Sima Qian was a Chinese historian of the early Han dynasty . He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for his Records of the Grand Historian, a Jizhuanti-style general history of China, covering more than two thousand years from the Yellow Emperor to his time, during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, a work that had much influence for centuries afterwards on history-writing not only in China, but in Korea, Japan and Vietnam as well. Although he worked as the Court Astrologer , later generations refer to him as the Grand Historian for his monumental work; a work which in later generations would often only be somewhat tacitly or glancingly acknowledged as an achievement only made possible by his acceptance and endurance of punitive actions against him, including imprisonment, castration, and subjection to servility.
Sima Qian book Records of the Grand Historian
translated by Tsai-fa Cheng, Zongli Lu, William H. Nienhauser, Jr., and Robert Reynolds, in The Grand Scribe’s Records, edited by William H. Nienhauser, Jr. <br class="br"> 孫子吳起列傳 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%8F%B2%E8%A8%98/%E5%8D%B7065 <br class="br">Records of the Grand Historian
Sima Qian book Records of the Grand Historian
translation by Burton Watson <br class="br">I once traveled west to Mount K’ung-t'ung and passed Cho-lu [Mountain] in the north; to the east I drifted along the coast, and to the south I floated over the Huai River and the Chiang. Wherever I went, all of the village elders would point out for me sites of The Huang-ti, Yao and Shun. The traditions were certainly very different from each other. In sum, [those accounts of the elders] which were not far from the ancient-text versions [of the classics], tend to be plausible. <br class="br">translated by Tsai-fa Cheng, Zongli Lu, William H. Nienhauser, Jr., and Robert Reynolds, in The Grand Scribe’s Records, edited by William H. Nienhauser, Jr. <br class="br"> 五帝本紀 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%8F%B2%E8%A8%98/%E5%8D%B7001 <br class="br">Records of the Grand Historian
“There is no fixed road to wealth, and money has no permanent master.”
Sima Qian book Records of the Grand Historian
Records of the Grand Historian
Source: Translated by Burton Watson. Shiji 129: The Biographies of the Money-makers.
