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The reliability of this account

Pan Ku has often been suspected of bias against Wang Mang. He
indeed condemns Wang Mang in the severest terms—his eulogy (99 C:
29a-30a) could hardly have been more drastic. His family, too, suffered
from Wang Mang. In the reign of Emperor Ch'eng (during ca. 32-18
B.C.), Pan Ku's clan had for a time been very close to the throne, enjoying
an eminence that was said to have shaken the empire (100 A: 6a).
About 1 B.C., however, Pan Ku's grandfather had been accused of a
capital crime by Wang Mang's associates and compelled to retire from
official life (100 A: 5b). Hence the Pan clan was not in sympathy with
Wang Mang, although it took no part in the rebellions against him. In
the disorder after the death of Wang Mang, Pan Piao fled to the present
Kansu, where he finally joined Emperor Kuang-wu's forces, and later
returned to the capital with them. Pan Ku was moreover a loyal adherent
of the Later Han dynasty; he was highly honored by and intimate
with its second emperor (HHS, Mem. 30 A: 8b). He thus had ample
reason to be prejudiced against Wang Mang.

There is, however, little or no evidence that he actually distorted his
History because of any such prejudice. In the first place, his method of
writing history by extensively quoting sources was itself a safeguard. If
there had been any considerable distortion of the facts on his part, the
large amount of quotation from contemporary documents would enable
us to discover such distortion.

The high literary quality of Wang Mang's edicts and of his courtiers'
memorials indeed probably caused Pan Ku to admire them greatly and
to quote them extensively. He was actually attracted to this age, because
of its Confucian spirit. Yin Min, with whom Pan Ku worked
on "The Fundamental Annals of the Epochal Exemplar, [Emperor
Kuang-wu]," (HHS, Mem. 30 A: 8a), found it impossible to rebut Ts'ui
Fa's apologia for Wang Mang, probably because it was so thoroughly
Confucian in its spirit and sayings. All he could say was that the sages
had written no prophetic writings and that the dissection of characters
to derive meanings from them was almost the same as vulgarity (HHS,
Mem. 69 A: 10a). Wang Mang's portents were so Confucian and were

presented with so much Confucian learning that probably the only possible
refutation was that offered tacitly by Pan Ku—that they were
fabrications.

In the second place, Pan Ku seems personally to have cherished a high
ideal of historical accuracy. He does not tell good stories for their own
sake, as did Szu-ma Ch'ien. His literary style may have suffered thereby;
the ambitious Szu-ma Ch'ien seems to have told dramatic stories, whereas
Pan Ku clung to what he conceived to be the truth. Pan Ku's spirit
was that of the fifty-odd Confucians whom Emperor Wu asked (ca.
110 B.C.) to determine the ancient ceremonies for the imperial sacrifices
feng and shan, which that Emperor proposed to reestablish. Failing to
discover any detailed account of these rites, they replied that they could
not determine them, and the Emperor himself fixed these rites (HS 58:
12a, b).

This spirit of historical accuracy was nourished by the famous story
in the Tso-chuan (Dk. Hsiang, XXV; Legge, p. 514), concerning the
historiographers in the state of Ch'i. When, in 548 B.C., Ts'ui Chu's
followers killed Duke Chuang, who had illegally entered the former's
house, the Grand Clerk is said to have written on his records, "Ts'ui Chu
assassinated his prince." Ts'ui Chu had the clerk put to death, but his
younger brother, who succeeded to the position, made the same record.
(Official posts were hereditary in the clans of their occupants.) Ts'ui Chu
had this brother in turn put to death, but the third brother, on succeeding
to the position, made the same record. So Ts'ui Chu forgave the last
brother and let the record stand. Meanwhile the Clerk For the South,
hearing that the clan of the Grand Clerk had been extinguished, had taken
his writing tablets and started for the court, evidently intending to make
the same record when he would succeed to the post of Grand Clerk. Upon
hearing that the record had been made, he however returned home. This
story, whether true or not, must have been a powerful stimulus in ancient
times to a correct recording of history, since it was the picture of the
ideal clerk.

One of the accusations made against Liu Hsin1a was that he had "done
away with the traditions about the classics handed down from generation
to generation by his teachers"—he seems to have merely changed the
principles of portent-interpretation (Cf. 99 C: 14b & n. 14.6). There was
thus in certain strains of Confucianism a strong tradition of fidelity to
the facts of history. Pan Ku, a thorough-going Confucian, had this
strong incentive to give an unprejudiced picture of even a ruler whom he
reprobated deeply.

In the third place, the Pan clan had not actually been harmed by Wang
Mang, and had good reason to be attached to his aunt, the Grand Empress

Dowager nee Wang. Pan Ku's own great-aunt had become a favorite of
Emperor Ch'eng and came to be entitled the Favorite Beauty nee Pan.
She retired from the imperial court in 18 B.C., when she became unwillingly
involved in an intrigue. She then devoted herself to the care of the
Grand Empress Dowager, who became fond of her (100 A: 5b). Wang
Mang belonged to the same social group as Pan Ku's grandfather and
great-uncles. Wang Mang indeed treated them as his own brothers and
wore mourning for Pan Ku's great-uncle (before 1 B.C.; 100 A: 5b).
Pan Ku's grandfather, Pan Chih, who was a commandery official during
the reign of Emperor P'ing, was impeached by Wang Mang's associates
for having failed to forward to the throne a laudatory report, which he
probably knew was false. Through the intercession of the Grand Empress
Dowager, he was not punished, and retired from active life with his former
salary to the funerary park of Emperor Ch'eng. Thus Pan Ku's clan
was able to remain unmolested in safe obscurity during the reign of
Wang Mang and had no reason for any active animosity towards Wang
Mang. The family income came from Wang Mang's treasury.

In the fourth place, the popular reaction against Wang Mang was so
thorough that the Later Han dynasty did not need to encourage propaganda
against him, so that a prejudiced account was not expected. Pan
Ku was moreover born nine years after Wang Mang died, so that he came
of a generation which was able to view Wang Mang dispassionately. He
wrote half a century after Wang Mang's age, when active resentment had
had time to die down.

In the fifth place, Pan Ku seems to have clung to a historian's objective
valuation of events, and refused to over-value events in order to make
an impression. For example, he did not record all the early revolts on
the part of the Liu clan against Wang Mang, which he might have done
in order to exalt the Han dynasty. He tells merely of Liu Ch'ung (99 A:
27a) and of Liu K'uai (99 B: 7b, 8a); it is only through an incidental
mention in a memorial by Sun Chien that we learn of Liu Ts'eng and Liu
Kuei, who also revolted (99 B: 13b). Probably these latter two revolts
were so ineffective that Pan Ku did not consider them worth recounting.
He even gives an outline of Wang Mang's book of propaganda and quotes
its conclusion at length (99 B: 9a-11a), without attempting any rebuttal.
The coincidences and analogies he quotes are quite adequate to convince
a superstitiously inclined person of Wang Mang's legitimacy. Pan Ku
does thus seem to try to give a fair view of Wang Mang and to be objective
in his presentation of the evidence. I began my study of this chapter
with a decided prejudice against Pan Ku (expecting him to be prejudiced)
and in favor of Wang Mang, but the weight of the primary sources quoted
by Pan Ku and the facts he recounts forced me to reverse my opinion

and to agree with Pan Ku in condemning Wang Mang. There is every
evidence that Pan Ku really tried and largely succeeded in giving an
objective and reliable account of Wang Mang.