Life
Ban's father, Ban Biao, died in AD 54 when Ban was twenty-two. After his father's death, Ban spent a period of time pondering what path he should pursue in life, eventually composing a long fu on his situation entitled "Fu on Communicating with the Hidden" (Chinese: 幽通賦; pinyin: Yōutōng fù), which is famous as one the earliest known fu used to discuss philosophical questions. Ban did not immediately begin an official career, but remained in the Ban family home in Anling to work on the completion of his father's historical sequel to Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian.
Around AD 60, rumors were reported to Emperor Ming of Han that Ban was "privately revising the national history", which caused the imperial court to become concerned about the type of account Ban would write of the fall of the Western Han and the rise of the Eastern Han. Ban was subsequently arrested and the Ban family library confiscated, though Ban's brother Ban Chao was able to intercede on his behalf and secure Ban's release. Ban was assigned to compile the annals of Emperor Guangwu of Han, the first Eastern Han emperor, and in AD 64 was assigned to the collation of books in the imperial library and promoted to the rank of gentleman. Emperor Ming was so impressed with the quality of Ban's work that in AD 66 he gave him permission to resume his work on the history of the Western Han, which he worked on for the rest of his life.
Ban continued to serve in the imperial library and at the imperial court throughout the second half of the 1st century AD. During the reign of Emperor Zhang of Han, Ban was promoted to the position of "Marshal of the Black Warrior Gate". Ban later served as a high-ranking literary official under Dou Xian, the brother of Emperor Zhang's empress. Although Dou won prestige for two successful campaigns against the Xiongnu, in AD 92 he was suspected by Emperor He of Han of plotting a rebellion and forced to commit suicide. Immediately thereafter, Ban was dismissed from office and arrested by an old rival who was serving as the prefect of Luoyang. Ban died in prison that same year at 61 years old.
Read more about this topic: Ban Gu
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the end of life but the final saturation with absence.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
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“For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind. For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. A perpetually new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full of tragedy and injustice. A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.”
—Joyce Cary (1888–1957)