Shih chi, Han shu and the Han culture

Title:

Shih chi, Han shu and the Han culture

Creator:

Kroll, Juri L.

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:48c8725d-4e7a-4e67-aab3-5c008f922749
uuid:48c8725d-4e7a-4e67-aab3-5c008f922749

Subject:

culture

Type:

model:article and TEXT

Format:

bez média and svazek

Description:

Of all the peoples of the world, the Chinese are the most famous for their historical-mindedness. They owe this reputation primarily to their unique traditional historiography. Its main genre is that of Standard Histories ( cheng shih 正史), which first emerged early in the first century B.C. and which were compiled for more than two millennia. The genre was first created and developed through the efforts of two Han historians. Ssu-ma Ch’ien 司馬遷 (145? – 86? B.C.) initiated it by writing the Shih chi 史記 (“Records of the Historian” [or, to be more exact, “the Astrologer”]), the first general history of the Chinese oecumene; whereas Pan Ku 班固 (A.D. 32 – 92) modified the genre by writing his Han shu 漢書 (“Han History”), the first history of a single dynasty. All in all, twenty-five Standard Histories were compiled. For the most part they are histories of one dynasty, like Han shu, but some of them are histories of several dynasties. The Shih chi and Han shu became models for later generations and greatly influenced traditional historians of China as well as of other countries of the region affected by Chinese culture, such as Korea and Japan. The cultural significance of the Shih chi is especially great. Suffice it to say that within its framework, Ssu-ma Ch’ien created the earliest samples of Chinese biographies that have come down to us. The possibility they are the first biographies written in China cannot be ruled out.

Language:

English

Rights:

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
policy:public

Source:

Archiv orientální | 2006 Volume:74 | Number:3

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false