SOURCE: Watson, Burton. “The World of Ssu-ma Ch'ien.” In Ssu-ma Ch'ien: Grand Historian of China, pp. 3-39. New York: Columbia University Press, 1958.

In the following essay, Watson outlines some general features of Chinese historical writings and explores the areas that were of greatest concern to Qian.

Before proceeding to any detailed discussion of the life and thought of Ssu-ma Ch'ien, it is well to relate something of the age in which he lived and wrote and, since he was an historian, of the past of China as he conceived it. Therefore, I shall try to describe briefly the scope of his history of China, the Shih chi, or Records of the Historian,¹ and some of the main ideas which dominate it. This is no place to attempt a condensation of the vast and complicated picture of the first two thousand years of Chinese history presented in the Shih...