Method

How a comic earns the right to be believed.

Evidence tiers

Rules we hold

• No scene enters an episode unless it traces to a named source, book and chapter.
• Quotations are translations of recorded words; paraphrase is never dressed as quotation.
• Figures of men, money and dead are claims in the sources, and are labelled as claims.
• Where the source is literary reconstruction — the speeches in the Shiji and the Hanshu, or in the Sanguozhi, for instance — we say so.
• Nothing is invented to fill a gap. A gap stays a gap.

Standing sources

• Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) — Sima Qianc. 91 BCE Basic Annals of Emperor Gaozu; Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin; Basic Annals of Xiang Yu; Hereditary House of Marquis Liu (Zhang Liang); Hereditary House of Chancellor Xiao (Xiao He); Biography of Li Si. Sima Qian wrote about a century after these events, out of the court archives and what he called the scattered old reports he went and collected himself.
• Book of the Han (Hanshu) — Ban Gu, finished by Ban Zhao1st c. CE Annals of Emperor Gaozu: the compressed official version of the entry into the pass, the three articles and the Hong Gate interview, plus the Treatise on Punishments and Laws for what Han law really looked like.
• Book of the Jin (Jinshu) — Fang Xuanling et al.648 CE Treatise on Punishments and Laws: the later legal tradition's own account of how the nine chapters of Han were made out of Qin's seven, and of the three articles as a moment, not a code.
• Zhangjiashan Han Tomb Bamboo Slips (Tomb 247, Jiangling, Hubei) — Wenwu Chubanshe, excavation report2001; revised reading 2006 The statutes and ordinances copied out in the second year of Empress Lü (186 BCE) and buried with an official of Nanjun: the closest thing we have to Han law as it actually ran in the first generation after the three articles.
• The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han — Michael Loewe2007 The standard English survey of the two empires, used here for the chronology of the years 209–206 BCE and for how far the surviving documents let a historian push the received story.
• Book of Han (Hanshu) — Ban Gu, finished by Ban Zhao1st c. CE Juan 1, Annals of Emperor Gaozu (the campaign dated to the tenth month of year seven; the one-clause notice of the escape); juan 94a, Memoir of the Xiongnu (the same narrative with its own figures and wording); juan 94b for the later marriage politics; juan 40 for Chen Ping.
• Zizhi Tongjian — Sima Guang1084 CE Scroll 11: the year 200 BCE assembled from the Shiji's separate memoirs — the ten parties of envoys, the encirclement, Chen Ping's march-order, the apology at Guangwu and the execution of the assessors, the marriage-tribute agreement.
• Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of the Nomadic Power in East Asia — Nicola Di Cosmo2002 The formation of the Xiongnu confederation under Modu against the background of Qin frontier policy, and the working of the marriage-tribute settlement as a system rather than a humiliation.
• The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1: The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 BC–AD 220 — eds. Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe1993 The political settlement of the early Han: the frontier kingdoms, the fate of the non-Liu kings, and the cost of the northern agreement in the first decades after 202 BCE.
• The History of the Former Han Dynasty, vol. 2 — translated by Homer H. Dubs1938 English translation of the Hanshu annals and biographies covering Emperor Jing's reign, the revolt, and Chao Cuo's and Yuan Ang's memorials.
• Book of the Later Han (Hou Han shu) — Fan Ye5th c. CE Juan 88, Memoir of the Western Regions: the sixty-five years of separation, Ban Chao, Gan Ying at the shore, the description of Daqin and the embassy of 166 CE which the book itself doubts.
• China in Central Asia: The Early Stage, 125 BC–AD 23 — A. F. P. Hulsewé and M. A. N. Loewe1979 Annotated translation of the Hanshu's Western Regions treatise with the documentary and archaeological evidence from the garrison posts of the corridor.
• Book of the Han (Hanshu), Treatise on Food and Money — Ban Gu1st c. CE juan 24: the cost of the same years in the empire's own accounting — rewards in gold, dead horses, an empty treasury, unpaid soldiers, the military-merit titles, the coinage change, salt and iron, and the relocation of seven hundred thousand starving people.
• Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty — translated by Burton Watsonrev. ed. 1993 English translation of the chapters on the Xiongnu and on Emperor Wu's reign, used here for the ordinary rendering of office titles and of the head-count vocabulary that both Han histories share.
• Crisis and Conflict in Han China, 104 BC to AD 9 — Michael Loewe1974 The standard reconstruction of Emperor Wu's later reign from the same annals and treatises: the fiscal expedients, the personnel of the court, the succession crisis, and the reasons the campaign state of 119 BCE could not be repeated.
