Records of the Three Kingdoms

Records of the Three Kingdoms
A fragment of the biography of Bu Zhi from the Records of the Three Kingdoms, part of the Dunhuang manuscripts
AuthorChen Shou
Original title三國志
LanguageClassical Chinese
Publication date
280s or 290s
Publication placeChina
Records of the Three Kingdoms
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese三國
Simplified Chinese三国
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinSānguó zhì
Bopomofoㄙㄢ ㄍㄨㄛˊ ㄓˋ
Wade–GilesSan1-kuo2 Chih4
IPA[sán kwǒ ʈʂɨ̂]
Yue: Cantonese
Yale RomanizationSāam gwok ji
JyutpingSaam1 gwok3 zi3
Southern Min
Hokkien POJSam-kok-chì
Tâi-lôSam-kok-tsì
Vietnamese name
VietnameseTam quốc chí
Hán-Nôm三國志
Korean name
Hangul삼국지
Hanja三國志
Transcriptions
Revised RomanizationSamgukji
Japanese name
Kyūjitai三國志
Shinjitai三国志
Transcriptions
RomanizationSangokushi

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.