Once The Bamboo Annals had entered circulation, it immediately attracted the attention of historians, especially since important elements of its contents were at variance to the received versions in formal histories of the time; for example, 'Shun banished Yao at Pingyang' (cited by Liu Zhiji in his Shitong [The generality of history]) and 'Yi usurped Qi's role, and thus Qi killed him', 'Taixi killed Yiyin', and 'King Wen killed Jili' (all cited in 'Shu Xi zhuan' [The biography of Shu Xi] of the Jinshu [The official book of the Jin dynasty] by Fang Xuanling of the Tang dynasty). These records have been accorded the appellations 'weird', 'greatly at variance', and 'perverse satire', and Liu Zhiji of the Tang dynasty even went so far as to opine that 'all wording pertaining to these several matters is different to the versions in orthodox canonic writings. The book from which they derive has only been issued recently, and those perspicacious of the world mostly do not believe them' (the essay 'Yigu' [Doubting the ancient] in Shitong). These 'weird' records are not only mostly not found in the 'current' redaction of The Bamboo Annals but are also not seen in the modern versions of the Jinshu and Shitong now in circulation.

The weirdest of all the records is probably the sentence: 'King Wen killed Jili'. 'King Wen' is King Wen of Zhou; 'Jili' is King Wen's father. As we are all aware, the chapter 'Wucheng' (Successful completion of the war) of the Shangshu (Book of documents) recounts the 'spears floating in blood' of the campaign King Wu mounted against Zhou. For this reason, Mencius indicates: 'If the Shangshu is trusted unthinkingly, then this is inferior to a situation where there is no Shangshu' ('Jinxin xia' [With the entire mind, part two] of The Mencius). If Mencius, because he held such an adulatory regard for King Wu of Zhou, looked on the Shangshu as only containing 'two or three bamboo writing slips worthy of trust', then other historians, on reading that King Wen of Zhou killed his own father, would probably have been even more repelled. If this record is not to be expunged entirely, then a means must be found to alter it.

No wonder, then, that the record in the 'current' version of The Bamboo Annals indicates that 'Wending killed Jili' ('Wending' was the third last ruler of the Yin dynasty and the grandfather of the Shang dynasty ruler Zhou). The 'current' version of The Bamboo Annals certainly did not create this correction, for as at least as early as the Northern Song dynasty, the Jinshu had already stated that 'Wending killed Jili'. The most authoritative contemporary version of the Shitong (that is, the 2009 Shanghai guji chubanshe edition) is also identical in this respect. Although there is no definite evidence, my suspicion falls on a supplementary edition employed by Xun Xu in his editorial process as the origin of this correction, and this is only one of a series of changes that he made. These corrections perhaps furnished the rationale behind the structure by which the sections recording Jin and Wei in the 'current' redaction of The Bamboo Annals employed the chronology of the reigns of the Zhou rulers.