Han Shu
漢書 (Book of Han)
A single unified dynasty, unlike Sima Qian's sweep across many rising and falling states, deserves its own complete history written on its own terms, so the proper unit of Chinese historiography going forward is one dynasty covered exhaustively rather than woven into universal history.
- single-dynasty history as a new historiographical model
- adopted and adapted the Shiji's annals-biography structure
- completed across three family members, including Ban Zhao
- preserves the earliest surviving Chinese library catalogue
The official history of the Western Han dynasty and Wang Mang's interregnum Xin dynasty (206 BC-AD 23), the first Chinese dynastic history to cover a single dynasty rather than following Sima Qian's Shiji in spanning all of recorded history, and the model every subsequent dynastic history followed. Begun by the scholar-official Ban Biao as a continuation of the Shiji, carried on by his son Ban Gu, who was imprisoned on suspicion of privately rewriting history before being freed to continue, and finished after Ban Gu died in prison in AD 92 by his learned sister Ban Zhao, who also compiled its complex astronomical tables. It preserves the Han 'Treatise on Bibliography,' the earliest surviving Chinese library catalogue.
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