The Power of an Alleged Tradition - CHINA Buchservice

esponsibility for the bold steps which the emperor soon after the poet’s death did
in fact take.
Tracing the cosmologists’ ideas in the Grand Scribe’s Record
In the two previous parts I have attempted to deduce the degree of personal involvement
of the three Sima in Emperor Wu’s grand reform both from explicit and
implicit evidence in the Shiji. I shall now examine how those ideological elements
which we ascribed to the faction of the cosmologists came to be refl ected in the
historical account as a whole. In other words: is the ideology which Gongsun Qing
propagated in his prophetic message and which seems to have been shared by Sima
Xiangru, Sima Tan and Sima Qian, confi rmed by the overall structure and underlying
message of the Shiji as a whole, or is it rather denied?
Before this tricky question will be approached, it should perhaps be recalled
that we do not know exactly which part of the Shiji Sima Tan or Sima Qian can reliably
be credited with. We shall thus again avoid speaking of Sima Tan or Sima Qian
as the author of the Shiji here and only after closer scrutiny of the text return to
the question whether we can learn to distinguish between Sima Tan and Sima Qian
from the text itself.
It should perhaps be also stressed that the writing of a historical work – other
than activities such as advising the emperor in matters of ceremonial or making calendrical
calculations – was not part of the offi cial duties of a Grand Scribe, at least
not during the time with which this study is concerned. The compilation of the work
which only later was given the title Shiji 156 thus must be regarded as Sima Qian’s
(and before him, his father Tan’s) private endeavor. 157 With these preliminaries in
mind a closer look at the Shiji will be taken now, attempting to fi nd traces of the
cosmologists’ ideas in the overall structure of the text.
Certainly the most striking peculiarity of the Shiji text is the fact that the fi rst
chapter is concerned with the Five (Mythical) Thearchs and especially with the fact
that the very fi rst ruler in the sequence is Huangdi, followed by Zhuanxu ��, Ku
�, Yao ��and Shun �� 158 It should perhaps be added that the account might, for
example, have begun with Yao – a decision which an adherent of the Confucian
teachings, a ru, would certainly have approved. The choice of Huangdi required justifi
cation as to which sources would support such a sequence, and this justifi cation
is found in the Grand Scribe’s personal remark at the end of this fi rst chapter. In
this remark, the author points toward sources that support the sequence given in the
156 The original title of the book seems to have been Taishigong shu������ “The book of the Lord the Grand
Scribe.” See Shiji 130/3319.
157 As for what may be called a “religious approach” toward the role Sima Qian had to fulfi ll as a scribe, see Michael
Nylan, “Sima Qian: A True Historian?” Early China 23–24 (1998–99): 203–46. She proposes to render the word
taishi ���as “Senior Archivist.”
158 For a synopsis of the various aspects of what he calls the Myth of Huang-ti as well as of the many previous studies
devoted to this topic, see Charles Le Blanc, “A Re-Examination of the Myth of Huang-ti,” Journal of Chinese
Religions 13/14 (1985): 45–63. Of special interest is the table in which the references to Huangdi in sources
of the 2nd cent. B.C. until the 2rd cent. A.D. are arranged according to themes or aspects related to Huangdi
(50–51). Li Wai-yee in her study “The Idea of Authority in the Shih Chi (Records of the Historian),” Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies 54 (1994), 370, maintains that Sima Qian “obliquely criticizes the cult of the Yellow
Thearch” – a hypothesis which does not seem to be confi rmed by textual evidence.
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