역사의 탄생

The Birth of History : Herodotos and Ssu-Ma Ch'ien

In the beginning there was not the history. History was born, when human beings began to research the traces of their own lives and to write it down in narratives. For this reason, there are fathers of history respectively in the West and the East. The Western father of history is Herodotos, who was born during the Persian War around B. C. 480 and died around B. C. 429, whereas the Eastern father of history is Ssu-ma Ch'ien, who was born around B. C. 145 and died around B. C. 86. History as a genre of the narrative has been created by Historiai written by Herodotos and Shih chi(Historical Records) written by Ssu-ma Ch'ien. Whereas the Western history has been born under the auspices of literature and has become independent of it, the East Asian history has been differentiated from Gyungsuh(經學), i. e. philosophy. Therefore, the comparative study of Herodotos and Ssu-ma Ch'ien would be about comparison between the Western and Eastern cultures. If the modern history has been established by declaring independence from the tutelage of literature and philosophy, the post-modern history has brought a revival of narrative by rediscovering the once discarded literature and philosophy under the name of meta-history. If the East Asian traditional historiography had been featured by the correspondence between history and writing and the correspondence between history and canon, the post-modern historiography pursues a throw-back to the narrative tradition. In this context, we can say that the post-modern historiographical turnaround was already predetermined by Herodotos and Ssu-ma Ch'ien as the fathers of the Western and Eastern history. Above all, this paper aims at clearing up this very truth.