Veritable Records of the Ming
The Ming court's reign-by-reign record, 1368 to 1627, with dated entries on Mongol, Oirat, Jurchen and Western Region embassies.
Full title Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty (13 reigns, 1368-1627), containing the dated entries on Mongol, Oirat, Jurchen and Western Region embassies
明實錄
Ming court historiographers
The Ming Veritable Records were compiled reign by reign from court archives by successive teams of historians between 1399 and 1656. They cover thirteen reigns from 1368 to 1627 and hold the dated entries on missions from the Mongols, Oirats and Jurchen and from Central Asian courts such as Hami, Turfan, Samarkand and Herat, and on Tibet. The card lists a set of 43 user-uploaded PDFs on the Internet Archive, source edition not stated. The atlas does not hold the text of this edition: the corpus lists it but stores no text of it, under its rights rule, so nothing from it was read for this guide.
- How they knew
- Official record
- Who “Tartar” means here
- Not recorded on the card. In Ming court writing the word Dada (Tatar) is the usual Chinese name for the eastern Mongols, set against the Oirats, but the card does not record particular entries.
- Why read it
- It is the dated court record of every Ming contact with the steppe and Central Asia, the source behind the Ming frontier chapters.
- Watch out
- The card says the edition is unidentified and the upload is unverified, so it is an access lead, not a critical edition.
What it says
No quotes from this one yet. Its text is out of reach for now, or the scan could not be read.
The fine print
How we know
compilation Assembled from earlier sources. The author did not observe it directly.
official contemporary court record compiled reign by reign from archives
Research notes
- Edition unidentified; verify against the Academia Sinica 1962-1966 collated edition. Geoff Wade's Southeast Asia extracts (NUS, epress.nus.edu.sg/msl) give an English index for Southeast Asian entries only.
- Unverified user upload; treat as access lead rather than critical edition.
Why it matters
The dated primary record of every Ming contact with Mongol, Oirat, Jurchen and Central Asian polities; the source of the Ming shi frontier chapters.
Places named
Mongolia; Manchuria; Hami; Turfan; Central Asia (Samarkand, Herat); Tibet
Peoples named
Eastern Mongols; Oirats; Jurchen (Jianzhou, Haixi, Yeren); Uriyangkhad; Hami; Timurids; Tibetan polities