Chinese and Roman biography : cross-study

Christophe Badel (Université de Haute-Bretagne-Rennes II)

This communication wishes to compare the biographical part of Shiji with the biographies of Greco-Roman Antiquity, from a Greco-Roman point of view since I am a specialist in Roman history. It will leave aside the Suetonian Twelve Caesars because the biographies of Sima Qian are not devoted to emperors but to ministers, generals or philosophers. It will study another corpus: the biographies of politicians and generals written by Cornelius Nepos and Plutarch; the Life of Tacitus’s Agricola; On the Grammarians and Rhetoricians, of Suetonius; the Lives of the Sophists of Philostratus. In Rome, biography is considered a literary genre different from history and borrows its characteristics from two models. It is inspired by the laudatio funebris, the eulogy, a highlight of the aristocratic funeral, and possesses a strong moral dimension, aiming to teach a life lesson. Beyond his singularities, the character is often seen as the embodiment of a moral “type”. The communication will seek to determine whether the same characteristics are found in the biographies of Sima Qian through the structure and themes addressed: origin, family, career, exploits or mischief, vices or virtues, details of intimate life… It will seek to see whether the aims, moral, social or political, are comparable. These questions will raise the question of whether the “biography” appears as a universal and invariant genre.

From Sima Qian to Liu Zhiji: Note on autobiographies in standard histories and beyond

Damien Chaussende (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

The paper aims at studying the first centuries of the history of the autobiographical genre and will endeavour to show its evolution from Sima Qian, which can be considered as the creator of the genre, up to Liu Zhiji, who wrote on this particular genre and composed himself an autobiography. In particular we will highlight the self-explanatory aspect autobiographies contain, which, in some cases, verge on the topos of the scholar frustration.

It is well known that, in addition to its other characteristics, Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) appear to be one of the first Chinese works, if not the first, to have a postface largely autobiographical entitled Zixu 自 序, placed at the end of the liezhuan 列 傳part. Sima Qian expose in it his genealogy, the life of his father, introduces an essay of him on the “schools” of Chinese thought and talk about himself, justifying his approach as a historian and exposing his models. He then summarizes his work, methodically justifying the presence of each chapter. If the Records of the Grand Historian were a historiographical model by inaugurating the first written history in the annals-biographies form, many authors, and not only in the case of historical works, took over the tradition of dedicating the last chapter of a work to themselves. Among the autobiographies that have been transmitted to us in the very book for which they were written are that of Wang Chong (Lunheng), that of Ban Gu (Hanshu), that of Shen Yue (Songshu), that of Li Baiyao (Beishi), which take up, while modifying, the tradition begun by Sima Qian. In addition to this series, we have not only autobiographies transmitted without the books and preserved elsewhere, but also the writings of Liu Zhiji, author of the famous Generalities in historiography (Shitong), a practical and theoretical manual on how to write history. This author seems to be the first to analyze how an autobiography (or more largely a personal postface) should be written and what kind of information it should contain. Does he himself follows the principles he highlights for others ? This is one of the questions we will address in the paper.

A Study of the biographical genre in the Sanguo zhi 三國志: From the perspective of its Inheritance and Transformation of the Shiji 史記

Chen Jianmei (Zhejiang University)

Among the first four histories of the twenty-four histories, the Sanguo zhi 三國志 (Records of the Three Kingdoms, completed by Chen Shou 陳壽 around 290s) differs greatly in genre from the other three official histories (Shiji史記, Hanshu漢書，Houhan Shu後漢書). This study focuses on the differences which are manifested in biographical genre in the Sanguo zhi from the perspective of its inheritance and transformation of the Shiji.

As known, when dealing with the biographical genre which was initiated by Sima Qian司馬遷, inherited and developed by Ban Gu班固，Chen Shou 陳壽 had to face an unavoidable question in the Sanguo zhi, which is who is legitimate among the three regimes. As a result, Chen Shou set Wei魏as orthodox to solve this problem. But subsequently other questions came into being: How to arrange the biographies of the monarchs and the royal families of the other two regimes? On the one hand, Chen Shou followed the biographical genre initiated by Sima Qian, on the other hand, he adopted a flexible approach to this problem. Therefore, new biographical types were created in the Sanguo zhi. As for the monarchs of the illegitimate two regimes, Chen Shou created new titles for individual biographies devoted to the monarchs such as Wu zhu zhuan 吳主傳 in the “History of the Kingdom of Wu” (Wushu吳書)，Xianzhu zhuan 先主傳 and Houzhu zhuan 後主傳 in the “History of the Kingdom of Shu” (Shushu蜀書) etc. For members of the royal families, Chen Shou created collective biographies such as “Wuwenshi wanggong zhuan” 武文世王公傳in the Weishu, “Zongshi zhuan” 宗室傳 and “Wu zhu wuzi zhuan” 吳主五子傳 in the Wushu.

