Li Ling

The five-thousand-strong Han army that had set out for the north in the ninth month had been reduced to a defeated group of fewer than four hundred soldiers—weary, wounded, and without their general—when in the eleventh month they reached a fort on the frontier. News of their defeat quickly reached the capital of Chang'an via post-horse.

Emperor Wu was not as angry as might have been expected. Given that the main Han army, a large force commanded by Li Guangli, had been soundly defeated earlier, it was unreasonable to expect much from Li Ling's small force, amounting to a single detachment. Moreover, the emperor was convinced that Li Ling had died in battle. Nonetheless, Chen Bule, who had earlier come from the northern deserts bearing a message from Li Ling to the effect that all was quiet on the battlefront and the troops' spirits were high, and who had been rewarded with an official post for having brought such good tidings, and remained even now in the capital—this Chen Bule had of necessity to commit suicide. Everyone felt sorry for him, but there was no help for it.

In spring of the following year, Tianhan 3, news arrived at the capital that Li Ling had not died in battle, but had been captured and was being held prisoner. Now Emperor Wu was furious. He was close to sixty, having reigned for over forty years, but he was more hot-tempered even than in his prime. He loved tales of gods and immortals and had deep faith in diviners and shamans, by whom he had several times been deceived over the years. This great emperor, who exercised power for a total of over fifty years while the Han dynasty was at its height, had since his middle years had an obsessive, uneasy interest in the supernatural world. Thus, disappointments in that realm were all the more telling blows to him. As he grew older, a succession of such blows had made him—a person by nature quite openhearted—darkly suspicious of his officials. Three successive prime ministers—Li Cai, Qing Zhai, and Zhao Zhou—were each put to death. The present prime minister, Gongsun He, had actually wept openly in front of the emperor, fearful of what would happen to him after he accepted his appointment. Ever since the resolute minister Ji An retired, the emperor had been surrounded by flatterers or corrupt, cruel men.

Emperor Wu summoned the various high officials to discuss what should be done about Li Ling. The general himself was not physically present in the capital, of course; but if his guilt was decided, his wife, children, and relatives were available for punishment and his property liable to seizure. One legal official, known for his cruelty, was skilled at reading the emperor's face and bending the law to accord with the ruler's wishes. When someone reproved him for this, citing the authority of the law, he replied: "What earlier rulers approved becomes the law, and what a later ruler approves becomes the regulation. What law can there be, apart from the will of the ruler?"

All the ministers were cut from the same cloth as this legal official. No one, from Prime Minister Gongsun He, Superintendent of the Court of Impeachment Du Zhou, and Superintendent of Rites Zhao Di on down, would attempt to defend Li Ling at the risk of incurring the emperor's wrath. They denounced his traitorous behavior. They said how embarrassed they were ever to have served at court alongside such a turncoat. Everyone agreed that, in retrospect, Li Ling's overall conduct had been suspect. The charge that Ling's cousin Li Gan had grown haughty because he had the favor of the crown prince became an excuse for baseless accusations against Ling himself. Those who were the most favorably inclined toward Ling simply kept their mouths closed and did not criticize him, but even they were few in number.

There was just one man who watched these developments with a pained countenance. Were these men who were slandering Li Ling now not the same as those who had, some months earlier, toasted his departure from the capital, offering him the highest encouragement? And were they not precisely the same men who had, when the messenger arrived from the northern deserts with the news that all was well with Li Ling's forces, praised the small army's fighting spirit, declaring Li Ling a worthy grandson of the great General Li Guang? This single observer wondered at these high officials, who pretended to have quite forgotten all that had gone before, and also at the emperor himself, who was wise enough to see through the officials' sycophancy yet refused to lend an ear to the truth. No—he did not actually wonder at this, since he knew all too well from long experience that this is what people were like. But even so, it remained distasteful to him.

