聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

睡虎地秦墓竹簡‧編年記

8 min read

Text ID
KR2p0139
Date
-306–-217
Dynasty
秦

Shuìhǔdì Qín Mù Zhújiǎn‧Biānnián Jì 睡虎地秦墓竹簡‧編年記

Bamboo Slips from the Qin Tomb at Shuihudi — Annalistic Record / Chronicle

About the work

The Biānnián Jì 編年記 is the shortest text recovered from Qin tomb no. 11 at Shuìhǔdì 睡虎地, Yúnmèng County 雲夢縣, Hubei Province, excavated in 1975–76. It is a terse chronicle in two interleaved registers: (1) year-by-year entries recording major Qin military campaigns from the first year of King Zhāowáng 昭王 (306 BCE) to what appear to be the last years of the Qin unified empire (c. 217 BCE); and (2) autobiographical entries in the first person recording the career milestones, births, and deaths of the tomb occupant Xǐ 喜 (262–217 BCE). Together, the two registers constitute the only surviving personal chronicle (biānnián in the strict sense) from the pre-Han period. The text belongs to the Shuìhǔdì corpus alongside the Qin legal texts (KR2p0140, KR2p0141, KR2p0142, KR2p0143, KR2p0175, KR2p0176, KR2p0177) and almanacs (KR2p0144, KR2p0178).

Abstract

Discovery context. Qin tomb no. 11 at Shuìhǔdì was excavated in 1975–76 by a team from the Hubei Provincial Museum and the Yúnmèng County Cultural Bureau. The tomb was sealed around 217 BCE — the final year recorded in the chronicle corresponds to this date — and contained 612 bamboo slips distributed across multiple texts. The occupant, identified from the chronicle itself as Xǐ 喜, was a low-level functionary (lìng shǐ 令史, scribe-official) in the Qin administrative apparatus based at Ān’lù 安陸 and Yān 鄢 (Yícháng area, Hubei). The standard edition and reproduction is 睡虎地秦墓竹簡整理小組, 《睡虎地秦墓竹簡》, 文物出版社, 1990.

Content: the political chronicle. The text opens: 昭王元年 (“First year of [Qin] King Zhāo [Zhao]”) and proceeds year by year through the reign of Qin Zhāowáng 昭王 (r. 306–251 BCE), the brief reign of Qin Xiàowén Wáng 孝文王 (r. 250 BCE, noted: 立即死 “acceded and immediately died”), and the reign of Qin Zhuāng Xiāng Wáng 莊王 (莊王, r. 249–247 BCE, also called Zhuāng Xiāng Wáng 莊襄王, noted: 莊王死 “King Zhuang died”), then continues through the reign of the future First Emperor (here designated 今 “the present [king]”), with entries tracking major campaigns: against Pí Shì 皮氏, Fēng líng 封陵, Xīn Chéng 新城, Yī [quē] 伊[闕], Ānxī 安邑, Cài and Zhōng Yáng 蔡、中陽, Huá Yáng 華陽, Cháng Píng 長平, Hándān 邯鄲 (written 邯單), Wèi Liáng 魏粱 (the siege of the Wei capital Dàliáng), and the campaigns against Chǔ 荊/楚. The regnal formula switches: from 昭王 to 孝文王 to 莊王 to 今 (“the present [king]”), the last presumably being the future First Emperor (Qin Shi Huang, r. 246–210 BCE from the Qin royal perspective, from 221 BCE as the First Emperor).

Content: the personal chronicle of Xǐ 喜. Embedded within the political entries are terse autobiographical notes. Year 45 of Zhāowáng (262 BCE): 十二月甲午雞鳴時，喜產 “In the twelfth month, day jiǎwǔ, at cock-crow, Xǐ was born.” Year 47 of Zhāowáng: 十一月，敢產 “In the eleventh month, Gǎn was born” (a sibling). Year 56 of Zhāowáng (251 BCE): 昭死 “Zhāo died” (King Zhāo of Qin); and 正月，遬產 “In the first month, Sù was born” (another sibling). Then under the present king (First Emperor’s reign): year 1 (246 BCE): 喜傅 “Xǐ registered [for conscript duty]”; year 3 (244 BCE): 八月，喜揄史 “In the eighth month, Xǐ became a yú shǐ [a type of scribe]”; year 4 (243 BCE): 喜□安陸□史 “Xǐ [became scribe at] Ān’lù”; year 6 (241 BCE): 為安陸令史 “Became lìng shǐ [scribe-official] at Ān’lù”; year 7 (240 BCE): 正月甲寅，鄢令史 “In the first month, day jiǎyín, [became] lìng shǐ at Yān”; year 11 (236 BCE): 十一月，獲產 “In the eleventh month, Huò was born”; year 12 (235 BCE): 四月癸丑，喜治獄鄢 “In the fourth month, day guǐchǒu, Xǐ managed criminal cases at Yān”; year 13 (234 BCE): 從軍 “Went on military campaign”; year 15 (232 BCE): 從平陽軍 “Campaigned with the army at Píngyáng”; year 16 (231 BCE): 七月丁巳，公終 “In the seventh month, day dīngsì, [Xǐ’s father?] the gōng passed away”; year 18 (229 BCE): 攻趙。正月，恢生 “Attacked Zhào. In the first month, Huī was born”; year 20 (227 BCE): 七月甲寅，嫗終 “In the seventh month, day jiǎyín, the old woman [his mother?] passed away”; year 27 (220 BCE): 八月己亥廷食時，產穿耳 “In the eighth month, day jǐhài, at court-meal time, Chān got her ears pierced” (apparently a granddaughter or niece); year 28 (219 BCE): 今過安陸 “The Emperor passed through Ān’lù.” The chronicle then ends — the remaining entries (years 29–30) are blank or damaged.

