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The ''Records of the Grand Historian'' ((中国語:Tàishǐgōng shū) 太史公書), now known as the ''Shǐjì'' 史記 – (Scribe's records), is a monumental history of ancient China and the world finished around 109 BC by the Han dynasty official Sima Qian after having been started by his father, Sima Tan, Grand Astrologer to the imperial court. The work covers the world as it was then known to the Chinese and a 2500-year period from the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the author's own time. The ''Records'' has been called a “foundational text in Chinese civilization.” After Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, "Sima Qian was one of the creators of Imperial China, not least because by providing definitive biographies, he virtually created the two earlier figures." The ''Records'' set the model for the 24 subsequent dynastic histories of China. Unlike Western historical works, the ''Records'' do not treat history as "a continuous, sweeping narrative", but rather break it up into smaller, overlapping units dealing with famous leaders, individuals, and major topics of significance. ==Contents== In all, the ''Records'' is about 526,000 Chinese characters long, making it four times longer than Thucydides' ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' (though "History of the Peloponnesian War" was written three centuries prior to "Records") and even longer than the Old Testament. Sima Qian conceived and composed his work in self-contained units. His manuscript was written on bamboo slips which were then assembled into bundles, many of which repeated a good deal of material. Even after the manuscript was allowed to circulate or be copied, the work would have circulated as bundles of bamboo slips or small groups. Endymion Wilkinson calculates that there were probably 30 slips per bundle, making a total of 466 bundles, whose total weight would have been . Until much later, when it was copied onto silk, the work would therefore have been difficult to access and hard to transport. These copies would have been textually unreliable in spite of early scholarship until the versions which were printed on paper. Sima Qian organized the chapters of ''Records of the Grand Historian'' into five categories, which each comprise a section of the book. ; Basic Annals (''běnjì'' ) The "Basic Annals" make up the first 12 chapters of the ''Records'', and are largely similar to records from the ancient Chinese court chronicle tradition, such as the ''Spring and Autumn Annals'' (''Chunqiu'' 春秋). The first five cover either periods, such as the Five Emperors, or individual dynasties, such as the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. The last seven cover individual rulers, starting with the First Emperor of Qin and progressing through the first emperors of the Han dynasty. In this section, Sima chose to also include ''de facto'' rulers of China, such as Xiang Yu and Empress Dowager Lü, while excluding rulers who never held any real power, such as Emperor Yi of Chu and Emperor Hui of Han. ; Tables (''biǎo'' ) Chapters 13 to 22 are the "Tables", which are one genealogical table and nine other chronological tables. They show reigns, important events, and royal lineages in table form, which Sima Qian stated that he did because "the chronologies are difficult to follow when different genealogical lines exist at the same time."〔''Shiji'' 130: 3319, cited in 〕 Each table except the last one begins with an introduction to the period it covers. ; Treatises (''shū'' ) The "Treatises" (sometimes called "Monographs") is the shortest of the five ''Records'' sections, and contains eight chapters (23–30) on the historical evolution of ritual, music, pitch pipes, the calendar, astronomy, sacrifices, rivers and waterways, and financial administration. ; Hereditary Houses (''shìjiā'' ) The "Hereditary Houses" is the second largest of the five ''Records'' sections, and comprises chapters 31 to 60. Within this section, the earlier chapters are very different in nature than the later chapters. Many of the earlier chapters are chronicle-like accounts of the leading states of the Zhou dynasty, such as the states of Qin and Lu, and two of the chapters go back as far as the Shang dynasty. The later chapters, which cover the Han dynasty, contain biographies. ; Ranked Biographies (''lièzhuàn'' ) The "Ranked Biographies" (usually shortened to "Biographies") is the largest of the five ''Records'' sections, covering chapters 61 to 130, and accounts for 42% of the entire work. The 69 "Biographies" chapters mostly contain biographical profiles of about 130 outstanding ancient Chinese men, ranging from the moral paragon Boyi from the end of the Shang dynasty to some of Sima Qian's near contemporaries. About 40 of the chapters are dedicated to one particular man, but some are about two related figures, while others cover small groups of figures who shared certain roles, such as assassins, caring officials, or Confucian scholars. Unlike most modern biographies, the accounts in the "Biographies" give profiles using anecdotes to depict morals and character, with "unforgettably lively impressions of people of many different kinds and of the age in which they lived." The "Biographies" have been popular throughout Chinese history, and have provided a large number of set phrases still used in modern Chinese. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Records of the Grand Historian」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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