Harvard-Yenching Institute

The Prose Style of Fan Yeh Author(s): Ronald C. Egan Reviewed work(s): Source: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Dec., 1979), pp. 339-401 Published by: Harvard-Yenching Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2718855 . Accessed: 10/12/2011 14:12
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The Prose Style of Fan Yeh

RONALD C. EGAN Harvard University

Q OMETIME during the first three weeks of A.D. 446, while iniJ carceratedand awaiting execution for his part in a plot to depose Emperor Wen of the Sung dynasty, Fan Yeh -O, the author of Hou Han shu X.X@, wrote the following letter to his nephews:'
Now that I have come to grief because of my recklessnessand dissent, what more can I say? You would all be quite justified in rejecting me as a criminal. I am, of course, mindful of my lifelong conduct, but you can determine that for yourselves. However, as for my innate abilities and how I interpret what is in my mind, these things you may not yet fully understand. In my youth I was lazy in my studies and matured late. I was over thirty before I discovered my true inclinations.2 From that time on, however, I began to
I am heavily indebted to Dr. Achilles Fang for introducing me to the prose of Fan Yeh several years ago and for weeding many errors out from my translations. Professor James R. Hightower has also made several suggestions that have greatly improved this article. 1 The letter is found in Fan Yeh's biography in Sungshu 69.1829-31; there is a slightly different version in Nan shih 33.854-55. (All references to the dynastic histories are to the Peking, Chung-hua shu-chii edition. The chuiannumber precedes the period and the page number follows it.) Fan Yeh was born in 398 into a family that had traditions of distinguished government service and scholarship. His grandfather, Fan Ning M (339-401), wrote what was later to become the standard commentary on Ku-liangchuan;his uncle, Fan Hung-chih -M4LZ, was an Erudite at the Imperial Academy during the Chin dynasty; and his father, Fan T'ai : (355-428), rose to the prestigious position of General of Chariots and Cavalry (Chui-chi chiang-chiin ) During the early years of the Sung dynasty, which displaced the Chin in 420, Fan Yeh served as a military officer under Liu Yi-k'ang J*,

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improve myself, and though now I am getting old, I intend to go on. From time to time I have insights, for what they are worth, yet I have been unable to express them fully. I was never fond of studying commentaries. My disposition is coarse and when I tax my brain even a little bit I feel sick inside. Furthermore, my tongue is not eloquent or agile and so I have never excelled at conversation. Whatever learning I have I acquired from within myself. My writing gradually improved, but my talents are limited and my thoughts come with difficulty, so that among the compositions I have managed to complete, few are satisfactory. I never wanted to become a mere literary embellisher. In writing, there is the danger that the substance will be overshadowed by the outward appearance and that the sentiment will be cramped by ornamentation, that literary conventions will hamper the writer's purport and that rhythm will distort his thoughts. Although occasionally there are competent writers, most do not avoid these hazards, making their work just like the craftsmen's paintings, which have no real value. I have always believed that in expressing oneself thought should be made primary and words should merely be used to convey the thought. When thought is primary then the purport will naturally show through, and when words are used merely to convey the thought the language will not run wild. Having grasped this principle, then one can gather fragrant blossoms and strike bronze gongs and stone chimes. Under these conditions, the thousand kinds of sense and sentiment will emerge coherently at every turn. Believing that I really discern the secret

Prince of P'eng-ch'eng, and by 432 he had been appointed to a high post in the Department of Functionaries. During that year, however, Fan Yeh committed the indiscretion of getting drunk on the eve of the burial of Liu Yi-k'ang's mother, throwing open the windows of his apartments, and making fun of the dirges that were being sung through the night. For this, he was demoted to the post of Grand Administrator (T'ai-shou %;t) of Hsiian-ch'eng R , in modern Anhwei. It was during the five or six years he occupied this post that Fan Yeh, his official career at the capital interrupted, compiled his Hou Han shu. Later, towards the end of the decade of the 430's, Fan Yeh received the first of a series of promotions that eventually restored him to the court, where he seems to have been a favorite of the Emperor and was eventually appointed Commander of the Imperial Guard on the Left (Tso wei chiang-chun ) and Supplier to the Heir Apparant ). However, in 445 he helped to organize a plot to install (T'ai-tzu chan-shih ; his old patron, Liu Yi-k'ang (Emperor Wen's younger brother) on the throne, and when the plot was leaked he was arrested. After approximately three weeks of incarceration, during which time the Emperor personally investigated the case, Fan Yeh was publicly executed on January 23, 446, together with three of his sons and other conspirators. (For additional biographical information see the Sungshu notice on Fan Yeh. Also, for the date of his death see Sung shu 5.93, and regarding the chronological discrepancy about the year of his demotion to the post at Hsuan-ch'eng see Hou Han shu, p. ii and Sung shu 69.1832. Another biographical sketch can be found in Hans Bielenstein, "The Restoration of The Han Dynasty." BMFEA. 26 r19541. 14-15.) 2 The Nan shih text has the variant shang fit "what I esteemed" for hsiang [i] "inclinations."

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of these matters, I have told it to others, but most were unable to appreciate what I said: perhaps because they look at things differently. All men can distinguish musical sounds and pitches; this is as it should be. What a pity that most writers of the past and present have failed to grasp this, and that those who have grasped it have not understood the essence of the matter. My opinion can be backed up with concrete proof and is not idle talk. Among today's young men, Hsieh Chuang [421-66] is the most gifted in this regard. His words are not constricted by conventional prosody. My thoughts have no fixed formula and are able to flow around any obstacle, always finding the right balance. And I have still never done full justice to my innate abilities. Most of my writings were of an official nature, hence they lacked the lingering flavor that goes beyond the matter at hand, a fact I deeply regret. That is why I never sought to become known as a writer. I never had anything to do with historical writing, always feeling that it was simply beyond me. However, when I wrote my History of the Later Han I came to discover the principles of historical writing. Now, when I examine the historical narratives and critiques from ancient times down to the present, there are few that I find satisfactory. Pan Ku [32-92] is the most renowned historian, but since he could only do as he saw fit, having no ancient precedents, he cannot be compared with later historians. His appended Eulogies are not acceptable to our common sense, and it is only his Treatises that are commendable. But in these his erudition cannot be matched and his organization is glorious. The Disquisitions in my various biographies embody my painstaking thought and deep purport. I made the language terse because I wanted to restrict the flavor in each of them. But as for the Introductions and Disquisitions in my chapters from the one on scrupulous officials down to those on the six barbarian tribes,3 in those my brush gallops away unbridled. They are the most original writings in this world. Here and there they do not pale before the piece "The Faults of the Ch'in, "4 and when I set them alongside those that Pan Ku wrote they are far from being a source of shame. I wanted to write various Treatises, to complement all those that Pan Ku wrote. Though they need not be so detailed, still they should enable one to see everything at a glance. I also wanted to write critiques on various matters within each chapter so as to pass judgment on the right and wrong of the age. My good intentions were never fulfilled.5
3 That is, the last fifteen of Fan Yeh's chapters of Biographies, each of which is devoted to a particular group of persons (e.g., scrupulous officials, harsh officials, eunuchs, scholars, men of letters, etc.). Actually, only eight of the chapters have both an Introduction and a Disquisition; the others lack one or both of the essays. 4 "Kuo Ch'in" the famous opening essay in Chia Yi's I (201-169 B.C.) Hsin f, shu. The first half of his essay was anthologized in Wenhsaan under the title "Kuo Ch'in selection see that by Burton ; for an English translation of the Wen hsu2an lun" Literature, ed. Cyril Birch (New York: Grove Press, 1965), Watson in Anthologyof Chinese pp. 46-48. J 6 The Treatises that are now found in Hou Han shu are from Ssu-ma Piao's

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The Eulogies contain my supreme thinking: not a single word is wasted, and they are full of unexpected turns, all aiming at the same goal though in different styles. I myself hardly know how to praise them. When this work circulates, I am convinced that there will be those who really appreciate it. In the Annals and Biographies proper, my plan was simply to give a general sketch of events. Still, they fully evidence my painstaking effort. Never since antiquity has there been such a grand plan matched with such careful deliberation as in this work of mine. I only fear that contemporaries will not do justice to my book. Many of them venerate ancient writings while belittling modern ones, and that is why I have now given free rein to my feelings and indulged in reckless talk. In music I am better at playing than at listening, but I regret to say that what I excel at is not the classically correct style. However, once one reaches mastery what is the difference? The reality and enjoyment of such a state can never be fully expressed in words. There is no way of accounting for the source of the thought that lingers after the string falls silent or the sound that remains after the reverberation has ceased. Even at its most meager, the flavor is infinite. I have tried to teach my method of playing to others, but neither among the gentry or the commoners is there anyone who can come close to it. It is sure to die with me. Though my calligraphy has some slight interest, my brush movement is clumsy and awkward. I have always been embarrassedby my reputation as a calligrapher.

This letter, which ends so abruptly, is strikingfor its arrogant tone (though the arroganceis sometimestemperedwith a pose of humility, as in the last sentence). Fan Yeh claims to be a man who has learned everything on his own rather than from books or conversations, a man who trusts nothing but his own intuition and who scorns conventions, such as prosodic rules for writing or the classical style in music.6 Furthermore, he finds fault with contemporaries and even with venerated ancients. Predictably enough, Fan Yeh has been strongly censured through the centuries for the attitudes expressed
a work no longer extant. Ssu-ma Piao's Treatises have (240-306) Hsu Han shu an*, regularly circulated together with Fan Yeh's work since the 11th century (see Bielenstein, pp. 16-17). Incidentally, the reason there is a discrepancy of thirty in the chiiannumbers of the Biographies in various editions of Hou Han shu is that some editions, such as the Peking, Chung-hua shu-chii edition, print the thirty chidan of Treatises at the end of the work, while other editions, such as the Palace edition, print the Treatises in the traditional place, before the Biographies. 6 In addition to his reputation as a writer (see note 8 below), Fan Yeh was also known for his musical talent. His biography relates the following anecdote: He played thep'i-p'awell and could composenew tunes.The Emperorwantedto hear him perform and subtly alluded to his desire on several occasions,but Yeh pretendedhe did not understand and would not play for him. Once, when the Emperorwas enjoyinghimselfat a feast, he turned to Yeh and said, "I want to sing a song. You accompanyme." Yeh did as commanded,but as soon as the Emperorstoppedsinging, Yeh stopped playing. (Sung shu 69.1830)

