The Grand Scribe's Records, Vol. 7: The Memoirs of Pre-Han China (Volume VII) [Hardcover]

Ssu-Ma Ch'ien (Author), Jr. William H. Nienhauser (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 22, 1995

This volume is part of the first complete translation (in nine volumes) of the Shih chi (The Grand Scribe's Records), one of the most important narratives in traditional China. Compiled by Ssu-ma Ch'ien (145-c. 86 B.C.), it draws upon most major early historical works and was the foremost model for style and genre in Chinese history and literature through the eleventh century A. D., and through the early twentieth century for some genres.

Volume 7, The Memoirs of Pre_Han China, translates twenty-eight Lieh-chuan or "memoirs" which depict more than a hundred men and women: sages and scholars, recluses and rhetoricians, persuaders and politicians, commandants and cutthroats of the Ch'in and earlier dynasties. Although the memoirs also begin with what is now often considered myth—an account of the renowned recluses Po Yi and Shu Ch'i—the emphasis in these texts is on the fate of various states and power centers as seen through the biographies of key individuals from the seventh to the third centuries B. C.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 440 pages
• Publisher: Indiana University Press (January 22, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0253340276
• ISBN-13: 978-0253340276
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #955,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William H. Nienhauser, Jr. was born in St. Louis in 1943. After a year of Chinese at the Army Language School in Monterey, California, Nienhauser became enamoured with Chinese culture, taking his Ph.D. at Indiana University under Professor Wu-chi Liu in 1972. During his early years at the University of Wisconsin (where he is Jay C. & Ruth Halls-Bascom Professor of Classical Literature) his interests focused on Chinese biographies, both historical and fictional. Readings in Comparative Literature led him to study narrative theory and develop an interest in the evolution of Chinese narrative. Beginning with Tang-dynasty biographies and tales, Nienhauser worked his back to the great Han-dynasty "national narrative," the Shiji (The Grand Scribe's Records, ca. 100 BCE), written by Sima Qian and his father Sima Tan. Since 1989 he has directed an evolving team of scholars who translate and annotate this massive text. Among numerous awards are the Humboldt Prize (2003). At present (December 2010) he is reading Hillary Mantel's Wolf Hall and recalling an earlier interest in fourteenth-sixteenth century English history.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb translation and copious notes, March 19, 2003

By 

Geoffrey Bonnycastle (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Grand Scribe's Records, Vol. 7: The Memoirs of Pre-Han China (Volume VII) (Hardcover)

I read The Grand Scribe's Records vol. 7 with immense pleasure, having worked on translations of several Shiji Memoirs in the past, finally defeated by the immensity of the task and the overwhelming number of obscure historical, geographical and literary references. This is where Nienhauser and his team have excelled: their translations extend beyond the basic text to the abundant notes and commentary generated by centuries of Chinese scholarship on this important work of history. The footnotes cross-reference every name and event that appears in the text to other parts of the Shiji and to other pre-Han texts.

The Shiji or Historical Records (Records of the Historian, Grand Scribe's Records) is the most impressive work of history of its time, on par with the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and with far less speculation than Herodotus. It was a heroic attempt to recover and explain the first millenia of the Chinese world from the scattered remains of documents destroyed by the First Emperor of China. Scholars agree its influence on later Chinese historical writing is profound. The Memoirs translated in this volume are the most readable section of the work, presenting more than a hundred memorable characters in brief thematic biographies.

Nienhauser and his colleagues present a highly readable translation, but offer much more to the general reader and student by explaining obscure references to sacrifices, dating, names, official posts, customs, etc.; by discussing doubtful readings and alternate translations; by identifying place-names and locating them in Tan Qixiang's The Historical Atlas of China; and by identifying passages that have parallels in other contemporary texts. These notes, plus a table of weights and measures, an enlightening discussion of chronology, an excellent bibliography and index, make their work vastly superior to the otherwise excellent English renderings of the Shiji and Zuozhuan [Tso Chuan] by Burton Watson, or of the Zhanguoce [Intrigues of the Warring States] by Crump, or of Lu Buwei's Annals by Knoblock. Only James Legge's translations of the Chinese classics demonstrate a similar commitment to explicating the text, though without the benefit of recent scholarship and archaeological discovery. When all nine volumes are complete, this work will be a classic and an essential text in any historian's library.

[My only complaint: shame on the copy editors for missing two misspellings in the first sentence of the first memoir!]

4.0 out of 5 stars Shi Qi . A few remarks., September 26, 2011

By 

Bill R - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Grand Scribe's Records, Vol. 7: The Memoirs of Pre-Han China (Volume VII) (Hardcover)

This volume continues the excellence of the series that I have purchased so far. It is much better and annoted translations than others that are in my collection.