Records of the grand historian Han dynasty I

346 Pages·1993·1.36 MB·english

by  Watson

Table of Contents

Title Page
Introduction
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE ON THE TEXT

SHI JI 5: THE BASIC ANNALS OF QIN

SHI JI 6: THE BASIC ANNALS OF THE FIRST EMPEROR OF THE QIN

SHI JI 15: REFLECTIONS ON THE RISE OF THE QIN

SHI JI 68: THE BIOGRAPHY OF LORD SHANG

SHI JI 71: THE BIOGRAPHIES OF SHULI ZI AND GAN MOU
SHULI ZI
GAN MOU
GAN LUO

SHI JI 72: THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE MARQUIS OF RANG

SHI JI 73: THE BIOGRAPHIES OF BAI QI AND WANG JIAN
BAI QI
WANG JIAN

SHI JI 79: THE BIOGRAPHIES OF FAN JU AND CAI ZE
CAI ZE

SHI JI 85: THE BIOGRAPHY OF LÜ BUWEI

SHI JI 86: THE BIOGRAPHIES OF THE ASSASSIN-RETAINERS (EXCERPT)

SHI JI 87: THE BIOGRAPHY OF LI SI

SHI JI 88: THE BIOGRAPHY OF MENG TIAN

SHI JI 126: THE BIOGRAPHIES OF WITS AND HUMORISTS (EXCERPT)
ACTOR ZHAN

Appendix One - SHI JI 48: THE HEREDITARY HOUSE OF CHEN SHE
Appendix Two - SIMA QIAN’S LETTER TO REN AN
INDEX
Copyright Page
INTRODUCTION
The Chinese, with their veneration of ancestors and reverence for the rites
and practices of the past, have from early times been indefatigable keepers
of historical records. It is not surprising, therefore, that works of history
should occupy a place of particular importance in their literature. The text
from which the chapters translated here are drawn, the Shi ji, Records of
the Grand Historian — or Historical Records, as the title is sometimes
translated — is in fact one of the most widely read and influential of all
works of early Chinese literature, and its author, Sima Qian (145?–89? BC),
commands among readers of Chinese a respect and admiration comparable
to that accorded Herodotus or Thucydides in the Western tradition.
The Shi Ji was planned, and perhaps written in part, by Sima Qian’s
father, Sima Tan (d. 110 BC), an official who held the title of Taishi, or
Grand Historian, at the court of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty but whose
actual duties pertained more to astronomy and the regulation of the
calendar. Sima Qian succeeded to his father’s post and title and, obedient to
his father’s dying request, set about bringing the proposed work of history
to completion. After some seven years of labor, however, his efforts were
unexpectedly interrupted by a tragic turn of events.
China at this time was frequently troubled by raids from the Xiongnu, a
nomadic people living in the desert north of China. Emperor Wu,
determined to put an end to the incursions, repeatedly dispatched large
military forces to the desert region in an attempt to capture the Xiongnu
ruler, known by the title of Shanyu, or at least force him to acknowledge
fealty to the Han. During one such expedition in 99 BC, a young military
commander named Li Ling led a force of several thousand men in a daring
raid deep into enemy territory, but after desperate fighting he was finally
forced to surrender. Emperor Wu, who expected his military leaders to die
in battle, was enraged when he learned of the surrender, and the other
court officials united in condemnation of Li’s action. Only Sima Qian, who
had known and admired Li Ling in the past, spoke out in his defense. For
such temerity he was charged with attempting to deceive the ruler and
handed over to the law officials for investigation, a process that involved
imprisonment and torture. Eventually he was sentenced to undergo the
penalty of castration. Customarily, a man of honor would commit suicide
before submitting to such disgrace. But, as Qian explains in a letter to a
friend translated in appendix 2 of this volume, he chose to suffer the shame
of mutilation in order that he might finish the writing of his history. This
price of completion, ghastly as it was, has assured him a place of honor
among the world’s great historians.
The Shi ji is monumental in scope and aim, running to 130 chapters and
covering the entire known history of the Chinese people from its beginnings
down to the time of the historian, a period of well over two thousand years.
In addition, it includes chapters describing the lands and peoples of the
areas of central Asia, Korea, and Vietnam that border China. It is thus in
effect a history of the entire world as known to the Chinese of this early
period.
To impose order on this vast array of material, Sima Qian devised an
entirely new historiographical form. He divided his history into five large
sections, arranging his material by subject and suggesting by the section in
which he placed it something of its importance and relative reliability. His
work opens with twelve chapters entitled benji, or “Basic Annals,” which
deal with the early dynasties of Chinese history or, in the case of the Han
dynasty, with the reigns of individual rulers. Next come ten “Chronological
Tables” that list in graph form the important events of the past with their
dates. These are followed by eight “Treatises” on such subjects as rites,
music, astronomy, religious affairs, water control, and economics. Thirty
chapters entitled “Hereditary Houses” come next, dealing for the most part
