Chapter 62 1. Name and pen

China's historical records are vast, and the official history alone contains as many as the "Twenty-Four Histories".Interestingly, among the twenty-four histories, the Southern and Northern Dynasties history books are the most: the Southern Dynasties part, there are "Song Shu", "Nan Qi Shu", "Liang Shu", "Chen Shu", "Southern History", and the Northern Dynasties part, there are The records of "Book of Wei", "Book of Northern Qi", "Book of Zhou", "Northern History", and "Sui Shu" take into account both the north and the south, while the records of "Book of Jin" also slightly involve the history of the Northern Dynasties.Calculated in this way, nearly half of the official history is related to the history of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Although this period of time is only a short two hundred years, it is not comparable to any of the great dynasties in the Han, Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing.

From this point of view, if we want to fully understand and study the history of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there is no shortage of literature and materials.Since the above-mentioned historical books are written by many people, and the historical periods and events overlap, there may be discrepancies in the description of the same event.In the process of writing "The Reign of Yuanjia", I needed to learn from various opinions, so I also noticed many things worth talking about. The first two books on the history of the Southern Dynasties—"Song Shu" and "Nan Qi Shu" were written in the Xiaoliang period, and "Wei Shu" in the history of the Northern Dynasties was written by Wei Shou, the official historian of the Northern Qi Dynasty. In other words, these three history books are Made in the Northern and Southern Dynasties.The other six books were all completed in the early Tang Dynasty.

It stands to reason that the earlier the history books are written, the more reliable the reference materials should be. Moreover, the people of the Southern Dynasties wrote the history of the Southern Dynasties, and the people of the Northern Dynasties wrote the history of the Northern Dynasties. It should be said that the reliability will be higher.However, there is a problem that has to be considered. Ancient Chinese historians have always had a "tradition" of "tabooing the venerable". The closer the author is to the historical period, due to the restrictions related to the ruler, they often use Qubi Avoid or rewrite the ruler's disgraceful history.From this point of view, if an event is done by a third party who has no stake in it, its credibility will be higher; Quite historical value.

The "Northern History" and "Southern History" compiled by Li Yanshou, a historian of the Tang Dynasty, were two historical books compiled by collecting historical materials from other northern and southern dynasties.Since it was written by one person, there will naturally be fewer contradictions in the middle.It is a pity that the process of Li Yanshou's examination of aliens was not recorded. This is a great pity. We have no way of knowing how Li Yanshou handled the contradictory historical materials.Sima Guang has a special "examination of differences", from which we can see how the historians of the Song Dynasty studied and analyzed different historical materials. However, the Song Dynasty has been more than 300 years since the end of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Many important Historical materials have begun to disappear; "Tongjian" narrates the history of the Northern and Southern Dynasties in an orderly manner and with wonderful writing, but its credibility is still greatly reduced.

Go back to the early three canonical histories. "Book of Song" and "Book of Southern Qi" have chapters dedicated to the history of the Northern Dynasties or the history of the Northern Wei Dynasty, namely "Biography of Suolu" ("Book of Song") and "Biography of Weilu" ("Book of Southern Qi"), which mainly describe the history of the Northern Wei Dynasty. The situation of the emperor and the exchanges and wars between the northern and southern dynasties; similarly, there is also a chapter in the "Book of Wei" dedicated to the history of the Southern Dynasties, namely "Biography of Daoyi", which covers the time from the Southern Song Dynasty to the Southern Dynasty Liang Jianwen Emperor. .

The narration of the "Book of Wei" is very detailed, starting from the distant ancestors of the Tuoba family, but most of them are untestable and are just symbols.Before Tuobagui, Emperor Daowu, the names of the monarchs were mostly two or three characters, or even longer. From Tuobagui, the monarchs were basically single characters, and there were very few double characters, such as Emperor Xiaozhuang Yuan Ziyou.My point of view is that the names of the monarchs before Tuobagui were transliterated from Chinese in Xianbei, while the names of the monarchs after Tuobagui are mostly Chinese names that came up later, so most of them are single characters.The Xianbei names of these monarchs were not preserved in the "Book of Wei", but they were preserved in the "Book of Songs" and other historical records of the Southern Dynasties.

