Ban Gu

Chinese historian

• Born: 32
• Birthplace: Shanxi, China
• Died: 92 c.e.
• Place of death: Shanxi, China

Through his compilation of a history of the Han Dynasty, Ban Gu created a full, well-documented record for this vital period of Chinese history and set the standard for all subsequent dynastic histories of China.

Early Life

Ban Gu (bahn gew) was a member of the illustrious Ban family of Han China (206 b.c.e. to 220 c.e.). Since the generation of his great-great-grandfather, the Bans had distinguished themselves in scholarship, serving the Han imperial government in both court and provincial posts. His grand-aunt had been a favorite concubine of Emperor Cheng (Ch’eng; r. 32-7 b.c.e.). Gu’s twin brother, Chao (Ch’ao), assigned the title of Marquess for Establishing the Remote Regions, won for himself immortal fame by reestablishing Chinese hegemony in Central Asia. His younger sister, Zhao (Chao), much respected in court circles as the tutor of imperial princesses, was one of China’s foremost women scholars; she wrote the Nu jie (c. 99-105 c.e.; The Chinese Book of Etiquette and Conduct for Women and Girls, 1900; also known as Lessons for Women), the first textbook ever written for teaching Chinese women.

Life’s Work

Despite having such illustrious forebears and siblings, the young Ban Gu had a hard time finding his niche in the world. The Ban family had no automatic right to high office. Gu’s father, Biao (Pan Piao), though fairly successful in his official career, died when his sons were still relatively young and unestablished. He did, however, bequeath to Gu a project that was to secure for the Ban family a hallowed place in China’s literary tradition: the writing of a complete history of the Former Han Dynasty, the Han Shu (also known as Qian Han Shu, completed first century c.e.; The History of the Former Han Dynasty, 1938-1955). Gu’s efforts in writing the history were brought to the attention of Emperor Ming (r. 58-75), who appreciated his merits and made him a gentleman-in-waiting (lang). In this capacity, Gu had access to government archives that facilitated his writing efforts.

Besides writing The History of the Former Han Dynasty, Gu was given other writing assignments such as to report on the proceedings at the Bohu (Po-hu) Pavilion, in which an enclave of Confucian erudites gathered to deliberate on the correct interpretations of Confucian classics bearing on the ritual aspects of the Chinese monarchy. In addition, he found time to indulge his poetic propensities. His two fu (rhymed prose essays or rhapsodies) on the two capitals of the Han Dynasty established him as the foremost poet of his time.

Although other people had a hand in the compilation of The History of the Former Han Dynasty, notably his father Biao, his younger sister Zhao, and the scholar Ma Zu (Ma Hsü), there is no question that the main credit has to go to Gu. He gave the book its definitive form and was personally responsible for writing most of the text. Thus, it is appropriate to credit Ban Gu as the author of The History of the Former Han Dynasty.

Traditionally, Ban Gu’s name came to be linked to that of Sima Qian (Ssu-ma Ch’ien)—often the two were referred to by the dual name Ma-Ban—to suggest the highest standard in historiographical writing. There is no denying Gu’s indebtedness to Sima Qian. In fact, The History of the Former Han Dynasty cannot be meaningfully discussed apart from the historiographical context that Sima Qian and his masterpiece, Shiji (first century b.c.e.; Records of the Grand Historian of China, 1960, rev. ed. 1993), provided.

Before Sima Qian’s time (c. 145-c. 86 b.c.e.), historical works had not been formally or conceptually differentiated from other forms of serious literature, which all purported to be authentic words and deeds of the ancients. To the extent that conscious attempts to write history were made, the only available framework into which records of the past could be fitted was the biannian (annals), as exemplified by the Chunqiu (fifth century b.c.e.; The Ch’un Ts’ew with the Tso Chuen, 1872; commonly known as Spring and Summer Annals) edited by Confucius. This was a strictly chronological listing of events as they transpired, recorded from the point of view of some court historian. The disadvantages of this format are obvious. In treatments of events that had to be recorded close to the time they occurred, they often appear to be abstracted from their context, unless substantial digression and background materials were incorporated. To catch the attention of the recorder, events had to be of a spectacular nature—battles, diplomatic alliances, and the accession or death of rulers. Long-term changes such as population growth or technological development occurred too slowly to be noticed. Moreover, the format could not accommodate matters such as social or cultural history that had no immediate bearing on the government.

Sima Qian lived at a time when vast changes had overtaken China. The decentralized feudal China of the time of Confucius had given way to the centralized bureaucratic empire under the Qin (Ch’in; 221-206 b.c.e.). The Qin Dynasty, ruling over a unified China for the first time in history, was undone by excessive tyranny and was overthrown by a universal revolt. The ensuing struggle to succeed to the throne of China ended with the triumph of the House of Han, which was to rule for more than four hundred years. Meanwhile, the quest for empire was taking the Chinese into Mongolia and Central Asia. The economy was expanding, and enormous fortunes were made. Myriad individuals had played important roles in the unfolding drama. The times called for a new historiography that would be capable of portraying these vast changes and doing justice to these individuals and their contributions.

