instead, through the existing historical materials and cultural relics, it is necessary to be responsible for every line of the correct history and ensure the accuracy of each word as much as possible. Today, when we read the history of a certain person, in the biography of a certain person, we may read about so-and-so, where the ancestral home is. In such a line, when the historian revises history, he may need to travel thousands of miles to find the ancestral tomb of this ancient person and his family, and then refer to the tombstone on the ancestral tomb of the person to verify it, and finally get the result.
Therefore, this workload, for the Sui Dynasty, was really too big. Until the fall of the Sui Dynasty, no canonical history be completely revised. For Master Li, this is also the biggest regret in his life. Master Li's lifelong dream was to be able to compile a complete history of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. But the situation in the Sui Dynasty doomed him to be unable to complete his dream.
After the Sui Dynasty, it was the Tang Dynasty.
The Tang Dynasty was the most famous dynasty in Chinese history, and at the same time relatively powerful. Moreover, the Tang Dynasty unified the world very quickly, and it took less than seven years from the founding of the Tang Dynasty to unify the entire Central Plains. After the Tang Dynasty unified the world, Master Li was still alive. However, due to the turmoil of the times, Master Li did not participate in the compilation of the history of the Tang Dynasty. Later, Master Li returned to his hometown and wrote the history books on his own.
In the second year of Zhenguan, Master Li died.
Until his death, Master Li failed to fulfill his wish and failed to truly complete the compilation of the history of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. This regret has also become the regret of Master Li's life.
After Master Li's death, his son Li Yanshou inherited his legacy. Since the father failed to complete the job, let the son do it!
Three years after Zhenguan, just after Master Li's death, the political situation of the Tang Dynasty was completely stabilized. In this year, Li Shimin officially issued a decree to restart the historical revision of the previous dynasty. As the son of Master Li and an excellent historian, Li Yanshou was naturally recruited again and participated in this historical project.
After this project began, there was a great controversy in the history of the Tang Dynasty on how to repair the history of the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
This is mainly because the history of the Southern and Northern Dynasties is so chaotic! Even today, more than 80% of the Chinese may be difficult to tell the general history of the History of the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
Here, we do a simple combing.
At the end of the Three Kingdoms era, the three divisions were returned to the Jin Dynasty, and the Sima family established the Western Jin Dynasty. However, after the establishment of the Western Jin Dynasty, not long after, because of the chaos in the upper echelons of the Western Jin Dynasty, several princes of the Sima family fought for power, which eventually led to the nomadic peoples of the northern frontier going south, and the Western Jin Dynasty was directly destroyed.
Because the nomadic peoples who went south at that time were mainly the five ethnic groups of Xiongnu, Xianbei, Xianbei, Qiang, and Qiang, they were also called Wuhu Chaohua in history.
After the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty, the remaining Sima family royal family, as well as many Northern Shi clans, fled to the south, known in history as the Southern Crossing of the Yiguan. After that, the Sima family, with the support of these warrior clans, established the Eastern Jin Dynasty in the south. As for the North, in the following decades, at least sixteen regimes emerged. Therefore, this history of the North is also known as the Sixteen Kingdoms period.
The Sixteen Kingdoms period and the Eastern Jin Dynasty were almost parallel eras. During this period, the south was relatively complete, and the north was always in a scuffle, and powerful regimes such as Former Qin and Former Yan appeared one after another. However, none of these regimes was able to completely unify the north, let alone go south to destroy the Jin.
By the end of this era, the Northern Wei regime in the north began to rise, and eventually unified the entire north. Almost at the same time, the Eastern Jin Dynasty in the south was also completely destroyed and replaced by the later Liu Song regime.
Chinese history has thus officially entered the period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
During the Period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the North and the South formed a state of division and confrontation for hundreds of years, and have always maintained relative independence. During this period, the south successively underwent four dynastic changes, and the four regimes of Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen appeared.
As for the north, after the Northern Wei unified the north, it did stabilize somewhat. But later, because of internal problems in the Northern Wei, the Northern Wei split into the Eastern Wei and the Western Wei. Later, Eastern Wei was usurped by the powerful gao family and established Northern Qi. Subsequently, Western Wei was also usurped by their vassal Yuwen Jia and became Northern Zhou.
After that, Northern Zhou destroyed Northern Qi and unified the north again. But at the same time, there were also many problems within northern Zhou, which eventually led to the ascension of his foreign relative Yang Jian to the throne, and finally usurped power to establish the Sui Dynasty. After the establishment of the Sui Dynasty, after several years of preparation, the Southern Chen was finally destroyed in the south, which completely ended the era of the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
In such a chaotic era, is it necessary to write the correct history according to the regime? Or do you write it in terms of both the North and the South? Either option seems to have shortcomings.
In the end, it was Li Shimin who made the decision and chose to write according to the regime dynasty.
First, there is the history of the Jin Dynasty. There had actually been several versions of the Book of Jin before, but Li Shimin felt that it was too bad, so he decided to rewrite the Book of Jin and include both the Western and Eastern Jin Dynasties. This work was led by Fang Xuanling, the current prime minister, and a group of people were responsible for completing it.
