THE scholar who has done most to bring the writings of Sima Qian to the English reader is Burton Watson, who in 1961 published two volumes of translations, one devoted to the early years of the Han Dynasty and the other to the age of Emperor Wu of the Han. More than thirty years later, at the end of 1992, it was announced that the publication of a third volume, on the Qin Dynasty, was imminent, and at the same time the two original volumes were to be reissued in Pinyin romanization. These have now been published under the title Records of the Grand Historian, by Sima Qian (Hong Kong, 1993).
Although such a coincidence was unfortunate in a field where there are so few workers, the overlap between our books is less than it might have been, partly because much relevant material already comes in Watson’s earlier volumes, and partly because he has included much more material from the period before Qin was able to unify China. Those who wish to know more about the historian’s life should read Watson’s Ssu-ma Ch’ien: Grand Historian of China (New York, 1958).
On the historical background it is sufficient to refer to the first volume of The Cambridge History of China, which is entitled The Ch’in and Han Empires, 221 BC to AD 220 (Cambridge, 1986). This has rich bibliographical information for anyone who wishes to explore further. A well-illustrated account of a visit to the tomb, with chapters on the historical context, is Arthur Cotterell’s The First Emperor of China: The Story behind the Terracotta Army of Mount Li (Harmondsworth, 1981).
A collection of articles which will give the reader some idea of the range of history-writing in the Far East is W. G. Beasley and E. G. Pulleyblank (eds.), Historians of China and Japan (London, 1961).
The Grand Scribe’s Records in nine volumes, ed. William H. Nienhauser, Jr. (Bloomington, In. 1994–in progress).
The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC, eds. Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (Cambridge, 1999).
Lothar von Falkenhausen, ‘Mortuary Behavior in Pre-Imperial Qin: A Religious Interpretation’, Religion and Chinese Society vol. 1, ed. John Lagerwey (Hong Kong, 2004), 109–72.
Martin Kern, The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang: Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Imperial Representation (New Haven, Ct, 2000).
Gideon Shelach and Yuri Pines, ‘Secondary State Formation and the Development of Local Identity: Change and Continuity in the State of Qin (770–221 BC)’, in Archaeology of Asia, ed. Miriam T. Stark (Oxford, 2006), 202–30.
Stephen W. Durrant, The Cloudy Mirror: Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Qian (Albany, NY, 1995).
Grant Hardy, Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian’s Conquest of History (New York, 1999).
Mark Edward Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China (Albany, NY, 1999).
Michael Loewe, A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han & Xin Periods (221 BC–AD 24) (Leiden, 2000).
Michael Nylan, ‘Sima Qian: A True Historian?’, Early China 23–24 (1998–1999), 203–46.
First Emperor, ed. Jane Portal (British Museum Press, 2007).
War and Peace: Treasures of the Qin and Han Dynasties (Hong Kong, 2002).
Xi’an: Kaiserliche Macht im Jenseits—Grabfunde und Tempelschätze aus Chinas alter Hauptstadt (Mainz, 2006).
Jonathan Clements, The First Emperor of China (Phoenix Mill, England, 2006).