The Social Network of the Grand Scribe and the Writing of the Biographies in the Shiji

Abstract

This research sketches, to a degree, the social network of Sima Qian’s family by gleaning information from the Shiji, Hanshu, and other written sources to explore the writing of the Shiji biographies from the perspective of social networks. This research finds that the network seldom affected the choices and attitudes of Sima Qian toward the persons recorded in the biographies and instead served as an important tool to help Sima Qian obtain crucially detailed biographical information for his writing. In addition, Sima Qian presented his relatively critical historical view through his dialogue with his friends (i.e., via the network). Generally speaking, Sima Qian did not write biographies for his ancestors and did not hide the awkward experiences of his teacher whom he greatly respected. He bravely praised the families of stigmatized ministers against political pressures and even openly declared friendship with someone whose entire clan was executed by the emperor. These features suggest that Sima Qian held somewhat independent attitudes in recording and analysing distinguished people of the past and was mostly concerned with the reliability and details of the narratives he constructed. This perspective, in some respects, is what he meant by saying “the words of one family”.