with the histories of the various feudal states of ancient China. The work
concludes with seventy chapters entitled liezhuan, “Biographies” or
“Accounts” devoted to the lives of famous personages or to the foreign lands
with which China had contact.
These five large divisions of the history support and supplement one
another in various ways, the different chapters pertaining to a single event
or personage often varying subtly in treatment and angle of approach. Thus,
although there is a certain degree of cross-referencing, one must take care
to read all pertinent sections of the work in order to gain a full picture of
any given subject. This type of formal arrangement, known as the “annal
and biography form,” was adopted in later dynastic histories compiled
under official auspices, and it exercised a great influence on the
development of Korean and Japanese historiography.
In two earlier volumes of translations from the Shi ji published in 1961
and reissued in slightly revised form in 1993, I presented material dealing
with the founding and early years of the Han, the dynasty under which the
historian lived and worked. In the present volume I have moved backward in
time somewhat to focus on the chapters of Sima Qian’s work that relate to
the preceding Qin, or Ch’in, dynasty, founded in 221 BC when the king of
the state of Qin brought all of China under his rule and assumed the title of
First Emperor of the Qin. The First Emperor, long regarded as one of the
most influential and noteworthy of all Chinese rulers, has in recent years
become the center of particular interest because of the spectacular life-size
terracotta figures of Qin period warriors that were discovered in
excavations near his mausoleum in 1974.
Sima Qian began his history with a chapter entitled “Basic Annals of the
Five Emperors,” which describes five legendary sages who were said to
have ruled the nation in the dawn of Chinese history. He followed this with
three chapters dealing respectively with the Xia, Shang (or Yin), and Zhou
dynasties, the Three Dynasties of antiquity that ruled China in succession in
the early historical period. Sima Qian’s account of the Xia and Shang
dynasties need not concern us here, but it should be noted that much of
what he tells us about the early centuries of the Zhou dynasty has been
confirmed or supplemented in recent years through the results of
archaeological research. Thus from the late years of the Shang, and
certainly from the Zhou on, we are on firm historical ground, though dates
in this early period are uncertain.
The Zhou, which was probably founded around 1045 BC, appears to have
exercised fairly effective control over a wide area of northern China during
the early years of its rule. But later, particularly after its capital was moved
east to Luoyang in 770 BC, its power rapidly waned, and China was
thereafter ruled by a number of feudal states that acknowledged nominal
fealty to the Zhou king but in fact behaved as virtually independent political
units.
The Zhou royal house, despite its political weakness, continued in
existence until its overthrow by the state of Qin in 256 BC. Sima Qian might
therefore have begun his account of the Qin dynasty at that point and still
preserved chronological continuity in his narrative. But, as he makes clear
in his remarks on Qin history, he was intensely interested in origins, in the
history of a state or ruling family not only in its period of greatest glory but
in the long centuries that preceded that era of flowering, for in the actions
of those earlier years, he believed, lay the key to an understanding of its
later successes or failures. He therefore began his account of the Qin
dynasty with a “Basic Annals of Qin” chapter that in chronological terms
runs parallel to his account of the Zhou dynasty and traces the beginnings
of the Qin ruling family back to the age of the mythic Five Emperors. The
chapter then describes the history of the state of Qin from its start as a tiny
feudal domain on the far northwestern border of the Chinese cultural
sphere, down through its subsequent stages of growth until the moment
when, having gradually amassed power over the centuries, it was able to
swallow up its rivals and unite China under a single rule.
Sima Qian then added a second chapter in annals form in order to present
a greatly expanded account of the momentous reign of the First Emperor,
and that of his successor, the Second Emperor, when the dynasty was
swiftly toppled by the rebellion that brought the Han dynasty to power. The
events in the close of this chapter, therefore, dovetail with those described
in the opening pages of my earlier volumes on the Han.
Sima Qian’s dramatic portrait of the First Emperor in this chapter is one
of the highlights of his history, skillfully juxtaposing examples of the
grandiose rhetoric employed by the monarch to celebrate his achievements
with grim accounts of the cruelty, folly, and oppression of the populace for
which he has been remembered in later ages. But Sima Qian’s preceding
chapter, in part because of the scanty sources available to him, is less
colorful and at times consists of little more than a dry recital of military