Queshi

Abstract

The article examines a little-studied work of medieval literature, Queshi (The Missing History). Written by an otherwise unknown author between the ninth and tenth century AD, this collection of short stories records minor historical events of the last decades of the Tang dynasty (618–907). Scholars have long suspected the book to be incomplete, a hypothesis the first part of this article will explore. The enigmatic fragments of a supplementary scroll, in turn, suggest that some stories were probably deliberately expunged between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. The article will show that these fragments, although unlikely to be original, did gravitate towards the book and were in fact included in it. A close inspection of a note appended to the book will reveal traces of the editing process through which the book went.