New Tang Dynasty Books
The New Tang Dynasty Book, co-authored by Ouyang Xiu, Song Qi, Fan Zhen, Lu Xiaqing, etc., is a chronicle of the history of the Tang Dynasty. The New Tang Dynasty has a total of 225 volumes, including 10 volumes, 50 chronicles, 15 tables, and 150 biographies. During the Five Dynasties period, there was a Tang Book (that is, the later Old Tang Book) compiled, but Song Renzong thought that the Tang Book was shallow and ugly, and issued an edict to rebuild it. Ouyang Xiu and Song Qi were involved in the pre-events, and the Tang literature and Tang history works on which the new Tang Dynasty books were based were carefully selected, deleting the grotesque content of the old history and cutting seven-tenths of the old history, and its content quality was far better and more refined than the old Tang books. The New Tang Dynasty Book attaches great importance to the Chronicles, adding the Chronicles of the Honor Guard, the Election Chronicles, and the Chronicles of the Soldiers, and the original astronomical chronicles and chronicles are more than three times as long as the Old Tang Dynasty. The New Tang Dynasty also restored the table, and set up the prime minister's table, Fangzhen table, clan lineage table, and prime minister's lineage table. The Qing Dynasty scholar Wang Mingsheng said in the discussion of the 17th History: "The best chronicles and tables of the new book" are allowed to be commented.
The New Tang Dynasty book was revised for a total of 17 years, in the fourth year of Qingli in the Northern Song Dynasty (1044), Song Qi, the secretary of the Ministry of Industry, presided over the revision of the "Liebiography", and in the first year of He (1054), Ouyang Xiu continued to edit the book, chronicles, and tables. The two hadn't seen each other in seven years. The draft was first completed and submitted to Song Renzong for review. After Renzong read it, he found that this historical book was written by two people, and the style and style were different, so he asked Ouyang Xiu to delete and modify them into one. Ouyang Xiu refused to revise it at this time, he said: "Song Gong is my predecessor, and people see it differently, how can it be as expected?" "In the end, I only proofread it once, and nothing was easy.
After the completion of the New Tang Dynasty Book, the Old Tang Book was no longer circulated until the Ming Dynasty became popular again. According to the Qing Dynasty scholar Zhao Yi's twenty-two historical records: "Looking at the historical events of the Tang Dynasty contained in the New Tang Dynasty calligraphy and literary records, there are hundreds of dozens of kinds, all of which have never been tasted when the five dynasties revised the Tang Dynasty. For reference, it is self-sufficient. and the scholars of the early Song Dynasty, each according to what they saw and heard, did not have a different account. For example, the Old Tang Dynasty Books have nearly 300,000 words, and the New Tang Dynasty Books have only 90,000 words left. The old Tang Dynasty's extremely tragic and touching Feng Changqing biography and Gao Xianzhi's biography were deleted in the New Tang Dynasty, and there were no Buddhist deeds such as Xuanzang. Later generations criticized Ouyang for "focusing on words and ignoring research" (modern scholar Wang Xinfu). Therefore, it cannot replace the old Tang book. Due to the many problems in the New Tang Dynasty Book, shortly after its promulgation, Wu Zhen wrote the New Tang Dynasty Book to correct errors, citing a total of 460 errors in the book. While finding out the mistakes of the New Tang Dynasty Book, he also believed that the writers "did not know the essentials of publication and revision, and each favored his own interests".
Sources of the above:Wikisource