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Choice by Pertinence: Depiction of Xiongnu in Chinese Historical Texts

This paper aims to discuss the depiction of Xiongnu in Chinese historical texts. The Han historians tended to oversimplify the polity of Xiongnu in their records while overlooking some crucial parts of the sophisticated political system, but disagreement remains as to why such oversimplification occurs. The historians never reduce the entire polity to its leader, Chanyu, but to an idealized hierarchy made up of both Chanyu and the lesser kings, the latter being neglected more by modern researchers than by the authors of these records. On the basis of such revision, it will be argued that chroniclers’ ignorance of the lesser kings is far from sufficient to account for their rare, and often scattered, appearance in the records. Alternatively, less relevance of these local leaders to Han Dynasty, especially when compared with Chanyu or the Xiongnu as a whole, is considered a more credible explanation for their being less frequently mentioned.