Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms
The Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms ( Chinese 三國志 / 三国志 , Pinyin Sanguo Zhi ) (Romanized spelling: Sanguozhi ) provide an official record of the historical events in China of the Three Kingdoms period is here to cover the period from. 189 bis 280 , so start in the final phase of the Han dynasty , when the imperial authority began to crumble with the uprising of the Yellow Turban and the fighting of rival warlords led to the emergence of three empires: Wei ,Shu Han and Wu . The author of the chronicles is Chen Shou , who wrote them towards the end of the 3rd century. composed. Due to the relative timeliness, the chronicles represent a unique source for this eventful epoch.
The chronicles belong to the canon of 24 dynasty histories , of which they form the fourth work, being one of the four early historiographies of China with the records of the historians , the history of the Han dynasty and the history of the late Han dynasty . The chronicles consist of 65 volumes with a total of around 360,000 words and are divided into three books: The book Wei ( 魏志 , Wèi Zhì ) comprises 30 volumes, the book Shu ( 蜀 志 , Shǔ Zhì ) 15 and the book Wu ( 吳志 , Wú Zhì ) 20. Each volume has the form of a biography of an important figure from this time; the length of the tape depends on the importance of the person described.
Chen Shou, originally in the service of the Shu Han, was commissioned by the Jin Dynasty to write the history after their fall . He relied on existing chronicles for the kingdoms of Wei and Wu, while for Shu the chronicles are largely based on data researched by Chen Shou himself. Since the Jin dynasty derived their own legitimation (the mandate of heaven ) from the rulers of the Wei empire, these appear in the chronicles with the imperial titulature, while the Shu rulers are represented as princes and the Wu rulers only with theirs Names without a ruler title can be described.
The chronicles were later modified a number of times. In the 5th century, Pei Songzhi added commentaries; he completed his additions in 429 . Using the documents available to him, he corrected some errors that Chen Shou had made and gave the work, in which some narrative sections were unconnected, a more closed form.
The time of the Three Kingdoms in particular was soon so overgrown by numerous legends, embellishments and heroic stories that the historical core of the events behind it was in part hardly recognizable. The best known was " The Story of the Three Kingdoms ", a popular novel written by Luo Guanzhong from the 14th century, which had a decisive influence on the later image for this epoch. The chronicles, on the other hand, stand out for the sobriety with which they string the facts together, which gives them a certain similarity to the medieval chronicles of Europe. The chronicles are therefore a first-class source for knowledge of the history of events, but they reveal little about social and economic backgrounds or political institutions. The exact degree of poetic freedom, as it was exercised by all historians of the time, can hardly be determined with the chronicles. Just as with European historians of antiquity and the Middle Ages, one can also find generals in Chen Shou who, even in the middle of the battle, give heroic speeches whose historicity or even wording can hardly be proven in this form. In addition, the author obviously had to take the wishes of his clients into consideration and was at the same time influenced by his origin from the Shu Han empire. Overall, the work is considered to be reasonably reliable and offers a good insight into the era.
