Mr. Qian Mu: History (IV)

Editor's Note

This article is selected from Mr. Qian Mu's Masterpieces of Chinese Historiography. Excerpts are hereby taken for the benefit of the reader.

Six

Today, I will talk about Sima Qian's "Records of History." The "History" is the first so-called "correct history" in China, followed by twenty-four more histories.

At Sima Qian's time, everyone only knew about the concepts of scripture, sub-learning, and literature, but there was no independent concept of "historiography". Therefore, in the Hanshu Yiwen Zhi, there are only six art strategies, zhuzi slightly, and cifu slightly, while Sima Qian's "Historical Records" are attached to the six art sketches "Spring and Autumn" door.

It can be seen that the academic classification at that time, historiography was still included in the classics, and it did not become an independent discipline. But Sima Qian was able to create the first "history" that would be used for almost two thousand years; isn't that a matter of great noteworthy discussion? According to the current people's teachings, Sima Qian's "Records of History" can be said to be a great creation. How Sima Qian could accomplish this creation is a big question.

In the previous lecture, there are three genres of Chinese history:

First: it is a heavy matter, and one thing is written down separately, like the Book of Western Zhou.

Second: it pays attention to the chronology, and everything is arranged according to the chronological order, which is Confucius's "Spring and Autumn".

Third: pay attention to the characters, all the driving forces in history occur in people, people are the center of history, the main brain of history, this concept should be said to start from the Taishi Gong "History". Therefore, the "Chronicle of History" is a kind of "column transmission body", one person and one person separate biography, that is, the history written with the character as the center.

When I was lecturing on Chinese history at Yale in the United States that year, I said that history should center on people, and how could no one have history? The "Chronicle of History" contains personnel affairs, and people's affairs should be mainly based on people, and things should be secondary, and things should only be performed by people.

A history professor specifically discussed with me, and he said: History should be centered on the characters and the main brain, which is very interesting. But this man has no performance, so he can't run history. I said: In this regard, it is a very different point between Chinese and Western scholarship.

In Chinese history, there are many people who have become important figures without the manifestation of historical events. You try to read this point of view in the Twenty-Four Histories, and I don't know how many such people there are. For example, in the two hundred and forty-two years of the "Left Biography", there is no Yan Yuan in it. Isn't it because he has no manifestation of historical events that he is not in history?

However, Yan Yuan, a person who has an indelible position in history, has a special value for Yan Yuan in the Eastern Han Dynasty. In the Song and Ming dynasties, people taught science and also attached great importance to Yan Yuan. How can we say that Yan Yuan is not a historical figure? If you are a historical figure, you should go to history. Therefore, Sima Qian used characters as the historical center and created it as the "column transmission body", which was a great creation in Chinese historiography.

To this day, Westerners still write history like the genre of the Chinese Book of Shang, focusing on things and ignoring people. Today, when we write history, we also follow the Westernization, such as the outline of national history that I wrote, and we divide things into years, and we focus on things.

But this is for simplicity. If we go further, it can also be said that Western historiography is still in the stage of our Zhou Gong's "Book of Western Zhou", and there is no large work that can be written like Confucius's "Spring and Autumn", or even in January of the year like the "Zuo Zhuan"; of course, there is no transmission like the "History". This is a great problem in historiography.

During the Qing Dynasty's Qianjia Period, Zhang Shizhai was writing about the General Righteousness of Literature and History, and he said that what prevailed in Chinese historiography were the Zuo Zhuan and the Records of History, which were divided into years and people; in the future, it was time to develop the "Book of Shang" style and make things the main unit. At that time, the new Western learning had not yet come to China.

After Daoguang, it came slowly, and Chinese read their history, they felt that Zhang Xuecheng had seen it first, and Western historiography was like this, so especially in the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, everyone recognized Zhang Xuecheng as a master of Chinese historiography. But we have to go a step further and say that the problem is not so simple.

