He then went north to Huaiyin (modern Huai'an, Jiangsu Province) to see the grave of Han dynasty general Han Xin, then continued north to Qufu, the hometown of Confucius, where he studied ritual and other traditional subjects. He then went to seek the burial place of the legendary rulers Yu on Mount Kuaiji and Shun in the Jiuyi Mountains (modern Ningyuan County, Hunan). He started his journey from the imperial capital, Chang'an (near modern Xi'an), then went south across the Yangtze River toĬhangsha Kingdom (modern Hunan Province), where he visited the Miluo River site where the Warring States era poet Qu Yuan was traditionally said to have drowned himself. In 126 BC, around the age of 20, Sima Qian began an extensive tour around China as it existed in the Han dynasty. Sima grew up in a Confucian environment, and Sima always regarded his historical work as an act of Confucian filial piety to his father. By his account, by the age of ten Sima was able to 'read the old writings' and was considered to be a promising scholar. The grand historian's other duties included traveling with the emperor for important rituals and recording daily events both at the court and around the country. 'Grand historian' was a relatively low-ranking position whose primary duty was to formulate the yearly calendar, identifying which days were ritually auspicious or inauspicious, and present it to the emperor prior to New Year's Day. Around 136 BC, his father, Sima Tan, received an appointment to the position of 'grand historian' ( tàishǐ 太史, alt. He was most likely born about 145 BC, although some sources say he was born about 135 BC. Sima Qian was born at Xiayang in Zuopingyi (around present-day Hancheng, Shaanxi Province). Sima Qian is depicted in the Wu Shuang Pu (無雙譜, Table of Peerless Heroes) by Jin Guliang.

In the postface of the Records, he implicitly compared his universal history of China to the classics of his day, the Guoyu by Zuoqiu Ming, Lisao by Qu Yuan, and the Art of War by Sun Bin, pointing out that their authors all suffered great personal misfortunes before their lasting monumental works could come to fruition. He was acutely aware of the importance of his work to posterity and its relationship to his own personal suffering. Although he is universally remembered for the Records, surviving works indicate that he was also a gifted poet and prose writer, and he was instrumental in the creation of the Taichu calendar, which was officially promulgated in 104 BC.Īs his position in the imperial court was 'Grand Historian' ( tàishǐ 太史, variously translated as court historian, scribe, or astronomer/astrologer), later generations would accord him with the honorific title of 'Lord Grand Historian' ( Tàishǐ Gōng 太史公) for his monumental work, though his magnum opus was completed many years after his tenure as Grand Historian ended in disgrace and after his acceptance of punitive actions against him, including imprisonment, castration, and subjection to servility. Given the choice of being executed or castrated, he chose the latter in order to finish his historical work.

However, in 99 BC, he would fall victim to the Li Ling affair for speaking out in defense of the general, who was blamed for an unsuccessful campaign against the Xiongnu. After inheriting his father's position as court historian in the imperial court, he was determined to fulfill his father's dying wish of composing and putting together this epic work of history. Sima Qian's father, Sima Tan, first conceived of the ambitious project of writing a complete history of China, but had completed only some preparatory sketches at the time of his death. As the first universal history of the world as it was known to the ancient Chinese, the Records of the Grand Historian served as a model for official history-writing for subsequent Chinese dynasties and the Chinese cultural sphere (Korea, Vietnam, Japan) up until the 20th century. He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for his Records of the Grand Historian, a general history of China covering more than two thousand years beginning from the rise of the legendary Yellow Emperor and the formation of the first Chinese polity to the reigning sovereign of Sima Qian's time, Emperor Wu of Han. 86 BC) was a Chinese historian of the early Han dynasty. Sima's name in Traditional (top) and Simplified (bottom) Chinese characters

Express scribe basic