《群書治要》乃唐人魏徵等奉唐太宗之命而編，其用意在於“昭德塞違，勸善懲惡”。惟歷代典籍眾多，遂於群籍之中，擇其“務乎政術”者，“以備勸戒，爰自六經，訖乎諸子，上始五帝，下盡晉年，凡爲五袠，合五十卷，本求治要，故以治要爲名”。此書引用經、史、子三部之典籍共６５ 種。其中卷一一至卷三〇爲史部，引用史部典籍六種，包括《史記》一卷半、《吳越春秋》半卷、《漢書》八卷、《後漢書》四卷、《三國志》四卷、《晉書》兩卷。其中《漢書》八卷僅存六卷，有兩卷在《治要》佚文之列也。《史記》載録三千年史事之於一事，上起黄帝，下訖漢武，共五十二萬六千五百字。《漢書》載西漢二百年史事，成八十萬字。然在《治要》之中，僅載《史記》一卷半，而《漢書》有八卷之多，比例懸殊，發人深思。本篇之撰，以《治要》所載《史記》爲根據，討論其去取《史記》之原則與精神，並見其如何體現《治要》“昭德塞違，勸善懲惡”之主旨。

Qunshu zhiyao (The Governing Principles of Ancient China), compiled by Wei Zheng and others under the order of Emperor Taizong of the Tang dynastyaimed to exhort virtues and punish vice. Qunshu zhiyao was only able to include those that were helpful to the regime. The texts as admonitions to later generations included in Qunshu zhiyao were the Confucius classics or written by ancient sages, covering the period from the Five Emperors to the Jin dynasty. “Zhiyao”in its title emphasizes the purpose of this book. Among the sixty-five classics selected into Qunshu zhiyao, Volume Eleven to Thirty are records of history, including six books of history：one and a half volumes of Shiji (Record of the Grand Historian), half of a volume of Wu-Yue Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue), eight volumes of Hanshu (Book of Han), four volumes of Houhanshu (Book of the Later Han), four volumes of Sanguo zhi (Records of the Three Kingdoms)and two volumes of Jinshu (Book of Jin). Two out of the six surviving volumes of the eight-volume Hanshu were among the lost volumes of Qunshu zhiyao. Shiji, a record of five hundred and twenty-six thousand five hundred words, covers three thousand years of history from the Yellow Emperor to Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, while the eight-hundred-thousand-word Hanshu only records the history of two hundred years of the Western Han dynasty. The conspicuous contrast between the quantities of texts of Shiji and Hanshu selected into Qunshu zhiyao is the focus of this paper, which discusses Qunshu zhiyao’s principles and spirit in including and excluding the volumes of Shiji and how they demonstrate the Qunshu zhiyao’s aims to exhort virtues and punish vice.