In my opinion, Chinese evolved from the Book of Shang to the Spring and Autumn Period, the Zuo Zhuan, and then to the Records of History, which is a great progress in Chinese historiography. It cannot be said that China's "Spring and Autumn", "Zuo Zhuan" and "Shi ji" are inferior to the Western historical genre that takes things as the center. Although I have only raised such a sentence today and do not intend to elaborate on this issue, this statement is worth your attention.

Seven

What I want to talk about today is how Sima Qian created this new historical genre, that is, the column transmission style? How could he come up with a new point of view, a new proposition, and put the character as the center of history? Don't you all like to be able to create and open new ones when you do research today?

Then Tai Shi Gong's "History of History" in the historiographical works, he is a great creation, opened up a very new road, so that people run with him on this road, continue to have twenty-five history to this day. How did Sima Qian embark on this road? Can we study it here?

You must know that I have already said that to do research, we must understand that problems occur, which is the so-called "doubt." Problems are only required to be solved. You are not willing to imitate, if you want to create, you should first understand how others create. This is not a one-size-fits-all problem. How could Sima Qian create a new genre of historiography?

As we have said above, the Book of Western Zhou is related to the Zhou Gong, and the Spring and Autumn Is the work of Confucius, that is, the creation of Confucius. Confucius admired The Duke of Zhou the most, but when he came to write history, it was a new creation. Why did Confucius write this Spring and Autumn? Why a new creation? I have also used a few sentences in Mencius to play the great meaning of Confucius's "Spring and Autumn".

Now that Sima Qian has arrived, he has composed the "Records of History", and he himself has a detailed explanation of the fa, in the self-prologue of his "Records of History". You must understand that when you read a book, you should first pay attention to the self-introduction of the author of the book. This is also a new body. Confucius's Spring and Autumn has no order, and the order is new later.

For example, in the Zhuangzi Tianxia chapter, why did Zhuangzi talk about such a set of ideas and make such a set of scholarship? That is, the self-prologue of the Book of Zhuangzi. But this preface was not written by Zhuangzi himself. Another example is mencius's seven chapters, the last paragraph is equivalent to Mencius's self-prologue. Therefore, the style of Taishi Gong's self-order is already found in the books of Mencius and Zhuangzi.

Later, when people write the preface, they do not put it at the end, but put it at the front. This is not an important issue. If we want to read a man's work, then, it is best to pay attention to reading his preface first, and how and why he wrote this book himself, there should be a way of saying; the value of this book is in this place.

Some of the prologues are only a few short sentences. For example, Gu Tinglin Rizhilu and Huang Lizhou Ming Confucianism Case have a preface at the beginning, which is very important. As for the fact that we wrote the book and asked others to write the preface, this is another matter.

Today I will talk about the "History of History" according to the "History of History" Tai Shi Gong self-prologue. You may have read the preface, but this one is not easy to read. It is best to read the Taishi Gong self-prologue and then read the "History of History"; after reading the "History", and then read the self-prologue, it is easy to understand.

It is not easy to know that reading an article is not easy. But as long as you can read one article, you can read everything. This one cannot be read, and neither can the others. Today, everyone reads vernacular literature, there are not many works that are standard enough in academics, everyone just casually translates, does not know how to use their hearts, and they all look at the past at a glance and ten lines, which we call turning books, or looking up books; what we check is also called reference books, and we do not say reading. That's not always going to work.

According to Tai Shi Gong's preface, their Sima family was a member of the "Zhou Shi Shi", and his ancestors were in charge of the Zhou Shi and served as historical officials. In the Spring and Autumn period, when King Hui of Zhou and King Xiang were king, Sima Shi ran to the Jin Dynasty, when the Zhou Dynasty had declined. After arriving in the Jin Dynasty, the Sima family dispersed to the State of Wei, the State of Zhao, and then to the State of Qin.

Sima Qian was born on the west bank of the Yellow River, Longmen in Shaanxi. His father Sima talked about "learning from the Heavenly Officials in the Tang Capital, from Yang He, and from Huangzi", and although he was a historical official, he also studied astronomy, calendar, Yi, and Zhuang Lao. He once wrote an article on the six schools to refer to, discussing the great righteousness of each of the sons of the Warring States.