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in this letter, particularly for his criticism of Pan Ku.7 However, if we refrain from dismissing Fan Yeh outright for his arrogance and remind ourselves of the high standing of his writing (as evidenced by the praise ancient and modern critics have for it,8 and the facts that his Hou Han shu completely supplanted several earlier histories of the Later Han9 and that more of his historical essays were selected into Wen hsuan than were those by any other historian),0 this letter takes on considerable interest as an acknowledged master's statement about his own writing. Naturally, we cannot simply accept Fan Yeh's evaluation of his writing. Writers are frequently poor judges of their own work; besides, Fan Yeh's remarks are too vague to be a satisfactory
7See, for example, the comments of Hung Mai # (1123-1202), Jung-chaisui-pi VW chi-pents'ung-shued.), 15.142-43; Ch'en Chen-sun &jw (ft. 1234), Chih(Kuo-hsui N chai shu-lu chieh-t'i chi-pents'ung-shu (Kuo-hsueh ed.) 4.92; and Chu Ho-ling ffl ,S (Ssu-k'uch'uan-shu ed. [Taipei: Commercial *%Wp (1606-83), Yii-anhsiao-chijJJ4 Press, 1973] 4th Series, vol. 385), 13.6a-7b. 8 The nineteenth-century scholar and parallel prose writer, Li Tz'u-ming (1830_;V 94) had especially high praise for Fan Yeh, saying that he was the best historian since the Han dynasty, and that his Introductions and Disquisitions are superior even to those by Ssu-ma Ch'ien, Pan Ku, and Ch'en Shou (see Yuieh-man t'ang tu shu chi LW Mff [Peking: Chung-hua shu-chiu, 1963], pp. 185-87). Earlier praise for Fan Yeh's literary skill can be found in Shih p'in *n, where Chung Hung go (469-518) quotes a contemporary opinion that the only persons who really understood the matter of tonal harmony in writing were Fan Yeh and Hsieh Chuang Sf; (421-66) (see Shih p'in chu gnt [Taipei: K'ai-ming shu-tien, 1973], p. 9). Liu Chih-chi tIJriW (661-721) also speaks highly of Fan Yeh's historical essays (see Shih-t'ungt'ung-shih _tM [Hong Kong: T'ai-p'ing shu-chui, 1961], p. 53). In this century, Tai Fan-yii W has commended the literary merits of Fan Yeh's prose in his Fan Yehyu ch'i Hou Han shurpeAA (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1939), pp. 1, 52-54. & 9 There were at least seven comprehensive histories of the Later Han, and a dozen or so works of limited scope, by the beginning of the fifth century. (For a complete listing see Bielenstein, pp. 10-13.) In addition to these earlier works, Liu Yi-ch'ing fDn (403-44) and Hsiao Tzu-hsien :f.-h (489-537) each wrote an additional Hou Han shu, but these two were eclipsed by Fan Yeh's work and later disappeared altogether (Bielenstein, p. 16). 10 Fan Yeh dominates the shih-lun P "Disquisitions from the Histories" section of Wen hsiuan,where he is represented by four essays as compared with two by Kan Pao ;it (441-513), and one by Pan Ku. The large numyf (ft. ca. 320), two by Shen Yueh & ber of Fan Yeh selections is particularly impressive when one remembers that the field of choice was larger by several times when Wen hsiian was compiled, in the early sixth century, than it would be now, since only a fraction of pre-T'ang historical writing has been preserved. Fan Yeh's essays in Wen hsuanare: the Introductions to the chapters on empresses, eunuchs, and recluses, and the Disquisition on the twenty-eight generals of the Restoration.

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description of his style. Still, the letter is important for the picture it gives of a man who takes great pride in the literary qualities of his prose. Here is a historian who seems to value aptness and power of expression over factual accuracy or moralistic instructiveness. (Thus, this letter makes a nice contrast with that written by Ssu-ma Ch'ien to Jen An five and one-half centuries earlier, in which that historian's pretensions are didactic and historiographical rather than literary.)"', Moreover, some of the points Fan Yeh makes in his letter help to orient us as we begin the attempt to characterize his writing. One such point is his insistence on giving priority to thought over ornamentation. Fan Yeh is not the first writer to criticize excessively "ornamental" writing. Yang Hsiung A* (53 B.C.-A.D. 18), Wang Ch'ung TIE (b. 27), and Chih Yu VA (d. ca. 312) all spoke out against embellishedfu Mt writing.12 However, there is some difference between Fan Yeh's criticism and that by earlier writers. The earlier critics disapproved of what they considered to be the frivolous purpose of fu, and their objections are closely tied to their commitment to moralistic, Confucian writing. Fan Yeh's criticism is not directed against a particular genre of writing but against a certain style of writing that was prevalent in his time. Thus, what Fan Yeh advocates is not a change in the purpose and method of some writing, but a new approach to writing in general. Fan Yeh's criticism of writing in which the outward appearance is given precedence over the substance is, of course, criticism of contemporary parallel prose (p'ien-t'i wen Jiq"3). Fan Yeh lived during an age in which parallel prose was emerging as the standard mode for all nonnarrative prose. Not only was the range of parallel prose widening, the mode itself was becoming increasingly stylized: its diction was growing more allusive and studied, and conventions
11 The letter is found in Ssu-ma Ch'ien's biography in Han shu 62.2725-36. It has been translated by James R. Hightower in Anthologyof Chinese Literature, pp. 95-102. 12 For Yang Hsiung's criticism offu see Yang-tzu fa-yen (SPTK ed.), 2. la-b (cf. David R. Knechtges, The Han Rhapsody[Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976], pp. 9497). For Wang Ch'ung's views see Lun hengchi chieh (Peking: Ku-chi ch'u-pan she, 1957 ed.), "Yi-wen p'ien," pp. 412-13, "Ting-hsien p'ien," p. 546, and "Tzu-chi p'ien," pp. 584-85 (tr. Alfred Forke, Lun-heng [New York: Paragon Book Gallery, 1962 reprint], II, 279, 145-46, and i, 72, respectively). For Chih Yu see the surviving fragments of his Wen-chang liu-piehchi (Collection of Writing by Genres)in Yen K'o-chiun's eIJA Ch'uanChin wen gS; 77.8a.

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were evolving regarding its sounds (that is, its prosody, rhyme, and phonetic tones) .13 A reading of the more mannered parallel prose pieces of Fan Yeh's day makes it easy to understand what he objected to and why his criticism was echoed by others.14 However, the terms in which his argument is cast may be slightly misleading. Fan Yeh's conception of how to write seems to be based on an assumption, common in the ancient world, that words are fundamentally distinct from the ideas they express, that language is simply a vehicle used in the service of a higher entity, thought. According to this assumption, it is possible to abuse the vehicle and thus fail to express any meaning. A modern critic would probably want to put it somewhat differently. He would insist on the close connection between language and meaning, and say that although it is certainly possible to use language awkwardly, thus conveying misleading or irrelevant meanings, it is unlikely that anyone who
13 On the general development of parallel prose through the fourth and fifth centuries see Wang Yao, "Hsui, Yu yii p'ien-t'i" ("Hsii Ling, Yu Hsin, and Parallel Prose"), in lun chi (Shanghai: Ku-tien wen-hsiieh ch'u-pan she, 1956), his Chung-kuwen-hsiieh-shih Chung-kuo p'ien-wenshih (Shanghai: Commercial pp. 158-63; and Liu Lin-sheng lijT, Press, 1937), pp. 26-60. 14 Hsiao Tzu-hsien f (488-537) notes the harmful effects of prolix diction, the excessive use of parallelism and ancient expressions, and startling or gaudy diction in his analysis of contemporary writing styles that is appended to the chapter on men of letters in his Nan Ch'i shu 52.908:

can moreor less be divided into three main Contemporary literature,for all its many practitioners, styles. In the firststyle, expressionis leisurelyand drawnout, and diction is rich and wide ranging. Although this style may achieve intricately resplendentpatterns, it is really too roundabout. It is suitablefor diversionat palace feasts,but shouldnot be taken as a standard. It has the incurable and torpidity.Its refinementand decorummay be commendable,but its maladiesof carelessness excessesare unacceptable. The origin of this style can be traced to Hsieh Ling-yun [385-433]. of the same type, not admitting The secondstyleweavesallusionstogetherand matchesreferences any line without a parallel. Althoughthe eruditionthusdisplayedmay have true merit, the convention soon becomes restrictive. Some writers rely completely on phrases borrowedfrom ancient writings to express today's sentiments; they twist and stretch the meanings, determined to use nothing but paired lines. Because they concentrateonly on ancient precedents,they lose all the essenceand color of written expression.As for the origin of this style, although the poems on the five classicsby Fu Hsien [239-94] and the indirectcriticismsby Ying Chu [190-252] do not fully manifestit, they can be taken as its model. In the thirdstyle, the singingis startlingand the tune is daring and fast. The elaborateintaglio dumbfoundand dazzle the mind. It is like the reds and purplesof the and inordinategorgeousness color spectrumor the Cheng and Wei songs of the musical repertoire.This style is the heritage of Pao Chao [d. 466]. In addition to the above, both Liu Hsieh's Wen-hsintiao-lungand Chung Hung's Shih p'in contain many disparaging remarks about writing that puts greater emphasis on outward appearances (whether diction or prosody) than substance; see notes 40, 53, and 54 below.

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writes in a grammatically correct manner will fail to convey some meaning. Likewise, as long as the connotations and nuances ("the lingering flavor that goes beyond the matter at hand") are felt to be relevant and to fill out the sense, then the texture of the writing may be very dense and the language bespeak great self-consciousness on the author's part without the writing being merely ornamental. 15 This modification of Fan Yeh's underlying theory is important to bear in mind, because if we subsequently think of the issue involved as that of "ornamental, frivolous writing" versus "plain, meaningful writing," we shall be quite unable to explain what makes Fan Yeh's prose innovative and interesting. For although Fan Yeh eschews the mannerisms of his contemporaries, his style could never be characterized as "plain." Judging from his letter, Fan Yeh takes the most pride in those sections of his history that are not the mere narration of events; that is, in the hsiu)$ Introductions, lun Wm Disquisitions, and tsan X Eulogies, which contain his summaries of major developments and his evaluations of policies. Since these are the sections in which Fan Yeh is the 1-east bound by the obligation to report factual details, and speaks most clearly in his own voice, it is not surprising that they are his particular pride and have the greatest literary interest of any part of the history. In what follows, I shall first discuss the characteristics of these stylistically elevated sections (excluding the Eulogies, which are a type of poetry),16 then go on to comment on the style of the more mundane narrative prose that makes up the bulk of the history. Fan Yeh's historical essays are, first of all, tightly organized. The opening paragraph of the Introduction to the biographies of harsh officials is typical:
The Han dynasty inherited the violent ways of the Warring States period and had great numbers of unruly and lawless people. Those bent on aggrandizement
15 See the thoughtful analysis of the relationship between style and meaning by W. K. Wimsatt: TheProseStyle of SamuelJohnson(Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1972 reprint), pp. 9-14. 16 Fan Yeh's tsan % Eulogies are written in alternately rhymed four-character lines and are normally between four and twelve lines long. They roughly correspond to the shu 3 that are contained in the last chapter of Han shu. Fan Yeh's tsan thus bear no resemblance to the tsan in Han shu, which are short prose essays found at the end of each chapter (and are the formal model for Fan Yeh's lun S Disquisitions).

