Records Of The Grand Historian (Shi Ji) In America

After the birth of Shiji(The Grand Historian's Record),in almost 2000 years,it has been disseminated at first in Sinosphere and then to Europe since the start of Sino-Western communications.Until now this masterpiece has become one of the best-known Chinese histories.But it was quite late for American sinologists to encounter with Shiji.American study of Shiji could be dated to the year of 1840 when Remusat's essay “Szema Tan and His Son Szema Tseen”(English version)was published on The Chinese Repository founded by an American missionary—E.C.Bridgman.This essay made an explicit introduction of the lives of the father and the son and Ssu-ma Ch'ien's historical thoughts.To some extent,French sinology nourished American study of Shiji.Chavanne's French version of Shiji,published in 1895,has become the most indispensable reference book for later American sinologists.And it wasn't until 1930 s that Derk Bodde began translating and interpretting several Shiji biographies of Qin Dynasty,which were published as two books---China's First Unifier and Three Shih-Chi Biographies of Chin.The former one is about Lisi and includes translation of Biography of Lisi,text criticism toward this biography and discussion on Lisi's leading role in unifying China.The latter one covers a collection of the translation of three biographies of Chin Dynasty and analyzing essays after each biography which discuss sources of Shiji and the credibility of Shiji's text.Meanwhile in two early books on Chinese historiography(Traditional Chinese Historiography and Elements of Chinese Historiography)there had been some related introduction of Shiji.Then in 1958 Watson's Ssu-ma Ch'ien,Grand Historian of China was published.As the first book that systematically introduced Shiji,this book discusses Ssu-ma Ch'ien's time,relationship between Shiji and Chunqiu,divisions of Shiji and Ssu-ma Ch'ien's thoughts.In the past 30 years,there have been two prominent books on Shiji written by American scholars.One was Stephen Durrant's Cloudy Mirror which analyzes Ssu-ma Ch'ien's frustration,Shiji and Chunqiu,Ssu-ma Ch'ien's shape of Confucius and ways of dealing with sources in Shiji.The other one was Grant Hardy's The World of Bronze and Bamboo,which analyzes the reason why Ssu-ma Ch'ien wrote history,illustrates underlying meanings of Shiji's structure,provides a microcosmic reading of Shiji and reveals Ssu-ma Ch'ien's shape of the world.This dissertation is devoted to draw a line of the study of Shiji in America and probe into representative works of sinologists.