As a middle-ranking official at court, he too was asked for his opinion. In his reply, he made a point of praising Li Ling. He remarked that, when one observed Ling's conduct, one could see that he was filial in serving his parents, trustworthy in his relations with other gentlemen, and a true patriot in his readiness to stand up, cast aside concern for his own safety, and sacrifice himself when the nation was in crisis. Now, alas, he had suffered a defeat; but how truly unfortunate it was that the emperor's wise judgment should be in danger of being obscured by the accusations of flattering courtiers whose only wish was to preserve themselves and safeguard their wives and children, and who were now taking advantage of Ling's one failure, which they distorted and exaggerated. Ling, after all, had led a force of fewer than five thousand foot soldiers deep into enemy territory, nearly exhausted the strength of the Xiongnu army numbering tens of thousands, and fought many battles over a distance of a thousand li. Even when his army's path was blocked and their arrows gone, he had them brandish their longbows at the enemy and use their swords to fight to the death. He had so won the hearts of his followers that they were willing to do this. Not even the most famous generals of the past could have surpassed him in this. Though his army was defeated, their valiant effort was worthy of celebration throughout the empire. And it seemed to him, this official went on, that in not dying but becoming a prisoner, Li Ling's aim must have been to serve the Han secretly in some way, in that enemy land....

The assembled courtiers were stunned. It was unthinkable that anyone would dare to speak like this. They looked up in fear at the face of Emperor Wu, the veins on whose temples seemed about to burst. Then they thought of what fate awaited this man who had called them "courtiers whose only wish was to preserve themselves and safeguard their wives and children," and they smiled.

No sooner had this audacious man, Sima Qian, the Grand Historian, left the emperor's presence than one of these "courtiers whose only wish was to preserve themselves and safeguard their wives and children" spoke to Emperor Wu about the alleged friendship between Qian and Li Ling. Another claimed that the Grand Historian's statements were a reflection of a rift between Qian and General Li Guangli, saying that Qian's praise for Ling was intended to disgrace General Li, who had left the fort before Ling arrived but had accomplished nothing. At any rate, everyone joined in the view that Qian's attitude was far too high and mighty for a mere grand historian, whose job was to serve as astrologer, calendar-maker, and declarer of auspicious and inauspicious days.

Strange to say, Sima Qian was punished even before Li Ling's own family. The following day, he was put into the custody of the head of the Board of Punishments, the appointed penalty being castration.

*

In China from ancient times there were four principal types of physical punishments: tattooing, cutting off the nose, cutting off the feet, and castration. During the reign of Emperor Wu's grandfather, Emperor Wen, three of the four were abolished, leaving only castration, that peculiar penalty by which a man is deprived of his manliness. It was sometimes called "the punishment of rottenness," perhaps because the resulting wound gave off a rotting odor, or perhaps because the man was thought to become like a rotten tree that cannot bear fruit. Those who had been punished in this way were known as "eunuchs," and most of the officials who served in the women's quarters of the palace were of course eunuchs. But that Sima Qian, of all men, should suffer such a punishment!

Still, though we of later ages know him as the famous author of the Historical Records, we must remember that, at the time, Sima Qian was an insignificant official in charge of writings at court. His was unquestionably a brilliant intellect, but he had too much confidence in his abilities, was hard to get along with, never lost in debate with others, and was known to his contemporaries as merely a stubborn eccentric. No one was terribly surprised that he had met with "the punishment of rottenness."

The Sima clan had originally been court historians in the state of Zhou. Later they went to Jin and then served at the Chin court; and Sima Tan, in the fourth generation during the Han dynasty, served Emperor Wu and became grand historian in the Qianyuan era (140-135 B.C.E.). Tan was Qian's father. Apart from law, calendar-making, and divination according to the I Ching, which were his professional specialties, he was well-versed in the teachings of Daoism and familiar also with the doctrines of the various schools—Confucian, Mohist, legalist, and nominalist. He mastered all of these views and synthesized them into a system of his own.

His strong confidence in his own intellect and spiritual powers was passed on intact to his son Qian. But Tan's greatest educational gift to his son was sending him on a grand tour of the empire upon the completion of his studies. This was not a common way of finishing an education in those days, but it goes without saying that this grand tour played a very major role in making Sima Qian the historian that he later became.

