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:
“The poem refreshes life so that we share,
For a moment, the first idea . . . It satisfies
Belief in an immaculate beginning
And sends us, winged by an unconscious will,
To an immaculate end. We move between these points:
From that ever-early candor to its late plural....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“when this life is from the body fled,
To see it selfe in that eternall Glasse,
Where time doth end, and thoughts accuse the dead,
Where all to come, is one with all that was;
Then living men aske how he left his breath,
That while he lived never thought of death.”
—Fulke Greville (1554–1628)
“The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, urges must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)