Reliability and Accuracy
Scholars have questioned the historicity of legendary kings of the ancient periods given by Sima Qian. Sima Qian begins Shiji with an account of the five rulers of supreme virtue, the Five Emperors who modern scholars, such as those from the Doubting Antiquity School, believe to be originally local deities of the peoples of ancient China. Sima Qian sifted out the elements of the supernatural and fantastic which seemed to contradict their existence as actual human monarchs, and was therefore criticized for turning myths and folklore into sober history.
However, according to Joseph Needham, who wrote in 1954 on Sima Qian accounts of the kings of the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600–c. 1050 BC):
| “ | It was commonly maintained that Ssuma Chhien could not have adequate historical materials for his account of what had happened more than a thousand years earlier. One may judge of the astonishment of many, therefore, when it appeared that no less than twenty-three of the thirty rulers' name were to be clearly found on the indisputably genuine Anyang bones. It must be, therefore, that Ssuma Chhien did have fairly reliable materials at his disposal—a fact which underlines once more the deep historical-mindedness of the Chinese—and that the Shang dynasty is perfectly acceptable. | ” |
| — Joseph Needham |
While some aspects of Sima Qian's history of the Shang Dynasty are supported by inscriptions on the oracle bones, there is, as yet, no clear corroborating evidence from archaeology on Sima Qian's history of the Xia Dynasty.
There are also discrepancies of fact such as dates between various portions of the work. This may be a result of Sima Qian's use of different source texts.
Read more about this topic: Records Of The Grand Historian
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