When in 110 B.C.E. Emperor Wu climbed Mount Tai in the east and worshipped Heaven, the hot-tempered Sima Tan, who happened to be lying ill in Zhounan at the time, was grieved that he alone was unable to accompany the emperor on this auspicious occasion of building the Han's first ritual mound. The indignity of this was so overwhelming that he died. It had been his most cherished desire in life to compile a comprehensive history from ancient to contemporary times, but he had only gotten as far as the collection of materials.

The scene of Tan's death is depicted in detail by his son Qian in the final chapter of the Historical Records. We are told that as soon as Sima Tan realized that he would not recover, he summoned Qian and, taking his hand, spoke earnestly of the necessity of writing history. He wept as he lamented the fact that he, the Grand Historian, had failed to accomplish this and was guilty of allowing the accomplishments of wise rulers and loyal ministers to be buried in the dust. "When I die, you will surely become grand historian. When that happens, do not forget what I sought to write!" When he said that this would be Qian's highest act of filial piety, the son bowed his head, weeping, and vowed that he would not disobey his father.

Two years after his father died, Sima Qian did indeed succeed to the post of grand historian. He immediately set his hand to the vocation that his father had bequeathed him, using the materials Tan had collected as well as secret documents stored in the palace. His first official duty after being appointed, however, was the major task of calendar revision, which required a full four years of his attention. When in 104 B.C.E. it was done, he set to work at once on the writing of the Historical Records. Qian was, at the time, forty-two years of age.

He already knew what he wanted to achieve: a work of history that would be unlike any that had come before it. He approved of the Spring and Autumn Annals for the standards of moral and ethical criticism it provided, but found its factual side wanting. More facts were what was wanted—not moral lessons, but facts. The Commentary of Master Zuo and the Accounts of the States contained an abundance of facts, to be sure. One could only marvel at the narrative skills of Master Zuo, but he did not explore the nature of the individual actors who created the facts he related. Zuo's descriptions were vivid, but there was no investigation of character or motive. This seemed highly unsatisfactory to Sima Qian.

In addition, all previous histories aimed at giving an account of the past to present-day readers, and seemed little interested in relating present-day affairs to readers in the future. In short, Sima Qian could not find what he sought in existing works of history. As for what precisely was unsatisfactory about those histories—Qian felt that he would come to a clear understanding of that only when he had tried his own hand at writing what he wished. Yet it was not so much criticism of existing histories that motivated him as a need to express the vague notions pent up within himself.

Indeed, his criticism of other histories simply took the form of creating something new of his own. He was not even sure whether the concepts that he had limned in his mind for so long could in fact be called "history." But whether or not that was the case, he had not the shadow of a doubt that it needed to be written—for the sake of the people of his age and of later ages and, above all, for his own sake.

As was the case with Confucius, Sima Qian's policy was "to relate and not create," but his relating and not creating were rather different from the sage's. For Sima Qian the mere listing of events in chronological order did not constitute "relating," while moralizing judgments that would impede future generations from knowing the facts themselves struck him as falling into the category of "creating."

Five successive reigns totaling one hundred years had elapsed since the founding of the Han Dynasty, and books that had been destroyed or hidden due to the anticultural policies of the First Emperor of the Chin began to reappear, at last. The literary arts seemed on the point of flourishing once again. It was not only the Han court but the times themselves that demanded the writing of histories. For Sima Qian, the deep emotions aroused by his father's final injunction were conjoined to broad learning, powers of observation, and literary skill; and all these had matured to a point where the writing of a nearly perfect history could be achieved. His work went well—almost too well, to his way of thinking. From the chronicles of the first five emperors of China down to the Xia, Yin, Zhou, and Chin Dynasties, he was little more than a technician arranging materials in the service of strict narrative accuracy. But when he passed from the reign of the First Emperor of the Chin and began to chronicle the life of General Xiang Yu at the beginning of the Han dynasty—including his fatal troubles with the founder of the Han after Xiang Yu became a "king," or local ruler, Qian began to be unsure about how cool and neutral a technician he could continue to be. It might happen, somehow, that Xiang Yu would take possession of him, or he of Xiang Yu.

