# Sima Qian’s Shiji becomes the durable public indictment of Qin

Date: 1961

## The fact

The Han historian Sima Qian’s Shiji is the main surviving narrative through which Qin’s violence and institutions are known in later centuries, including in modern translations. The First Emperor did not authorise this book.

## Context

A hostile history can be both biased and indispensable. Treating Shiji as gospel is an error. Treating Qin as unknowable without it is also an error. Archaeology now sits beside it.

[Qin Shi Huang](/people/qin-shi-huang) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official museum/encyclopedia/agency pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum (https://www.bmy.com.cn/; Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum).

## Significance

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Qin Shi Huang: https://factrail.ai/people/qin-shi-huang

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Qin-Shi-Huang
- https://www.bmy.com.cn/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/cn-sima-qian-indictment