The Grand Scribe's Records, Vol. 7: The Memoirs of Pre-Han China (Volume VII) Review

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The Grand Scribe's Records, Vol. 7: The Memoirs of Pre-Han China (Volume VII) ReviewI read The Grand Scribe's Records vol. 7 with immense pleasure, having worked on translations of several Shiji Memoirs in the past, finally defeated by the immensity of the task and the overwhelming number of obscure historical, geographical and literary references. This is where Nienhauser and his team have excelled: their translations extend beyond the basic text to the abundant notes and commentary generated by centuries of Chinese scholarship on this important work of history. The footnotes cross-reference every name and event that appears in the text to other parts of the Shiji and to other pre-Han texts.
The Shiji or Historical Records (Records of the Historian, Grand Scribe's Records) is the most impressive work of history of its time, on par with the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and with far less speculation than Herodotus. It was a heroic attempt to recover and explain the first millenia of the Chinese world from the scattered remains of documents destroyed by the First Emperor of China. Scholars agree its influence on later Chinese historical writing is profound. The Memoirs translated in this volume are the most readable section of the work, presenting more than a hundred memorable characters in brief thematic biographies.
Nienhauser and his colleagues present a highly readable translation, but offer much more to the general reader and student by explaining obscure references to sacrifices, dating, names, official posts, customs, etc.; by discussing doubtful readings and alternate translations; by identifying place-names and locating them in Tan Qixiang's The Historical Atlas of China; and by identifying passages that have parallels in other contemporary texts. These notes, plus a table of weights and measures, an enlightening discussion of chronology, an excellent bibliography and index, make their work vastly superior to the otherwise excellent English renderings of the Shiji and Zuozhuan [Tso Chuan] by Burton Watson, or of the Zhanguoce [Intrigues of the Warring States] by Crump, or of Lu Buwei's Annals by Knoblock. Only James Legge's translations of the Chinese classics demonstrate a similar commitment to explicating the text, though without the benefit of recent scholarship and archaeological discovery. When all nine volumes are complete, this work will be a classic and an essential text in any historian's library.
[My only complaint: shame on the copy editors for missing two misspellings in the first sentence of the first memoir!]The Grand Scribe's Records, Vol. 7: The Memoirs of Pre-Han China (Volume VII) Overview

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