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tyrannized provinces and counties, while local strong-men dominated the villages. Furthermore, the jurisdiction of each magistrate was vast and the population large. Therefore, officials who governed the people had to take all power into their own hands and act with authority: in extirpating evildoers and their families they would first carry out the executions and only later send reports to their superiors. They acted harshly on their own impulses, cultivating an inflexible bearing. They disregarded the masses and followed their own will, flaunting their unpredictable craftiness. It went to the extent that strict laws were wantonly applied, and there were more scapegoats than could ever be listed. Thus there were such cases as the pile of bones that filled the pit and the blood that flowed for ten miles.17 Wang Wen-shu had subordinates who were known as tigers with caps,18 and Yen Yen-nien was called "king of the butchers"19-were such characterizations unwarranted? Yet those who crushed the mighty and bridled the ducal ministers, never flinching even when their own necks might have been cut, were, after all, heroic men.20

The first three sentences describe the general conditions that officials confronted at the beginning of the Han dynasty, the next three sentences report the way the officials reacted, the next three sentences tell of the excesses that the policy of harshness led to, citing specific examples, and then the paragraph ends on a positive note, with a sentence that softens the censure in what precedes. The paragraph is a balanced, carefully thought out statement on these cruel but effective men. Fan Yeh's brief Disquisition on eunuchs shows similar attention to careful exposition:
Ever since antiquity, the perishing of a dynasty and consequent extinction of its sacrificial offerings have always come as the culmination of a gradual process. The Hsia, Shang, and Chou dynasties brought on their calamities because of their women favorites, the Ch'in dynasty ruined itself through extravagance and cruelty, the Former Han reign came to an end owing to Imperial in-laws, and the Later Han was toppled on account of eunuchs, Now, the causes of such catastrophes have long been discussed by historians, but the case of the fatal "crack" originating with eunuchs may yet bear some comment.
17 See Han shu 90.3673 and 90.3656, respectively (referred to by Li Hsien * [65184], under whose supervision the T'ang Hou Han shu commentary was compiled). 18 For the biography of Wang Wen-shu see Han shu 90.3655-58. 19 For the biography of Yen Yen-nien see Han shu 90.3667-72. 20 Hou Han shu 77.2487. In this passage and those translated below I have followed the text of the Chung-hua shu-chu edition and adopted its textual emendations, most of which are made in accordance with changes suggested in Wang Hsien-ch'ien's Hou Han shu chi-chieh.

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The fact of the matter is that the corporeal mutilation of eunuchs makes them defective human beings: their name and fame have no way to reflect gloriously upon their family, and their flesh and blood can never be passed on to an heir. Their evils are not detected even after scrutiny, and their propinquity to the ruler wins them his trust. Furthermore, in time they become steeped in court affairs and acquire expertise in formal precedents and usages. Hence young rulers depend upon their dutiful and proven service, and regent Empresses rely upon them to promulgate decrees; sovereigns consult them without any suspicion and become intimate with them because of their pleasing mien. To be sure, there were truly loyal and fair-minded eunuchs who through their resourcefulnessmanaged to correct wrongdoing. On the other hand, there were also those who, gifted with agile minds and glib tongues, used clever displays to confound the truth. Then there were those who rode along on the praises given to faithful and upright officials whom they had recommended as young men. It is not that the eunuchs simply indulged their evil nature and stopped only after they had committed cruel and wild acts. But the perverse among them walked side by side with the honest ones, their appearance at odds with their real disposition. It is little wonder that they were able to confuse and delude witless and young rulers, blinding their vision and deafening their hearing. Once their trickery and the advantage thus gained became extensive, with the ranks of their cohorts and followers increasing daily, then whenever outspoken ministers tried to protest they would be sure to leak the matter before the protestations were formally made; and when the Imperial in-laws were stirred up, the occasion was just right for them to open the crack for usurpation and seizure of power. It was thus that faithful and worthy men were outwitted, and the altars of earth and grain were demolished and became ruins. The Book of Changes says, "Treading on hoarfrost, it gradually turns to solid ice," meaning that the process is a lengthy one. Now, when we trace the true causes of the dynasty's fall, it surely is not something that came about in one day or night.21

Here, in addition to presenting a well-ordered and progressively more complex and qualified explanation of what the eunuchs were like and how they managed to usurp power, the author uses phrases from a classical source to frame his essay and to lend it even more cohesion. The phrase "the culmination of a gradual process" at the end of the first sentence is taken from the Wen-yen Commentary on the second hexagram in the Book of Changes.(The wording is slightly different in Fan Yeh's essay and the grammar conspicuously odd.)22 Aside from this phrase, which bears directly on the theme
Hou Han shu 78.2537-38. The Hou Han shuphrase is: i; t; phrase: At ,, Cf. the Bookof Changes Xf-, (Choui [Harvard-Yenching concordance], p. 4a).
21
22

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of the essay, there is no other phrase drawn from a classical source until the end of the essay. There, by way of recapitulating the theme of gradual process, the author first gives an explicit quotation from the same Book of Changes hexagram,23 and then, in the final line, uses the phrase "in one day or night," which is the phrase that immediately precedes the one used at the beginning of the essay in the Wen-yen Commentary. Fan Yeh's essays are thus characterized by meticulous structuring and the expression of strong, well-considered opinions. He consistently addresses important matters, relating the subject of a particular chapter to larger events, and refrains from oversimplifying (by noting, for example, the real contributions made by such groups as the harsh officials and eunuchs as well as the harm they did). But there is more to these essays than the careful exposition of a reasoned point of view. The language itself is rich and engaging. It draws attention to itself, much as language does in poetry, being full of nuances of meaning and sentiment that fill out the opinion being expressed. It is the essays' literary interest that is their most distinctive mark. Several characteristics of the language help to account for its interest. First, there is the tailoring of sense to rhythm (the quality that suffers most in translation). Intelligent use of rhythm can improve writing by clarifying the precise weight of individual words and by binding certain of them more closely together. It has been pointed out how much a poem loses when paraphrased in prose, or even when its words are unaltered but are printed out in paragraph form.24 What is lost is the pleasing and clarifying effect of a steady beat. Grammatical parallelism goes hand in hand with metrical regularity in the Chinese prose of Fan Yeh's age (a type of prose that takes its name, p'ien-t'i wen, from its conspicuous use of parallelism). The juxtaposition of grammatically matching phrases, which either make related affirmations or which stand in antithetical relationship to each other, can result in a stronger statement than can
23Choui, p. 3b. 24 See Archibald MacLeish, Poetry and Experience(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), pp. 11-12; and Hugh Kenner, The Art of Poetry (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1959), pp. 71-72.

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be achieved in any free paraphrase of the same lines. Such parallelism is particularly effective in Chinese, since it allows the writer to express himself in forceful language that is often so terse that it would be ambiguous were it not for the matching member of the parallel construction, which clarifies the grammar. Surely, this is one of the reasons parallelism became such an important element in Chinese poetry, along with metrical regularity. Prose that is highly rhythmic and full of parallel constructions is formally closer to poetry than is less constricted prose in which these features rarely occur, and its potential for some types of poetic effect is correspondingly greater. On the other hand, the dangers of these formal characteristics are not inconsiderable. It is all too easy for the writer who uses them to become slave to their tyranny. The forcefulness and clarity of parallel constructions and a steady beat can so mesmerize the writer that he begins to use them in places where they are detrimental to the sense required by the context; or they may assert themselves to the extent that they dominate the entire composition, depriving it of the spontaneity of unexpected turns and altered rhythms that are essential to most exposition. Thus, Liu Hsieh VJ (d. ca. 523) warned, "If there are no irregularities in your expression, if your writing lacks variation and goes on and on in parallel units, you will put your reader to sleep."25 In his letter, Fan Yeh shows that he is well aware of the pitfalls of these formal conventions: "In writing, there is the danger that the substance will be overshadowed by the outward appearance and that the sentiment will be cramped by ornamentation; that literary conventions will hamper the writer's purport and that rhythm will distort his thoughts." Although Fan Yeh's expository prose is heavily influenced by the vogue of the parallel mode during his day, in general he succeeds in avoiding its dangers while exploiting the expressive potentials of the conventions to the full. Grammatical parallelism is put to a variety of uses in Fan Yeh's historical essays. (All the examples given below are taken from the six essays that are translated as an appendix to this paper, or from the passages translated above. The reader is referred in each example
25 Wen-hsintiao-lungchu-ting,ed. Chang Li-chai (Taipei: Cheng-chung shu-chii, 1967), p. 352.

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to the page on which the example occurs in the fill translation.) It may be used to specify coordinate aspects of a particular event or situation:

The jurisdiction of each magistrate was vast and the population large (p. 347).

[Eunuchs'] name and fame have no way to reflect gloriously upon their family, and their flesh and blood can never be passed on to an heir (p. 348).

It was thus that faithful and worthy men were outwitted, and the altars of earth and grain were demolished and became ruins (p. 348).

It may be used antithetically, to help to order a general argument, clarifying distinct alternatives:

If august Imperial grace is given only to a few, then the sovereign will easily make the mistake of favoring the incompetent. However, if everyone is treated with absolute fairness, then the sovereign will widen the road along which able men can be recruited for office (p. 401).

It may be used, for emphasis, in an antithetical statement that affirms one thing while denying its opposite:
P-t 4 P, ,L% t a.

... they only concerned themselves with expedients of the day, and had no thought for far-reaching policies of statesmanship (p. 393).

Or in a statement that contrasts different types of persons or situations:

Those who compromised themselves and bent to the eunuchs' demands won prominence and Imperial favor for their clans to the third degree, while those who remained true to their convictions and went against the eunuchs' desires brought on the extirpation of their families to the fifth degree (pp. 385-86).

Fan Yeh tends to save parallel constructions for those cases in which it is appropriate and meaningful to analyze the matter at hand

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into two distinct elements. There are some particularly skillful uses:

The court advisors, trying to give counsel, had no means to influence decisions made within the inner-palace curtains; and the Empress Dowager, as she issued decrees and proclamations on the Emperor's behalf, never emerged from behind the doors to the women's quarters (p. 385).

Here, the topic is the separation of the Empress Dowager from the court advisors and how the eunuchs intermediated. The passage accurately analyzes the policymaking process into two steps: advisors offering up their counsel, and the ruler handing down decisions. Since in this case the ruler was a woman, the court officials could not have direct contact with her, hence both steps of the process required intermediaries. Therefore, as the passage concludes, "[The Empress Dowager] could not but use eunuchs, entrusting them with all state orders." ASVIM %3VOK

But the perverse among them walked side by side with the honest ones, their appearance at odds with their real disposition (p. 348).

This sentence describes the eunuchs by means of two pairs of opposites: chenhsieh AS, the honest versus the perverse eunuchs, and ch'ingmao ;rS, the appearance versus the real nature of the perverse eunuchs. The two pairs are related but not redundant, moreover both pairs are essential to the larger argument, which attempts to explain how such an evil group of men rose to political prominence by noting that there were some good men among them and that the others managed to keep their wickedness concealed. What Fan Yeh generally avoids is contrived parallelism; that is, parallelism which results from padding a statement so that it comes out in parallel phrases even though the sense does not require the matching. The most common methods of such padding are to say the same thing twice and to provide two illustrations or examples

of something. Kan Pao's T

(f.

ca. 320) Chin-chi tsung-lun zIRMS

"Comprehensive Disquisition on the History of the Chin Dynasty," which precedes Fan Yeh's Disquisitions in Wenhsuan, is full of padded parallel constructions:

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fTA*.%,1

01-V, A)J1<, ffT'HtF11.

[The sage rulers] held off great adversities but did not claim the accomplishment for themselves; they prevented great calamities but did not take credit for the benefits of having done so.

Hence, [the people] were moved and responded to [the sage rulers]; they were delighted and gave themselves to them.26

There is virtually no difference in the meanings of the two members of each construction. The writer has given priority to rhythm over sense.

... [the people gave themselves to the sage rulers] just as falcons flock to the northern woods, as water creatures rush to the streams and pools.

*%f 4T-AMf,

liaii

Oxen and horses roamed freely on the pastures; surplus grain was stored out in the fields.27

Here, the two members of the parallel constructions do not say virtually the same thing ("falcons" is not synonymous with "water creatures" as "adversity" is synonymous with "calamity"); however, they are merely illustrations. They do not specify two essentials of the topic at hand, as Fan Yeh's sentence about the court advisors and the Empress Dowager specifies the two essential steps in the process of setting policy. We can easily think of other figures of speech to illustrate how eagerly the people sought out the virtuous ruler's protection, and other concrete manifestations of the sense of peace and security that pervaded the land. In other words, these parallel constructions are illustrative rather than definitive. The parallel style may also tempt the writer to use clichds or all too predictable pairings to keep the rhythm going: 0I,

i aiX.