Moreover, the Sanguo zhi is the one with the fewest thematic biographies among the four histories. The only thematic biographical chapter in Sanguo zhi is the Fangji zhuan方技傳 (Biography of the technicians and magicians) in the Weishu. Chen Shou retained this type of biography but  was unable to write other thematic biographies due to insufficient data, maybe lack of people with common characteristics during the period of division.

Obviously, even as private historian, Chen Shou had the sense of “official biography” when he wrote Sanguo zhi. From this point of view, the biographical genre in the Sanguo Zhi  inherited some characteristics of the biographical genre in the Shiji. But Chen Shou also undertook many transformations to adapt it to his own time and situation.

Biographies as Bowls: Manipulation of the genre in Ruan Ji’s “Biography of Master Great Man”.

Hugo Dubois-Mouro (Université Paris Cité)

This paper focuses on Ruan Ji’s 阮籍 (210-263) longest prose work, the “Biography of Master Great Man” (Daren xiansheng zhuan 大人先生傳), which was written somewhere between 251 and 257 CE, roughly three centuries after Sima Qian’s 司馬遷 (ca. 145-86 BCE) implementation of the zhuan 傳 genre in his Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji 史記). The “Biography of Master Great Man” is also considered as the foundation upon which later 3^rd person autobiographical zhuan were based — such as Tao Yuanming’s 陶淵明 (ca. 365-427) “Biography of Master Five Willows” (Wuliu xiansheng zhuan 五柳先生傳).

Despite being titled “Biography”, a quick overview of Ruan Ji’s text would convince any reader that depicting the life of Master Great Man is not its primary focus. While developing at length “the character’s” rather radical views on society, it does not provide any information that would allow for his identification: the Master bears no name, inhabits no place, and his age and ancestry remain unknown. Hence the question: how much of a zhuan is this piece?

In order to build a reference frame from which to discuss the biographical qualities of Ruan Ji’s text, we shall consider various zhuan collections from the late 3^rd century CE, such as Chen Shou’s 陳壽 (233-297) Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo zhi 三國志) and Huangfu Mi’s 皇甫謐 (215-282) Accounts of High-Minded Men (Gaoshi zhuan 高士傳). I will argue that Ruan Ji molded his zhuan into a decoy, a recipient for thoughts and feelings of his own that would otherwise have been censored or punished by those in power. To support this argument, I will rely, among other points, on the numerous similarities tying Ruan Ji and his work to his character, on Ruan Ji’s history of creating innovative vehicles for his diatribes, on the “Biography”’s efforts to avoid being biographical and on the blatant absence of a Master Great Man in previous literature.

Dominance relationships and their narrative expression in the biography of Master Sun

Grégoire Espesset (Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités)

The Sunzi bingfa 孫子兵法 (Master Sun’s Military Method), also simply called the Sunzi 孫子 (Master Sun), is hailed as mankind’s earliest known treatise on the “Art of War” (4th century BCE) and probably the most famous one today. Due to the number of Western translations the work has inspired, the biography of its purported and eponymous author—Sun Wu 孫武 (6th/5th century BCE)—must rank among the passages from the Records of the Historian which Westerners are the most familiar with.

At first glance, this short text (in Shiji 史記, vol. 65) seems to be of limited interest. Remarkably, it contains nearly no data of properly biographical nature, a feature that soon contributed to cast doubt on the historicity of this theoretician, which no other ancient historical source seems to know. Indeed, the biography as a whole rests on a single anecdote occupying text space almost entirely (379 logograms out of 406, about 93%). This anecdote will therefore be the focus of the present paper.