In writing the Records of the Grand Historian of China, Sima Qian overcame the limitations of the old historiography by developing a composite format. The seventy chapters of the Records of the Grand Historian of China are divided into five sections, each representing a distinct style of historical writing. The first section, known as “Basic Annals” (benji), essentially follows the biannian style of the old historiography, being a chronicle of events recorded from the viewpoint of the paramount ruler of China. The longest section is the “Biographies” (liezhuan). Here, attention is given to individuals, ranging from successful generals and ministers to unconventional characters such as the would-be assassin Qingke (Ch’ing K’o), as well as physicians, diviners, entertainers, and entrepreneurs. Sima Qian chose people who exemplified in their words or deeds patterns of human endeavor that were to be commended. The biographical section also gave the historian the flexibility to reconcile the two moral imperatives of his profession: objectivity in reporting, and praising the worthy and castigating evildoers. Since the annals and the biographies sections together constitute the bulk of the Records of the Grand Historian of China, the shiji format of historiography is often known as the jizhuan style.

The section of hereditary houses (shijia) deals with the history of the de facto sovereign states during the period preceding the Qin unification. The section on chronological tables (biao) traces the genealogy of the prominent families and furnishes a convenient scheme for correlating the chronologies of the various feudal states. The most distinctive section of the Records of the Grand Historian of China is the one titled “Monographs” (shu), which comprises eight chapters dealing with such wide-ranging matters as rites, music, pitched pipes, the calendar, astronomy, state sacrifices, rivers and canals, and the economy.

Sima Qian lived during the reign of Wudi (Wu-ti; 140-87 b.c.e.), during the heyday of the Former Han Dynasty. By 9 c.e., however, Wudi’s descendants had been edged out of the succession by the usurper Wang Mang, who founded the Xin Dynasty (Hsin; 9-23 c.e.). Wang Mang, however, was unable to consolidate his regime, and his dynasty fell amid a revolt by starving peasants and disgruntled landlords, precipitating another scramble for the throne of China. The man who emerged triumphant in this contest, Liu Xiu (Liu Hsiu; posthumous title Guang Wudi, r. 25-57 c.e.), who was descended from the founder of the Western Han Dynasty, claimed that his dynasty was a continuation or restoration of the Great Han. As his capital was located at Luoyang (Lo-yang), to the east of the Western Han capital, Chang’an (now Xi’an), historians refer to the restored dynasty as the Eastern, or Later, Han.

To scholars living at the court of the Eastern Han, the period from the founding of the first Han Dynasty to the final overthrow of the usurper Wang Mang constituted a natural unit of history. Emulating the success of Sima Qian, several of them (among them Ban Biao, Gu’s father) had tried to write its history. Apart from determining the overall design and collecting source materials for the project, however, Biao apparently had done little actual writing. Though Gu received the idea of writing The History of the Former Han Dynasty from his father, and though he was apparently deeply moved by the Confucian value of filial piety, he saw no need to be bound by his father’s design. Whereas his father had had no use for the majority of Sima Qian’s innovations, Gu retained almost all the sections of the Records of the Grand Historian of China, with the exception of “Hereditary Houses” (for the obvious reason that in the centralized bureaucratic polity of Han China there were no authentic hereditary houses apart from that of the imperial family).

Records of the Grand Historian of China not only was the model for Ban Gu’s The History of the Former Han Dynasty but also constituted his single most important source. Materials from the Records of the Grand Historian of China pertaining to the first hundred years of the Former Han Dynasty, in which the coverage of the two works overlaps, were copied almost verbatim into The History of the Former Han Dynasty. Nevertheless, Gu was no mere imitator; wherever possible, he sought to develop the potentialities of the model he had inherited. Sima Qian, for example, had invented the category of monographs to expand the scope of historiography to encompass ritual, social, and economic as well as political history. Ban Gu went one step further. In the section on monographs (which he renamed zhi instead of shu), he retained all the Records of the Grand Historian of China chapters on ritual matters but vastly expanded the scope of administrative history, adding new chapters on penal law and geography. The monograph on geography gives detailed population figures for the administrative subdivisions of the empire, thus yielding the first complete census of China, for the year 2 c.e. In addition, he ventured into the domain of intellectual history. The monograph on literature (yiwenzhi) was more than a systematic account of Chinese intellectual history; it also contained the first complete catalog of all Chinese books extant at that time.

