What does Historical Records mainly talk about?

Historical Records is the earliest biographical general history in China, written by Sima Qian, a great historian, writer and thinker in the Western Han Dynasty. Historical Records originated in the first year of Taichu (BC 104), and was imprisoned because the author defended Li Ling. It ran aground in the second year of Tianhan (99 BC). After the author was released from prison, he endured humiliation and wrote a book in anger, adding his own more brilliant ideas. After 10 years of hardships, it was finally completed around the fourth year (the first 93 years) in Liang Wudi.

Historical Records is an epoch-making symbol in the history of Chinese historiography, a masterpiece of "studying the relationship between man and nature, linking the changes of ancient and modern times and forming a unified view", and an extremely valuable contribution of Sima Qian to China's national culture, especially history. The author recorded the political, military, economic and cultural history from the Yellow Emperor to the Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty for three thousand years (10 1 years ago), especially in the Warring States, Qin and Han Dynasties. In particular, the history of the Western Han Dynasty is less than 100 years, accounting for almost half of the book.

It is a historical masterpiece with the highest achievement and the greatest influence in the pre-Qin and Han Dynasties. It comprehensively and profoundly summarizes the ancient history of China and reflects the ancient social features of China through the description of characters. Collection of books 130 volumes, including biography 12 volumes, table 10 volumes, 8 books, 30 aristocratic families, 70 biographies, 526,500 words.

In addition to Qin Benji, Benji also recorded the political situation and events of emperors in past dynasties according to their lineage and age. Table lists simple memorabilia between emperors and vassal States in various historical periods in a simple tabular arrangement, which is the connection and supplement of the narrative of the whole book; A "book" is a file that records the beginning and end of a single event. They describe the development and present situation of astronomy, calendar, water conservancy, economy, culture and art respectively, which is similar to the special history of science in later generations. The "aristocratic family" mainly describes the lineage and the history of the rise and fall of the vassal states, including the imperial families and heroes in the Han Dynasty and people with certain special positions in history, such as Confucius and Chen She. Biographies are mainly the deeds of influential people of different types and classes, while minority biographies describe the ruling history of foreign and domestic ethnic minorities. Among the above five categories, "biography", "biography" and "family" are all biographical literary works.

The author inherits the tradition of previous historical works, sorts out, researches and sorts out the chaotic historical materials for thousands of years, and then classifies them as biographies of more than 100 historical figures, and summarizes their historical background in eight volumes. Finally, chronology sorts the years and supplements them in time, which makes the whole book system complete and sparse, thus creating the literary style of China's biographical history. Because its main contents are biographies and biographies, it is called a general history of biographies.

Historical Records has been published for more than 2000 years, which has given endless enlightenment and great and far-reaching influence to future generations, both in history and in the history of literature. In historiography, it is a model of "general history" and "official history" in past dynasties, especially its genre form, which has been used by all "official history" since Hanshu.

In literature, the form, genre and writing style of biographical literature have a great influence on later literary styles such as prose and novels. Later writers of classical Chinese regarded it as a model of classical Chinese, and later operas and novels drew a lot of material from it. The writer's spirit of "writing with anger" has become the direct inheritance and development of our nation's excellent tradition. It has been translated into English, French, Russian, Japanese and other languages and is popular in the world.

Lu Xun praised "Historical Records", saying that "historians never sing, leaving Sao without rhyme". Sima Qian was honored as "Shi Sheng" and "the father of China history" by later generations. Fukuda, a famous Japanese contemporary historical novelist, calls himself Ryotaro Shiba because he admires Sima Qian, which means that he is far less than Sima Qian.