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Records of the Grand Historian: Revised Edition, Vol. 1
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Sima Qian (145?-90? BCE) was the first major Chinese historian. His
Shiji, or Records of the Grand Historian, documents the history of China
and its neighboring countries from the ancient past to his own time.
These three volumes cover the Qin and Han dynasties.
SYNOPSIS
Sima Qian (145?-90? BCE) was the first major Chinese historian. His
Shiji, or Records of the Grand Historian, documents the history of China
and its neighboring countries from the ancient past to his own time.
These three volumes cover the Qin and Han dynasties.
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Volume II
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Volume III
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FROM THE PUBLISHER
Sima Qian (C. 100 B.C.E.) was China's first historian - he was known
as Grand Astrologer at the court of Emperor Wu during the Han dynasty
- and, along with Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, was one of
the creators of imperial China. His Shiji not only became the model
for the twenty-six Standard Histories that the historians of each Chinese
dynasty wrote to legitimize the dynastic succession, but also has been
an enormously influential resource to historians, literary scholars,
philosophers, and many others seeking an understanding of early Chinese
history. In Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo, Grant Hardy presents convincing
evidence that the Shiji is quite unlike such Western counterparts as
the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, for, Hardy argues, Sima Qian's
work seeks not only to represent but also to influence the world in
a manner based on Confucian concepts of sageliness and "the rectification
of names."
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Sima Qian's vast Records of the Historian is the first comprehensive
history of China and has exerted an immense influence both upon our
understanding of the Chinese past and also upon the style and structure
of subsequent Chinese historiography. In addition to his contribution
as a historian, Sima Qian is a highly significant literary figure whose
writings are among the most elegant and powerful from the ancient world.
Durrant's study approaches Sima Qian's work from a literary perspective
and demonstrates the relationship between Sima's narrative of the past
and his narrative of his own life. That life was a fascinating and complex
one. Enjoined by his father to complete a comprehensive history of China,
Sima Qian subsequently offended the great Emperor Wu and was sentenced
to castration. Rather than take the "noble path" of suicide,
he suffered this traumatic punishment and lived on to fulfill his father's
injunction--but not without emotional scars, scars that influenced his
portrayal of the Chinese past. In fact, the great Han historian's account
of the Chinese past, this study argues, is as much his story as it is
history.
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