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Case file s928 · Literature and art · 92
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92
Ban Gu: Ban Gu
Ban Gu. Unknown author. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
AD 92
Place
Luoyang, China
Field
history writing · Royalty and nobility on the timeline
Legal tradition
Han criminal procedure; imperial commission
Historical event
The fall of the Dou family, 92
Religion
Ban Gu: Confucian and Taoist (recorded as Confucianism on Wikidata)
Literature and artAncient worldEast AsiaChina

Ban Gu died in a magistrate's prison with the Book of Han unfinished, and the emperor ordered his sister Ban Zhao to complete it

The history of the Former Han was a family project. Ban Biao began it. His son Ban Gu continued it for decades. Ban Gu served the general Dou Xian. The Hou Han Shu records that Chong Jing, the magistrate of Luoyang, had a grudge against the Ban household because one of its servants had insulted his carriage party. He could do nothing while Dou Xian was powerful. In 92 Dou Xian fell. Ban Gu was dismissed. Chong Jing arrested him, and he died in prison at 61. An edict reprimanded Chong Jing. The Book of Han still lacked its eight tables and its treatise on astronomy. Emperor He ordered Ban Gu's sister, Ban Zhao, to go to the imperial library in the Dongguan and complete them. The scholar Ma Rong, later famous, studied the history under her there. She also taught Empress Deng, who gave Ban Zhao's son a title and a post at court. Scholars still debate how much of the final text is hers. The Book of Han survives complete.

What the law took from it

A family work survives its author when a named successor is given the authority and the archive to finish it.

Sources
  1. zh.wikisource.orgScholarship
  2. zh.wikisource.orgScholarship
  3. ebsco.comPress

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Ban Gu died in a magistrate's prison with the Book of Han unfinished, and the emperor ordered his sister Ban Zhao to complete it,” story s928, https://www.celebrity.estate/ban-gu-92, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Literature and artAncient worldEast AsiaChina