著者

勝藤 猛

出版者

大阪外国語大学

雑誌

大阪外国語大学論集 (ISSN:09166637)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.13, pp.131-151, 1995-09-29

---

The history of the Far Eastern Asia before the modern age may be defined as a history of interactions between pastoral or nomadic peoples in the north and agricultural and urbanized China in the south. Si-ma Qian (145?-86? BC) was a court-historiographer under the Emperor Wu-di of the Han Dynasty. When he expressed at a court meeting his sympathy for Li Ling, a Chinese soldier defeated at a battle with the warrior-horsemen Xung-nu, or the Huns, he was put in prison and was made eunuch. Recovering from a desperate mood, he resumed to write a history of China. It was a kind of comtjensation for the physical defect. We see from his life how weak and miserable an intellectual is in the face of a sovereign. His Records of History, however, as a model of Chinese historiography, has been loved and respected for thousands of years.