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A Reexamination of “The Biographies of the Reasonable Officials” in the Records of the Grand Historian1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 March 2015
Abstract
“The Biographies of the Reasonable Officials” (“Hsun-li lieh-chuan”), chapter 117 of the Shih chi (Records of the Grand Historian) by Ssu-tna Ch'ien (145–c. 85 B.C.), has been deemed a forgery by a number of scholars including Ts'ui Shih (1852–1924). The objections raised by these scholars are reexamined in this paper along with the texts of “The Reasonable Officials” and its companion, “The Biographies of the Harsh Officials” (“K'u-li lieh-chuan”). The narrative structure and historical accuracy of “The Reasonable Officials” are contrasted with those of “The Harsh Officials” to reveal still more flaws in the former. But the basic concept that a chapter in the Shih chi flawed by such errors must be from the hand of a forger is challenged, since time constraints on Ssu-ma Ch'ien would have been greater than those on later imitators and it is likely that without such constraints the obvious problems in this chapter would have been avoided. Finally, an alternative solution to the integral problems in “The Reasonable Officials” is suggested: namely, that the text is based closely on previously compiled materials on reasonable officials taken from the Han imperial archives. This hypothesis, while it cannot be irrefutably substantiated, would resolve almost all of the questions scholars have traditionally raised concerning “The Reasonable Officials,”
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- Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 1991
Footnotes
1.
I should like to thank the Pacific Cultural Foundation, the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin, and the Council on Academic Planning and Development, Executive Yuan (Taiwan) for financial support of the research which led to this paper. I first read a draft of this paper at an Early China Conference at the University of Chicago in October 1989, and am grateful to Professor Edward L. Shaughnessy, who organized that gathering, and the other participants for their numerous and useful suggestions. As a result of these comments and those by two anonymous readers for Early China, I decided to take a slightly different tack with the material. The paper in its present form was first given in Chinese at the Institute of Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, in May 1991.
References
1. Shih chi t'an-yüan 史記探源 (1910; rpt. Peking: Chung-hua, 1986), 212Google Scholar.
2. Shih Han lun-kao 
(Nanking: Chiang-su ku-chi, 1984), 189Google Scholar.
3. “The Biographies of the Confucian Scholars” (“Ju-lin lieh-chuan” 
, ch. 121) contains more than 3,000 characters, “The Biographies of the Money-makers” (“Huo-chih lieh-chuan” 貨殖列傳, ch. 129) about 6,000, and that of “The Biographies of Turtle and Rod (Diviners)” (“Kuei-ts'e lieh-chuan” 
about 7000.
4. This echoes the language describing Shun in the “Yao tien” 堯典 of the Shang-shu. Thus despite the malice that his step-mother and half-brother had for him, “Shun was able by means of his filial piety to control himself to the point that none of them would again come to any evil” 
Shang-shu cheng-i 尙書正義 (SPPY ed.), 2.14b.
5. I have generally translated official titles as given in Hucker, Charles, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.
6. The names of these laws may have been unwieldy, but their intention was clear: to encourage officials to keep an eye on, and report on, each other; see Kametarō, Takigawa 瀧川饞太郞, Shiki kaichū kōshō 史記會注考證校補, (1932–1934; rpt Taipei: Hung-shih, 1982), 1969c (commentary)Google Scholar.
7. The translations of this passage and other Shih chi excerpts throughout the paper are my own. They are heavily indebted where applicable to Watson's, BurtonRecords of the Grand Historian of China, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)Google Scholar. The chapter on the harsh officials can be found in vol. 2, pp. 419-51.
8. Some of these terms — k'o-shen, for example — appear elsewhere in the Shih chi especially to depict the legal system in the Ch'in period (cf. Shih chi [Peking: Chung-hua, 1959], 6.269Google Scholar and 6.284, both depicting the enforcement of the law during the time of the Second Emperor). In fact, chapters 119 and 122 should probably be understood as referring to “officials who reasonably applied the law” and those “who harshly applied the law.” The applicability of following written legal codes too closely, rather than interpreting them with regard to each situation, has always been suspect in China.
