 A fragment of the biography of Bu Zhi from the Records of the Three Kingdoms, part of the Dunhuang manuscripts | |
| Author | Chen Shou |
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| Original title | 三國志 |
| Language | Classical Chinese |
Publication date | 280s or 290s |
| Publication place | China |
| Records of the Three Kingdoms | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 三國志 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 三国志 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Vietnamese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Vietnamese | Tam quốc chí | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hán-Nôm | 三國志 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Korean name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hangul | 삼국지 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hanja | 三國志 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Japanese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kyūjitai | 三國志 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Shinjitai | 三国志 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Records of the Three Kingdoms is a Chinese official history written by Chen Shou in the late 3rd century CE, covering the end of the Han dynasty (c. 184 – 220 CE) and the subsequent Three Kingdoms period (220–280 CE). It is regarded as to be the authoritative source text for these periods. Compiled following the reunification of China under the Jin dynasty (266–420), the work chronicles the political, social, and military events within rival states Cao Wei, Shu Han and Eastern Wu into a single text organized by individual biography.
The Records are the primary source of information for the 14th-century historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, considered to be one of the four classic novels emblematic of written vernacular Chinese.
While large subsections of the work have been selected and translated into English, the entire corpus has yet to receive an unabridged English translation.