King Xiang then rose in the night and was drinking behind the curtains of his tent. A beautiful woman was with him. Her name was Yu. She was so much favored by the king that she always attended him. He had a fine steed whose name was Chui, which he always used to ride. Thereupon King Xiang improvised a poem expressing his sorrow and anger: "My power can penetrate mountains and my spirit cover the world, yet the times are not propitious, and Chui will not go forward. What can I do if he refuses to go forward? And what shall I do about thee, my Yu, my Yu?" He sang a few verses, and the beautiful Yu joined in the song. King Xiang shed tears. Those around him all wept, and none could look upon him.

Sima Qian wondered if this kind of writing was appropriate. Could he allow himself to write so passionately about past events? He wanted to be wary of "creating." His job was only "to relate." In fact, all he had done was to relate events. But with what vividness he related them! His kind of narration would be quite impossible for someone without an extraordinarily imaginative visual sense. Sometimes, out of an excess of fear that he was "creating," he would reread a passage he had written and cut the phrases that made historical figures seem to behave as if they were actual living persons. Then the vital breath would vanish from those figures, and there would be no need to worry about his having "created" them. But, it seemed to Sima Qian, at this point Xiang Yu ceased to be Xiang Yu. Xiang Yu and the First Emperor of the Chin and King Zhuang of Qu all became the same kind of person. How could depicting very different people as if they were the same be called "relating"?

Also, "to relate" was to depict different people as different, was it not? Looking at things in this way, he could not help but restore the phrases he had earlier deleted. He would put them back in, try reading the passage once again, and finally be content. And not only he: the historical figures depicted—Xiang Yu, Fan Kuai, Fan Zeng—all seemed at last to calm down and settle into their place in history.

*

When in good spirits, Emperor Wu was a truly wise, magnanimous, and understanding protector of letters and learning. Moreover, since the position of grand historian was one that required an unspectacular but very special kind of skill, Sima Qian was able to avoid the insecurity about his position (or his very life) that often resulted from the practically inevitable slander and detraction by colleagues in official life.

For some years, then, Sima Qian led a full and happy life. (The happiness envisioned by the men of that period was a very different thing from our present conceptions, but the quest for happiness was the same.) He was not one to compromise; but he was positive and active, often debating, often indignant, often amused; and his favorite occupation was beating his opponents in argument to the point where they had not a leg left to stand on.

And then, after some years of such a life, this calamity descended upon him.

*

The light was dim inside the "silkworm chamber." It was necessary to avoid all exposure to the wind for some time after a castration was performed, so a dark, tightly sealed room was built, and a fire kept going for warmth; and there the castrated prisoner was kept to enable him to recover. Since the warm, dark room was similar to the chamber in which silkworms were raised, it was so named.

Disturbed beyond words, Sima Qian leaned vacantly against a wall. He was not so much angry as thunderstruck. He had always been ready to face death by beheading, for example. He could imagine himself being executed; and he had had forebodings of that when he spoke up in defense of Li Ling, risking the emperor's anger. But that he should be subjected to castration, the most shameful of all punishments! He had, no doubt, been too heedless (for if one is to be prepared for death, one must be prepared for any punishment); but he had never considered the possibility of such an ugly fate as this. He had always believed that, in this life, only things appropriate to a person happened—an idea that had come to him from his long study of history. Thus, in adverse circumstances, a gentleman who is righteously indignant over the state of the nation will experience intense, violent pain, while a weaker man will have to endure a slow, gloomy, ugly pain. Even if what happens to a man seems at first sight unjust, his response to his situation will ultimately demonstrate that his fate well suits him.

Sima Qian believed himself to be a manly person. True, he was a writer; but he felt sure that he was more of a man than any of the military men of his day. And it was not only he who thought so: even those who had not the least liking for him could not but acknowledge that fact. Thus, he could imagine himself—if he insisted on his personal views—facing execution by being tied to two carriages and torn apart. But to face a humiliating punishment like this when he was almost fifty years of age! That he should now be in this "silkworm chamber" seemed like a nightmare. He wanted it to be a bad dream. But, leaning against the wall and opening his eyes, he saw in the dimness three or four men sitting or lying every which way, their faces lifeless, as if their very souls had left them. When he realized that he was in that same condition, a cry burst from him, a cry that was something between a sob and a bellow.

