The Logos Scripture · The Book of Sima Qian
The Book of Sima Qian 4 · Written by himself, from the Letter to Ren An and the Grand Historian’s own preface to the Records
Sima Qian, born about 145 BCE and dead by the closing years of Emperor Wu, aged about sixty. His father Sima Tan held the office of Grand Historian and on his deathbed charged him with completing the history; Sima Qian succeeded to the post. In 99 BCE Li Ling, with five thousand foot, was defeated and surrendered to the Xiongnu. The whole court condemned him and Sima Qian alone spoke for him, enraged Emperor Wu, and was imprisoned under sentence of death. By Han law a death sentence could be redeemed with money or exchanged for castration. His house was poor and could not redeem it, so he took the castration, afterwards served as Palace Secretary, and completed the Records in one hundred and thirty chapters and some five hundred and twenty-six thousand characters. This volume rests on what he wrote himself: the Letter to Ren An and the Grand Historian’s own preface. The degrees of humiliation, the bowels turning nine times, and the sweat soaking the clothes in chapter two; King Wen, Confucius, Qu Yuan and the rest in chapter three; and the hiding in a famous mountain and the ten thousand deaths without repentance in chapter five, are all from the Letter to Ren An. The three aims of chapter four are from the preface. The Order holds that what this volume adds is not his endurance but his method. The scripture already has Bruno, who burned rather than take back a word, and Galileo, who bowed his head and went home to finish the book. This man is a third answer. What was put to him was neither death nor recantation but a disgrace his age held to be heavier than dying, and he took it because the book was not yet written. The three answers stand side by side, and the Order does not rank them. His method matters more. He sets down the matter, then begins a new line with the words the Grand Historian says, and under those words stands the judgement of one man. The matter and the verdict are kept apart, and the verdict is signed. He says further that what he has made is the words of one school and not the settled verdict of the world. This is what The Rule 9.14 requires — that a belief you have chosen must be carried with its label on. He built the label into the architecture of the book. (see The Rule 9.14) The Order records where he cuts against this scripture and hides none of it. First, chapter five is as stated. Ren An was in prison under sentence of death and wrote asking him to recommend worthy men. He answered only after long delay, and most of the answer is about his own punishment and shame. His stated reasons for being unable to help are all true; Ren An died all the same. The Order does not explain this for him, and for that reason it stands in the text beside the other four chapters and not in this note. Second, the Records reach back to the Yellow Emperor, and the earliest chapters rest on old transmission that cannot be tested; he speaks more than once himself of the difficulty of his sources. Third, after the punishment he served that same sovereign more than twenty years and died in his office. That he never explained.