After the fall of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the south was successively the four dynasties of Song Qi, Liang, and Chen. The main history of the two dynasties, Song and Qi, was compiled in the Southern Liang era. Li Shimin turned it over and felt that it was okay to write, so there was no need to do it anymore. But the history of Southern Liang and the history of Southern Chen, this is a must.
In these two correct histories, Li Shimin entrusted a person named Yao Silian to take charge. The reason why it was handed over to him, in addition to Yao Silian himself being an excellent historian, the most important reason was that Yao Silian was originally a Southern Liang person. Yao Silian was born in the year of the fall of Southern Liang, and then grew up in the Southern Chen era, served as an official in the Sui Dynasty, and finally wrote history books in the Tang Dynasty. His father, Yao Cha, was also a very good historian, who accumulated a lot of historical materials in his lifetime, and was responsible for compiling the history of Southern Liang and southern Chen in the Sui Dynasty. Therefore, these two canonical histories are the most appropriate to hand over to Yao Silian to get.
As for the history of the north, it is even more chaotic because of the long division of the north. After Li Shimin turned around, he found that the history of northern Wei had already been written. The person who wrote the history of the Northern Wei Dynasty happened to be a fellow of the First Tang Dynasty, Wei Zheng, named Wei Shuo. The Northern Wei "Book of Wei" is still well written, and there is no need to do it anymore.
However, after the division of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the Northern Zhou and Northern Qi were divided, and the history of these two dynasties was not carried out. Therefore, Li Shimin asked a historian named Li Baiyao to compile the history of Northern Qi; another historian named Ling Hu Dedi to compile the history of Northern Qi.
Finally, there was a Sui Dynasty left, and Li Shimin handed over the history of the Sui Dynasty to the famous Wei Zheng. In addition to Wei Zheng's ability to raise the bar, his own historical attainment is also very high. Responsible for this job, with ease.
As for Li Yanshou, he also participated in the compilation project of the Book of Jin presided over by Fang Xuanling, and also participated in the compilation project of the Book of Sui presided over by Wei Zheng. Wei Zheng and Fang Xuanling were both big men among the big men, and people still had a big stall of work in the court, so naturally it was impossible to put all their energy into the compilation of history books. Therefore, they need to find someone to help them do the work. And Li Yanshou is the two big men Fang Xuanling and Wei Zheng, who have found someone to help them work.
For the Book of Jin and the Book of Sui, although Li Yanshou did not complete it independently, he also participated in most of the compilation work, and this contribution was also great. Throughout the Zhenguan years, so many major events occurred in the history of Qingqing, Li Yanshou did not participate in any of them, he has always been honestly his own historian, engaged in his own historiographical work, and enjoyed it.
By the end of the Zhenguan era, these canonical histories had been compiled one after another. The work of revising the history of the former dynasty is even at an end.
But in this regard, Li Yanshou was not satisfied.
Although he participated in the revision of the history of the Tang Dynasty, he also made great contributions. But for a long time, Li Yanshou had the opposite attitude toward the government. Li Yanshou's concept of historiography was inherited from his father, Master Li. Their family advocates dividing history between the north and the south.
Therefore, Li Yanshou spent more than ten years, from the perspective of the confrontation between the north and the south, to write the two canonical histories of the "History of the South" and the "History of the North" respectively. Because Li Yanshou had participated in the official revision work before, he had mastered a lot of first-hand historical materials. Moreover, at this time, the official revision of the official history of the Tang Dynasty had also been completed. Therefore, Li Yanshou's two books are relatively relaxed.
But even so, in order to repair these two books, Li Yanshou still spent a full sixteen years before and after!
The two books "History of the South" and "History of the North" were independently completed by Li Yanshou. In addition to the previous "Book of Jin" and "Book of Sui", Li Yanshou participated in the revision of four canonical histories. This record is unparalleled in history. There are no ancients before, and there are no people in the back.
In addition to Li Yanshou, the second most involved in the revision of the canonical history was the detachment of the Yuan Dynasty, and he participated in the compilation of the canonical history of the Three Regimes of the Jin Dynasty, the Liao State, and the Song Dynasty. Then there was Ouyang Xiu, who presided over the compilation of the New Book of Tang and the History of the New Five Dynasties. There was also Yao Silian, who was a contemporary of Li Yanshou, who edited the history of Southern Liang and the history of Southern Chen.
In addition to these four canonical histories, Li Yanshou's life actually has many other works. For example, the "History of the Five Dynasties", which records the music, etiquette, criminal law and many other contents of the Southern and Northern Dynasties period, and the "Zhenguan Political Code", which records the history of the entire Li Shimin era, unfortunately, this book has not been handed down.
In short, Li Yanshou's life has always been spent on the revision of historiography. It has made great contributions to the inheritance of Chinese history. Although he did not participate in the important changes of the Zhenguan era, his contributions to history are still worthy of admiration by future generations.
In fact, it is precisely because of the existence of a large number of people like Li Yanshou in ancient China that the history of our country can be fully recorded. These historians, they are not afraid of power, they are not afraid of difficulties and obstacles, they do not seek wealth and glory, but only to speak bluntly and leave a real history for future generations.
This spirit is really worth thinking deeply about all of us.