9. Burton Watson follows the “Chi-chieh” 集解 commentary here (Shih chi, 122.3147) and translates “I Tsung governed like a hawk spreading its wings and swooping down on its prey.” But the original says ying-chi mao-chih 鹰撃毛摯, “falcon attacking wings held,” and the commentary's reading of chang 張 for chih 摯 cannot be substantiated.
10. Shih chi, 122.3131-3155.
11. Li uses hsiao 效, “to follow the example of,” but the original passage (Shih chi, 122.3144) has k'o 刻, “harsher.”
12. Ching-hsing, Li, Shih chi p'ing-i 史記平議, in Li-tai ming-chia p'ing Shih chi 歷代名家評史記, ed. Yen-ch'i, Yang 楊燕起 et al. (Peking: Pei-ching Shih-fan ta-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1986), 708–9Google Scholar.
13. For more on these deaths, see chapter 122. For a thorough discussion of capital punishment during the Ch'in (which has proved useful in my translation), see Hulsewé, A. F. P., Remnants of Ch'in Law (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), 14–15Google Scholar. Hulsewé also argues (p. 5) that the Han legal system was in large part adopted from that of the Ch'in.
14. Shih chi, 130.3318.
15. Shih chi, 122.3154.
16. Shih chi, 119.3099.
17. This passage refers to a statement Confucius made in the Lun-yü 6.18: “The Master said, ‘When there is a preponderance of native substance over acquired refinement the result will be churlishness. When there is a preponderance of acquired refinement over native substance, the result will be pedantry. Only a well-balanced admixture of these two will result in gentlemanliness”; translation by Lau, D. C., Confucius, The Analects (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), 83Google Scholar. Here, however wen 文 is juxtaposed to wu 武 and its meaning is therefore emended from the original to mean “civil, cultural.” But Ssu-ma Ch'ien certainly intends praise for these men through his allusion to one of Confucius' definition of a “gentleman.”
18. Shih chi, 122.3154.
19. Records of the Grand Historian of China, vol. 2, 413, n. 1Google Scholar.
20. The subject of Sun Shu-ao's names is complicated, since nomenclature in the Spring and Autumn era was complex and not always understood by the Han dynasty. Sung Kung-wen 宋公文 has the best discussion of the problems surrounding these names; Ch'u-shih hsin-t'an 楚史新探 (Kaifeng: Honan University Press, 1988), 46–7Google Scholar. The following comments are based in large part upon Sung.
The controversy surrounding Sun Shu-ao's names involves three ways in which the author of the Tso-chuan chooses to refer to him within a two-year period: as Chief Minister (ling-yin 令尹) Wei Ai-lüeh 蕊艾獵 (Hsüan 11; 598 B.C.), as Chief Minister Wei Ao, and as Chief Minister Sun-shu Ao (both Hsüan 12; 597 B.C.). Various explanations equate Sun Shu-ao and Wei Ao and claim Wei Ai-lüeh was an elder brother, but since there is no explanation of why King Chuang changed chief ministers in 597 B.C., this sibling theory is not tenable.
If one follows the lead of two of the earliest commentators to the Tso-chuan, Fu Ch'ien 服虔 (d. c. 190 A.D.) and Tu Yü 杜預 (222–284), however, and assumes that Wei Ai-lüeh is Wei Ao, this problem is resolved. Moreover, since in 597 B.C. the Chin general Shih Hui 士會 praised the strengthening of the state of Ch'u under Wei Ao's tenure as chief minister, it is probable that Wei had served more than a few months. Finally, we note that the author of the Tso-chuan seems to have consciously varied his manner of referring to other political figures so that the reader could be exposed to all of their names (cf., for example, the following names used to identify Tzu-yüeh 子越 who was chief minister of Ch'u from 611–605 B.C.: Tzu-yüeh, Tzu-yüeh Shu 子越椒, Tou Shu ∕鬧椒, Po-fen 伯棼, and Shu 椒.