26 For these two passages see Wen hsuan (Hu K'o-chia ed.), 49.9b and 49. 1Oa. This Disquisition was originally written to accompany Kan Pao's Chin chi Vt#Z (a history of the Western Chin dynasty), which was subsequently lost. 27 Wenhsiian49. lOa and 49.7a.

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[The people] took delight in his life and mourned his death.

B+XT -v, "'Ast.

Officials carefully observed the rituals, while the commoners exerted themselves to the utmost.28

Or, the writer may let himself be forced into making false distinctions: ORA, Rk|%
heart.29

50-MR&MR.

Morality was substantial in each dwelling, and wickedness vanished from each

Kan Pao might just as well have said that morality was substantial in each heart and that wickedness vanished from each dwelling. This is simply imprecise writing. Of course, no extended piece of formal Six Dynasties prose, including Fan Yeh's essays, is completely free of such blemishes. Parallel constructions that consist of illustrative examples are especially common, and they are not felt to be a lapse when used sparingly and in contrast to other kinds of statements. However, when the above types of parallelisms begin to equal or outnumber the more legitimate kinds that are rooted in meaning rather than in prosodic convention (as they do in Kan Pao's "Comprehensive Disquisition"), then the prose becomes, at best, loose and rhetorical; at the worst, such writing is sapped of exactness and intensity. Two longer passages from Kan Pao's Disquisition are translated below. The first describes how the sage kings of antiquity ruled:
According themselves with Heaven, the sage rulers received its mandate; responding to the people, they united them in their loyalty. Then they established rituals and regulations to keep them in order, and determined punishments and penalties to overawe them; they cautioned them about good and evil behavior to instruct them, and expounded on the causes of good and bad fortune to teach them; they sought out discerning men to govern them, and developed their own beneficence to the full to preserve their allegiance. Thus, the people came to understand the Way: they took delight in their ruler's life and mourned his death; they found pleasure in his teaching and comfort in his customs. Officials carefully observed the rituals, while the commoners exerted themselves to the utmost. Morality was substantial in each dwelling, and wickedness vanished from each
28 29

Wenhsiuan 49.1Oa and 49. 1Ob. Wenhsian 49.1Ob.

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heart. Hence, the people would lay down their lives in a national crisis, and would not seek to protect themselves at the expense of duty. How could they ever have thought of waving their arms and shouting to each other, banding together to violate the law and initiate rebellion ?30

The second passage describes the social and political malaise at the end of the Western Chin dynasty:
The court had few true and principled officials, and the hamlets had a scarcity of ingenuous elders. Moresbecame depraved, and the standards of pride and shame became dislodged. Scholars took Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu as their orthodoxy and rejected the Confucian classics; clever talkers fashioned arguments out of vacuous words and scorned all values; in their personal lives, men took indulgence in wickedness to be the right way and considered integrity and trustworthiness to be narrow; those who served in the bureaucracy strove after personal gain and despised rectitude; and those who held high office devoted themselves to staring into space and laughed at diligence. Thus the three ducal ministers were dubbed "know-nothings"3' and court counsel was known as "empty chatter." Liu Sung spoke out repeatedly on the true way of government, and Fu Hsien continuously tried to correct wrongdoing,32 but they were denigrated as lowly clerks; meanwhile, those who supported themselves with empty actions and gave themselves over to thoughtlessness all achieved renown throughout the empire. As for the examples set by King Wen, who never took time to eat until sunset, and Chung-shan Fu,33 who did not rest from his toil morning or evening, everyone scoffed at them, considering them to be as worthless as dirt and a source of shame.34

The overall tone of Kan Pao's essay is unmistakably different from that of Fan Yeh's essays, and much of the difference can be traced to Fan Yeh's more restrained and deliberate use of parallelism. Although Fan Yeh avoids contrived parallelism, he does not sacrifice the steady rhythm of the parallel style. He does write in couplets, which normally consist of two four-character lines, but
Wenhsiian49. 1Oa-b. Mine is only one of several possible understandings of the troublesome term hsiaoMonzen C;, Zenshaku , chi #kL; see the note on the expression by Obi Koichi Vol. 31 (Tokyo: Shiueisha, 1976), p. 614. Kambuntaikei ; 32 Liu Sung (ft. ca. 275) and Fu Hsien (239-94) have biographies in Chinshu 46 and 47, respectively. 33 For the legendary industriousness of King Wen and Chung-shan Fu, both of the Chou dynasty, see Shang shu, "Wu-i," pars. 9-11 (Bernhard Karlgren, tr., The Book of Documents [rpt. Goteborg: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1950, from BMFEA, Vol. 22], p. 58), and Shih chingode no. 260 (Karlgren, The Book of Odes [rpt. Goteborg, 1950, from BMFEA, Vols. 16-17], pp. 228-30). 34 Wenhsiian49.14a-15a.
31 30

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often settles for metrical parallelism rather than grammatical parallelism. There are many types of such couplets: #MI?,? W.
The troops in Ping and Liang sustained the heaviest casualties (pp. 390-91).

Although from time to time truly loyal officials appeared at the court, in the end they were all driven away (p. 385).

1ffiW6r,

iEb

. . . but because they hesitated and failed to act, they met death and defeat (p. 387).

&*'ML'r9, %AMO&
During the Yung-ch'u period, all the barbarians arose in swarms (p. 390).

The two lines of the first couplet above can be analyzed as subject/ predicate. The second couplet consistsof a concessive clause followed by the main clause. The third presents a cause in the first line and its effect in the second. And the fourth is an adverbial clause followed by a full sentence. Where it would be awkward to express the sense in two metrically equivalent lines, the normal rhythm is violated. Still, some attempt is usually made to preserve a semblance of the standard beat:

The court advisors, fearing further decline in military strength, desired to negotiate whatever settlement they could (p. 391).

Here, the long first line ends with a four-character objective phrase which, when matched with the following line, recovers some of the feeling of the normal rhythm, helping to compensate for the metrical irregularity. Occasionally, Fan Yeh presents lines that may at first appear to be grammatically parallel but which in fact are not:
f0'ffi;tg2, CStf

... relying on their absolute probity that could brook no evil to justify their cruel ferocity (p. 381).

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... wanting to cultivate the same friendly relations with us that Hu-han had formerly enjoyed, in order to prevent attacks upon his people by the barbarians further north (p. 395).

This is formal parallelism: the lines are metrically equivalent and the feeling of parallelism is enhanced by the correspondencein wordclass, but the lines neither share a relationship to a third line that makes them parallel nor do they stand as grammatically matching independent statements. Elsewhere, one finds a large number of couplets in which grammatical parallelism is not maintained where it might have been:
IMPiI TkAM.

With shining majesty, he commissioned generals, and military banners filled the sky like stars (p. 394).

Then they called out the warriors who were hiding in the mountains, signaling a muster with their shrill whistling (p. 390).

The first couplet above describes Emperor Wu's marshalling of troops to do battle agains the Hsiung-nu, and the second describes the western barbarians' rallying to rebellion. They are the kinds of statements in which one would expect grammatical parallelism, but the author chooses to avoid it, using the second line of each ouplet to relate an interesting image rather than to fill out the grammatical pattern. The couplet is thus the basic unit of Fan Yeh's expository prose, though of course the balanced rhythm of the couplet is occasionally broken by an unpaired line. (This happens most often at the beginning or the end of a paragraph and is a prosodic signal of a shift in the line of thought.) But what is distinctive about Fan Yeh's expository prose is the care with which grammatical parallelism within the couplet is used. The number of couplets that are merely metrically parallel is high,35 and when grammatical parallelism is
35 By my count, roughly 40 percent of the couplets in the essays translated at the end of this paper are metrically parallel and 60 percent are grammatically parallel. The percentage of couplets that are merely metrically parallel in Kan Pao's "Comprehensive

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employed it is done so meaningfully. During an age in which grammatical parallelism was becoming little more than a formal convention, Fan Yeh uses it as an expressive device. The ultimate result is a prose in which there is a steady metrical beat overlaid with a texture of meaning that alternates between parallel and nonparallel statement, with the few formally parallel couplets falling somewhere in between the two main types. The type of couplet used in any particular place depends entirely on the kind of sense required by the context: Fan Yeh resorts to metrical parallelism whenever grammatical parallelism would cramp the sense. This flexibility is evidently Fan Yeh's response to the danger that "literary conventions will hamper the writer's purport" (as he wrote to his nephews). As for Fan Yeh's diction, the abundance of binomes can hardly go unnoticed. It can partly be explained by the fact that the prose is predominantly written in four-character phrases; however, Fan Yeh does more with the binomes than merely use them to satisfy the metrical convention. Although one can readily enough find binomes in Fan Yeh's writing that have a long history of usage, the real mark of his diction is the large number of new binomes he coins:

NW IANPS,ZWOM.RMINkE,A tt worle, RMZ&VE, 3PA9Kt1ffP1C Wt S

SkNiT'Sw, it~

Using the pretext of this criticism, the eunuchs went on to indict many members of the league of scholars and to slander and smear one man after another. Eventually, not a single person of high repute escaped disaster and injury. Tou Wu and Ho Chin, who were high-ranking ministers and Imperial in-laws, drew support from the entire empire's murmuring and rancor and had the power of the age's mightiest heroes behind them; but because they hesitated and failed to act, they met death and defeat (pp. 386-87).

One cannot be absolutely certain that Fan Yeh was the first to use
Disquisition" is considerably lower, about 20 percent, and it is even lower in Lu Chi's (261-303) "Disquisition on the Causes of the Fall" (see p. 365 below), about 15 g per cent. Furthermore, in these two Disquisitions, the couplets that are not grammatically parallel tend to be clustered together in paragraphs that virtually abandon the parallel mode to provide factual information, and both essays contain long passages in which it is difficult to find a single couplet that does not exhibit grammatical parallelism.

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any particular binome. In trying to find earlier instances of the binomes underlined in the passage above, and those referred to in the following pages, I have checked Morohashi's Dai Kan-wa jiten, P'ei-wen yun-fu, and the Wen hsiian concordance. A more thorough search might turn up precedents for some of the binomes in earlier well-known texts; or, as seems more likely, they may occur in texts written between the third and early fifth centuries that are no longer extant or are little known and hence not cited by Morohashi or quoted in P'ei-wenyun-fu. Nevertheless, the overwhelming impression Fan Yeh's diction gives is one of novelty, and that would hardly be diminished by the elimination of a few of the apparently new binomes from the list. Occasionally, Fan Yeh joins synonyms together (e.g., li-pei t). In such cases, the creation of the binome owes more to prosody than to anything else. But his more characteristic procedure is to bring two words together that have quite different, if related, meanings: wu jan S "to slander, to dye"-a verb that is used figuratively is appended to one used literally; hsiaoyfian W,o "clamor, rancor"-the first noun relates to the sensory world and the second to the psychological one; i liu E- "to doubt, to tarry"-a mental state and a physical condition, both of which are involved in "hesitation," are brought together. Fan Yeh's binomes do not always combine different spheres of action or existence as these three do. Often, they simply name discrete actions or qualities, as t'ien-pai PO "to die and be defeated" does in the passage above ("death" referring to the men themselves and "defeat" to their scheme). Other examples include:

As for those he slaughtered or wounded in ambush ...