During the several days of anger and pain that followed, thoughts came to him, the result of ingrained habits of scholarly reflection: What, in fact, had gone wrong? Who had done what to cause all this? He first blamed Emperor Wu (the Way of Lord and Subject of China being fundamentally different from that of Japan). Indeed, his resentment against his sovereign was for a time so intense as to make him forget everything else. When, however, this brief period of violent feeling had passed, the historian within him was reawakened. Unlike the orthodox Confucianists, he knew how necessary it was, as a historian, to discount the inflated reputations of the Sagely Previous Kings, as they were termed; and so he could not now allow personal resentment to distort his historical evaluation of Emperor Wu, a latter-day king.

Emperor Wu was undeniably a great ruler. Despite his various defects, so long as he was sovereign, the empire of the Han was unshakable. Leaving aside for the moment the merits of the founding emperor of the dynasty, one had to admit that both Emperor Wen, "the Benevolent," and Emperor Jing, "the Illustrious," were minor figures compared to Emperor Wu. But the defects of major figures are also major—that is the way of the world—and it was incumbent on Sima Qian not to forget that, even in the midst of his intense anger. One had to regard what had happened as an act of Heaven, on a par with plagues, typhoons, and violent thunderstorms.

Thus, reflection would now push him toward even more despairing indignation, and now toward a kind of resignation. Finding that he could not forever direct his fierce resentment toward the sovereign, inevitably he aimed it at the wicked ministers surrounding the ruler. They were wicked, no doubt about it; but theirs was a very minor kind of wickedness. Besides, Sima Qian had so high a sense of self-respect that he could not find satisfaction in taking such petty persons as objects of his resentment.

But never before had he felt such anger at apparently "good-natured" people. They were harder to deal with than the obviously wicked ministers and cruel officials. Observing their doings infuriated Sima Qian. They enjoyed a cheap, "conscientious" peace of mind and helped others to enjoy it, too, and it was this that made their behavior all the more shameful. They would neither defend nor confute. Inwardly, there was neither self-examination nor self-reproach.

The Prime Minister Gongsun He was a prime example of this type. When it came to toadying to the powerful, a man like Du Zhou (who had recently brought down Wang Ching and cleverly managed to take his place as superintendent of the Impeachment Court) knew exactly what he was doing; but this fool of a prime minister was not even aware of what he himself did. Even were he to be called "the kind of minister who seeks only to save himself and protect his wife and children," it would not anger this fellow in the least. Finally, he too was not worth directing one's resentment against.

At last Sima Qian began to direct his rage at himself. If he had to be angry at someone, there could be no better object than himself. But where had he gone wrong? He could not possibly regard his defense of Li Ling as a mistake; nor did he feel his choice of methods was particularly bad. Speaking out was the only thing he could have done if he did not wish to descend to the level of a sycophant. If, looking back, he found nothing to be ashamed of, a gentleman worthy of the name ought to accept whatever resulted from acting honorably. That could not be denied. Therefore he was prepared to accept his punishment, even if it meant amputation of his limbs or being cut in half at the waist.

But castration—and the physical state resulting from that punishment—that was another matter entirely. It was different from losing a foot or a nose to the executioner. It was not a punishment to be inflicted upon a gentleman. Indeed, this bodily condition he was left with was, viewed from whatever angle, a perfect evil. It could not be disguised with fine words. A wound to the spirit might heal with time, but the hideous reality of his body would be with him until death. Whatever his motives might have been, anything that invited such a result had to be termed wrong. But what, precisely, had been wrong? What wrong had he done? None whatsoever. He had done nothing but what was right. At most, his mere presence there at that time was at fault.

Sima Qian would be sitting in the silkworm chamber in a vague, absent state, and then suddenly jump up and begin pacing around the warm, dim room, moaning like a wounded animal. He kept repeating these actions unconsciously, and his thoughts, too, went round and round the same point, never coming to a conclusion.

