Person
Nghiem An
A Han official who petitioned Emperor Wu to stop making war; his memorial, copied whole into the Records of the Grand Historian, is the one place in that work naming Do Thu.
At a glance
- Role
- A Han official whose memorial to Emperor Wu argued that the emperor should stop making war, taking the Qin campaign as his example: the Qin sent Commandant Do Thu with tower-ship troops against the Hundred Yue in the south and Giam Loc to cut a canal to carry grain, and drove deep into Yue country — the Yue fled, the days stretched out, the grain ran out, the Yue struck back, and the Qin army was heavily beaten1
- Earliest record
- His memorial was copied whole into the Records of the Grand Historian at book 112 — and that is the one place in the work where the name Do Thu appears, not in the annals and not in Sima Qian's own voice1
Life
The old chronicles say
To say the Records of the Grand Historian do not mention Do Thu is wrong. They do — only not in the annals, and not in Sima Qian's own voice. The Qin commander's name stands in Nghiem An's memorial to Emperor Wu of Han, which Sima Qian copied into the book whole. Nghiem An was arguing that his emperor should stop making war, so the war in the Yue lands is an example in a case, not an annalistic entry. One history, one war, two voices: the annals give the founding of the three commanderies a single sentence, while the copied memorial has a commander, a canal and a defeat.1
Two Han men, both urging their ruler not to fight in the south, both telling of a Qin defeat in the Yue lands, tell it differently exactly where it matters. Nghiem An gives no troop figure at all, where the Huainanzi has five hundred thousand in five armies. Nghiem An puts the quagmire at more than ten years rather than three. Nghiem An says plainly that these were tower-ship troops, that is a river navy. And Nghiem An does not say Do Thu was killed — only that the Qin army was heavily beaten. The death of Do Thu, the strongest image left in popular memory, is not in his version.12
His memorial is also one of three very different texts that say the same one thing: the Qin could get in, but they could not settle. The people there left their villages for the forest, refused to become men of the Qin, and waited. The three are the Huainanzi, Nghiem An's memorial as copied into the Records of the Grand Historian, and the notes to the Le dynasty national history. Only Jia Yi tells it the other way: in his essay on the faults of the Qin the lords of the Hundred Yue bow their heads, put ropes about their own necks and hand their lives to petty officials, and there is no Qin defeat at all. Four texts, three agreeing and one not.134
Mentioned in
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