Thus Wei 
is Wei Ao's surname (shih 氏), Ao 教 the praenomen (ming 名), and both Sun-shu 孫叔 and Ai-lüeh 艾獵 were nomen (tzu 字) [cf. also Hsüan 12, where Wu Ts'an 伍參 refers to Wei Ao as “Sun-shu,” which must therefore be his tzu]. In all early texts other than the Tso, however, Wei Ao is known as Sun Shu-ao.
21. Sun Shu-ao's [i.e., Wei Ao's] father, Wei Chia 萬賈, opposed the powerful clans in Ch'u for years. In 605 B.C. he was imprisoned and killed by his enemies. Thus it is possible that Sun Shu-ao returned to Ch'i-ssu 期思 at this time for his own safety and thereby became “a retired scholar of Ch'u.”
22. Meng-tzu 6B/15; trans, by Lau, D. C., Mencius (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 181Google Scholar.
23. Shih Tz'u-yün 石次耘 notes that the Huai River region — Sun's home area — was at that time referred to as the “Hai” 海 region; Meng-tzu chin-chu chin-i 孟子今註今譯 (rpt. Taipei: Shang-wu, 1981), 342–3, n. 6Google Scholar.
24. Chuang-tzu (SPPY ed.), 8.18a.
25. Huai-nan tzu (SPPY ed.), 9.3a.
26. Lieh-nü chuan (SPPY ed.), 6.2a.
27. Peters, Heather A. (“The Role of the State of Chu in Eastern Zhou Period China,” Ph.D. diss.: Yale University, 1983, 59f)Google Scholar has described four types of Ch'u coins: (1) the square-shaped, gold Ying-yüan 
, (2) gold ping 鉼 discs, (3) bronze cowries (also known as i-pi ch'ien 樣真錢 [ant-proboscis money] or kuei-lien ch'ien 鬼臉錢 [ghost-face money]), and (4) the shovel-shaped, silver pu 布. The gold coins seem to have been eventually used primarily for ceremonial and political purposes (pp. 305–10), while the bronze cowries, weighing about 3.5 grams each, were the commercial coin. But in this instance it would seem King Chuang decided to replace the cowries with gold Ying-yüan, which weighed about 270 grams. Since these plaques were not cast, but hammered into shape, they did not have standard weights and sizes. These larger coins, although quite functional on the political level, would naturally have been most inconvenient in the marketplace, where smaller purchases were the norm. It may well be that the failure to introduce gold coinage to the local economy of Ying led to its subsequent use as a monetary unit destined for commerce, political and economic, with other states or regions, commerce which would primarily call for larger-value coins.
The modern scholar Ch'en Chih 陳直 notes, “Nothing has been found to date on the weights and sizes of money from the state of Ch'u during the Spring and Autumn period”; Shih chi hsin-cheng 史記新證 (T'ien-chin: T'ien-chin jen-min, 1979), 185Google Scholar. Liu Tsung-yüan 柳宗元 (773–819) has a passage in his “Fei Kuo-yü” 非國語 that discusses using lighter coins in Ch'i; Liu Tsung-yüan chi 柳宗元集 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1979), 1290Google Scholar.
28. Tz'u-hang 次行 refers to the normal order and location of each merchant's stall or shop; see Kametarō, Takigawa, Shiki kaichū kōshō, 1938aGoogle Scholar.
29. Mentioned, for example, in “The Harsh Officials” (Shih chi, 122.3140 and 122.3146).
30. Shih chi, 83.2475.
31. Kuo-yü, (Shanghai: Ku-chi ch'u-pan-she, 1978), vol. 2, p. 573Google Scholar: “Of old Tou Tzuwen was dismissed from the position of Chief Minister three times before a single day [in office] had accumulated because of his sympathy for the people.” In the Lun-yü 論語, Tzu-chang asks Confucius about Tzu-wen's three demotions; Lun-yü 5/19.
