SOURCE: Boltz, William G. “Myth and the Structure of the Shyy Jih.” In Asiatische Studien Etudes Asiatiques LVI.3.2002, edited by Kai Vogelsang and Robert Gassmann, pp. 573-85. Bern, Germany: Peter Lang, 2002.

In the following essay, Boltz contends that shifts in content in the Shih chi also indicate shifts in sources used.

The new and unprecedented establishment of the Chinese imperial state, founded as it was on the Hann consolidation of a far more traditional polity represented by the Chyn unification two generations earlier, roused dramatically new needs of political authority and legitimation in the Chinese court and among the Chinese intelligentsia and literati. In contrast to the clan-based hereditary legitimacy of the pre-imperial states, the new empire claimed its heritage and its legitimacy directly from high antiquity. The chief tangible expression of this is seen in the emergence in the early years of the empire of a set...