Sima Qian, while reading the "Spring and Autumn Annals" and records of the calendar, would sigh and put down his book when he saw the story of King Li of Zhou. He said: "Ah, Shi Zhi saw this coming, didn't he? When King Zhou of Shang used ivory chopsticks, Jizi worried and sighed about it; when the rites and music system of the Zhou Dynasty declined, poets wrote about this scene in their poems, just like in the poem 'Guan Ju.' When benevolence, righteousness, and morality decayed, 'Lu Ming' was written to satirize it. By the time of King Li, his tyranny made everyone aware of his mistakes. The ministers were afraid of being killed, causing chaos throughout the country. King Li fled to Zhi, and the capital, Chang'an, was also in chaos, leading to the emergence of a republican situation. Later on, each feudal state fought for power and profit based on their strength. Strong nations oppressed weaker ones, and they went to war without seeking approval from the emperor. They claimed to be upholding the royal family while forming alliances under the guise of military campaigns, becoming overlords. Power was held by five overlords, and the vassals did as they pleased, living it up and not following the laws, with more and more incidents of usurpation and seizing of power. The states of Qi, Jin, Qin, and Chu, which were originally near the capital of Zhou, had territories of no more than a hundred or fifty li (approximately half a kilometer). Later, the state of Jin occupied the Three Rivers region. Qi relied on the East Sea, Chu controlled the Jianghuai basin, and Qin held the strategic position of Yongzhou. These four states took turns dominating, and all those praised for their literary and military achievements were subservient to them.
Therefore, Confucius laid out his vision for a righteous kingdom, pitching his ideas to over seventy princes, but got nowhere. He looked into Zhou Dynasty history and compiled the records, starting from the state of Lu, and wrote the "Spring and Autumn Annals," beginning with Duke Yin and ending with the story of the unicorn during Duke Ai's time. He boiled it down to the essentials, conveying deep meaning in simple words. It's all there: the ideal government and the ups and downs of history. Confucius's more than seventy disciples orally transmitted his thoughts, but the criticisms, jokes, praise, hush-hush stuff, and edits—that all went unrecorded. Zuo Qiuming, a Lu scholar, worried that the disciples had their own interpretations, deviating from the original intent, so based on Confucius's historical materials and explanations, he wrote the "Zuo Zhuan." Duo Jiao tutored King Wei of Chu. King Wei couldn't quite grasp the "Spring and Autumn Annals," so Duo Jiao distilled its wisdom into forty scrolls of his own, the "Duo Shi Wei." During the reign of King Xiaocheng of Zhao, his prime minister Yu Qing, using the "Spring and Autumn Annals" as a guide and applying it to his times, also wrote eight scrolls called "Yu Shi Chunqiu." Qin's prime minister, Lv Buwei, consulted ancient classics, revised the "Spring and Autumn Annals," collected the deeds of the six states, and wrote the "Lv Shi Chunqiu," which included eight sections on different topics, six on key debates, and twelve historical accounts. People like Xunzi, Mencius, Gongsun Yang, and Han Feizi also extracted materials from the "Spring and Autumn Annals" to write books, each with their own emphasis and narrative style. Han Dynasty's PM Zhang Cang worked on the Five Virtues Calendar, and top scholar Dong Zhongshu wrote extensively on the "Spring and Autumn Annals."
Sima Qian said: Those Confucian scholars, they'd latch onto one idea and run with it. And the show-offs? All flash, no substance. Family historians just jotted down birth and death dates, sometimes throwing in a few miracles for good measure. Just names, dates, and titles—hardly a full biography.
So, I wrote these twelve histories of feudal lords, from the period of the Spring and Autumn period to the time of Confucius, summarizing the ups and downs, as critiqued by scholars in the *Spring and Autumn Annals* and *Guoyu*, of these states. It's a really valuable resource for anyone studying ancient texts, helping them cut to the chase and get the gist.
The tables in Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) are not translated. If you are interested in these tables, you can click on the Republic of China flag above to view the Traditional Chinese page.