This article is extremely well written, he separately divided the six major ideas of the Warring States period, where are their strengths? Short in that wrap? He naturally wrote about Confucianism. At that time, the I Ching was considered a Confucian, but in fact the I Ching was close to Taoism, so Sima Tan's final conclusion was to admire the Taoists. He was a Taishi Ling in the Han Dynasty, but he not only studied the scriptures, but also knew hundreds of family dialects, and it was Huang Lao who was respected.

Emperor Wu of Han went to fengchan Taishan, and Sima Tan had different opinions from other ordinary alchemists on sealing Zen, so Emperor Wudi of Han did not want Sima Tan to follow, and Sima Tan stayed in Luoyang. His son Sima moved to travel outside, when he was still very young.

When he returned, his father was ill in Luoyang, so he said to Sima Qian, "If you make me a historian again after I die, don't forget the many things I want to discuss, you must write it down." Therefore, we say that Tai Shi Gong wrote the "History of History" to inherit his father's will. You probably know all of this.

And Tai Shi Gong's self-prologue to his father's words, more importantly, below, people who read Tai Shi Gong's self-prologue may not pay attention. Tai Shi Gong wrote of his father in the preface:

The world praised the Duke of Zhou, saying that he could talk about the virtue of singing and writing, the wind of Xuan Zhou's summons, the thoughts of Wang Ji of The Prince of Datai, and gong Liu; to honor Hou Ji.

He said: Why do we respect Zhou Gong so far? This is because Zhou Gong composed the poetry of Ya, Song, and Ernan, and Ya Song Er nan is the history of the Zhou people, from Hou Ji down, all the way to Wen, Wu, Zhou, and Zhao. The history of the Zhou Dynasty was written by the Duke of Zhou.

I also proved that according to Mencius' saying that "the poem died and then the Spring and Autumn Period was composed", I also proved that the book of poetry is related to history, and the founding history of the Zhou Dynasty is all in the book of poetry. However, today we are going to talk about the masterpieces of Chinese historiography, according to the general method, only talking about the Book of Shang, not about the Book of Poetry.

In fact, Sima Tan looked at the poetry of the Duke of Zhongzhou from a historical perspective. And the contribution of the Zhou Gong Poetry Classic, according to this saying, can publicize the history of the founding of the Zhou Dynasty. So there is another sentence:

Tang Wu No Long, poet song.

This means that what the poet sings is history. Later, until the Tang Dynasty, Han Chang Li Ping Huai Xi Stele, Li Yishan Shiji called it, called it:

Dot the Yaodian Shundian characters, and alter the Qing Temple's folk poems.

This is to mention the Book of Shang and the Book of Poetry together. Of course, we can't say that the YaoDian and shundian are the true Shang Shu according to Li Yishan, but we can talk about the poetry classics, which is also history. Here you can see everyone reading, and you can have different insights. Don't think that a book has only one way to go.

As I said here, from ancient times to the Tang Dynasty, people like Li Yishan were a poet, and he also understood that poetry and books are related to historiography. Why is Zhou Gong weighed? Sima talked about it because of his contribution to the promotion of historiography. After the Zhou Dynasty arrived at You and Li:

The king is lacking, and the lilly is declining. Confucius repaired the old and abolished, on poetry books, and wrote "Spring and Autumn", which scholars still do.

This is what Mencius said, "Poetry died and then "Spring and Autumn" was composed." At this point, you should know that I am talking about the masterpieces of Chinese historiography at this moment, from Zhou Gong's "Book of Western Zhou" to Confucius's "Spring and Autumn", and then to Tai Shi Gong's "History of History", in fact, Tai Shi Gong's father has already said so. He added:

Han Xing, the unification of the sea, the ming lord and the sage, the loyal and righteous soldiers, Yu wei Tai Shi and Fu, the abolition of the world's history, Yu is very afraid!