• Literary Selections (Wenxuan), juan 41 — compiled by the Crown Prince of Liang; commentary by Li Shan6th c. CE The Reply to Ren An as a second, independently transmitted copy of the same document, with a different opening and several variant readings in the famous lines, and the commentary that supplies the vocabulary of the penalty and of the ladder of shames. Used here as a witness to one letter, not as a history of the campaign.
• Sima Qian: Grand Historian of China — Burton Watson1958 The standard English study of the man and of the biographical material about him, used here for the ordering of Sima Qian's career against the reign-titles, for the rendering of the office names, and for the dating of the letter to Ren An.
• Book of the Han (Hanshu), annals and treatises — Ban Gu, completed by Ban Zhao and others1st c. CE The frame the biographies strain against. Juan 6, the year-book of Emperor Wu: the levy of knights and the eleven days in 92 BCE, the chancellor dead in prison, the princesses in the intercalary month, the digging in the seventh month, five days of fighting with tens of thousands dead, the yellow yak-tail added to the credential, the first standing garrison on the gates of Chang'an, and the death at the Wuzuo Palace in 87 BCE. Juan 8 for the restoration under Emperor Xuan, juan 7 for the regency, and juan 24 for the finance that paid for the wars.
• Book of the Han (Hanshu), Memoir of the Western Regions — Ban Gu, completed by Ban Zhao and others1st c. CE Juan 96 lower, which carries the Luntai memorial of 89 BCE and the edict refusing it in the emperor's own words, with Ban Gu's frame for both — the first opening of the west, thirty-two years of marching, an exhausted realm, the general who lost a whole command. The same memoir, with juan 70, for what the empire did afterwards: the garrison farmed again at Luntai, and the protectorate established in 60 BCE.
• Zizhi Tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance) — Sima Guang and his bureau1084 CE Scroll 22, the years 98 to 87 BCE, used throughout as a relay of the chapters above and never as an independent witness. It is where the dated order of these months is worked out, and where four items belonging to it alone are kept: the dream of wooden men, the shaman's named part in the diagnosis, the prince's attempt to go to Ganquan and explain himself, and the emperor's words of self-accusation by the sea. Scroll 29 supplies the later history of the prince's tomb-park.
• Discourses on Salt and Iron (Yan tie lun) — The court debate of 81 BCE, traditionally compiled by Huan Kuan1st c. BCE The fiscal half of the aftermath: the wise men and the provincial appeals summoned by the young emperor's edict, arguing with the ministers over salt, iron and liquor, the levied transport of grain, the price stores and the frontier garrisons. Used here for the shape of the case on both sides, and for the man who signed the Luntai request defending that frontier eight years later — never for a number. Juan 66 dates and reports the origin of the debate.
• Book of the Han (Hanshu), Annals — Ban Gu1st c. CE juan 8, Annals of Emperor Xuan, and juan 9, Annals of Emperor Yuan: the dating of the audiences and the hostage princes, the edict that set the chanyu above the vassal kings, the relief grain ordered for the northern border, and the one-line notice of the bride and the change of era to Jingning. The annals also carry the two emperors' own summaries of the settlement.
• Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History — Nicola Di Cosmo2002 Modern English-language work on the steppe powers the Han faced and on the frontier machinery of garrison, watchtower and gift that these memorials argue about; used here for the vocabulary of client status. No number in this episode comes from it — the grain, gift and casualty totals are the Hanshu's own.
• Book of the Han (Hanshu), frontier and imperial-women biographies — Ban Gu1st c. CE juan 94 lower, Biography of the Xiongnu: the seal re-cut from the word for imperial seal to the word for tally, the old seal broken with an axe, the chanyu's connoisseur's protest, and the fifteen chanyus that were never delivered. juan 96 lower, Biography of the Western Regions: the three hundred and seventy-six officers wearing Han seals, the killed protector, the destroyed column, and the cutting-off of the Regions. juan 98: the Grand Empress Dowager, the throwing of the transmission seal, and the Ritual Mother. juan 97 lower: his daughter, the title she refused, and the fire she went into.
• The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 1: The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 BC–AD 220; and Light against Darkness: The Beginnings of the Later Han Dynasty — ed. Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe; Rafe de Crespigny1986; 1981 Modern English-language work, used for the chronology of the regency years and the dating of the 8 CE versus 9 CE accession question, for the administrative machinery the edicts had to run through, and for the years 23 to 36 CE, when the record of the restoration has to be read against the announcements it was written to justify.
