Sima Qian

Sima Qian the Chinese historian of the Han dynasty (c. 145-c. 86 BC) who wrote the Records of the Grand Historian, the first comprehensive history of China and a foundational work of Chinese literature. His monumental project, undertaken after a personal catastrophe, established the model for dynastic history and earned him the title of father of Chinese historiography.

Family and Early Career

Sima Qian was born around 145 BC in Longmen, in what is now Shaanxi province, into a family of hereditary astronomers and archivists. His father, Sima Tan, held the office of grand astrologer at the Han court, a position that combined the duties of keeping the calendar, interpreting omens and maintaining the records of the state. From his father the young Sima Qian inherited both a profession and a mission.

He received a classical education and, as a young man, undertook extensive travels through the empire. He visited the sites of ancient events, examined the graves and monuments of former kings, questioned local elders and gathered the legends and traditions that surrounded the great figures of the past. These journeys gave him a breadth of experience and a fund of oral testimony that distinguished his history from the work of mere compilers.

He entered government service and became a palace attendant, and in 110 BC he accompanied the emperor on a tour of the sacred mountain of Mount Tai. His father, who was too ill to join the journey, died during that period, and on his deathbed he charged his son with the task of completing the great history he had begun, a work that would preserve the records of the past from being lost.

The Records of the Grand Historian

The Shiji, or Records of the Grand Historian, is a vast work in 130 chapters that covers Chinese history from the legendary age of the Yellow Emperor down to the time of its author. Sima Qian completed it around 91 BC. It is organised in five parts: the basic annals of the rulers, chronological tables, treatises on institutions such as rites, music, the calendar and the economy, the hereditary houses of the feudal states, and the biographies of notable individuals arranged in ordered categories.

The most innovative element of the work is its use of biography as the organising form of history. The liezhuan, or collected biographies, present individuals from emperors and generals to merchants, assassins and jesters, and through their lives the historian illuminates the politics, ethics and society of the age. This method created the model for the dynastic histories that later generations would compile, and it made the Shiji a work of literature as much as of scholarship.

Sima Qian drew on a wide range of sources: official archives, the classics, the records of the various states, inscriptions and the oral traditions he had collected in his travels. He was careful to indicate where accounts disagreed and to preserve variant versions, and he often appended his own judgement with the phrase that he had heard it said. This critical treatment of sources, and his willingness to record the faults as well as the virtues of the powerful, set a standard for historical writing that has rarely been surpassed.

The Li Ling Affair

In 99 BC Sima Qian suffered the catastrophe that shaped the rest of his life and, in a sense, made the Shiji possible. The general Li Ling, leading a small force against the Xiongnu, was overwhelmed and forced to surrender. The court, and the emperor himself, condemned Li Ling as a traitor, but Sima Qian, who knew him and believed in his loyalty, spoke up in his defence, arguing that he had fought bravely against overwhelming odds and that his surrender must have been a stratagem.

The emperor, already angered by the campaign's failure and by the pleas of Li Ling's enemies, took this defence as an insult and as an implicit criticism of his own policy. Sima Qian was arrested and sentenced to death. Under Han law a condemned man could escape execution by paying a fine or by submitting to castration, and since he could not afford the fine, he chose the humiliation of castration in order to live and complete his father's history.

He described his decision in a famous letter to his friend Ren An, one of the most powerful documents in Chinese literature. In it he explained that he had endured the greatest disgrace a man could suffer rather than let his work remain unfinished, comparing his own situation to that of the great figures of antiquity who had produced their masterpieces in adversity. The letter became a classic statement of the duty of the scholar and of the value of literature as a means of immortality.

Historical Method and Ideas

Sima Qian's approach to history was empirical and comprehensive. He sought to record events accurately, to distinguish fact from legend and to explain the causes of the rise and fall of states and dynasties. He paid attention to economic life, to the calendar and astronomy, to ritual and music and to the hydraulic works and finances of the empire, and he understood that history involved the material conditions of society and not only the deeds of rulers.

He was sceptical of the supernatural explanations that were common in his day. Although he recorded omens, portents and prophecies as part of the historical record, he often treated them with reserve and looked instead to human actions and institutions for the causes of events. This rational and humane outlook, and his insistence on judging men by their conduct rather than by their reputations, gave his work a moral seriousness that later historians admired.

The Shiji also embodies a strong ethical purpose. Sima Qian wrote that his aim was to examine all that concerned heaven and man and to understand the changes of past and present, and he hoped that his work would be transmitted to later ages. He believed that the historian had a duty to preserve the truth and to honour the worthy, and his willingness to praise the defeated and to criticise the victorious made his book a standing reproach to power.

Influence and Legacy

The Shiji became the model for the twenty-four dynastic histories of China, each of which followed its structure of annals, tables, treatises and biographies. Every subsequent dynasty compiled its official history on the pattern that Sima Qian had established, and the whole tradition of Chinese historical writing looks back to him as its founder. His organisation of history around the lives of individuals also shaped the Chinese conception of the past as a gallery of exemplary persons.

As literature the work has had an incalculable influence. Its vivid narratives, its skill in characterisation and its economical and forceful style were studied and imitated by writers of prose for two thousand years, and many of its episodes, from the feast at Hongmen to the death of Xiang Yu, became standard stories of Chinese culture. The letter to Ren An and the prefaces and judgements scattered through the history are counted among the finest essays in the language.

Sima Qian came to symbolise the scholar who sacrifices his body and his comfort for his work and for the truth. His name is invoked whenever historians discuss the courage required to record unwelcome facts about the powerful, and his history remains a principal source for the study of ancient China and a monument of world historiography. He is honoured as the greatest of Chinese historians and as the founder of the biographical approach to the writing of history.

See also

• Records of the Grand Historian
• Han dynasty
• Historiography
• Emperor Wu of Han