The Shiji

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The way the Chinese have conceived of their past, and of themselves, was profoundly shaped by the Shiji. The Shiji, or Historical Records, was a monumental work composed of 130 chapters written during the Han dynasty by Sima Qian. It presented the past from several perspectives: a chronological narrative of political events; topical accounts of key institutions; and biographies of individuals that Qian saw as important. The political narrative began with the Yellow Lord and continued through the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, down to the Han dynasty and Emperor Wudi of Sima Qian's day. Chronological charts with genealogical data and information on government posts came next, such as the calendar, state ritual, the construction of waterworks, and government finance. Thirty chapters were devoted to the ruling houses of the states of the Zhou period, recounting the reigns of successive rulers. These were supplemented by seventy chapters on other important individuals, including not only great officials and generals, but also people not associated with the government, both the famous and infamous including: philosophers, poets, merchants, magicians, and even rebels. Even non-Han people along the frontiers were described in narrative accounts. The emergence of a unified empire out of the warring States of pre-Qin China, the consolidation of the former Han, and the relations between the empire and the surrounding people groups were major themes in the Shiji. Qian’s records also offer insights through his role as a historian and his attempt to resolve a life changing experience he distinguished in his own life. Equally important, Sima Qian, by writing so well on so much, had a profound impact on Chinese thinking about government, pers...

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...u wavered between an essentialist reduction of their nature to those aspects of it that the Chinese found particularly shameful and a more favorable appreciation of their intelligence and flexibility. Likewise, some Xiongnu customs, such as their preference of the young over the elderly, are depicted as simple reversals of Chinese customs. The description of the political organization of the Xiongnu, for example, gives an impression of efficient government rather than backward tyranny. In fact, its sophisticated combination of centralized control and decentralized administration seemed well suited to provoke the admiration of Sima Qian’s Chinese readers, many of whom were critical of the unwieldy governmental bureaucracy of the Han. His descriptions of the Xiongnu underlined the limits of the expansion of Han civilization in the steppe regions of northern Asia.

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