The Grand Scribe's Records, Volume V.1

The Hereditary Houses of Pre-Han China, Part I

by Ssu-ma Ch'ien

Edited by William H. Nienhauser Jr.

Published by: Indiana University Press

416 Pages, 3 maps

Hardcover
9780253039569
Published: April 2006

$60.00

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

With Part I of the two-part fifth volume of Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Shi chi (The Grand Scribe's Records), we enter the world of the shih chia or "hereditary houses." These ten chapters trace the history of China's first states, from their establishment in the 11th century B.C. until their incorporation in the first empire under the Ch'in in 221 B.C. Combining myth, anecdote, chronicle, and biography based on early written and oral sources, many no longer extant, the narratives make for compelling reading, as dramatic and readable as any in this grand history.

Acknowledgments
Introduction (William H. Nienhauser, Jr.)
On Using this Book
A Note on Terms
Weights and Measures (Lu Zongli)
List of Abbreviations

Hereditary House 1 (Zhi Chen and William H. Nienhauser, Jr., translators)
Hereditary House 2 (Bruce Knickerbocker, translator)
Hereditary House 3 (Weiguo Cao, translator)
Hereditary House 4 (Hongyu Huang, translator)
Hereditary House 5 (William H. Nienhauser, Jr., translator)
Hereditary House 6 (Wang Jing, translator)
Hereditary House 7 (Scott Cook, translator)
Hereditary House 8 (Zhenjun Zhang, translator)
Hereditary House 9 (Zhao Hua and William H. Nienhauser, Jr., translators)
Hereditary House 10 (Weiguo Cao, translator)

Frequently Mentioned Commentators
Biographical Sketches of Shih chi Commentators (Juri Kroll)
Selected Recent Studies of the Shih chi
Index
Maps

Ssu-ma Ch'ien (145-ca. 86 B.C.) was a major official in the Western Han dynasty. China's greatest historian, he overcame tragedy to complete this work, compiling the history of his culture from its beginnings through the end of the second century B.C.

William H. Nienhauser, Jr. is Halls-Bascom Professor of Classical Chinese Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature (two volumes, IUP, 1985; 1998) and (as translator) Chinese Literature, Ancient and Classical by André Levy (IUP, 2000). He was a founding editor of the journal Chinese Literature, Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR).

"[T]he Grand Scribe's Records volume 8 is a remarkable achievement and an interesting experiment in combining something resembling a traditional Chinese commentarial style with a Western scholarly context. . . . And, as with previous volumes, the intrepid beginner or the careful specialist will find volume 8 to be ahelpful aid to research on the Shiji."
~China Review International

"These volumes are most welcome. . . . The English translation has been done meticulously, with full scholarly apparatus. . . . These volumes are essential library additions."
~Choice

The Grand Scribe's Records, Volume V.1

The Hereditary Houses of Pre-Han China, Part I

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