He said: As a Taishi official of the Han Dynasty, I have not been able to write down these things well in the Han Dynasty, so isn't the history of this world abolished in my hands? These are the words I quoted above, "Those who do not forget what they want."

Later, those who read the Taishi Gong's preface only paid attention to the previous paragraph and did not pay attention to the next paragraph. It is even said that Sima Tan, because Emperor Wu of Han did not ask him to follow him to Mount Tai, he became angry and said to his son: When I die, you will be a Taishi official, and you should write out many things. Therefore, he said that Tai Shi Gong's "History of History" was a "slander book" to slander the imperial court of Emperor Wu of Han.

His father died of resentment, so Sima Qian's "Records of History" was to write a book of sealing Zen. So, what is the value of a "History"? Taishi Gong's father Sima Tan did not write a history for the Han Dynasty because he became a Han Dynasty Taishi official, so he left Sima Qian to complete his father's wishes.

Where did writing history come from? Didn't you come from Zhou Gong and Confucius? Isn't it true that history should be centered on the characters, and it should jump out of the paper?

As you listen to my previous lectures, you know that reading is not easy. After reading Mencius's "poems died and then the Spring and Autumn Period" was written, didn't you not understand how to say this sentence? Reading the Tai shi gong self-prologue, it is exactly like the footnote of Mencius's "poems died and then "Spring and Autumn" was written" .

Can you say that Sima Tan did not read Mencius? You only have the habit of turning the pages of the book, and the "History of History" is too Shi Gong to translate the preface, and Mencius's sentence is not easy to translate. Reading Tai Shi Gong here, Mencius's words are useful.

This is not easy to read. And Tai Shi Gong wrote down his father Sima Tan's speech in the preface, and everyone only read the previous section and did not read the next section, not because they had not read it, but because they had read it as if they had not read it. This is another example of how reading is not easy.

Sima Tan died for three years, and sure enough, Sima Moved to take his father as a Taishi official. Sima Qian went on to say:

The ancestors have said: Zhou Gong died five hundred years old and there was Confucius, and after Confucius died to the present five hundred years old, there is a time when he can shao Mingshi, Zheng Yichuan, follow the "Spring and Autumn", and this poem and book Lile, which is intended to be Si Hu? Meaning Sihu?

He said that his father had said that confucius was five hundred years old after the death of The Duke of Zhou, and that confucius was five hundred years old after his death, and this historical responsibility was on me.

Therefore, he came to write the "History of History", which was written after Zhou Gong and Confucius. Five hundred years ago there was the Duke of Zhou, five hundred years later there was Confucius, and five hundred years later there was him. Try to read this to the last chapter of Mencius, and that's what Mencius said.

How many years after Yao Shun there was Tang Wu, how many years after Tang Wu there was Confucius, and how many years after Confucius should someone come out. It can be seen that Sima Tan and Sima Qian's father and son both read Mencius and had their academic traditions. Sima Qian also said: Someone can continue this Ming Dynasty, come out on the occasion of the zhengyi transmission, following the "Spring and Autumn", and this poem and book.

And this Yi Chuan, the Spring and Autumn Period, and the poetry book Li Le were all scriptures at his time, and there was no historiography. But he was a historian who should write history, and what he wrote was scripture. We can also say that this is the new scripture of The Taishi Company's Ma Qian's ideal.

Today, you believe that the old Chinese historiography should not be used at all, but that we should learn from the New Western. That's not bad, too. However, Western historiography should also have its origins, from the beginning to the bottom, how to come to this day. You need to know before you can go on. You can't just ask yourself to be a dragon runner. Not to be the protagonist, but also to be a supporting role, some performances.

Even if you make a dragon running set, you must also know a little about the whole play before you can do it. If you want to talk about Western historiography, you must also know that there is a whole set of Western historiography history, and then go back and write Chinese history, which can be zhou gong, Confucius, Sima Qian, and Ban Gu.

We said: I want to write a new history of China! Folks, how great is this responsibility! Now there's a big problem. After writing history today, there will be no more twenty-six histories, so what should I do next? Isn't that a big deal?

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