Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: July 15, 1999
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780231113045
Subjects: Asian / Middle Eastern history: BCE to c 500 CE; Cultural studies; China - History; Historiography; History; History - General History; History: World; Ancient World; Ancient - General; Asia - China; History / Asia; Asia - General; China; Qin dynasty, 221-207 B.C; Shi ji; Sima, Qian,; To 221 B.C; ca. 145-ca. 86 B.C; ca. 145-ca. 86 B.C.
Description: Sima Qian (C. 100 B.C.E.) was China's first historian - he was known as Grand Astrologer at the court of Emperor Wu during the Han dynasty - and, along with Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, was one of the creators of imperial China.

His Shiji not only became the model for the twenty-six Standard Histories that the historians of each Chinese dynasty wrote to legitimize the dynastic succession, but also has been an enormously influential resource to historians, literary scholars, philosophers, and many others seeking an understanding of early Chinese history.

In Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo, Grant Hardy presents convincing evidence that the Shiji is quite unlike such Western counterparts as the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, for, Hardy argues, Sima Qian's work seeks not only to represent but also to influence the world in a manner based on Confucian concepts of sageliness and "the rectification of names."