Abstract ▼ AI-Helper

There have been enormous amounts of researches on Sanguozhi(『三國志』) and Romance of Three Kingdoms(『三國志演義』), and they can be categorized into the ones from the perspective of national history, the ones from the perspective of character history, and the ones in the cultural aspects. Sanguozhi had huge ...

There have been enormous amounts of researches on Sanguozhi(『三國志』) and Romance of Three Kingdoms(『三國志演義』), and they can be categorized into the ones from the perspective of national history, the ones from the perspective of character history, and the ones in the cultural aspects. Sanguozhi had huge impacts on the future generations. In the 5th century, Pei-Songazhi(裵松之) from Song of Southern Dynasties wrote Peizhu(『裵主』); in the 14th century, Luo-Guanzhong(羅貫中) wrote the Romance of Three Kingdoms; and in the 17th century Maolun(毛綸) and Mao-zonggang(毛宗岡) who were father and son analyzed and researched the Romance of Three Kingdoms and the son wrote Romance of Three Kingdoms[so-called Maoben(『毛本』). The purpose of this study was to analyze the characteristics of Sanguozhi a history book. One of the history books demonstrating historicity from the latter Han Dynasty(後漢) to earlier Jin Dynasty(西晉), Sanguozhi presents an official history rather than the history of a dynasty. The author regards the Kingdom of Wei(魏) as the legitimate one and chooses the lineage of Wei. Throughout the book, there are many pieces of evidence that he made Wei as the legitimate dynasty: First, he puts the Book of Wei first in Sanguozhi and allocates a half of the entire book to the kingdom. Second, since Sanguozhi is a history book in emperor's vestige & biography(紀傳體), it's natural that the author should write all the three kingdoms in "emperor's vestige(紀)”. But he writes only Book of Wei in emperor's vestige with the kings in the Book of Shu(蜀) and Book of Wu(吳) written in “Biography(傳)”. Third, there is a difference in his addressing the emperors. While he refers to the emperor of Wei as “Emperor(帝)”, he does the emperor of Shu and Wu as “King(主)”. And fourth, he adopts different terms to refer to the death of an emperor. While he uses "Demise(崩)”, which is reserved for the death of an emperor, he uses "Demise(殂)" for the emperor of Shu and "Demise(薨)" for that of Wu. It's obvious that he uses "Demise(崩)" for Wei to demonstrate that it's the legitimate dynasty. The author of Sanguozhi Chenshou(陳壽) further argues that Wei is the legitimate dynasty by calling it "Hwa(華)" after it dominated the proper China. But he calls Shu "Yi(夷)" that's concentrated in the west, implying that it's a barbarian people and thus illegitimate.