ARI Working Paper Series

Much use has been made of Chinese texts in re/constructing the history of Champa. However, the scholars who have done such work have generally not had access to the text translated in this paper –the account of Champa contained in the Song Hui-yao ji-gao ( 宋會 要 輯稿 ), or “Draft of the Collected Statutes of the Song Dynasty”. The hui-yao were institutional histories of the successive regimes and the Song hui-yao is that for the Song dynasty. The original work –the Song hui-yao in 2,200 juan– was compiled during the Northern and Southern Song dynasties in a process which extended from the early 11 th century until the middle of the 13 th century. By the early 15 th century, almost half the work had been lost, but the extant sections were included in the huge (22,877 juan) encyclopaedia produced by the Yong-le emperor—the Yong-le da-dian ( 永樂大典 ), completed in 1408. In 1809, the Qing scholar Xu Song was appointed as a reviser for the compilation of the Quan Tang-wen ( 全唐文 ), a compendium of writing from the Tang (618-907) dynasty. During the process of compiling this work, Xu Song had access to the Yong-le da-dian and began assembling the references contained in that work taken from the Song hui-yao. He died before he could re-arrange these in any coordinated way. That version was lithographed by the Peiping National Library in 1935-36. Another part of Xu’s compilation was published in 1957 by the Zhong-hua shu-ju in Beijing under the title Song hui-yao ji-gao bu-bian ( 宋會 要 輯稿 補編 ) in eight volumes. It is from the 1957 volumes that the text which is here translated is taken.

The account of Champa contained within the Song hui-yao ji-gao is quite similar in its structure to the country accounts contained within the various standard Chinese dynastic histories. It begins with a geographical positioning of the place, a “natural history” section detailing its products, and an “ethnographic” account of the polity, before beginning a chronological account of the relations between the Song and “the country of Champa”. This chronological account extends from the 950s, when the Song founder Zhao Kuang-yin (later known as Song Tai-zu) was engaged in a process of bringing the various Ten Kingdoms to submission, until 1199, when the Mongols were beginning their southward sweep which would eventually bring an end to the Song dynasty.

This text is being made available in draft translation for the first time. Analysis of the contents of this text is provided in my paper “The ‘Account of Champa’ in the Song hui-yao ji-gao ( 宋會 要 輯稿 )”, which is included in Bruce Lockhart and Tran Ky-phu’o’ng (eds.), New Scholarship on Champa (forthcoming).