(p. 392)

The first two verbs ("to trap, to assail") are sequential, and the second two ("to slaughter, to wound") are coordinate.

...

it earned them the lasting favor and trust of the sovereign (p. 385).

Not only is the pairing ("to favor, to confirm") unique, the causative usage adds to the interest.

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The perverse among them walked side by side with the hpnest ones ...

(p. 348)

Here, the antonyms are not what one would expect. Chen A "truthful" implies its opposite, wei fi (or chia fK) "false," but the author wishes to emphasize the eunuchs' evil nature in this phrase, saving the idea of their deceit for the next phrase (f rtugk). Likewise, hsieh 9 "perverse" implies and would normally be paired with its opposite, cheng IE "right, orthodox," but this word could hardly be applied to a eunuch, and so the author chooses a word that simply describes their good behavior. A similar tendency towards novel diction is evident in the adverb/ verb and the adjective/noun combination: hsiung kuei *M "heroic . "to die in frustration" (p. 392), ch'i plans" (p. 391), fen sang lieh *BIJ"arrayed like chess pieces" (p. 386), t'ung sha iR "torturous executions" (p. 381), kuo hsi N> "fissures in the realm" (p. 389), and wei tuan 90r "to act with authority" (p. 347). However, there is a clear preference for binomes in which the two words are coordinate rather than the first subordinate to the second. There are even instances in which a more common subordinate compound seems to have been deliberately avoided by reversing the order of the two words:

you ruin your goodwill and long-standing friendship (p. 400).

Chiu en SV,k "long-standing goodwill" would have been perfectly acceptable here, but the author opts instead for two equally weighted qualities. A similar choice is found in the line ABU-A &b quoted above, in which the author does not modify the actual manifestation with the psychological state (i.e., "angry murmuring"), but presents the two coordinately. The cultivation of this novel diction with its heavy reliance upon coordinate binomes results in phrases that seem to be coiled like so many springs under the pressure of all the meaning compressed into them. The phrases expand outward as the reader encounters them, often in unexpected directions. There are also other characteristics of the writing that contribute to this dense texture of meaning. When to specify a subject or an antecedent would extend a phrase

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beyond the standard length, then the subject or antecedent is often omitted. Note, for example, the unmarked changes in the following phrases:

---A*.. *'SPr
[Those who] compromised themselves and bent to [the eunuchs'] demands ... while [those who] remained true to their convictions and went against [the
eunuchs'] desires. . . (pp. 385-86)

ir. *,rhg*NAV, PPWAX4Z

[Rulers] scrutinize but do not detect [the eunuchs'] evils, and as [the eunuchs] serve they readily win [the ruler's] trust (p. 348).

Elsewhere, nominal clauses are pared down to the attributes of the principal noun:

They were able to confuse and delude witless and young [rulers] (p. 348).

...

managed all the weighty and far-reaching [affairs of the realm]36 (p. 385).

Or, verbs that are normally transitive are deprived of their direct objects:

. .. Imperial prestige no longer carried out [to the barbarians] (p. 391).

...

and rooted out all traces [of the eunuchs] (p. 387).

Regarding the first example, compare the Han shu passage: M-*k;, )9r_M=A,AV LAS "The feudal lords' fiefs bordered on each other; they encircled the realm on three sides and extended abroad to the northern and southern barbarian lands."37 For the second, in which shan-i .3 is followed by an adverbial qualifier rather than a direct
; as a verb see the sentence: T#p{r 36For the use of wan-chi ;J* M "When Your Majesty first acceded to the throne, you were yet unable to manage all the affairs of state." (Hou Han shu 78.2526) 37 Han shu 14.394.

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object, compare the Tso chuanline: 3k Jj;fti b "You uprooted our

crops."38
The last characteristic that contributes to the density of meaning is the packing of two distinct, if related, statements into a single four-character phrase:

[The Emperor] bore all the Shan-yui'sinsults, knowing full well the difficulty he
could cause . .. (p. 395)

... whose positions were high and whose relationship with the Imperial House was close ... (p. 387)

They spied on each other and took advantage of every opportunity they detected (p. 396).

Of course, if this kind of thing were done too frequently, the writing would simply be too dense to follow. The abundance of various kinds of figures of speech and images is another characteristic that marks Fan Yeh's expository prose and that contributes to its literary interest. Several of the two-character compounds cited above contain figures of speech; other examples, constructed on a somewhat larger scale, include:

. . . their renown dashed beyond the four seas (p. 389).

...

writing prolix commentaries and boring into inaccessible crannies (p. 388).

ItA&S, JA

... such a rotten morsel would infect all around it, and there would be no way to check the infection's spread (p. 391).

a v*,%m b.,
38 Tso chuan(Harvard-Yenching concordance), p. 235, lines 4-5 (tr. Legge, The Chinese Classics,v, 382b).

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When the scraping and breaking of the edifice came to its own end ...

Converging like clouds and scattering like birds ...

(p. 396)

...

[the invaders] chewed and swallowed the sacrificial offerings (p. 398).

Such use of figures of speech in prose is not unprecedented, but Fan Yeh tends to avoid hyperbolic figures, which are so common in earlier writing. Of course, when he says that certain leaders' renown "dashed beyond the four seas" he is exaggerating both the speed and the extent of the spread of their fame, and when he says that scholars "bored into inaccessible crannies" he is amplifying their zeal and unreasonableness. Nevertheless, such statements are not as hyperbolic as Kan Pao's observation that the rebels who brought about the fall of the Western Chin dynasty "tamed the empire as if they were herding sheep, and captured Lo-yang and Ch'ang-an as if picking up a stray item along the road,"39 or Lu Chi's & (261-303) remark that when Chin attacked the state of Wu "city walls and moats did not even provide the protection of a bamboo fence; mountains and rivers were not even as advantageous as a ditch or mound" (see p. 365 below). In Fan Yeh's statements it is the figures of speech that are striking rather than the implicit claim behind the figures. But what is most characteristic about Fan Yeh's use of images is that most of them have at least an element of literal truth and many of them are not metaphorical at all. He delights in describing matters in concrete terms. Thus rather than say "as soon as hostilities began," he writes "as soon as drumsticks and armor were taken up" (p. 390); rather than "the Hsiung-nu attacked," he writes "they made their arrows whistle and kicked up the dust" (p. 394); instead of "once the eunuchs seized all authority," we read "once they had the royal insignia in their hands and the Imperial decrees on their lips" (p. 385); and instead of reporting that certain generals remained loyal and tractable, we are told that they prostrated themselves at the feet of the sovereign and
39 A passage from his "Comprehensive Disquisition," Wenhsiian49.8b.

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obeyed summary summonses (p. 389). Such use of synecdoche and concrete imagery owes much to poetry. So too does the related practice of filling statements out with vivid detail, such as the observation that as Emperor Kuang-wu's generals requested permission to lead campaigns against the Hsiung-nu they all "stamped their
feet and flailed their arms .
.

. (p. 395). Many such details are not

essential, but they add to the appeal of the writing. Having said this much about Fan Yeh's diction and use of imagery, it must be noted that to some extent these characteristics reflect a period rather than just an individual style. Fan Yeh was not the only writer of his time who consciously sought to extend the resources and heighten the elegance of the language. It is evident that writing styles changed considerably between the first and the sixth centuries, and that the vocabulary increased substantially, even if the rate and causes of the changes are little understood. Surely, the development of a richer and more sophisticated vocabulary was related to the ever increasing split between the written and spoken languages during those centuries. As the expectation that writing bear some resemblance to speech grew fainter, writers were freed to explore all the potentials of a written language that had so many historical layers and whose lexical elements could so readily be fused to form new compounds. Furthermore, Fan Yeh's generation is often singled out as one that made especially large strides in the use of studied and intricately wrought diction in both prose and poetry.40 But even after we make allowances for his time, there are still two points that help to distinguish Fan Yeh from his contemporaries. The first is that Fan Yeh did his part in the literary exploration of
40 Commenting on writing in general, Hsiao Tzu-hsien (488-537) traces the origins of the tendency to use intricate and prolix language and the tendency to use gaudy and startling diction to writers of Fan Yeh's generation (see the translation of his analysis in note 14 above). Likewise, Liu Hsieh (d. ca. 523) says about the history of poetry:

At the beginningof the Sung dynasty, therewas a change in literarystyle. Taoist themes declined and poetry concerned with mountains and rivers increased. Compositionswere adorned with stringsof parallelcoupletsthat extendedto one hundredwords,and writersstroveto come up with single marvelouslines. They expressedthemselvesby describingthe outwardappearanceof things in exhaustive detail, and in their language they chased after innovation, cudgling their brains. Indeed, these are the very qualities that writers are bent on today. (Wen-hsin tiao-lung chu-ting, pp. 48-49) For the related remarks of Chung Hung see note 53 below.

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his age while writing expository (and, as we shall see below, even narrative) prose. Naturally, it was in poetry (including thefu) that attention to the use of words was greatest. In prose, such attention is most in evidence in descriptive, eulogistic, or exhortatory parallel prose pieces. Of course, before Fan Yeh there had been some attempts to extend the use of innovative and elevated diction into the realm of expository prose, but the results are quite different from what Fan Yeh achieved. See, for example, the following passage from Lu Chi's "Pien wang lun" htr ("Disquisition on the Causes of the Fall"), written about the demise of Lu Chi's native state of
Wu:
The Wei, relying on the prestige accumulated through repeated victories, led a million troops to launch boats at Teng-sai and conquer the people along the southern bank of the Han River. With ten thousand flying oars, they coursed down the river like soaring dragons, with a thousand crack cavalry squads, they stalked across the plains like tigers. Strategists packed the command tent, while valorous generals rode chariot to chariot: they were filled with the desire to swallow the lands along the Yangtse and with the ambition of vanquishing the entire world.... Then, in the final years [of the Wu state], when all the meritorious lords had died, the people intended to scatter like tiles and the Imperial House had cracks in it like those in a mound about to crumble. The realm's divine signs and mandate waned, reflecting the change, and the royal Chin armies set forth, responding to the course of events. The Wu soldiers deserted their ranks, and the people fled from their villages. City walls and moats did not even provide the protection of a bamboo fence; mountains and rivers were not even as advantageous as a ditch or mound. Although the attackers did not have such weapons as Kung-shu's cloudladder,4' or such devastating schemes as Chih-po's flooding,42and although they did not build huts while they beseiged the capital as the Lord of Ch'u did,43or have as huge an army as the state of Yen did when it fought west of the Chi

41 For the cloud-ladder of Kung-shu Pan, made for the purpose of attacking the capital of Sung, see Mo-tzu (Harvard-Yenching concordance), p. 93, line 1. (Li Shan, Wenhsiuan 53.25a) 42 In 453 B.C., when the Chin minister Chih Po attacked Chao Hsien-tzu at Chih-yang, he diverted the waters of the Fan River to flood the city; see Shih chi 43.1975. (Li Shan, 53.25a) Wenhsiuan 43 In 594 c.C.,King Chuang of Ch'u secured the state of Sung's submission to him when, after besieging Sung's capital for several months without success, he adopted his charioteer's advice and had his men build huts outside the city to show that they had no intention of giving up the siege and returning home; see Tso chuan,p. 203 (tr. Legge, Classics,v, 328a). (Li Shan, Wenhsiian53.25a) The Chinese