Significance. The Biānnián Jì is significant for several reasons: (1) It provides the only dated autobiographical record from a low-ranking Qin official, allowing scholars to reconstruct the career trajectory — registration for military service, apprenticeship as a scribe, appointment as lìng shǐ, prosecution of criminal cases, military service — of an ordinary Qin administrator of the third century BCE. (2) It anchors the dates of other texts in the Shuìhǔdì corpus: since Xǐ was born in 262 BCE and died around 217 BCE (when the tomb was sealed), the legal and administrative texts he copied can be assigned to the mid-third century BCE. (3) The interleaving of national-historical and personal-autobiographical entries in a single chronicle is without parallel in early Chinese writing. (4) The chronicle attests the administrative geography of Hubei during the Qin period: Ān’lù 安陸 (Qin county seat) and Yān 鄢 (another county center), both in the Jǐanghàn Plain.

Dating. The chronicle begins in 306 BCE (year 1 of Qin Zhāowáng) and ends around 217 BCE. The entire text was presumably written or compiled by Xǐ himself during his lifetime, with the final entry being made shortly before his death and burial.

Translations and research

  • 睡虎地秦墓竹簡整理小組, 《睡虎地秦墓竹簡》, 文物出版社, 1990 — editio princeps with photographs, transcription, and commentary.
  • 雲夢睡虎地秦墓編寫組, 《雲夢睡虎地秦墓》, 文物出版社, 1981 — comprehensive site report.
  • Hulsewé, A.F.P. Remnants of Ch’in Law: An Annotated Translation of the Ch’in Legal and Administrative Rules of the 3rd Century BC. Brill, 1985 — introductory chapter provides essential context for Xǐ’s career.
  • Barbieri-Low, Anthony J., and Robin D.S. Yates. Law, State, and Society in Early Imperial China: A Study with Critical Edition and Translation of the Legal Texts from Zhangjiashan Tomb no. 247. 2 vols. Brill, 2015 — comparative context.
  • Lewis, Mark Edward. The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han. Harvard University Press, 2007 — contextualizes Qin administrative personnel.
  • Pines, Yuri et al., eds. Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin Revisited. University of California Press, 2013.
  • Caldwell, Ernest. Writing Chinese Laws: The Form and Function of Legal Statutes Found in the Qin Shuihudi Corpus. Routledge, 2018, pp. 1–25 — discusses the chronicle as context for the legal texts.

Other points of interest

The Biānnián Jì is the only pre-Han document that allows us to reconstruct a dated personal biography from a non-elite Chinese official. Xǐ’s life spans the entire final phase of the Warring States period and the first decade of the Qin empire: he was born in 262 BCE (the year of the famous battle of Chángpíng 長平, which the chronicle records), served in the military campaigns that led to Qin unification, witnessed Qin Shi Huang pass through his home county of Ān’lù in 219 BCE (the Emperor’s second inspection tour), and died in 217 BCE at the age of 45. The entry recording the Emperor’s passage (今過安陸, “the Emperor passed through Ān’lù”) is a remarkable juxtaposition of world-historical and local-administrative perspectives.

The chronicle also records family events in language simultaneously official and intimate. The birth of siblings and children is recorded with the same terse formulas used for military campaigns; deaths are noted with the word zhōng 終 (“ended”) rather than sǐ 死 (“died”), the polite usage for one’s own family. The entry “In the seventh month, day jiǎyín, the old woman passed away” (七月甲寅，嫗終) — using yù 嫗 (“old woman”) rather than “mother” — may reflect legal-administrative style carried over into personal records.

Graph View