Sima Qian, "Records of the Grand Historian"

Sima Qian

The biggest difference between professional historians and regular history lovers is that history lovers want to know what happened, but professionals want to know how we know what happened. I listen to a lot of lectures on YouTube, mainly philosophy and linguistics but sometimes other topics. But never history, because YouTube historians hardly ever get around to telling you about the sources of what we know, and for me history without that discussion is empty.

It occured to me recently that while I had taken a whole course on Chinese history before 1600 AD, and read a fair amount about the era of the Chin (221-206 BC) and Han (202 BC to 220 AD) dynasties, I had no idea where our knowledge of those periods comes from. So I decided to find out.

As it turns out, this was a ridiculously easy thing to learn, because most of what we know comes from a very small group of chronicles written in the imperial court. The most important is the Shiji, usually rendered in English as The Records of the Grand Historian, written by Sima Qian. Qian died around 86 BC. He was for a time the chief historian of the Han emperors, a job that mainly involved him in producing a calendar for each year that correctly noted the various festivals, lucky stellar conjunctions, and unlucky days. He effectively inherited this position from his father. But his father had a more exalted view of  the job, and he had embarked on an ambitious project to chronicle Chinese history from its origins to his own time. On his deathbed he charged his son with finishing this project.

Sima Qian was a diligent and thoroughly Confucian sort, and he dutifully set about writing this chronicle. He turned out to be, however, far from traditional in his approach. It is hard to gage how original he was, because only snippets of earlier Chinese histories survive. But none of those fragments reveal a history anything like Sima Qian's. His chronicle contains three kinds of chapters: narratives, biographies of famous people, and treatises on particular subjects such as currency and the evolution of ritual. This is a massive work, four times as long as Thucydides' History of the Peloppenisian War. It begins in China's legendary past and covers a period of about 2,500 years. Most of it, therefore, relies on other sources that are now lost. But we know that Sima Qian did not uncritically follow older accounts, since he tells us that he removed stories about magic and "other impossible things." He also tells us when he has multiple sources to rely on and when he is reduced to only one. As a result, Sima Qian has a very high reputation to this day.

Interestingly, the part of the work that has come in for the most criticism and doubt was the chapters about his own lifetime. You might think that since Sima Qian worked in the imperial court, knew many of the key political figures, and traveled across the realm on government business, this would be the most reliable part of the text. But there are certain issues. Wikipedia:

In 99 BC, Sima became embroiled in the Li Ling affair, where Li Ling and Li Guangli, two military officers who led a campaign against the Xiongnu in the north, were defeated and taken captive. Emperor Wu attributed the defeat to Li Ling, with all government officials subsequently condemning him for it. Sima was the only person to defend Li Ling, who had never been his friend but whom he respected. Emperor Wu interpreted Sima's defence of Li as an attack on his brother-in-law, Li Guangli, who had also fought against the Xiongnu without much success, and sentenced Sima to death.

Burton Watson:

No one raised a hand to help him. According to Han custom, a gentleman was expected to commit suicide before allowing himself to be dragged off to prison, where he would be subject to "investigation," which meant torture until the victim confessed. But Sima Qian declined to take this drastic step because, as he himself states, he hoped at all costs to finish writing his history. In the end he was sentenced to undergo castration, the most severe punishment next to death, and one which carried with it an aura of shame.

Qian later wrote, "When you see the jailer you abjectly touch the ground with your forehead. At the mere sight of his underlings you are seized with terror ... Such ignominy can never be wiped away."

Watson: 

After his punishment the emperor made him a palace secretary, a position of great honor and trust that could be filled only by a eunuch, since it involved waiting upon the emperor when he was at leisure in the women's quarters. At this time Sima Qian seems to have finished his history. . . .

Obviously a man who had suffered such a punishment would have every reason to hate the ruler who inflicted it and to despise his fellow courtiers who had been too timid or callous to come to his aid. For this reason many critics have viewed the sections of the Shiji relating to Emperor Wu and his court with suspicion.

Emperor Ming (AD 58-75) disliked Sima Qian's account of his great ancestor and accused him of "using veiled words to criticize and slander, attacking his own times." But we don't know if Sima Qian was fair or not, because his is the only account that survives. Beyond the basic facts that can be gleaned from seals and inscriptions, everything we know about Emperor Wu comes from Sima Qian. Watson again:

Posterity must forever view Emperor Wu and his age solely through the eyes of a man whom the emperor, in a fit of petty rage, condemned to the most humiliating punishment conceivable. It is difficult to imagine a more striking and ironical example of the power wielded by historians.