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River,44still their attack was less than twelve days old when the state altars of Wu were destroyed. Even though there were some loyal subjects who did their all, and some distinguished generals who died for their realm, it was all to no avail.45

Although this is a Disquisition, it achieves its effects by piling up hyperbolic images and amassing references to ancient history. The writing is reminiscent of the marvelously rhetorical "The Faults of the Ch'in" by Chia Yi WA (201-169 B.C.), and is compared to that piece by Liu Hsieh (d. ca. 523).46 However, the diction has little of the exactness that Fan Yeh's does, and evidences less attention than his to the placement of individual words. The second point is that while Fan Yeh is at one with his contemporaries in striving for innovative language, his innovations show some distinctive tendencies. For one thing, Fan Yeh prefers to coin new expressionsrather than cull old ones out of ancient writings and press them into service. The latter practice was one of the principal ways that Six Dynasties writers cultivated refined and novel diction (often altering the original sense of the adopted expressions). A reading of the Wen hsuan selections of the parallel prose

pieces by Yen Yen-chih MM-5,(384-456), one of the leading parallel prose writers of Fan Yeh's generation,47 shows his penchant for doing this. Thanks to the painstaking exegesis by Li Shan W* (d.
689) and subsequent Wen hsiuan commentators, it is clear that there

are few lines in Yen Yen-chih's compositions that do not contain at least one expression taken from an earlier and well-known text. Of course, such appropriation of notable expressions (or even entire lines) can be a legitimate method of enriching the meaning of one's writing. See, for example, Yen's use of the phrase ting ting tJr in a line that describes the founding of the Sung dynasty in his "Preface
44 In 284 B.C., a general of the state of Yen, Yiieh Yi, led the combined armies of Yen, Chao, Ch'u, Han, and Wei in an invasion of Ch'i, defeating the Ch'i army on the western side of the Chi River; see Shih chi 80.2428. (Li Shan, Wenhsiian53.25a) 45 Wen hsuian 53.2 1b-25a and Lu Shih-hengwen-chi(SPTK ed.), 10.3a-4b. 46 Wen-hsintiao-lungchu-ting,pp. 185-86. For Chia Yi's essay, see note 4 above. 47 In his day, Yen Yen-chih's reputation as a writer was matched only by that of Hsieh Ling-yu (see Shen Yiieh's jtNi [441-513] evaluation, Sung shu 76.1778-79). Hsieh was considered the finest poet, and Yen the best parallel prose writer. Modern authorities still consider Yen's parallel prose to be among the finest of the age; see Liu Lin-sheng, pp. 52-53, and Chang Jen-ch'ing = Chung-kuo p'ien-wenfa-chanshih (Taipei: Chunghua shu-chii, 1970), ii, 332-36.

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to Poems Written on the Third Day of the Third Month By the Ch'ii River": AgkEA1p "The Founding Emperor [Emperor Wu, r. 420-22] established the tripods through his sagely martial deeds."48 The expression ting ting is taken from a famous Tso chuanspeech about the founding of the Chou dynasty.49 According to that speech, the establishment of the ancient tripods at Chia-ju by King Ch'eng of the Chou symbolized the transference of the Mandate of Heaven from the Shang dynasty to the Chou, and with the tripod's establishment came the prognostication that the Chou would reign for over seven hundred years. Yen Yen-chih's use of the phrase in his line about the founding of the Sung, which had occurred a mere fifteen years before the "Preface" was written, implies that it was an event comparable to the founding of the Chou, and that the Sung was destined to rival the Chou in glory and longevity.50 (It should be noted that the poems written on this occasion and Yen's "Preface" were composed at the request of Emperor Wen [r. 424-53], Emperor Wu's son.) However, often the original context of such appropriated expressions does not add nearly so much to the sense of the passage in which it is inserted. Thus, when a few lines later Yen Yen-chih uses a four-character phrase from Tso Ssu's ;AJ, (d. ca. 306) "Rhapsody on the Wu Capital" to report that barbarians came to pay their respects to the Emperor from all directions,5' and when he sub48

49

"San yiieh san jih Ch'u shui shih hsii" Tso chuan,p. 182:

E!7JC.?

Wenksiian46.6a-b.

In antiquity, when the Hsia dynasty had moral power, the distant regionssent picturesof their supernaturalcreaturesto the capital and presentedmetal as tribute to the nine provincial lords. Tripods were then cast, with pictures of those creatureson them; thus all such things were fully represented so that the people might know about the supernatural and malevolentbeings. Henceforth, when the people went into marshesand mountains,they could withstandunnaturalthings, and the water and land demons were unable to confrontthem. In this way, the lowly were harmonizedwith the high-ranking,and all enjoyedHeaven'sblessing.Later, when King Cliieh ruled benightedly,the tripodswere transferred to the Shang House and remainedwith it for six hundred years. But when King Chou of the Shang presidedwith violence and tyranny, the tripods were transferredto the Chou dyansty. When the ruler's moral power is commendableand brilliant, then the tripods,howeversmall they may seem, are heavy [and cannot be moved]. But when the rulerrevertsto benightednessand wanton conduct, then howeverlarge the tripodsmay seem, they prove to be light. Heaven blessesbrilliantmoral power and now has a place in which the tripods may be kept [the Chou House]. King Ch'eng of the Chou establishedthe tripods [tingting] at Chia-ju, and divined that the dynasty should last for thirty reigns, over seven hundred years: it is the decreeof Heaven. (Cf. Legge, TheChinese Classics, v, 293b and BernhardKarlgren, "Glosses on the Tsochuan," BMFEA, 41, [1969], nos. 269-74.) The comparison with the Chou becomes explicit a few lines later. Yen's use of the phrase (V**) is found in Wenhsiian46.6b. For Tso Ssu's earlier use, in his "Wu tu fu" g*gg, see Wenhsiian5.14b (the Hu K'o-chia text has A for P).
51 50

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sequently uses a four-character Shangshu phrase to say "when the Emperor issued warnings and gave commands,"52 since the original contexts of these phrase have little bearing on Yen's use of them, the reader concludes that Yen adopts them merely to give his writing an air of formality and respectability, and to display his erudition. One is not surprised to find that Chung Hung NO (469-518) singles Yen Yen-chih out as one who was particularly fond of using allusions, noting how it made his writing "constricted" (chu-shu I'p3*), and goes on to observe that he set the temper of his times.53 Another contemporary trend that Fan Yeh avoided was the use of novel turns of phrase in which the richness and ingenuity of the presentation draw at least as much attention as the sense of what is being said. Pao Chao f (d. 466) is one of the writers with whom critics commonly associate this trait." It can be illustrated with two short passages from one of Pao Chao's most well-known parallel prose pieces, "A Letter to My Younger Sister, Written Upon Ascending Ta-lei Cliff":
To the south, the piled-up mountains in a myriad shapes contentiously strive to rise above each other: consuming the hued clouds and drinking the sunlight, they each have their turn as supreme lord. The waters' huge waves hit the sky and their tall billows splash the sun. They spit

Classics,in, 585): Shangshu, "Chiung ming," par. 2 (Legge, tr., TheChinese Chung Hung was of course criticizing Yen's poetry, but the same trait is also evident in his parallel prose. Chung Hung's remarks occur in the second of his three prefaces and in his notice on Yen:
52 53

The finest lines written from ancient times down to the present are mostly free of patchings and borrowings;rather, they result from the writer'sdirect pursuit of his subject. However,Yen Yen-chihand Hsieh Chuangwere especiallyprolixand densein theiruse of allusion, and they set the temperof their times. Hence, during the Ta-ming and T'ai-shihperiods [457-64, p'in chu,p. 7) 465-71] writing virtually became a copy-bookexercise. (Shih [Yen] is also fond of using allusions,which make his writing even more constricted.Although he goes againstwhat is gracefuland untrammeled,his is a talent for the documentary,elevated style. Someone of less talent, however,would find himselfbogged down. (Shih p'in chu,pp. 25-26). (Here, and in note 54 below, I have drawn upon the translation of all but the last p'in of Shih p'in done by J. T. Wixted [in his unpubl. Univ. of Oxford Ph.D. thesis, "The Literary Criticism of Yuan Hao-wen," 1976], making some modifications.) 54 See Hsiao Tzu-hsien's critique, translated in note 14 above. Chung Hung's notice on Pao Chao contains similar remarks: "However, he set great store on ingenious descriptions and did not shy away from daring and risky phrasing; this did injury to his resonance and correctness." (Shihp'in chu, p. 27)

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forth a hundred rivers and innundate ten thousand valleys. Their fine mist never dissipates: a gilded caldron boiling.55

When Pao Chao chooses to write this way he does so skillfully and achieves great effects. However, such writing represents a certain tone and use of language that Fan Yeh does not cultivate. As noted above, Fan Yeh prefers synecdoche to metaphor and literal statement to hyperbole. To be sure, the fact that Fan Yeh was not writing eulogistic or exhortatory prose (as found in funerary pieces or court writings) helps to explain why he did not fill his compositions with expressions that had a venerable history of usage, and the fact that he was not writing scenic descriptions helps to account for the absence of ingenious turns of phrase. Nevertheless, the inherent danger in both these traits, that they will dominate the writing to the point where the author seems merely to be seeking to impress the reader rather than to present something to him-this danger is something that Fan Yeh was evidently sensitive to and consciously tried to avoid. Thus, in his letter Fan Yeh disparages writing in which "the substance is overshadowed by the outward appearance," and in his own writing, while he does not revert to a plain style, he avoids the excesses of contemporary trends. Likewise, in his letter Fan Yeh insists on making thought primary, and one of the distinctive characteristics of his writing is how much meaning he packs into a single phrase. After praising his own Introductions, Disquisitions, and Eulogies in the highest terms, Fan Yeh goes on in his letter to remark about his Annals and Biographies, almost as an afterthought, that in them he planned "simply to give a general sketch of events." His only claim for them is that they "fully evidence my painstaking effort." Although at first it might be surprising that Fan Yeh seems to take the least pride in those sections that constitute the bulk of his work, actually his attitude is only natural. Fan Yeh lived fully two cen55Pao Ts'an-chuin , ed. Ch'ien Chung-lien (Shanghai: Ku-tien wenchi chu hsiieh ch'u-pan she, 1958), pp. 37, 39. (The letter is also included, with more thorough ts'ao-k'aotzu-liao, ed. Faculty of the annotation, in Wei Chin Nan-pei ch'ao wen-hsuieh-shih Department of Chinese Literature, Peking University [Hong Kong: Hung-chih shu-chii, n.d.], pp. 524-32.)

