Report that Xia imprisoned its ruler; edict to attack
The Song shi basic annals enter under a gengyin day in the seventh lunar month of Yuanfeng 4 (AD 1081) a report from the officials guarding the western frontier that the Xia people had imprisoned their ruler Bingchang (秉常), followed by an edict ordering the Shaanxi (陝西) and Hedong (河東) circuits to attack them.
What this does and does not establish
The Song shi is a Yuan-compiled (1343-45) official history drawing on Song court records; the English is an AI working translation. The entry records when the frontier officials' statement reached the court and the court's response; the imprisonment may have happened earlier, and the annals give it only as the officials' statement. Other chapters were not inspected.
- Read through an AI working translation.
- Region
- East Asia
- Theme
- Politics and institutions
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- 元豐 4 (元豐四年 as numbered by the annals), lunar month 7
- How we use it
- Year assigned from the lunar month under which the annals enter the item; the sexagenary day was not converted to a Julian day.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
Lunar month 7 of 元豐 4 = Julian 1081-08-08 to 1081-09-05, per Academia Sinica 兩千年中西曆轉換 year table(s) 元豐4.html (sha256 dd96892fb091…); the whole month lies in AD 1081.
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
Song shi (History of Song), basic annals
Toghto (脫脫) et al., Yuan court historiographers
The credit or link shown here was corrected after an audit of the retained source.
Quoted text (Classical Chinese)
庚寅，西邊守臣言夏人囚其主秉常，詔陝西、河東路討之。AI working translation into English; not official or authoritative
On the gengyin day, the officials guarding the western frontier stated that the Xia people had imprisoned their ruler Bingchang; an edict ordered the Shaanxi and Hedong circuits to attack them.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Source: Song shi, juan 16, zh.wikisource transcription (revision 2285107). English renderings are AI working translations, not published translations.
Exact source version
74904e5fb3ba910f7f65b05914201bbfc63146e9e283760b1a0850dc0b73b0a1Checks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-04. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
No correction has been made to this record’s statement or limits.
Revision s1p_1081_song_1
Exact revision fingerprint
95b5a4c9f3bfaecc62f98674728c513794f5cd2a474f497d40cee1dd59987636