Scholars › Historian
Xu Song
Qing scholar who mapped the rivers of Xinjiang during exile at Ili and recovered the Song institutional compendium from the Yongle Encyclopedia
In an archive hall, tall wooden shelves hold scrolls and bound books with small tags, and one person climbs a ladder with their back turned; a long table in front holds an unrolled river map, a bronze lamp and a copper jug, with a city wall seen through the window.
Also known as Xing Bo
- Roles
- Historian
Xu Song, courtesy name Xingbo, had family roots in Shangyu, Zhejiang, but was registered at Daxing near Beijing; he passed the metropolitan examination in 1805 and joined the Hanlin Academy. While serving in the office compiling the Complete Prose of the Tang, he copied out of the Yongle Encyclopedia a mass of Song government records, later edited as the Song huiyao jigao. Impeached in 1812 while education commissioner of Hunan, he was exiled to Ili, travelled widely on both sides of the Tianshan, and from what he saw wrote Xiyu shuidao ji, a study of the waterways of the Western Regions, together with a commentary on the Han history's chapter on the region and a rhapsody on Xinjiang. He also enlarged a frontier gazetteer for the military governor Songyun, which the Daoguang emperor titled Xinjiang shilue. Released late in the Jiaqing reign, he died in 1848; his Tang liangjing chengfang kao reconstructs the wards and streets of Tang Chang'an and Luoyang.
Life and times
Dates 1781 CE–1848 CE