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turies after the fall of the dynasty whose history he wrote, hence for all of the factual detail that makes up the Annals and Biographies he was completely dependent upon the several earlier histories of the period.56 His writing of the Annals and Biographies must have been largely a mechanical task, one that consisted of compiling documents and anecdotes from his array of sources, deciding between conflicting versions of events, and arranging the material into coherent chapters. It was only in the nonnarrative sections that he could give free rein to his own opinions of events and to his literary skills. Nevertheless, Fan Yeh's narrative prose is not without interest. It is clear that he often rephrased the sources he drew upon, and he probably wrote many passages, especially speeches, from scratch.57 The overall impression his narrative prose makes is different from that of earlier histories or, for that matter, of any earlier writing. The language is more carefully chosen, the diction being denser and more interesting and the rhythms stronger and more effectively used; hence the flavor of what is "beyond the matter at hand" lingers longer. To say this much is to say that certain qualities of Fan Yeh's more self-conscious expository prose carry over into his narrative prose, though since the narrative prose is burdened with a heavy requirement of factual information as well as the weight of earlier versions, it is inevitably more cumbrous and less graceful than the expository prose. One way to shed light on the distinctive qualities of Fan Yeh's narrative prose is to compare certain of his passages with their apparent sources in the earlier histories of the Later Han. See, for example, how Fan Yeh's version of what a certain Li Ch'ung 2q says to his mother when he divorces his wife differs from the corresponding speech in Tung-kuanHan chi AM# (a history written :58 during the Later Han)
56 See note 9 above. 57 In his discussion of speeches in Hou Han shu, Bielenstein gives several examples of speeches that must have been fabricated by the historian (pp. 49-60). In addition, Nait6 points out that a comparison of certain documents quoted both in Torajir6 7 San kuo chih and in Hou Han shu shows that Fan Yeh rewrote the documents to improve their literary style (Shina shigakushi, rev. ed. [Tokyo: Shimizu K6bund6], pp. 184-85). 58 Tung-kuan Han chi, the most important source for Fan Yeh's Hou Han shu, was an imperially commissioned history of the Later Han that was begun under the direction

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ft*IbA)ff

TN_P*Af,B 104_;.

&et4zA .

"This wife has urged that she and I live apart from you. She is unfit to perform the ancestral sacrifices, and with your permission I want to divorce her." Then he Han chi 19.13b) yelled at his wife and drove her from his home. (Tung-kuan

k*1M>R, ffti&;MMfR.
MOMA-4,

XtF-a .
IN3.WS .

A-16PI- . am*_M4_.

"This wife does not act properly and has urged me to abandon my mother and older brother. She deserves to be driven out." Then he yelled at his wife and chased her out the door. She departed with tears in her eyes. Everyone present was startled and fell silent. Shortly, the feast ended and the guests dispersed. (Hou Han shu 81.2684)

Aside from the greater amount of detail in the Hou Han shuversion, its wording is more interesting and not as flat as in the Tung-kuan Han chi version. The compounds li-chien#IN, ch'ien-ch'ih F-, chuling A+, hsien-t'i , and ching-su VW all appear to be novel. Han The following parallel passages are taken from the Tung-kuan chi and the Hou Han shu biographies of Chou Yu )AI*W:
*RW4 0 F. 40K9 0AP18gA.

His family was poor and he had nothing to support himself with. He was reduced Han chi 19.13a) to making bricks to provide himself with food. (Tung-kuan
0MR4419M.

tff

i18

Yu was scrupulous and uncorrupted, and had no private assets. He was often reduced to making bricks in order to provide for himself. (Hou Han shu 77.2494)

Fan Yeh eliminates the somewhat awkward redundancy of tzu-shan shih S *RAin the earlier version, and he adds a detail 8 a and tzu-chi in the opening clause that helps to fill out the description, doing so in a characteristicway. Of course the fact that Yu had no private assets is related to the moral qualities named in the first compound (the implication being that as an official he refused to accept bribes),
of Pan Ku and others and was supplemented three successive times during the second century. The work was lost some time during the Yuan dynasty. The portion that survives editors today (roughly one-sixth of the original) was compiled by the Ssu-k'uch'uian-shu from quotations in various works. (See Bielenstein, pp. 10-11, and the SKCS Catalogue notice.) All references are to the SKCS ed. (Taipei: Commercial Press, 1975), pieh-chi, Vol. 107.

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but Fan Yeh does not mark the relationship explicitly, being content simply to juxtapose the two compounds and let the reader surmise the connection. Fan Yeh does not hesitate to use emphatic flourishes where he deems them appropriate (here, the earlier version is from the Hsi! Han shu Mg of Ssu-ma Piao 1 [240-306]) 59

The Prefect of the Imperial Secretariat and the Palace Regular Attendant, Wu Fu, Ts'ao Chieh, and others, seized all power and authority. (HsuiHan shu 5. 1Ob)

At that time, the Palace Regular Attendants, Wang Fu, Ts'ao Chieh, and others, treacherously and oppressively flaunted their power, convulsing the Imperial court and those outside it. (Hou Han shu 77.2499)

Elsewhere, Fan Yeh is simply more precise (in this and subsequent of Yuan examples, the earlier versions are from the HouHan chi*4 Hung At [320-76]) :60

He gave credit for beneficial policies to his subordinates, and whenever there was something bad he held himself responsible. (Hou Han chi 25.297)
APIVMN,

*;LMT,

)JARAR, 914AIM.

When his undertakings were successful and proved to be beneficial he would give the credit to his subordinates, but when evil omens appeared he held himself responsible. (Hou Han shu 25.887)

Yuan Hung probably uses his expressionpu shan /T2- with natural disasters or portents in mind (it is really too much to say that the official blamed himself if one of his subordinates did something wrong), but he fails to make the sense clear, as Fan Yeh does in his
version.
59The surviving fragments of Ssu-ma Piao's Hsu Han shu (excluding the Treatises, for which see note 5 above) were collected together, along with those of six other histories of the Later Han, by Wang Wen-t'ai IIIfCE;in his Ch'i chia Hou Han shu tG M.@ References are to the 1882 edition. 60 Yuan Hung's Hou Han chi, an annalistic history of the Later Han, is the only one of Fan Yeh's sources that has been preserved intact (probably because it was the only edition. chi-pents'ung-shu annalistic history of the period). References are to the Kuo-hsileh

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In addition to his careful choice of words, Fan Yeh showssensitivity to the expressive potentials of rhythm. He tends to write in couplets that consist of two four-character lines:
,

In his dealings with others, if his values were not shared by the other person, he would not associate with him no matter how wealthy and high-ranking he was. But if the other's actions bespoke a disposition similar to his own, then he would esteem the other person no matter how impoverished or humble he might be. (Hou Han chi 24.291)

t/It FfiXT 943-2:C,1,

On" ,PA,

PM

&*T111r63.

As for those he befriended, he made sure that they were of one mind with him. If the other person did not share his preferences, then he would not seek to associate with him no matter how wealthy and high-ranking he was. But if the other's disposition was similar to his own, then he would not allow his inclination towards the other to be affected by whatever poverty or humble position the other found himself in. (Hou Han shu 57.1842)

Not only does Fan Yeh provide a metrically parallel match for the first line, making a couplet, in the two couplets that follow he makes the correspondences between the couplets more exact (he does not match a single character verb with a compound verb as Yuan Hung does), hence the feeling of parallelism and rhythm is strongerin Fan Yeh's version. Furthermore, Fan Yeh makes an effort to keep the two lines within each couplet the same length. If the unstressed pu's f are not counted, each couplet has metrically equal lines. Relatively unimportant words, such as the grammatical particle sui M and the pronominal object chih Z, are omitted to facilitate this metrical pairing. Compare the following:
A loyal minister strives to do away with treacherous ones, and thus ensures that goodness will prevail. (Hou Han chi 22.261)

A loyal minister does away with treacherous ones, thus the royal way is unsullied. (Hou Han shu 67.2204)

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Fan Yeh's ch'ing N makes a nice contrast to the preceding chien A, and he makes the contrast stronger by eliminating the unnecessary words so that the two lines are metrically parallel. When the earlier version has a dangling, unpaired phrase at the end of a statement, Fan Yeh generally either gives it a match or cuts it out altogether:

"Precisely what have you plotted to do? Tell me the entire truth." (Hou Han chi 22.262)

"Precisely what is it that you plan to do, those of you who have plotted and banded together? Tell me the entire truth, without concealing or glossing over anything." (Hou Han shu 67.2205)

A*I*A9

tSS-0

S1~klffi

"I will soon determine the truth about those whom I haven't yet investigated, thus doing away with all the evil ones." (Hou Han chi 22.261)

A*1*99

tv-S.

"I will soon proceed to determine the truth about those whom I haven't yet investigated." (Hou Han shu 67.2204)

In both these examples, the earlier version ends with a weak phrase that is something of an afterthought. Fan Yeh expands the first one into an antithetical sentence (the binomeyin-shih Oi is typical of Fan Yeh's diction, and so too is the change from the earlier compound of synonyms t'u-mou IXiXto mou-chieh ) and does away with the second one to preserve the couplet rhythm. When Fan Yeh writes a sentence with an odd number of clauses, he usually has a reason for doing so:
1t#b1Rf -17:t?L.

"If they were not greedy, vile, treacherous, and culpable, why would I have sullied the indictment tablet with their names?" (Hou Han chi 22.261)

"If they were not greedy, vile, treacherous, and oppressive, doing great injury to

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375

the people, why would I have sullied the indictment tablet with their names?" (Hou Han shu 67.2204)

Here, Fan Yeh's third clause is not an afterthought but is rather the main clause of the sentence. In fact, it is so strong, being a rhetorical question, that Fan Yeh evidently feels that he must balance two preliminary subordinate clauses against it instead of the earlier version's one. It must be noted that since nearly all of the earlier histories that Fan Yeh drew upon have been lost, with only the fragments that are quoted in other works now preserved, we cannot positively identify any surviving passage from them (such as those quoted above) as the source for the corresponding passage in Fan Yeh's history.61 There is always the possibility that Fan Yeh copied his passage verbatim from another history and that the real source was subsequently lost. (We know that he did incorporate some passages verbatim.) However, the weight of accumulated examples such as those above in which Fan Yeh's version differs from the earlier version in certain consistent and predictable ways tends to offset the fact that any single example might not be valid. Still, such examples of parallel passages are mere snippets, necessarily brief because of the now fragmentary nature of the earlier histories (or, in the case of the annalistic Hou Han chi, because it is organized differently than Hou Han shu). If we want to sharpen our sense of Fan Yeh's narrative prose style, we must examine more substantial passages, even though there will be no source or earlier parallel passage to compare them to. Two such passages are given below, followed by a Han shu passage for contrast.
jcx+ARM

AL AbF+. MAMM,

S1TEEM, 44-VM;LV.
XP.

IMRFEi4I &9PT3*RFqt,

--af4A, g4fi*;f"14.

A7REIXI2,

AMOM"s iR59411A, M4i*

xX

,$

tX

During the fifteenth year of the Yung-yuan period [103], [Wang Huan] was in the Emperor's suite on a tour of the south, and after the entourage returned to the capital he became Prefect of Lo-yang. By conducting himself fairly and justly, he succeeded in striking a balance between lenience and severity. As for those protracted lawsuits in which the defendants claimed to have been wrongly accused or convicted on merely circumstantial evidence and which several judiciaries had
61 Bielenstein (p. 14) calculates that only 9 per cent of the historical writing on the Later Han that antedated Fan Yeh's work survives today.

