Pei Songzhi

Also known as Zi Shiqi

Pei Songzhi, courtesy name Shiqi, came from Wenxi in Hedong; by eight he knew the Analects and the Book of Songs, and at twenty he became a palace guard officer. Under the late Eastern Jin he served as magistrate of Guzhang in Wuxing and in the Ministry of Rites, and in 416 he followed Liu Yu's northern campaign to Luoyang as a registrar. Under the Song he became an erudite of the national academy and in 426 toured Xiang province as an imperial envoy. Emperor Wen commissioned him to annotate Chen Shou's Records of the Three Kingdoms; he collected biographies and other records to fill gaps, set out conflicting versions side by side and judged between them, and presented the work in 429. He later governed Yongjia and ended his career as a palace counsellor, dying in 451 at seventy-nine. His son Pei Yin wrote the Shiji jijie commentary on the Records of the Grand Historian, and his great-grandson Pei Ziye wrote the Song lue.