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The Chi-shih-lu of Yü Pen: A Note on the Sources for the Founding of the Ming Dynasty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Edward L. Dreyer
Affiliation:
University of Miami
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Abstract

In a 1926 article Wada Sei criticized the chronology of early Ming history given in the Ming T'ai-tsu shih-lu and other official sources. His conclusions have won general acceptance. Wada based his revisions on the Chi-shih-lu of Yu Pen, a lost work surviving only in fragmentary quotation. Recently, a more extensive text of the latter has come to light, and internal analysis of the longer text shows that its chronology is too confused for any of the Chi-shih-lu to be reliable as a corrective to the official sources. This removes the evidential basis for Wada's revised chronology, and requires the substitution for it of the order of events given in the Ming T'ai-tsu shih-lu.

Type
Research Notes and Abstracts
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1972

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References

1 Review by Dardess, John W. of Franke, W., An Introduction to the Sources of Ming History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar in JAS 29 (1970) 3, 687–8. Professor Dardess also provided the Project with the microfilm of Ming-hsing yeh-chi.

2 The edition used here is that of Chung-hua wen-shih ts'ung-shu, 2nd Series, Taipei, Hua-wen, 1968.

3 Sei, Wada, “Min no Taisō to Kōkin no zoku” (Ming T'ai-tsu and the Red Turban bandits), Tōyō Gakuhō 13 (1923) 2, 278302Google Scholar.

4 The edition used here is that of Academia Sinica, Taipei, 1962.

5 The revisions of TTSL are discussed in W. Franke, op. cit., p. 30.

6 Ming-hsing yeh-chi 2.44b.

7 Ibid. 1.9a places Yü Pen under Feng Kuo-sheng's command as early as 1357; for Feng Kuo-sheng's place with the ambush force in 1360, cf TTSL 8.73b.

8 Ming-hsing yeh-chi 1.18b-19a.

9 CHSL 4.18a-20b, also in Ming-hsing yeh-chi 1.24ab.

10 Ming-shih, ch. 122.

11 TTSL 4.3a-4a, chi-mao = 28 July 1356. Wada, op. cit., p. 293 cites the Yü Pen text quoted in CHSL 1.29b, which also appears in Ming-hsing yeh-chi 1.18a. Yü Pen dates the event simply “21st Year (1361), 1st Month” but a change of tide would be announced on the Lunar New Year (in this case 2 February 1361).

12 Nakayama Hachirō, “Chin Yū-ryō no daiikkai Nankin kōgeki” (Ch'en Yu-liang's first attack on Nanking) in Suzuki Shun kyōjū kanreki kinen Tōyōshi ronsō (Articles on Chinese History Presented to Professor Suzuki Shun), Tōkyō (1964), 447–71.

13 Most of TTSL, ch. 8 is devoted to this battle.

14 Ming-hsing yeh-chi 1.24a, again dated simply “23rd Year (1363), 1st Month” and TTSL 14.1a, ping-yin = 4 February 1364.

15 Ming-hsing yeh-chi 1.20a-21b, dated “21st Year (1361), 11th Month” as opposed to TTSL (wu-ch'en = 6 April 1364), 6ab (keng-wu = 8 April) and 10ab (jen-hsü = 30 May).

16 Both the struggle for An-feng and the P'o-yang Lake campaign are described in TTSL, ch. 12; for the corresponding Yü Pen texts, cf. note 9, above.