Abstract: Table of Prime Minister of the New Book of the Tang Dynasty, which records the appointment,
promotion and unmaking of prime ministers in the Tang dynasty, is an important historical material in
investigating related issues. However, we can find, in this table, tremendous confusions in the record of years,
historical personages’ name and official transfer, in the basis of the absence of a rigorous stylistic rule, after
the comparison between this table and the biographic sketches of emperors of the New Book of the Tang
Dynasty. The reason lead to this phenomenon is concerned with the actual writer of this table, the only one
among four tables of the New Book of the Tang Dynasty that confuses the academic circle for centuries. Yet
we can affirm that it is Mei-yaochen who compiled this table, via analyzing the table and the signified of the
record “方镇百官表” in Notes after withdrawing through Chun-ming Gate after having an audience with the
emperor. And as time for the compiling work is insufficient, Mei only completed the preparatory work, except
for the subsequent perfection procedure, so the table has a lot of stylistic-rule defects. Therefore, most of the
achievements of worthies’ textual research are not corruptions that generated during the spread of the New
Book of the Tang Dynasty. This is the main practical significance of this paper.

Key words: Table of Prime Minister in New Book of the Tang Dynasty, Writer, Stylistic rule, Emendation.