| Chapter 1: | Inscribing the Past: A History of Chinese History |
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Biao lamented that Qian’s inconsistency gives his readers no rest in trying to locate information on their own. Ironically, Ban Biao disparaged Sima Qian’s prolixity and his omissions of what Biao felt were important details.
Furthermore, Ban Biao suggested that the function of recording the past is to explain the present, to make the past relevant to the present reader. Biao stated that such works as the Zuozhuan, Intrigues of the Warring States, Shiben 
(Genealogies), Chu-Han chunqiu 
(Spring and Autumn Annals of the Chu and Han),47 and the Records of the Grand Historian (Taishigong shu 
) “are the means whereby this generation understands antiquity, and the means whereby later generations see the past; they are the ears and eyes of sagely men” 
, 
.48 Biao’s assertion is echoed in George Santayana’s (1863–1952) famous statement that those who forget about the past are condemned to repeat it. For Ban Biao, these early texts functioned as the interpretive tools of Confucian intellectuals; they are the “eyes and ears of sagely men.”
In his final assessment of Sima Qian, which merely repeats much of what his father said about him, Ban Gu again praised Sima Qian’s literary merits. He noted that Qian “discourses without sounding florid; he is simple without being rustic. His writing is direct and his facts sound. He does not falsify what is beautiful, nor does he conceal what is evil” 
.49 Ban Gu commends Sima Qian’s ability to provide detailed accounts of the Qin (221–209 BC) and Han, but he also had criticisms, suggesting that Sima Qian’s use of classical texts, commentaries, and philosophical works is “often careless and imprecise, and takes liberties with his sources” 
.50 Moreover, Ban Gu criticized Sima Qian’s apparent preference for Huanglao 
thought over the Confucian classics, his valorization of wandering knights (youxia 
), and those skilled at making profits over gentlemen scholars who live in retirement.