Tzu-wen or Tou Ku-wu-t'u 歸穀於冤 is a legendary figure. He was called “Ku-wu t'u,” which means “suckled by a tiger” in the Ch'u dialect, because he was abandoned at birth and raised by tigers. He became ling-yin 令尹 or prime minister of Ch'u in 664 B.C. and dominated the political scene there until he retired in 637. He was also patriarch of the clan that killed Sun's father.
32. There are two Western studies on Tzu-ch'an: Eichler, E.R., “The Life of Tsze-ch'an,” The China Review, 1886–1887, 12–23 and 65–78Google Scholar, and Rubin, V.A., “Tzu-ch'an and the City-State oi Ancient China,” T'oung Pao, 52 (1965–1966), 8–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I have not seen Cheng K'o-t'ang's 鄭克堂 Tzw-ch'a p'ing-chuan 子產評傳 (Shanghai: Shang-wu, 1935)Google Scholar. Watson's, BurtonThe Tso chuan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, also has a section (“Tzu-ch'an's Government Policies,” pp. 154-63) which is relevant.
33. Shih chi, 119.3101.
34. Since the reigns of the dukes of Lu were more standard measures of chronology because of the Ch'un-ch'iu and because Tzu-ch'an had a number of dealings with Chin, it is likely that instead of Duke Chao of Cheng, Duke Chao of Lu (541–530 B.C.) or Duke Chao of Chin (531–526 B.C.) is meant here.
35. Shu-min, Wang, Shih chi chiao-cheng 史記科證 (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1982), vol. 9, 3230Google Scholar. Tzu-p'i was the tzu of Han Hu 罕虎, who, according to the Tso-chuan, yielded the rule of Cheng to Tzu-ch'an (see Watson, , Tso Chuan, 154–5)Google Scholar.
36. This is a free translation. The “So-yin” (Shih chi, 119.3101) interprets this line as “When you are on the point of determining the value of something, you don't predetermine it(s value)” (lin shih p'ing ch'i kuei chien pu yü ting yeh 臨時奔Ä貴賤, 不豫定也). The “Cheng-i” 正義 (as reconstructed by Takigawa, , Shiki kaichū kōshō, 1938c)Google Scholar explains that “It means the amount demanded is not arbitrarily increased beforehand” (ch'i shu pu hsü yü kuangso yeh 其數不虛豫廣索也).In other words, the bartering was done without either side (or at least the seller) having a preconceived price, certainly an ideal in Chinese society.
37. V.A. Rubin has a markedly different understanding of the text, which he translates in his “Tzu-ch'an and the City-State of Ancient China” (p. 22): “After one year of Tzu-ch'an's government, young people ceased to joke indecently, older people lifted (loads) no more, and slaves no more ploughed up the boundaries. After two years, prices on the markets rose no more. After three years, the doors at night were locked no more, and nobody lifted (the things) lost on the roads. After four years, agricultural tools could be left on the fields. After five years, the officials no more took census and at times of mourning they governed without orders.”
38. Shih chi chih-i 史記志疑 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1981), vol. 3, 1432–3Google Scholar.
39. There is also a possibility that here again confusion exists because there were two, nearly contemporaneous Duke Ting's: one of Lu (whose twentieth year was 496 B.C.) and one of Cheng (whose twentieth year was 516 B.C.).
40. Shih, Ts'ui, Shih chi t'an-yüan, 212Google Scholar.
41. Shu-min, Wang, Shih chi chiao-cheng, 3230Google Scholar.
42. Shu-ming, Wang, Shih chi chiao-cheng, 3230–1Google Scholar, provides a plethora of other accounts of the lamentations following Tzu-ch'an's death.
