Reading Notes. "historical Records" Han

Liu Zhiji said: "Since History of the Han Dynasty by Ban Gu, the other historians wrote similar to Si Maqian." ( History Comprehension ?Caizhuan) Seeing from time, The Records of the Historian records the history from the Huangdi to the beginning years of Emperor Wu Di of the Han Dynasty (as Zhao Shengqun said), while History of the Han Dynasty ends one generation before Wudi. The overlapping parts of the two books cover more than one hundred years. From the length, among the one hundred articles History of the Han Dynasty, fifty five of them have same content with those in The Records of the Historian, including five Ji, six Biao, five Zhi, and forty Zhuan. Although Ban Gu borrowed many from The Records of the Historian, he didn't plagiarize it and had some supplementations, revisions and movements toward it. Thus the overlapping parts of the two books arose as "the Differences and Similarities between Ban and Ma". Since Jin and Tang Dynasty, many people had done some research about it. But their research put much emphasis on the layout, thinking, style and knowledge of the two. Of some them depreciate Ma and appraise Ban; others do oppositely. However, few people research from the angle of collating about the different article of Ban and Ma, obtain the parts worth collating and correct the errors from copying and printing in the writing about historical facts in the two books. During the spreading course of two thousand years, the errors from copying and printing are unavoidable. Thus, on the basis of grasping the different parts of the two books wholly, through gathering inside evidence and circumstantial evidence, my paper applies different collating means as comparative collation, collation in itself, collation by others and rectifying collation, borrows the achievements by the predecessors, and does a detailed textual research on some different parts of the two books. It also distinguishes between right and wrong and tries to be useful to the collating research on the two books. Besides, the two versions complied by the Zhonghua Book Company are the generally accepted and current reliable texts, which also have quite lot of mistakes misusing punctuations, which lead to the inconsistence and ambiguity between the content and historian facts. I have tried to determine and rectify them emphatically.