Sima Qian
Chinese historianWikipedia
95
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23
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18
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Search complete. 95 mentions across 23 episodes found for "Sima Qian".
Sep 29, 2026
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Whether Lao Tzu ever lived as one specific person is a genuine and unsettled question in the history of Chinese philosophy.
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The historian Sima Qian, writing in the first century BCE, already could not sort out the competing traditions about the old master's identity, and modern scholarship has only deepened the uncertainty.
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The text itself shows signs of being a composite, a work assembled from multiple voices and traditions and gradually stabilized over the course of the fourth and third centuries before the Common Era.
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Manuscript discoveries have confirmed this fluidity.
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The name is more a title than a proper name, suggesting an elder of great wisdom, a teacher whose authority rests not on office or rank, but on depth of understanding.
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Tradition places him in ancient China, and the most famous account of his life, found in the historian Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, casts him as an older contemporary of Confucius.
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According to one version of the story, Confucius traveled to consult with Lao Tzu and came away shaken by the encounter, comparing the old master to a dragon, something beyond ordinary comprehension, rising on the winds of cloud and sky.
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It is a beautiful story.
2 HRS 39 MINS LATER
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Something that felt obligatory turns out to be optional.
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And, uh, the road ahead, which a moment ago seemed to require carrying, turns out to be a road that carries itself.
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The figure himself stands very far back in time, in a China that we know now mostly through bronze vessels, bamboo strips, and the accounts of historians writing centuries after the fact.
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Tradition places him in the sixth century before the common era, during the long decline of the Zhou dynasty, when the central authority that had once held the region together was dissolving into a patchwork of competing states.
Yinghui WuGUEST
Rather, his interest spans across various genres and fields.
Yinghui WuGUEST
He has come up with a list of tazishu, which includes Zhuangzi, An Qiyuan's Li Sao, Sima Qian's Shi Ji, and Du Fu's poetry, Xue Huzhuan and Xi Xiangji.
Yinghui WuGUEST
But I think there is a difference between his commentary on Xue Huzhuan and Xi Xiangji, as the latter weaves together his multiple experience as a spirit medium, as a Buddhist sermonizer, and a commentator and creator of Chan Gong An Dialogues, I think he treats the roles just as seriously as the role of a commentator.
Yinghui WuGUEST
So if we compare him to the Xixiangji commentators before and after him, we do see him as unique in the sense that he does not make a distinction between medium and message.
Yinghui WuGUEST
Rather, his interest spans across various genres and fields.
Yinghui WuGUEST
He has come up with a list of tazishu, which includes Zhuangzi, An Qiyuan's Li Sao, Sima Qian's Shi Ji, and Du Fu's poetry, Xue Huzhuan and Xi Xiangji.
Yinghui WuGUEST
But I think there is a difference between his commentary on Xue Huzhuan and Xi Xiangji as the latter weaves together his multiple experience as a spirit medium, as a Buddhist sermonizer, and a commentator and creator of Chan, Gong, and Dialogues, I think he treats the roles just as seriously as the role of a commentator.
Yinghui WuGUEST
So if we compare him to the Xixiangji commentators before and after him, we do see him as unique in the sense that he does not make a distinction between medium and message.
Yinghui WuGUEST
Rather, his interest spans across various genres and fields.
Yinghui WuGUEST
He has come up with a list of taisi shu, which includes Zhuangzi, An Qiyuan's Li Sao, Sima Qian's Shi Ji, and Du Fu's poetry, Xue Huzhuan, An Xixiangjian.
Yinghui WuGUEST
But I think there is a difference between his commentary on Shifu Zuan and Xixiangji as the latter weaves together his multiple experience as a spirit medium, as a Buddhist sermonizer, and a commentator and creator of Chan, Gong, and Dialogues.
Yinghui WuGUEST
I think he treats the roles just as seriously as the role of a commentator.
Yinghui WuGUEST
Rather, his interest spans across various genres and fields.
Yinghui WuGUEST
He has come up with a list of tazishu, which includes Zhuangzi, An Qiyuan's Li Sao, Sima Qian's Shi Ji, and Du Fu's poetry, Xue Huzhuan and Xi Xiangji.
Yinghui WuGUEST
But I think there is a difference between his commentary on Xue Huzhuan and Xi Xiangji, as the latter weaves together his multiple experience as a spirit medium, as a Buddhist sermonizer, and a commentator and creator of Chan Gong An Dialogues, I think he treats the roles just as seriously as the role of a commentator.
Yinghui WuGUEST
So if we compare him to the Xixiangji commentators before and after him, we do see him as unique in the sense that he does not make a distinction between medium and message.
Yinghui WuGUEST
Rather, his interest spans across various genres and fields.
Yinghui WuGUEST
He has come up with a list of taisi shu, which includes Zhuangzi, An Qiyuan's Li Sao, Sima Qian's Shi Ji, and Du Fu's poetry, Xue Huzhuan, An Xixiangjian.
Yinghui WuGUEST
But I think there is a difference between his commentary on Shifu Zuan and Xixiangji as the latter weaves together his multiple experience as a spirit medium, as a Buddhist sermonizer, and a commentator and creator of Chan, Gong, and Dialogues.
Yinghui WuGUEST
I think he treats the roles just as seriously as the role of a commentator.
Peter LorgeGUEST
That's a... later attribution, but we won't deal with that.
Peter LorgeGUEST
Then we get to Sima Qian, who's a Han Dynasty historian, second first century BCE, and he creates categories of kinds of individuals in this history he writes.
Peter LorgeGUEST
And one of the categories, well, the categories are very interesting because we're still stuck with them.
Peter LorgeGUEST
So that's pretty, anytime someone starts saying to you, you know, history is just fashion and you're like, yeah, if that fashion lasts 2000 years, it's hard to, you know.
Andrew Seth MeyerGUEST
There are sources that weren't necessarily produced by the masters, but within sort of the same... literary milieu that produced the masters that contain kind of historical anecdotes like the Zhang Wuzi or the Zuo Juan.
Andrew Seth MeyerGUEST
And then probably one of the richest transmitted sources is this long historical compendium by a Han Dynasty historian named Sima Qian.
Andrew Seth MeyerGUEST
It was written in about 100 BC, the Shuji, the Records of the Grand Historian.
Andrew Seth MeyerGUEST
And that's a very rich source for the warring states.
Andrew Seth MeyerGUEST
There are sources that weren't necessarily produced by the masters, but within sort of the same... literary milieu that produced the masters that contain kind of historical anecdotes like the Zhang Wuzi or the Zuo Juan.
Andrew Seth MeyerGUEST
And then probably one of the richest transmitted sources is this long historical compendium by a Han Dynasty historian named Sima Qian.
Andrew Seth MeyerGUEST
It was written in about 100 BC, the Shuji, the Records of the Grand Historian.
Andrew Seth MeyerGUEST
And that's a very rich source for the warring states.
13 more episodes mention Sima Qian.
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