43. I here read ti 第for ti 弟.
44. Cited in Li-tai ming-chia p'ing Shih chi, 694.
45. Meng-tzu 6B/6; translation slightly revised from that of Lau, D. C., Mencius, 175Google Scholar.
46. In order to resolve the issue, a modern editor of the Shuo-yüan, Hsiang Tsung-lu 向宗魯 (1895–1941), suggests that King Ch'eng 成 may be an error for King Wei 威 (r. 339-329 B.C.); Shuo-yüan chiao-cheng 說苑校證, ed. Tsung-lu, Hsiang (Peking: Chung-hua, 1987), 334Google Scholar. However, King Wei did not take the throne until over forty years after Duke Mu and it hardly seems likely that Kung-i Hsiu would still be active on the political stage at that time. Moreover, the Shuo-yüan narrative involves Ch'u summoning the feudal lords for a meeting, something possible in the mid-seventh century B.C. when Ch'u was ascending in power, but highly unlikely over two centuries later.
47 See also Wang Shu-min's long note on whether po-shih 博士 was a position or just a general term for a “scholar” or “academician” at this time; Shih chi chiao-cheng, 3231.
48. As the commentator Lu Wen-chao 盧文弨 (1717–1795) has pointed out, tzu-chi 自給 does not appear in some texts and the passage makes better sense without the term.
49. Han Fei tzu chi-chieh teng chiu-chung 
ed. Hsien-ch'ien, Wang 王先謙 (Rpt. Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1988), 14.255Google Scholar.
50. Huai-nan hung-lieh chi-chieh 淮南鴻烈集解, ed. Wen-tien, Liu 劉文典 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1989), 400Google Scholar.
51. Shu-min, Wang, Shih chi chiao-cheng, 3232Google Scholar.
52. Shih chi chih-i 1433.
53. Hsin-hsü chin-chu chin-i 新序今注今譯, ed. Yüan-chün, Lu 盧元駿, (Rpt. Taipei: Shang-wu, 1984), 7.243–7Google Scholar.
54. Han-shih wai-chuan chin-chu chin-i 韓詩外傳今注今譯, ed. Yen-yüan, Lai 賴炎元 (rpt. Taipei: Shang-wu, 1981), 2.65–6Google Scholar.
55. Shih chi chih-i, vol. 3, p. 1433Google Scholar.
56. I translate cheng 正 here as “regularize,” based on its intrinsic meaning and the context. It might also be understood as “maintain the correctness of.”
57. See, for example, the material provided in his comments on the “Kuan [Chung], Yen [Ying] Biographies,” Shih chi, 62.2136Google Scholar. See also discussions of documentary sources of the Shih chi by Hardy, Grant R. in his “Objectivity and Interpretation in the Shih chi” (Ph. D. diss.: Yale University, 1988), 115–26Google Scholar, and by Chih-sheng, Juan
in his fine study, “T'ai-shih kung tsen-yang sou-chi ho ch'u-li shih-liao” 太史公怎樣搜集和處理史料, Shu-mu chi-k'an 書目季刊, 7.4 (03 1974), 18–22Google Scholar.
58. Li-tai ming-chia p'ing Shih chi, 694.
59. His comments are cited in Takigawa, , Shiki kaichū kōshō, 1938bGoogle Scholar.
60. Ibid.
61. Chih-sheng, Juan, “Sou-chi ho ch'u-li,” 18–21Google Scholar.
62. See note 53 above.
63. On the dependence of the Shuo-yüan on archives and the subsequent loss of these materials, see the preface by Ch'ü Shou-yüan 屈守元 (Hsiang Tsung-lu's s tu-dent) to Shuo-yüan chiao-cheng, 2.
64. Tzu-ch'ing, Chu, Ching-tien ch'ang-t'an (rpt Taipei: Hsüeh-hai, 1983), 19Google Scholar.