• Continuation of the Han History (Xu hanshu), the treatises — Sima Biao, 3rd c. CE; bound into the Book of the Later Hanundefined Juan 97, Treatise on Sacrifices upper: the altar at Hao and the full text of the prayer to Heaven, the suburban sacrifices of Luoyang, and the record of the sealing and sacrifice at Tai Shan in 56 CE including the refusal edict of 54 CE, the reading of the meeting-at-Mount-Tai chart, and the words cut on the stone. Juan 109, Treatise on Commanderies and Kingdoms: the household and mouth counts of 57 CE, the treatise's own summary of a century of depopulation, and the rule that a county missing from its list was one this emperor merged away.
• Records of the Eastern Wing (Dongguan han ji) — the court's own compilers, successive hands, 1st–2nd c. CEundefined The near-contemporary official history of the dynasty, now in fragments and used here only where the commentaries quote it: the description of a general's funeral carried out on the model of Emperor Xuan's visit to Huo Guang, the emperor's repeated lament for Ji Zun and another officer's embarrassed answer to it, and the family particulars of the Guanglie empress. It is a court record made inside a century of the events, and it flatters.
• Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government (Zizhi Tongjian) — Sima Guang and colleagues, 1084 CEundefined The annals for the years 23 to 57 CE, used strictly as a relay: for these reigns it abridges the Book of the Later Han's annal and memoirs, and where this episode gives a date it is the Hou Han shu's own date. Cited nowhere as an independent witness, and the ordering of the land-audit years follows the annal rather than the mirror.
• Imperial Prison: A Study of the Bureaucracy under the Last Emperors of the Hou Han Dynasty — Rafe de Crespigny1977 Modern work on the administrative machinery of the later dynasty — the throne and terrace offices, the imperial affinal houses and the eunuch captains — which is what this episode's ending points at: the instrument Guangwu built to keep strong men from stealing mandates, and who ended up holding it.
• Wenxuan (Selections of Refined Literature) — Xiao Tong, with commentary6th c. CE Preserves Ban Gu's Yanran Mountain inscription — the text the 1990 expedition matched to the stone in Mongolia.
• The Western Regions According to the Hou Hanshu — Hans Bielenstein1980 The standard annotated translation and study of the Hou Han shu Memoir on the Western Regions: the texts, dates and identifications behind the oasis states, the 97 CE mission of Gan Ying, and the arguments over which sea he was turned back from — the reason we say which reading we adopt and mark the other as possible.
• Continuation of the Han History (Xu hanshu) — Sima Biao3rd–4th c. CE (surviving in fragments) The source the commentaries draw on for the Three Lords, Eight Elites, Eight Who Nurture, Eight Who Lead and Eight Providers — the rank-by-rank taxonomy of the proscribed that the Hou Han shu itself keeps only in outline.
• Emperor Huan and Emperor Ling — Rafe de Crespigny1996 Annotated translation of the Zizhi Tongjian's later Han annals for 157–189: the chronology of the arrests, the coup of 168 and the two prohibitions in one year-by-year stream, with the prosopographical notes behind this episode's cast.
• Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi) — Chen Shouc. 280 CE Wei shu 1 (Annals of Emperor Wu); Shu shu 2, 5, 6; Wu shu 2, 9, 10
• Commentary to the Sanguozhi — Pei Songzhi429 CE Quotes the Jiangbiao zhuan, the Weilüe and the Guochong sanshi — and argues with them
• Generals of the South — Rafe de Crespigny1990 Modern scholarly reconstruction of the Wu state and the Red Cliff campaign
• The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1 — eds. Loewe & Shaughnessy1993 Political context of the late Han
• To Establish Peace, vol. 2 — Rafe de Crespigny1996 Annotated English translation of the Zizhi Tongjian annals for Part D, A.D. 200–220, including the Tong Pass campaign.
• Book of Jin (Jin shu) — Fang Xuanling et al.648 CE Annals of Emperor Xuan (Sima Yi): the feigned illness, the memorial to the Empress Dowager, the closing of the gates, the oath by the Luo river, the executions. Annals of Emperor Jing (Sima Shi): the three thousand retainers.
• Wei shu (History of Wei) — various, 3rd c. CE3rd c. CE Known now only in the fragments Pei Songzhi quoted: the fullest account of Cao Shuang's regency and its end, written by the side that won.
• Han Jin Chunqiu — Sun Sheng4th c. CE The source, inside Pei Songzhi's commentary, for the Luoyang banquet: the Shu music and dancers, the weeping ministers, and the last emperor's laugh.

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Corrections

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