Author
Sima Qian (145–c. 86 BC)
China’s first general history in biographical ...
China’s first general history in biographical annals, written by Sima Qian: over 520,000 characters in 130 chapters, recording three thousand years from the Yellow Emperor to Emperor Wu of Han. Its very birth is a tragic epic: in the second year of Tianhan, Sima Qian defended the general Li Ling, enraged Emperor Wu, was imprisoned, and suffered castration — the most humiliating punishment falling on a historian. In his “Letter to Ren An” he bared his heart: “a man has but one death; it may be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a goose feather.” Enduring shame and disgrace for ten years, he completed his father’s dying command and his own swan song. Lu Xun called it “the last song of the historians, a Li Sao without rhyme” — half the founding of historiography, half the tragic passion of literature. The biographical annals the Records established became the ancestor of all later official histories for two thousand years; it wrote biographies for emperors — and also for wandering knights, assassins, merchants, and physicians, giving history back to all who made it.
In the “Autobiography of the Grand Historian,” Sima Qian set historiography a threefold mission: to explore the boundary between heaven’s mandate and human affairs; to comprehend the patterns of rise and fall from past to present; to complete the words of one independent school. These twelve characters gave Chinese historiography its first self-awareness: history is not a heap of materials but a body of knowledge with method and a critical standpoint.
His standpoint could be near-offensive: a basic annals for Xiang Yu, a hereditary house for Chen She — placing the defeated and the rebel within the imperial sequence; history is written by actual influence, not by success or failure. The Hanshu mocked him for straying from the sages in his judgments of right and wrong — but precisely this audacity of “a school of one’s own” lifted the Records above the official archives into living thought.
In the third year of Tianhan, Sima Qian was jailed over the Li Ling affair, too poor to redeem himself, and suffered castration. A scholar may be killed but not humiliated; twice he thought of taking his own life — yet he “endured in secret and lived on, sunk in filth, refusing to quit” — because the Records was unfinished: “grieving that what was in my heart was not yet fully spent, that I should die with my writing never displayed to later generations.” The “Letter to Ren An” catalogs the ancients: King Wen, imprisoned, elaborated the Changes; Confucius in distress made the Spring and Autumn; Qu Yuan, banished, composed Li Sao; Zuo Qiu, blind, wrote the Discourses of the States — “mostly the work of sages writing out of their pent-up anguish.”
He forged his own suffering into a philosophy of history: the deepest works are born of the deepest adversity — “the three hundred poems are, for the most part, what the sages wrote out of their anguish.” This was self-exhortation, and words staked for every creator in dire straits. Ten years later the Records was complete — “to be stored in a famous mountain, a copy in the capital” — at last “the debt of my former disgrace repaid; though I be killed ten thousand times, what regret?” A history book: one man’s self-redemption, completed with his whole dignity.
人固有一死，或重于泰山，或轻于鸿毛，用之所趋异也。 — A man has but one death: it may be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a goose feather — the difference lies in what it is spent on.——Sima Qian, “Letter to Ren An” (Bao Ren An Shu)
The Records’ literary achievement is universally acknowledged: the siege of Gaixia in the “Basic Annals of Xiang Yu” — the farewell of the hegemon and his concubine, songs of Chu on four sides, self-slaying at the Wu River — stands before the eye a thousand years on. The “Biography of Lian Po and Lin Xiangru” — returning the jade intact to Zhao, the meeting at Mianchi, bearing the thorns to ask pardon — rises and falls like a tale of marvels. In the “Biographies of the Assassins,” Jing Ke’s farewell at the Yi River — “the wind soughs, the Yi is cold; once the brave man is gone, he returns no more” — became the most tragic farewell in the language. Every figure speaks in his own voice: Liu Bang’s rascality, Li Si’s sigh, Chen She’s ambition of the swan — a few strokes and the soul steps out entire.
Yet Sima Qian’s literature never stops at being good reading: the “The Grand Historian remarks” (taishigong yue) separates narrative from judgment, letting facts speak and verdicts rest on evidence. He wrote the “Biography of Bo Yi” as a prose essay questioning the justice of Heaven — “Heaven has no partiality; it ever sides with the good” — yet Bo Yi and Shuqi starved on Mount Shouyang, Yanhui died young, the bandit Zhi lived out his years: where then is Heaven’s way? History thereby gained philosophical depth: it records not only what happened, but asks whether the world is just.
The biographical annals form the Records first created — basic annals for emperors, tables for great events, treatises for institutions, hereditary houses for the feudal great, biographies for persons — were honored by every official history from Ban Gu’s Hanshu on: the Twenty-Four Histories, one lineage of form, constitute the world’s largest and longest-continuous historiographical tradition. The “persons as the key-link” form carries a view of history: history is made by human beings; institutions and events are all woven from human choices.
Its influence overflows historiography: the idioms born in the Records — returning the jade intact to Zhao, sleeping on firewood and tasting gall, strategy on paper, calling a deer a horse — live on in daily Chinese. The cry “are kings and nobles born to their line?” is the earliest manifesto of a history of the common people. Sima Qian was revered by all later historians: Ban Gu praised him for “not flattering the worthy nor concealing the evil — hence it is called a faithful record.” One historian’s brush wrote three thousand years of rise and fall, and set down the quality Chinese intellectuals prize most: to write the truth, though I be killed ten thousand times, without regret.