SOURCE: Watson, Burton. Introduction to Records of the Grand Historian, by Sima Qian, translated by Burton Watson, pp. ix-xvii. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1993.

In the following essay, Watson explains that Qian's main purpose in writing history was didactic, so he did not hesitate to describe the oldest of events even when some of his sources were dubious.

In my two earlier volumes of translations from the Shi ji or Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian (145?-89? bc), which are being reprinted as companions to the present volume, I presented material dealing with the founding and early years of the Han dynasty (206 bc-ad 220), the dynasty under which the historian himself lived and wrote. In the present volume I have moved backward somewhat in time to focus on the chapters of Sima Qian's work that relate the history of the preceding Qin or Ch'in...