A Family of Historians
Ban Chao also belonged to a family of historians. His father was Ban Biao (3-54 CE) who started the History of the Western Han Dynasty (Hanshu; The Book of Han) in 36, which was completed by his son Ban Gu (32-92) and his daughter Ban Zhao (Ban Chao's brother and sister). Ban Chao was probably the key source for the cultural and socio-economic data on the Western Regions contained in the Hanshu.
Ban Chao's youngest son Ban Yong (班勇 Bān Yŏng) participated in military campaigns with his father and continued to have a central military role in the Tarim Basin into the 120s.
Read more about this topic: Ban Chao
Famous quotes containing the words family and/or historians:
“Wherever the citizen becomes indifferent to his fellows, so will the husband be to his wife, and the father of a family toward the members of his household.”
—Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835)
“As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our day.”
—Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)