Shitong

The Shitong, also translated into English as A Thorough Exploration in Historiography, is one of the first Chinese-language works specifically about the theories of history and a detailed examination of historiography. It is deemed to be "the first comprehensive work on historical criticism in any language." The text was compiled by Liu Zhiji between 708 and 710 during the Tang dynasty. The book discusses the general pattern of the past official dynastic historiography on structure, method, order of arrangement, sequence, caption and commentary back to the pre-Qin era.

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