Issue 133 (2017)

V. Rubel, Dr. habil. (History), Prof.

Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/1728-2640.2017.133.2.13

"THE STANDARD HISTORIES" OF MONGOLIAN SUPREMACY ERA IN CHINA AS A PHENOMENON OF CLASSIC CHINESE HISTORICAL WRITING

During the reign of China's Mongolian Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) court historians wrote three "Standard Histories" (zhengshi) – "History of Liao" (Liaoshi), dedicated to the Khitan Liao Empire (907-1125) , "History of Jin" (Jinshi), dedicated to the Jurchen Jin Empire (1115-1234), and the largest of all legitimate zhengshi "History of Song" (Songshi), dedicated to the Chinese Song empire (960-1279). Despite the differences in size of zhengshi (Liaoshi consists of more than 300 thousand characters, the text of Jinshi has got over 900 thousand characters and the greatest of "Standard stories" Songshi has got a volume of about 4 million characters), they are all written of the same time in the reign of the last Yuan emperor Toghon Temür (Yuan Shun-di: 1333-1368), and chief curators of the project managers were the Yuan heads of government Toqto (1314-1356 ) and Alutu (?), who were not ethnic Han Chinese and therefore their Chinese language was poor. That provided the Chinese chroniclers, who immediately wrote these "Standard stories", a unique freedom from the authorities, which objectively minimized possibilities of censorship pressure on authors. It especially concerns Songshi that captures atrocities during the Mongol conquest of China in detail, sympathetically describes anti-Mongolian resistance heroes, who died but did not accept foreign rule. This suggests that "History of Song" is almost unique in the history of the official Chinese historiography work, pending the writing of which the maximum creative freedom, minimal supervision and censorship were given to the writers because the history was not written as ordered by the authorities, but as they understood the historical process themselves.

However, implicitly the fact of simultaneous writing of the history of the Chinese empire Song and two more legitimately recognized "Standard stories" of Khitan Liao State and Jurchen Jin State as empires fully worth "perpetuation" in some zhengshi was to emphasize the legitimacy of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, which reigned in "Heaven" at the moment of writing of those zhengshi and by analogy with the emperors Liao and Jin dynasties in such way supported their right of legal status of imperial rulers as the "Sons of Heaven". Therefore , the simultaneous writing in the time of Yuan of three zhengshi should not only have fixed the official history of previous dynasties, what was considered in traditional China to be the responsibility of each subsequent dynasty, but it also should have emphasized the right to possess Mongolian khans of China as the legitimate emperors, as the historical precedent of the Khitan and Jurchen dynasties justified simple truth: the legitimate "Sons of Heaven" in China may be not only the Chinese dynasties, but dynasty of different ethnic origin (in this case – the Mongol Yuan Khans, Descent from Genghis Khan).

Key words: China, Historical writing, Standard Histories, Mongolian supremacy, Liáo shǐ, Jīn shǐ, Sòng shǐ.