It is customary for Chinese dynasties to…
1060 CE
It is customary for Chinese dynasties to compile histories of the dynasty preceding them as a means of cementing their own legitimacy.
As a result, during the Later Jin dynasty of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, a history of the preceding Tang Dynasty, the Book of Tang had already been compiled.
In 1044, however, Emperor Renzong of Song had ordered a new compilation of Tang history, based on his belief that the original Book of Tang was wanting in organization and comprehensiveness.
The process has taken seventeen years, being finally presented in 1060.
Generally translated as “New History of the Tang,” or “New Tang History,” it is a work of official history covering the Tang Dynasty in ten volumes and two hundred and twenty-five chapters.
The work has been compiled by a team of scholars of the Song Dynasty, led by Ouyang Xiu and Song Qi.
The New Book of Tang differs dramatically in its organization and contents from the older version, in part due to the literary and philosophical inclinations of its chief compilers.
Ouyang Xiu frequently invokes the principle of reason in evaluating historical accounts, and purged all accounts containing elements of myth or superstition, thereby dramatically shortening many of the biographies of emperors and major figures.
In contrast, the New Book of Tang includes several new sections of more practical interest to Tang history.
These include a much expanded series of Treatises, including topics on the horse trade with Tibet and military affairs, and a table of the bureaucratic hierarchy of the Tang administration which was missing from the old Book of Tang.
Another feature that has been revived is the use of Tables, annalistic tables of events and successions which included not just the emperors themselves but also chancellors and jiedushi.
The style of prose in the New Book also differs, due to Ouyang Xiu and Song Qi being both admirers of the simplified, 'ancient' prose style of Tang scholars such as Han Yu, rather than the flowery prose style found in official Tang documents.
This has led them to change the original wordings in the documents that they quote in the book.
However in the reduction, the direct use of Tang court records is lost, some reduced passages are unclear, and many errors are introduced in attempting to find more 'ancient' words to rephrase the Tang originals.
Four biographies of women appear in this new book that were not present in the first Book of Tang.
The women kill or maim themselves in horrible ways, and represent examples of Tang Dynasty women that are intended to deter contemporary readers from extreme behavior.
For example, Woman Lu gouges her own eye out to assure her ailing husband that there will be no second man after him.
Biographies of thirty-five overly filial and fraternal men are also included in the work, though these men do not resort to the extremes of female mutilation found in the female biographies.
Mei Yaochen was born in Xuancheng in present day Anhui Province.
His style name was 'Sheng Yu'.
He had passed the jinshi exam in 1051 and had a career in the civil service, but was unsuccessful.
He is a prolific poet, with around 3000 works extant; he is popularized as a poet by the younger Ouyang Xiu.
Most of his works are in the shi form, but they are much freer in content than those of the Tang dynasty.
His response to the impossibility of surpassing the Tang poets is to make a virtue of his lack of ambition; his ideal is pingdan, or the pedestrian.
His early verses are often socio-critical, advocating reform along Neo-Confucian lines; later he turns to celebrations of ordinary life and verses mourning the deaths of his first wife and several of his children.
An example is his poem translated into English by Kenneth Rexroth as "An Excuse for Not Returning the Visit of a Friend."
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