TRANSLATOR’S NOTE ON THE TEXT

As in my earlier volumes of translations from the Shi ji, I have on the whole followed the text of the Shi ji as it appears in the edition entitled Shiki kaichū kōshō (Tokyo, 1934; reprinted in China and Japan), though I have not always followed the punctuation in this edition. Below are listed works that contain earlier translations of the chapters I have translated here Shi ji chapters translated both in these works and in my selection are listed in brackets), or works that were particularly helpful to me in preparing my selection. I am much indebted to the Research Centre for Translation of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and to its director, Dr Eva Hung, for a Renditions Fellowship that allowed me to spend six months at the Centre in the spring of 1990 revising my earlier translations and preparing the new translations in this volume.

 

Derk Bodde. China’s First Unifier: A Study of the Ch’in Dynasty as Seen in the Life of Li Ssu (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1939; rpt. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967). [Shi ji 88]

Derk Bodde. Statesman, Patriot and General in Ancient China: Three Shih-chi Biographies of the Ch’in Dynasty (New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, 1940; rpt. New York: Kraus Reprint, 1967). [Shi ji 85, 86 (Jing Ke), 88]

Édouard Chavannes. Les Mémoires Historiques de Se-Ma Ts’ien, Vol. I-V (Paris: Ernest Laroux, 1895-1905; rpt. Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1969). [Shi ji 5, 6, 15]

J. I. Crump, Jr. Chan-kuo ts’e (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).

J. J. L. Duyvendak. The Book of Lord Shang (London: A. Probsthain, 1928). [Shi ji 68]

Denis Twitchett & Michael Loewe. The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1 (Cambridge University Press, 1986).

Burton Watson. Records of the Historian: Chapters from the Shih chi of Ssu-ma Ch’ien (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969). [Shi ji 85, 86]

Gladys & Hsien-yi Yang. Records of the Historian (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1974). [Shi ji 6, 68, 79, 85, 126]