A major source for this work was a man who visited the Tocharians during his 12-year travels.
One episode in this work relates how a ruler entered his outhouse to find the dismembered, rotting corpse of his father's lover, traumatizing him into a life of sexual deviancy and leaving the throne in the hands of his mother. A major source for this work was a man who visited the Tocharians during his 12-year travels. This work imagines a worm eating a mulberry leaf to explain the rapid success of one figure; that man's near-murder with a knife concealed in a scroll appears in this work's catalogue of assassinations. The first figure described in this work affixed a compass to a chariot to defeat a bronze-headed tyrant. Modern critics of this first of the (*) 24 Histories were shocked after excavations at Anyang mostly matched its early king list with Shang-era oracle bones. To finish this work, its author refrained from suicide after Li Ling's failed attack on the Xiongnu led to his castration. Running from the Yellow Emperor to Wudi, for 10 points, name this most famous history of China, compiled by Han historian Sima Qian.
One episode in this work relates how a ruler entered his outhouse to find the dismembered, rotting corpse of his father's lover, traumatizing him into a life of sexual deviancy and leaving the throne in the hands of his mother.
Records of the Grand Historian [or Shiji; accept just Historical Records; accept clear equivalents like Sima Qian's History]