高祖功臣侯者年表

The Grand Historian says: In antiquity, the merit of ministers was graded in five categories: establishing ancestral temples and securing the altars of state through virtue was called 'distinction'; through counsel, 'toil'; through force of arms, 'achievement'; demonstrating clear rank, 'eminence'; through accumulated days of service, 'experience.' The oath upon enfeoffment declared: 'Until the Yellow River shrinks to a belt and Mount Tai wears down to a whetstone, may the state endure in peace, extending to your descendants forever.' The original intent was always to secure the root — yet the branches and leaves gradually declined and withered.

I have read the records of the meritorious ministers Gaozu enfeoffed as marquises, examined their initial grants, and studied why they lost them. I say: what strange and revealing stories! The Documents speak of 'harmonizing the myriad states' — and those states endured through the transitions to Xia and Shang, some for several thousand years. The roughly eight hundred enfeoffments of Zhou survived past Kings You and Li and appear in the Spring and Autumn Annals. The Documents record earls and marquises from the reigns of Yao and Shun who persisted through three dynasties and over a thousand years, preserving themselves as a protective screen for the Son of Heaven. Was this not because they held fast to humanity and duty and upheld the law of their superiors? When Han arose, more than a hundred meritorious ministers received fiefs. The realm had just been pacified; the great cities and famous capitals had been scattered and destroyed, and the population that could be counted was no more than one-fifth or one-third of what it had been. The largest marquises had no more than ten thousand households; the smallest, five or six hundred. After several generations, the people all returned to their native places, households multiplied, and the houses of Xiao, Cao, Jiang, and Guan sometimes reached forty thousand households, with the smaller marquises at least doubling — all grown rich and grand. But their sons and grandsons became arrogant and dissolute, forgetting their ancestors and wallowing in excess. By the century mark of the Taichu era, only five marquisates survived; all the rest had been condemned under law, losing their lives or their states. They were consumed. The legal net had also grown somewhat tighter, yet all of them had personally failed to walk with care within the prohibitions of their time.

Living in the present age and reflecting on the ways of antiquity is a way to hold up a mirror to oneself — though the two eras need not be identical. Each emperor and king has distinct rites and different tasks; what matters is taking accomplishment as the guiding thread. How could they be lumped together? Observing how some gained honor and favor and how others were disgraced and ruined provides a record of the gains and losses of their era — why limit oneself to ancient precedents? I have therefore carefully traced their histories from start to finish and tabulated the records. Some cases could not be fully documented from beginning to end; what is clear I have set down, and where doubt remains I have left gaps. If a worthy scholar in the future wishes to expand and arrange this material, here is something to work from.