Although Gu’s character was amiable and accommodating, he had the misfortune late in life to be caught up in the factional strife of the Han court. He joined the staff of General Dou Xian (Tou Hsien) as his confidential secretary on the eve of the latter’s punitive expedition against the Xiongnu (Hsiung-nu). On his return, the general was impeached for treason, and members of his retinue were also implicated. Gu was cast into prison, where he died before his friends could rescue him.

Significance

Through The History of the Former Han Dynasty, Ban Gu had a great impact on Chinese historiography and on Chinese political consciousness. He developed the possibilities of the jizhuan format, bringing it into the mainstream of Chinese official historiography. His contribution in this regard is twofold. First, he produced a monumental work, in one hundred chapters, in the style of Sima Qian’s new historiography, thus helping to popularize the form. Indeed, it is doubtful whether Sima Qian’s legacy could have survived if Ban Gu had not written The History of the Former Han Dynasty in support of it. There is evidence that until the Tang Dynasty (T’ang; 618-907 c.e.), the Records of the Grand Historian of China was an extremely rare book and that it was primarily thanks to Ban Gu’s The History of the Former Han Dynasty that scholars became acquainted with the jizhuan style of historiography. Second, Ban Gu was the one who arranged for the new historiography to be wedded to the salient feature of Chinese history, the dynastic cycle. Although dynasties varied in length and in the circumstances of their rise and fall, generally speaking, each dynasty marked a distinct period, an era with its own characteristics. After the time of Ban Gu, as soon as a new dynasty had consolidated its power, one of the first things its scholars did was compile an official history of the dynasty that had preceded it, signifying in this way that that dynasty was indeed defunct. The precedent for this practice was established by Ban Gu, who also set the tone for the writing of these official dynastic histories: impersonal, objective, and dignified.

Bibliography

Hughes, E. R. Two Chinese Poets: Vignettes of Han Life and Thought. 1960. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977. The author examines two sets of rhapsodies on the two Han capitals, by Ban Gu and Zhang Heng (Chang Heng), respectively. While the book is informative with regard to the nature of Han rhapsodies and the descriptions of the two capitals, the main purpose of the author is to highlight, through exploring the minds of the two poets, the contrasting style and ethos of the two Han dynasties. Indispensable for understanding Ban Gu’s ideology and worldview.

Hulsewé, A. F. P. China in Central Asia: An Annotated Translation of Chapters Sixty-one and Ninety-six of “The History of the Former Han Dynasty.” New York: E. J. Brill, 1979. Particularly useful is the seventy-page introductory chapter by M. A. N. Loewe. Loewe comments on the materials on which the original copy of The History of the Former Han Dynasty was written (wood or bamboo slips) and discusses the relationship between the Records of the Grand Historian of China and The History of the Former Han Dynasty. He argues, contrary to previous assumptions, that at least in one case the Records of the Grand Historian of China text is not the source for The History of the Former Han Dynasty but indeed derivative from it.

Hulsewé, A. F. P. “Notes on the Historiography of the Han Period.” In Historians of China and Japan, edited by W. G. Beasley and E. G. Pulleyblank. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961. A general but authoritative survey on the authors of the Records of the Grand Historian of China and The History of the Former Han Dynasty and other works of historiography of the Han period.

Ssu-ma Ch’ien. The Grand Scribe’s Records. Translated by Weiguo Cao, Scott W. Galer, and David W. Pankenier, edited by William H. Neinhauser, Jr. Vols. 1, 2, and 7. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994-2002. A modern translation of Sima Qian’s history, with copious notes and commentary. These three volumes are the sections published to date; eventually the entire work will be available in nine volumes.

Swann, Nancy Lee. Pan Chao, Foremost Woman Scholar of China. 1932. Reprint. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Center for Chinese Studies, 2001. Still the most important source on Ban Gu’s life. The author traces the genealogy of the Ban family, discusses the career of some of Gu’s forebears, and assesses the contributions that Gu’s father and younger sister and others made toward the completion of The History of the Former Han Dynasty. A meticulous scholar, Swann utilizes all available primary and secondary sources in arriving at her conclusions.

Twitchett, Denis, and Michael Loewe, eds. The Ch’in and Han Empires: 221 B.C. to A.D. 220. Vol. 1 in The Cambridge History of China. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Among the most comprehensive and authoritative histories of the Han period. Includes essays on sociocultural as well as historical events.

Watson, Burton. Ssu-ma Ch’ien, Grand Historian of China. New York: Columbia University Press, 1958. Not only the most authoritative study on the Records of the Grand Historian of China but also indispensable for any serious work on The History of the Former Han Dynasty; the author often makes insightful comments on the relative merits of the Records of the Grand Historian of China and The History of the Former Han Dynasty and their respective authors.