Word population analysis and other evidences indicate that Shiji was amended by Liu Xiang

•Shiji by Shima Qian is the most important and influential historical book in China.•Shiji contains 10 amended parts starting with the sentence “Mr. Chu said”.•Such amended parts were widely considered to be written by Chu Shaosun.•We develop a statistical method useful to solve authorship dispute problem.•We use our method and other evidences to find that the amended parts were by Liu Xiang.

Shiji prepared by Shima Qian in Western Han Dynasty (202 BC–9 AD) was the most famous historical book in historical China. The current version of Shiji   contains 130 chapters, including 10 chapters which contains some parts starting with the sentence “Mr. Chu said ……”; such parts were considered to be written by Chu Shaosun by Chang Yen in the Three Kingdoms Period (220–280 AD), which was widely accepted. We have analyzed the word population in Shiji and books written by Liu Xiang (77 BC–6 BC) in Western Han Dynasty, who was a member of the royal family. Our results and other evidences indicate that the parts of Shiji   starting with the sentence “Mr. Chu said ……” were prepared by Liu Xiang. The other evidences include (1) The ending year of the events mentioned in “Mr. Chu said...” was considered to be 47 BC, the second year of Emperor Yuan (as Emperor in 48 BC–32 BC) of Western Han Dynasty, and in the same year Liu Xiang was put into a jail, then left power center for many years. Such coincidence suggests that Liu Xiang wrote the parts “Mr. Chu said ……” in Shiji  . (2) Liu Xiang’s education, interest, and writings are quite consistent with the parts with “Mr. Chu said ……” in Shiji. On the other hand, one cannot find such a connection with Chu Shaosun, who did not have any other identified writings for comparison.