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'''Ban Gu''' the Chinese historian and man of letters of the Eastern Han dynasty (32-92 AD), the principal author of the Book of Han, the first of the great dynastic histories to cover a single dynasty in full. His work established the model for official historiography that later Chinese dynasties followed for nearly two thousand years.

== Early Life and Education ==
Ban Gu was born in 32 AD in Fufeng, in present-day Shaanxi, the son of Ban Biao, a scholar of wide learning who had begun a continuation of the Records of the Grand Historian. He was the elder brother of the general Ban Chao and the brother of Ban Zhao, who would become one of the most distinguished women of letters in Chinese history. He was, by all accounts, a precocious and studious child.

The family was celebrated for its learning and its literary talent. His father had composed essays on political philosophy and had gathered materials for a history of the Western Han, an ambition that he did not live to complete. Ban Gu inherited these materials along with his father's scholarly discipline and his sense of history as a moral enterprise.

According to tradition he was nine years old when he began to compose literary works and could recite long texts from memory. Though he entered official life at a young age, the death of his father and the unfinished history turned his energies toward the great project that would occupy much of his life.

His upbringing gave him fluency in the classics, a deep familiarity with the dynastic records, and the habit of patient accumulation that a large history demands. These qualities shaped both his scholarship and his cautious, orderly temperament.

== The Book of Han ==
Ban Gu's magnum opus is the Book of Han, a history of the Western Han dynasty from its founding in 206 BC to the usurpation of Wang Mang in 9 AD. Modelling the work on the Records of the Grand Historian of Sima Qian, he nonetheless departed from his predecessor in an important respect: whereas Sima Qian wrote a general history spanning many ages, Ban Gu confined himself to a single dynasty, the unit that would define Chinese official history thereafter.

The work was long in the making. He began from his father's notes and continued for more than twenty years, and it is said that he was still revising it at the time of his death. It comprises the annals of the emperors, the biographies of notable figures, and the treatises on subjects such as geography, law, ritual, calendar, waterworks, literature and economics. It was finally completed by his sister Ban Zhao and by other scholars.

The composition of the history was not without danger. Ban Gu was at one point accused of privately revising the dynastic records, an act punishable as a challenge to imperial authority, and he was arrested. His brother Ban Chao pleaded his case at court and explained that he was honouring his father's work, and the emperor, impressed by the quality of the writing, not only released him but granted him access to the imperial archives.

== The Treatises and Literary Achievement ==
The treatises of the Book of Han are among its most valuable contributions. The treatise on geography systematically describes the provinces, their products and their populations, and is a foundation of the historical geography of China. The treatise on literature, known as the Bibliography of the Arts and Letters, is the earliest surviving classified catalogue of Chinese books and preserves the titles and divisions of a learned tradition that would otherwise be lost.

Ban Gu was also an accomplished poet and prose writer. He is associated with the development of the fu, the elaborate rhapsodic poem that was a hallmark of Han literary culture, and his long rhapsody on the two capitals is a celebrated example of the genre. His style is ornate and learned, and his writings display the encyclopedic range of his reading.

The Book of Han established conventions of historiography that endured for centuries. Its careful separation of annals, biographies and treatises, its use of documents and its moral judgements on rulers and officials became standard features of the twenty-four dynastic histories. Later historians looked to Ban Gu as a model of accuracy and orderly presentation.

== Political Career and Later Life ==
Ban Gu held a series of official positions, mostly in the scholarly and secretarial branches of the government. He served in the imperial library, where he had access to the archives of the state, and he accompanied the court on its movements. He was a member of the intellectual circle that gathered around the court and took part in debates on the classics and on state policy.

In 89 AD the general Dou Xian led a great campaign against the northern Xiongnu, and Ban Gu accompanied him as a member of his staff, composing the inscription that celebrated the victory. Dou Xian, however, fell from power in 92 AD after being accused of plotting against the throne, and those associated with him were caught up in his downfall.

Ban Gu was arrested and died in prison in 92 AD. His death was a bitter end for a scholar who had devoted his life to the service of the dynasty and to the recording of its deeds. His sister Ban Zhao was left to complete and refine the history he had begun.

== Influence and Legacy ==
The Book of Han was immediately recognised as a masterpiece and became the standard account of the western dynasty. It was widely copied, studied and commented upon, and it gave rise to its own scholarly tradition. Together with the Records of the Grand Historian it stands at the foundation of Chinese historical writing, and the two are often named together as the great monuments of Han historiography.

Ban Gu's decision to frame his history around a single dynasty defined the shape of official history in China. The principle that each dynasty should record the deeds of its predecessor, gathering annals, biographies and treatises into a coherent whole, organised the historical enterprise for the rest of the imperial age and produced a continuous record of more than two thousand years.

He is remembered as a scholar of encyclopedic learning, a master of prose and verse, and a careful historian who valued accuracy and orderly arrangement. His family, with his father Ban Biao, his brother Ban Chao and his sister Ban Zhao, forms one of the most remarkable scholarly households in Chinese history, and his name remains inseparable from the great history that he wrote.

== See also ==
* Book of Han
* Sima Qian
* Ban Zhao
* Twenty-Four Histories

== References ==

<ref name="r1">Ban Gu and Ban Zhao, Book of Han, Zhonghua Book Company, 1962.</ref>
<ref name="r2">Fan Ye, Book of the Later Han, Zhonghua Book Company, 1965.</ref>
<ref name="r3">Homer H. Dubs, The History of the Former Han Dynasty, Waverly Press, 1938.</ref>
<ref name="r4">Michael Loewe, A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han and Xin Periods, Brill, 2000.</ref>

<references />

[[Category:History]]
[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Han dynasty]]

Ban Gu - Revision history

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