Several times he found himself butting his head against the wall until his blood flowed, but apart from that, he never attempted to harm himself. He wanted to die—how good it would be if he could! He had no fear of death because a sense of shame that was far more fearsome relentlessly pursued him. Why, then, could he not die? Partly because he had none of the tools needed for suicide in this prison. There was, however, something else that stopped him from committing suicide, something from inside himself. At first, he was not aware of what it was. Although he often felt a fitful urge to die in the midst of his frenzy and resentment, he was also vaguely aware of something that would not let his emotions move in the direction of suicide.

It sometimes happens that one feels as if one has forgotten something, but cannot say quite what. That was Sima Qian's situation. It was only after he had been permitted to return to his residence, under strict orders to refrain from leaving it, that he realized that he had, during the madness of the past month, forgotten about his life's work, the compilation and writing of the history. He realized too that, although he had forgotten about it on one level, his unconscious commitment to that work had played a role in keeping him from suicide.

His father's agonized words as he lay on his deathbed ten years before, weeping as he took his son's hand, still resounded in his ears. But it was not those words alone that kept him from giving up his work on the history, even in his present harrowing state of mind. It was, above all, the work itself. Not the charm of the work, or his enthusiasm for it—not something so pleasant as that. He realized, of course, that it was his mission to write the history, but this realization was not born of proud self-reliance. He had been a very egotistical man, but what had happened made him painfully aware of how worthless he really was. He had been proud of his ideals and aspirations, but in fact he amounted to no more than a worm crushed under the hooves of cattle by the roadside.

Yes, his ego had been crushed, but there could be no doubt about the value of his work as a historian. Having lost all self-confidence, all self-reliance, having been reduced to this contemptible state, he would nonetheless live on in this world and accomplish his task—not that he would take any pleasure in it. It felt to him like the kind of human relationship that seems destined, fated, and that one cannot, finally, break off, no matter how repugnant it may be. It was absolutely clear to him that, as long as he had this work to do, he could never kill himself. This was not from a mere sense of duty, but due to an almost physical bond with the work.

Now, in place of the blind, animal suffering he had first experienced after his castration, there was a more conscious, human suffering. Unfortunately, with the clear realization that he could not commit suicide came a steadily clearer realization that there was no other means of escape from his suffering and shame, apart from suicide. The strong and healthy Grand Historian Sima Qian died in the spring of Tianhan 3, and the Sima Qian who later continued the unfinished history was no more than a writing-machine, without intelligence or consciousness; it was essential for Sima Qian to convince himself of this. And so he tried his best to do so. The writing of the history must be carried on. For him, this was an absolute. For the work to be carried on, he had to continue to live, no matter how hard it was to endure. In order to continue to live, he had to convince himself that he no longer existed as a person.

After the fifth lunar month had passed, Sima Qian once again took up his writing-brush. There was neither joy nor excitement in this: he was just whipped on by his will to complete the work; and so, like a traveler dragging himself on sore, injured legs toward his destination, he plodded on with the manuscript. He had been relieved of his post as grand historian, but Emperor Wu, a little regretful of what he had done, made Sima Qian head of the Department of Documents. To Qian, however, official advancement or degradation no longer had any meaning. He who had been such a keen debater now never opened his mouth, and neither laughed nor showed anger.

Yet he did not appear despondent or dispirited. On the contrary, people saw in his silent visage a terrifying quality, as if he were possessed by an evil spirit. He carried on with his work, even begrudging the time he had to spend in sleep at night. He seemed to his family to be in a great hurry to finish the work as quickly as possible so he would then be free to take his own life.

After applying himself grimly for a year or so, Sima Qian discovered at last that, even after having lost all joy in living, there was still joy to be found in self-expression. Even then, however, he maintained his perfect silence, and the terrifying harshness of his countenance remained unsoftened. When, in the course of writing the history, he came to passages where he had to use the words "eunuch" or "gelding," he could not suppress a groan. Whether he was alone in his study or lying on his bed at night, whenever the memory of his humiliation came back to him, a throbbing pain would run through his body, as if he had been burned with a hot iron. He would jump up, letting out a strange cry, and begin to walk about the room for a time, moaning. Then, gnashing his teeth, he would endeavor to compose himself.