NOTES ON THE SOURCES OF DE MAILLA
95
His own writings may, however, have suffered just this fate, for the section of Ming-ch'ao chi-shih pen-mo dealing with the Tung-lin party is identical with Chiang P'ing-chieh's10 Tung-lin shih-mo✶✶✶✶. Hsieh Kuo-chen explains this as due to the fact that historians of the late Ming period freely exchanged their materials and copied each other, so that portions of a complete work were sometimes published by more than one man and under different titles.
2. Chu Lin14 (T, Ch'ing-yen†) was a native of Shang-yü, Chekiang,11 who rose to be prefect of Nan-yang Honan, in 1690.12 The Ming-chi chi-lüeh •*#* (based on the Huang Ming t'ung-chi✯ of Ch'en Chien [1497-1567]) which he compiled, was published in 1696 in 16 chüan.13 As Wolfgang Franke writes, this is found in various editions, one of them being the T'ung-chien Ming-chi ch'üan-tsai ih # 124,4 which is cited as one of de Mailla's sources. The preface, dated 1696, was written by Chang Ying15 (minister of ceremonies in 1692, who served as grand secretary in 1699-1701),16 who is credited by the note with the publication of T'ong-kien-ming-ki-tsuen-tsai.
The Ming-chi chi-lüeh had an interesting history after de Mailla's time. In 1771 the ministry of ceremonies entertained a request from the Korean court for the "correction" of that portion of the Chi-lüeh pertaining to the palace revolution of 1623.17 But a search of the capital at this time revealed not a single copy for sale. The Board concluded that it was no longer circulating in China, and its recommendation that “the king be ordered to search for them18 in his own country and [if found] prohibit and burn them in order to stop doubts" received imperial approval. Four years later the sending of a copy of the Chi-lüch to Peking to be burned occasioned a special imperial edict explaining why suppression was unnecessary, in which no mention was made of the objection raised by Korea.19
3. It is true that Chung Hsing (T, Po-ching (k), a native of Ching-ling, Hukuang, who lived from 1574 to 1625, is generally credited with writing the first eight of the twelve chüan Ming-chi pien-nien %, which covered the years 1368-1627.19 But this is obviously out of the question as he died two years before the terminal date. Wolfgang Franke20 suggests that Chung Hsing may have left the work unfinished, or that, as he was primarily a poet, his name may have been "used after his death by editors and