The anecdote confronts three instances with one another: Sun Wu, from Qi 齊, a wandering strategist looking for employment, who proceeds to show the efficacy of his method; Helü 闔廬, king (514–496 BCE) of the Southern state of Wu 吳, who hires him; and a hundred and eighty royal concubines. In all likeliness a fiction, the story nevertheless derives from passages in the received treatise, for example where it is said that “some orders from the king shall not be obeyed” (chap. 8). It has traditionally been read as a critique of the military school of thought (bingjia 兵家) by a historiographer with a known preference for the school of the Way (daojia 道家). By contrast, the paper discusses the narrative triangulation of power relationships between the three instances above, and the tension that these relationships create. King Helü, with both ostentation and lightness, embodies absolute power and its intrinsic limitations; Sun Wu, the inhuman efficiency of a legalist-type (fajia 法家) of authoritarianism; the concubines, in addition to the evident gender subordination, mass submissiveness of the disorderly and anonymous whose moral deficiency annihilates the potential strength of numbers.

It is doubtless that Sun Wu’s biography can inform us more about the context of its writing than the distant era during which the action supposedly took place. It raises again questions pertaining to the textual nature of the biographical document and the range of its epistemic functions, as well as the biographer’s sources and his intended target audience.

The sixth chapter of the Confucian Analects and the disciples of Confucius in the Shiji

Hans van Ess (LMU Munich)

As is well-known, chapter 67 of the Shiji contains short biographies of the major disciples of Confucius. These biographies are also known from the Kongzi jiayu, but many of the texts or sentences are also to be found in the Confucian Analects. How these three chapters are related to each other is not easy to assess. Traditionally it has always been assumed that disciples of Confucius themselves wrote down their conversations with the master. The editors of the Kongzi jiayu and Sima Qian then copied these conversations or sayings into their own texts.

While this traditional approach may be true, it is legitimate to ask whether these compilations may have been more than just collections put together in a rather haphazard way. In my paper I would like to address the question of whether the compilers of the Lunyu may have done more than to just collect what they remembered from what Confucius told them. Was there an over-arching question that guided them when they arranged their material? I will try to give a preliminary answer to this question for which I will draw on a comparison between sayings that are to be found in all three texts, although Shiji and Lunyu will be my major sources.

Staging the taishigong: The Textual Persona of Sima Qian as Reader and Writer

Martin Kern (Princeton University)

In the pages of the Shiji 史記, nobody is presented more often as a reader of texts than Sima Qian 司馬遷 himself, who frequently refers to his own acts of reading, in most cases in the taishigong yue 太史公曰 comments. It is in these comments where Sima Qian’s voice is heard, a voice through which the Shiji has been read for centuries. But it is not simply Sima Qian speaking here. It is Sima Qian being represented, or staged, as a particular persona, that is: a textual figuration inscribed  into “his” work, either by himself or by whoever composed the taishigong yue comments. Sima Qian the historical person may well have been, in some loose sense, the author of his text; but the highly emotional and yet extremely formulaic and repetitive taishigong, dramatically present in his dialog with the textual voices from the past, is not that author but its representation, or self-representation. Staged first of all as a reader, his gesture of writing is one inspired from earlier writing: not of his own, but of those before him. As the formulaic taishigong yue comments configure Sima Qian as the exemplary reader of the past, they prefigure “those to come” (laizhe 來者): Sima Qian’s ideal readers of the future.

The opening of the biographical section in the Shiji, the Hanshu and the Hou Han shu

Béatrice L’Haridon (Université Paris Cité) 

The three great histories open their respective biographical section with a chapter whose context is that of the years of war and disorder preceding the foundation of a dynasty: In the Shiji 史記, the triggering of the conquest of the Shang 商 by King Wu of the Zhou 周武王; in the Hanshu 漢書, the fights and defeats of Chen Sheng 陳勝, the rebel, and Xiang Yu 項羽, the rival, in the years between the fall of the Qin 秦 and the founding of the Han 漢; and in the Hou Han shu 後漢書, the failure of Liu Xuan 劉玄 and Liu Penzi 劉盆子, both members of the Han imperial family, to restore the dynasty after the fall of Wang Mang 王莽.  These first chapters, each in their own way, narrate the fate of figures who were the great losers in the conquest of power. Here I would like to try to contrast and confront these three opening chapters. As an “universal” history, Sima Qian’s Shiji may well have begun its biographical section not with the brothers Bo Yi and Shu Qi, but with more ancient figures, or more recent and historically attested figures, as the historian himself recognizes the testimonies related to them are quite contradictory. It nevertheless opens with these two opponents to the conquest of Shang and offers a fascinating, multi-layered account of their tragic destiny.  The Hanshu, although the first dynastic history, opens no less the biographical section by returning to the years before the foundation of the dynasty and by putting Cheng Sheng and Xiang Yu (to whom Sima Qian had dedicated a “Hereditary house” and “Basic annals” respectively) in their rightful place. In the intriguing “discussion” (lun 論) inserted in the first biographical chapter of the Hou Han shu, Fan Ye 范曄 weaves a link between King Wu, Chen Sheng and Xiang Yu, and Liu Xuan. This paper will focus on how these first biographical chapters are related to each other and how they integrate “losers” into the historical narrative.

