|
|
|
Herodotus and Sima Qian: History and the Anthropological Turn in Ancient Greece and Han China*
SIEP STUURMAN
Erasmus University Rotterdam
| HISTORY AS a critical account of the past and a means of self-knowledge and political enlightenment was independently invented in two civilizations in ancient Eurasia: China and Greece. It received its two best-known canonical formulations in the Shiji (Records of the Scribe, written ca. 100–90 B.C.E.) of Sima Qian (Ssu-ma Ch'ien) in the former Han dynasty in China, and in Herodotus's Histories (Inquiries, written ca. 450–425 B.C.E.) in the Greek communities of the eastern Mediterranean after the Persian Wars. The Greek city-states were vibrant newcomers to the established world of the ancient civilizations of western Eurasia, while China was the most advanced civilization of eastern Eurasia. The independent development of history in two Eurasian civilizations provides us with a fascinating comparative case in the world history of ideas. |
1
|
|
History represented a new way for a society to reflect on itself, competing with older religious, poetic, and philosophical modes of self-understanding. More than those older genres, history investigated the contingencies of time and place. It made it possible to explore frontiers and to reflect on the differences between one's own way of life and the customs of foreigners. It is surely significant that in Greece as well as in China, the new discourse of history comprised a large amount of geography and ethnography. My comparison of Herodotus and Sima Qian focuses on the ethnographic parts of their histories, in particular on Herodotus's description of the Scythians and Sima Qian's treatment of the Xiongnu (Hsiung-nu). In both cases, historians belonging to a sedentary civilization confronted the nomadic culture of the northern peoples inhabiting the great band of steppe lands that traverses Eurasia from west to east. I will discuss their nomadic ethnographies in the context of their views of empire and cultural difference, as well as in connection with the temporalities underpinning their historical narrative. |
2
|
|
The dialectic of empire, ethnography, and history powerfully frames these histories. The writing of history is always an exercise in self-definition. More than anything else, it is the confrontation with others that compels people to question their own identity. That is what makes imperialism so central to my comparison, whether empire is a menace from without, as in Herodotus, or a perilous course the fate of one's own civilization depends on, as in Sima Qian. Both Herodotus and Sima Qian were fascinated by the conditions and morality of empires, giving much thought to cultural difference, and trying out formulations akin to what we today call cultural relativism. The problematic of empire incited both historians to compose a history of "the known world." Their societies had reached a stage when it was no longer possible to understand one's civilization without taking the measure of its wider environment. This, then, is the problematic that will guide my comparative investigation. |
3
|
|
A few theoretical observations may be useful at this point. The ethnographies in the Histories and the Shiji are instances of what we may call the anthropological turn. Our historians inform their readers about the way of life of "others" living in foreign lands. The anthropological turn happens when they attempt to understand those others "from within," examining the functioning of their culture, instead of merely compiling a list of weird and outlandish customs. Now, the type of ethnography we encounter in Herodotus and Sima Qian has frequently been labeled under the generic notions of "othering" and "Orientalism" ("Occidentalism" would be more appropriate in Sima Qian's case). In an influential book, François Hartog has analyzed Herodotus's Scythian ethnography as an exemplary case of othering, while Owen Lattimore has long ago deplored Sima Qian's "strongly conventional" ideas about the steppe nomads.1 Over the past decades, the diagnosis of "othering" has been made about virtually every European text discussing non-European cultures, and there is no good reason why a similar evaluation could not apply to Chinese accounts of "barbarians." |
. . . |
There are about 16954 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
