The Power of an Alleged Tradition - CHINA Buchservice

One may infer from this passage how close the duties of the Han taishi must still
have been to those of shamans or sorcerers: the taishi seems to have applied his
knowledge about phenomena in the heavens to practical needs on earth, such as
warding off the enemy who inhabited a certain area on earth by pointing with the
spear of Taiyi toward the corresponding position in the sky, a practice similar to
voodoo. 86 As for Sima Qian’s professional engagement, the fact that he must have
been deeply involved in Emperor Wu’s grand ceremonial reform can be concluded
from the last chapter of the Shiji. There we learn:
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DOROTHEE SCHAAB-HANKE
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When three years had gone by since [his father’s] death, [Sima] Qian became
Director the Grand Scribe. 87 He [then] excerpted the records of the scribes 88 as
well as the books of the stone room and the metal casket. 89 The fi fth year [after
his father’s death] was the fi rst year of the Taichu [era]. 90 At dawn of the jiazi
[day], in the eleventh month, the winter solstice occurred. The heavenly
calendar was brought to a new start, [the calculations?] were deposited in the
Hall of Light, and all the Gods received the record. 91
The way Sima Qian refers to both events, fi rst in a three-year-step and then in a
fi ve-year-step as being somehow related to his father’s death, strongly conveys the
impression that he intended to emphasize an inner connection between his father
Tan and these events, that both events must somehow have been intimately linked
with his father or, at least, that these events were of utmost importance to his father
– a phenomenon which fi nds its parallel in the biographical account of Sima Xiangru
to which I will turn presently.
The calendar reform was certainly the single most important event during the
time Sima Qian served at court in the position of taishiling. Yet inspite of its signifi -
cance and although the event is treated here and elsewhere in the Shiji as a matter of
major importance, there is only one passage in the Shiji in which Sima Qian explic-
86 The term “voodoo” has been applied by Hans van Ess to the practices of the scribe (shi��) Chang Hong ��
who advised his ruler, the Zhou king Ling, to perform a ceremony in the presence of the feudal lords during
which they had to shoot with bows at the head of a wildcat – due to a magical play with words, van Ess explains,
this became equivalent with attacking those feudal lords who did not attend the meeting. See his “Implizite
historische Urteile,” 48.
87 According to the Bowuzhi, Sima Qian entered offi ce on a yimao day, in the sixth month of the third year
(of the era Yuanfeng, which would be 108 B.C.), at the age of 28, and had an income of 600 dan (bushels). Cf.
Jijie commentary to Shiji, 130//3296.
88 For the records of the scribes, Shiji ��� mentioned here, cf. the passage shortly before where Sima Tan in his
long monologue expresses his fear that the texts of the scribes of the whole world (tianxia zhi shiwen�����
�) might get lost, due to his inability to fi nish his grand project without the help of his son (Shiji 28/3295). It
seems that the endeavor to collect texts written by earlier scribes of the different feudal states before the unifi cation
of the empire was the reason for several of the journeys Sima Tan undertook. This is indicated in a passage
quoted from Han jiuyi (Taiping yulan 235/3b).
89 The stone room and the metal casket, as the Jijie commentary (3296) remarks, were both places in which offi cial
documents of the state were stored.
90 Although a note by Li Qi in the Jijie commentary emphasizes that the counting of years had to be started from
Qian’s entering upon offi ce, simply from the distance of almost six years between Sima Tan’s death and the fi rst
year of Taichu, it must be in both cases related to the year in which his father had died.
91 Shiji 130/3296. The Jijie commentary here cites a remark by Xu Guang �� who refers to the almost parallel
formulation in the rhymed preface to chap. 28 (cf. Shiji 130/3306).
BMFEA 74 · 2002