The Nature of the Genre of Taishigong zixu: Developing Three Arguments Regarding the Term zixu

Lee Chi-hsiang (Foguang University)

First, among the seventy chapters of biography, it is clear that the Taishigong zixu is Sima Qian’s autobiography. The most important figure to comprehend this was Ban Gu. In Hanshu he imitated Shiji. Ban changed the name of this chapter to xuzhuan to distinguish between the terms xu序 and xu 敘. The Tang dynasty Shitong followed this perspective, as reflected in the xuzhuan and zixu chapters. This type of definition referred to the Taishigong zixu, with Taishigong referring to a person’s name.

Moreover, among the 130 chapters of the entire book, only zixu, the final chapter, clearly inherited the zishu tradition. Sima Qian inherited the structure of a final chapter from the Dalue of chapter of the Xunzi and the Yaolue chapter of Huainanzi. Dedicating the book’s final chapter to the author’s own family made it serve as an interpretation of the general significance of the entire work. This genre was called lue. Sima Qian’s zixu inherited the lue from the tradition of the Zhou dynasty thinkers. In this case, the name Taishigong is used in the title of Taishigong zixu.

The third point regards the relationship between Confucius and the Book of Documents. Both Shiji and Hanshu record “Kongzi xushu”. The character xu can be understood as meaning to compile and put in order. The zixu of Sima Qian can be understood as inheriting the operations of the xushu of Confucius. Therefore the character xu in the title Taishigong zixu implies that Sima Qian was compiling and putting into order the remnants of historical sources. 

Han dynasty old text classical scholars promoted the idea that after Confucius’ operations of xushu, he also wrote Shuxu. This led various Qing dynasty scholars to believe that the chapters of the Xiaoxu in Taishigong zixu were done in imitation of the Shuxu of Confucius. This viewpoint is debatable.

On the Position of Diviners and Wonderworkers in Sima Qian’s Life, Writing, and Historiographical Legacy

Daniel Patrick Morgan (Centre national de la recherche scientifique)

Typically translated as ‘biography’, the Shiji 史記 (c.94 BCE) features three sets of zhuan 傳 that, to my mind, most clearly do not fit this label: the zhuan dedicated to foreign peoples (j. 110, 113–116, 123), to goods (j. 129), and to personal fate divination (j. 127–128). Of these, later historians would keep the foreign peoples’ zhuan, while the ‘Huozhi liezhuan’ 貨殖列傳, which strongly resembles a technical monograph (shu 書/zhi 志), would become one in subsequent histories. It would seem that personal fate divination could have gone either way, but these zhuan instead disappeared from the genre to be replaced some centuries later with more conventional biographies organised around the broader themes of ‘arts’ (yi 藝), ‘skills’ (ji 技), ‘recipes’ (fang 方), and ‘techniques’ (shu 術). This paper takes a look at the Shiji ‘Rizhe liezhuan’ 日者列傳 and ‘Guice liezhuan’ 龜策列傳 as zhuan and potential monographs, asking why they read the way they do and why they were essentially abandoned as models for subsequent histories in the genre. I will argue that Sima Qian 司馬遷 (c.145–c.86 BCE) and Chu Shaosun 褚少孫 (1st cent. BCE) place a peculiar ethnographic distance between themselves and diviners, the way one might with foreign peoples, and that the framework of these zhuan was, in part for this reason, ill adapted to the ever-evolving arena of technē in a culture that increasingly valued ‘broad studies’ (boxue 博學) amongst its intellectuals.