Most of the emperors of the Northern Wei Dynasty described in "Songshu Suolu Biography" have both names and characters, and these characters are very strange, unlike the double characters that ordinary Han people often have, but more like a meaningless pronunciation.In fact, these characters are the nicknames of these emperors, or in other words, they are the Chinese transliteration of Xianbei. Let's start with Tuobagui, Emperor Daowu. In the Book of Songs, his name is Kai (the sound is close to Gui), and the character is Shegui, while in the Book of Southern Qi, it is Shegui, which has the same pronunciation and different characters.From this, it can be inferred that Tuoba Gui's name "Gui" is probably derived from his Xianbei name, and his name is likely to have a sound like "skwei".Tuoba Si, emperor of the Ming and Yuan Dynasties, had the word Mumo in the "Book of Songs". This name has the same pronunciation as Qifu Mumo, the last monarch of the Western Qin Dynasty. This proves again that this word is the name of the Xianbei language.

From this, we can sort out the Chinese names and Xianbei names of the emperors of the Northern Wei Dynasty. For example, Tuoba Tao's well-known nickname "Buddha" is actually the pronunciation of his Xianbei name. Posthumous name Chinese name Xianbei name Daowu Emperor Gui Shegui Mu Mo Taiwu Emperor Tao Buddha Beaver Emperor Jingmu Huang is naive Emperor Wencheng Jun Wulei (Zhiqin) Emperor Xianwen Hongdi Douyin ("Book of Song")/Wan Min ("Book of Southern Qi") The following Emperor Xiaowen Yuan Hong entered the Southern Qi period, and no words have been handed down.

There are also differences in the origins of Wei and Song, and the history books of the North and the South.For example, the Tuoba family in the Northern Wei Dynasty, "Wei Shu" said that they were Xianbei people from the Great Xianbei Mountain, while "Song Shu" and "Nan Qi Shu" said it was a kind of Xiongnu, and "Song Shu" more specifically pointed out that it was a general of the Han Dynasty The descendants of Li Ling who surrendered to the Huns.From a linguistic point of view, the Xianbei language of the Tuoba clan is quite different from the Xiongnu language or other Hu languages, but it is close to other branches of Xianbei, such as the examples of the names of Tuoba Si and Qifu Mumo.It seems that the Tuoba clan is a descendant of the Huns, which seems a little unbearable.

Regarding the family background of Emperor Liu Yu of the Southern Dynasties, there are also discrepancies: "Book of Songs" says that he is a descendant of Liu Jiao, and the age is too far away to be studied. "Wei Shu"'s "I don't know where it came from before" is more credible. Tuoba Gui's grandfather, Tuoba Shiyiqian, was Emperor Zhaocheng in "Book of Wei". "Wei Shu Biography of Zhaocheng's descendants" makes it very clear that Tuoba Shiyiqian died at the hands of his son Shijun when Fu Jian conquered the dynasty.As for "Songshu Suolu Biography", it is said that Tuoba Shiyiqian was "destroyed by Fu Jian, returned to Chang'an, and then returned to the north".In other words, Tuoba Shiyiqian actually surrendered to the former Qin Dynasty, and was later repatriated because of his good performance, and died in Mobei.This narrative is circumstantially evidenced by "Book of Jin · Fu Jian Zai Ji", and "Book of Wei" here is a quip.

Regarding the ending of Tuobagui, there are also two theories, which come from "Wei Shu·Qinghe King Biography" and "Song Shu·Suolu Biography", respectively.According to "The Legend of Suolu", Tuobagui had a violent temperament in his later years, and a wizard predicted that Tuobagui would suffer disaster. Only by "killing Qinghe and killing thousands of people" can the disaster be avoided.Believing this prophecy, Tuoba Gui ordered the massacre of the common people in Qinghe County, up to 10,000 people, which can be described as extremely cruel.Tuobagui's son Qinghe King Tuobashao had an affair with his concubine Wanwan, and Tuobagui was aware of it.Tuoba Shao was afraid, so he conspired with ten thousand people. When ten thousand people were serving Tuoba Gui alone, Tuoba Shao sneaked into the palace and killed Tuoba Gui.Before he died, Tuoba Gui came to his senses and said, "It turns out that 'Qinghe' and 'Ten Thousand People' were referring to you two!" In contrast, the statements in "Book of Wei" and "Tongjian" are indeed doubtful, because it is mentioned that Tuoba Shao, king of Qinghe, killed Tuoba Gui in order to save his biological mother He Shi, but killing Tuoba Gui It doesn't directly solve the problem. If it's really adultery, it's easier to understand.My guess is that in order to cover up Tuoba Gui's massacre, "Wei Shu" may also use a quiz here.Of course, it is difficult for us to know the details of whether Tuobagui really slaughtered Qinghe County, or killed innocent people to make up the number.