Rethinking the “Rulin zhuan”  

Michael Nylan (University of California, Berkeley)

Most scholars up to now, myself included, have read the Shiji “Rulin zhuan” in light of the even more famous Hanshu “Rulin zhuan,” and to a later extent, the Hou Hanshu “Rulin zhuan.”  My talk will explain why the two books represent very different separate projects (as Hans van Ess has already shown), and reading the “Rulin zhuan” is especially tricky, given the different attitudes Sima Qian and Ban Gu have toward the Ru (classicists mainly, but sometimes “Confucian”).  By my reading, both authors hold strongly aristocratic views, but they arrive at substantially different accounts of the world and the Ru place in their world.  By my reading, neither Sima Qian nor Ban Gu would think himself a Ru, but the Ru nonetheless represent some values that have their place within a fully functioning court.  Implicitly, my contribution argues against several current views of Han history: the “recurrent ripple” theory postulated first by Zhang Taiyan, in dialogue with Japanese scholars, and the autocratic monarchical views that posit the gradual “Confucianization” of Han classicism and the Han laws.

Shiji Biographies and the Question of the Intellectual’s Autonomy

Yuri Pines (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

The biographic genre is frequently and justifiably singled out as one of Sima Qian’s major breakthroughs in the history of Chinese historiography. My goal in the forthcoming paper is to analyze this genre from the angle of political culture of traditional China. Based on my recent exploration of the role of ming 名 (name, fame, repute) in early Chinese political thought, I want to explore the role of commemoration in Sima Qian’s biographies as reaction to the state’s attempt to monopolize control over individual ming. The latter attempt, which is articulated in the writings associated with Shang Yang 商鞅 (d. 338 BCE) and Han Fei 韓非 (d. 233 BCE), peaked under the system of the so-called “ranks of merit.” Through massive conferral of these ranks, the state attempted to control not only individuals’ economic, social, political, and legal status, but even their prestige. Whereas the state’s monopolization of ming was bitterly opposed in the writings of many leading intellectuals (most notably Xunzi 荀子 [d. after 238 BCE]), those did not propose an alternative mechanism for creating a “name” for outstanding individuals. Sima Qian’s invention of “historiographic immortality” as exposed with great clarity in the first of his “Arrayed Biographies” created precisely this alternative mechanism. It turned a historian—rather than a power-holder—into the ultimate judge of individual’s reputation, and especially of one’s posthumous fame. In due time, the historical genre became the major asset of intellectuals in their attempt to preserve a certain degree of moral autonomy in the ruler-centered state.

Painter and His brushes：The Creation and Self-Bounding of the Historical Narrative System in Shiji

Jianwei Xu (Renmin University)

How did Sima Tan and Sima Qian choose, use and arrange the historical materials of the Spring and Autumn Period? Through the analysis of related materials, we will see that the document processing method of Shi Ji is closely related to its original narrative system. Spring and Autumn and Zuo Zhuan were not only the source of historical materials in the Spring and Autumn Period of Shi Ji, they also deeply influenced the overall writing of Shi Ji. The different parts of the Shi Ji deal with the Spring and Autumn historical materials are very different, which is actually the difference caused by Sima Tan and Sima Qian's different writing ideals. But at the same time, the two people's understanding of the functions of each part was completely consistent, which is a great contribution to their historical narrative. At the same time, this historical narrative had bound their expression to a certain extent. The breadth of the history of Shi Ji had also been limited.

The Social Network of the Grand Scribe and the Writing of the Biographies of Shiji

Zhaoyang Zhang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

This research sketches, to a degree, the social network of Sima Qian’s family by gleaning information from the Shiji, Hanshu, and other written sources to explore the writing of the Shiji biographies from the perspective of social networks. This research finds that the network seldom affected the choices and attitudes of Sima Qian toward the persons recorded in the biographies and instead served as an important tool to help Sima Qian obtain crucially detailed biographical information for his writing. In addition, Sima Qian presented his relatively critical historical view through his dialogue with his friends (i.e., via the network). Generally speaking, Sima Qian did not write biographies for his ancestors and did not hide the awkward experiences of his teacher whom he greatly respected. He bravely praised the families of stigmatized ministers against political pressures and even openly declared friendship with someone whose entire clan was executed by the emperor. These features suggest that Sima Qian held somewhat independent attitudes in recording and analyzing distinguished people of the past and was mostly concerned with the reliability and details of the narratives he constructed. This perspective, in some respects, is what he meant by saying “the words of one family.”

Keywords: Shiji, biography, Sima Qian, social network, the words of one family