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been unable to decide, the cases being difficult to adjudicate, Wang Huan got to the bottom of the truth and uncovered the deception in all of them, resolving them to everyone's satisfaction. He also managed, by means of ruses and tricks, to expose undetected evildoers, so that everyone in the metropolis admired him and believed that he had divine calculations. In the first year of the Yuan-hsing period [105], he died of illness. All the people, whether in the marketplace or on the roads, sobbed for him. (Hou Han shu 76.2468-69)

The couplet rhythm (marked by the underlining) is strong throughout the passage, even though there are no examples of perfect grammatical parallelism and few of perfect metrical parallelism. In the complex third sentence, the rhythm is used first to bind together the two subordinate clauses that elaborate upon the lawsuits mentioned in the first, unmatched phrase, then it is used again in the predicate to coordinate the description of what Huan did and what effect his actions had. In addition, there are several interesting turns of phrase. The line 1W:: EJf is one whose meaning is evident, but the wording is slightly odd and unexpected. The entire phrase is best understood as an inversion of 4J9TE (this use of chu )X deriving from such expressions as chu ching Jft "to be respectful" [Lun yu 6/2]). Yiian-hsien , is an unusual compound, but one that makes perfect sense in the context; likewise, ch'ing-tsa ,t 1 "truth and deception" is better here than the more common ch'ing-wei *pg,~ "truth and falsehood," since there is bound to be deliberate lying by one party in each case. In the third sentence, the last word, i M, aptly echoes the synonymous hsien0 at the beginning of the sentence, and in the fourth sentence, shen-suanFX, makes a nice complement to the earlier chuieh-shu 54. Finally, the placement of shih-tao $M after po-hsing -At rather than before it (which would be "the people in the marketplace and on the roads") makes the entire phrase more emphatic.

Qat 71. fQ;K9Ua

4-S 6

/T fI'MANp

R I W

"

Later, [Chou Yu] became Palace Assistant to the Imperial Secretary. When Emperor Ho ascended the throne, the Grand Tutor, Teng Piao, accused Yu of having been excessively cruel in his former posts and claimed that he was not fit to supervise the Imperial government.62 Yu was then dismissed from office, and
The Palace Assistant to the Imperial Secretary was the head of the censorate and had the power to impeach any official (Rafe de Crespigny, The Last of the Han, Centre of
62

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377

he returned to his native village. Subsequently, when the Tou clan rose to preeminence and [Tou] Tu along with his brothers seized all power, so that when they looked askance at those against whom they formerly had grudges all of them collapsed to the ground, Yu concluded that he was doomed, and so he closed his door and kept to himself, awaiting the disaster. However, Tu and the others knew that Yu was fair and just and that his disaffection from them had a long history behind it,63hence they did not dare to harm him. (Hou Han shu 77.2495)

Here too, there is an obvious tendency to write in couplets and to use rhythm to help to convey the sense. In the long fourth sentence, there is only one unmatched phrase, which comes after two couplets and in front of a third one. (This sentence might also be divided into two, but that reading is not as smooth.) Appropriately, the unmatched phrase marks the turning point in the line of thought, making a prosodic contrast with the preceding description of the Tou clan's power, which is what brings about Yui's conclusion that he is doomed, and the succeeding observation about how Yu reacts to his conclusion. In that same sentence, the figures of speech ("looked askance," "collapsed to the ground") effectively emphasize the awesome power of the Tou clan. Also, there are two ellipses in the sentence, ellipses used, one suspects, for their novelty, their characteristic compression of meaning, and the fact that they keep the phrases in which they occur from extending too far beyond the standard length of four characters. Thus, suyuan y, does not mean "a long-standing grudge" but rather "those against whom they formerly had grudges"; similarly, the expression wu ch'uan 1I is an ellipsis meaning "he had no method(or chance)to preserve himself." The Han shu passage is given below:
)ZAP#JO.

IV,03,

P 1{M1Ms,

L X

.-

*U71AMV;

AV19. -kRiqM EE
AMMAT.

fiAtL

OWW-3tMff1-A-t,

_ff%dfflVfAM.

AKWL, aVA;K-M% WM -ilR MEIAMEM,

Oriental Studies, Monograph 9 [Canberra: Australian National Univ., 1969], p. 369, n. 13; cf. Yu-ch'uan Wang, "Central Government of the Former Han dynasty," HJAS,

12 [1949], 147-50).
63 While formerly serving as Prefect of Lo-yang, Yu had let it be known that he was determined to put a stop to abuses of power by the empresses' clans, such as the Tou clan. Once, he was arrested for an incident in which one of his subordinates threatened Tou Tu; see Hou Han shu 77.2494-95.

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[Huang] Pa was perceptive and endowed with a quick mind, and was also well versed in law. Yet he was gentle, kind, and deferential to others, while having considerable wisdom and excelling at leading the people. As Assistant [in Ho-nan Commandery], he adjudicated court cases in complete accordance with the law and won the hearts of the people. The Grand Administrator [of the Commandery] entrusted him with great responsibility, and the people loved and respected him. From the end of Emperor Wu's reign on, laws became more and more severe. When Emperor Chao [r. 86-74 B.c.] acceded to the throne he was a mere child, and so the General-in-Chief, Huo Kuang, managed the government for him. Then the high-ranking ministers contended for power and Shang-kuan Chieh and others plotted revolt, collaborating with the Prince of Yen.64 Once Kuang put them all to death, he proceeded to adopt Emperor Wu's laws and practices, and cruelly disciplined subordinates with punishments. From that time on, all the lowerranking officials considered sheer harshness to be the mark of administrative competence and Pa alone achieved renown through lenience. When Emperor Hsuan [r. 73-49 B.c.] ascended the throne, since while living among the people he had seen that they suffered grievously under harsh officials, upon hearing that Pa enforced the law moderately, he summoned him as Commandant of Justice. Pa decided many perplexing cases and was praised in the court for his impartiality. (Han shu 89.3628-29)

The tendency here is to use common words in commonplace ways. There is nothing the least bit surprising about the diction. Lacking specificity and exactness, the language constantly skirts cliche (e.g., :MRWX5 )Qff:f;15 Xfl`L), and occasionally words are used loosely (see the two different senses in which the word p'ing " is used in the last two sentences). Another difference from Fan Yeh's style is that this writing makes little deliberate use of rhythm to aid in the expression of the meaning. In fact, this prose is quite unrhythmical. Metrical and grammatical parallelism occur less frequently, and when they do occur the correspondences are not as marked. Also, the sentences do not give such a strong impression of careful conception and planning. There is somewhat less subordination and qualification, and one often encounters strings of coordinate phrases each of which is a grammatically complete sentence (see especially lines 1-3 of the Chinese text above). Finally, there are no striking ellipses (the author preferring to spell everything out), figures of

64 For the details of this attempted coup d'etat see Huo Kuang's biography in Han shu China[New York: Columbia in Ancient andCommoner 68.2934-36 (tr. Burton Watson, Courtier Univ. Press, 1974], pp. 125-28).

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speech, or emphatic flourishes: the writing goes on and on in a steady tone. Having dwelled on stylistic differences between Fan Yeh's and Pan Ku's narrative prose, I do not want to exaggerate the distinctiveness of Fan Yeh's writing. His prose is not so different from Pan Ku's, or that of other, chronologically intervening historians, that any given passage can always be positively identified on stylistic grounds alone as having come from his hand. In many passages the writing is virtually indistinguishable from that found in earlier histories (often, no doubt, because Fan Yeh has simply copied earlier sources). However, there is something distinctive about the overall impression Fan Yeh's narrative prose makes, which I have attempted to analyze and account for in the preceding pages. In general, his characteristic traits are more pronounced in the Biographies than in the Annals (which are more formal and hence more formulaic) ;65 within the Biographies the use of language seems to be most selfconscious in the chapters that contain multiple biographies of a certain type of person (e.g., scrupulous officials), where the writing is less likely to be dominated by quotations of documents or the narration of important historical events than in the biographies of more prominent persons. As noted above, Fan Yeh's narrative prose cannot compare with his expository prose in elegance: it is inevitably more pedestrian. Yet there is a sense in which Fan Yeh's achievement in the narrative portion of his history is at least as important as that in the nonnarrative passages. The Introductions, Disquisitions, and Eulogies, however brilliantly done, are limited in number and scope. To have written these alone would merely have earned for Fan Yeh his place in anthologies of fine specimens of writing, such as Wen hsuan. But to have developed a narrative prose style that is unprecedented in its precision, intricacy, and literary interest, and to have demonstrated that it could be used to relate a wide range of events, is to have extended the expressive potential of the language. The question remains: to what extent does Fan Yeh's narrative prose style result from his own innovations and to what extent does
65 Bielenstein (pp. 47-48) draws a similar distinction between the style of the Annals and that of the Biographies.

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it simply reflect the innovations of his age? The answer seems to be that although many of its characteristics are found in other kinds of contemporary writing, Fan Yeh managed to adopt them into a kind of writing from which they had formerly been absent (narrative prose), while avoiding contemporary mannerisms and excesses. Yuan Hung wrote his HouHanchiin the middle of the fourth century, and, as suggested by the quotations from that work given above, his narrative prose is quite plain. Shih-shuo was comhsin-yui : pleted within ten years of Fan Yeh's history,66 but the distinctive features of its style seem to have more to do with the influence of the spoken idiom than with deliberate literary innovations in diction and prosody.67 The fact is, the assumption that there was but a single Six Dynasties narrative prose style needs to be reexamined.68 There seem instead to have been many distinct styles, with differences between them that can be traced to idiosyncracies of individual writers and to the unavoidable influence of the type of writing undertaken. (One should not expect witty anecdotes to be narrated in the same style as sober history.) Fan Yeh developed a new style of narrative prose, one that was influenced by certain contemporary trends, but which can lay claim to excellences all its own.

66 Shih-shuo hsin-yui was compiled around the year 430 (see Richard B. Mather, ShihshuoHsin-yu, A New Account of Tales of the World[Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1976], p. xxvii). 67 Yoshikawa K6jir6 is surely correct in attributing many of the peculiarities of Shihshuohsin-yii'slanguage to the influence of the spoken idiom (cf. Mather [p. xiv], who suggests that one of the work's purposes was to serve as an aid to conversation); however, many of his specific points about how the style differs from that of Han dynasty narrative prose are questionable. (Yoshikawa's views are contained in his "Seisetsu shingo no bunsh6" i EJe' t, Toho gakuho, 10 [Kyoto, 1939], 2.86-109, which was reprinted in the author's Chagokusambunron rPFV_;" [Tokyo: K6bundo, 1949], pp. 66-91. A slightly condensed and altered version of the article was translated into English by Glen W. Baxter under the title "The Shih-shuo hsin-yuand Six Dynasties Prose Style," HJAS, 18 [1955], 124-41; this translation was reprinted in Studies in ChineseLiterature, ed. John L. Bishop, Harvard-Yenching Institute Studies 21 [Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1966] pp. 166-87.) 68 Yoshikawa makes such an assumption, saying that the style of Shih-shuo hsin-yuexhibits characteristics that are typical of narrative and expository prose during the period between the Han and the T'ang dynasties, and that it is stylistically close both to collections of tales of the marvelous (e.g., Sou-shen chi) and to historical writing of the period. (See p. 87 of the original Tohogakuhoarticle, or pp. 125-26 of the translation in HJAS.)

Appendix

DISQUISITION

ON HARSH

OFFICIALS69

were so free of pettifogging and opportunism In antiquity, the mores that evil deeds were easily distinguished from good deeds. Even though punishments were limited to markings on clothing and headgear,70 still no one transgressed. However, with the avarice and inconstancy of later times, superiors and inferiors came to deceive each other regularly. The ruler's exemplary moral conduct could no longer permeate and transform the realm, and gentle guidance no longer sufficed to prevent wrongdoing. Subsequently, rulers tried to restore order through the use of severe punishments and torturous executions. They employed harsh and exacting officials, who used violent methods to try to curb lawlessness,relying on their absolute probity that could brook no evil to justify their cruel ferocity. The Han dynasty did indeed have officials known as harsh yet capable. With their daring and deftness they cleverly enforced the letter of the law. Their actions, as swift as the wind and biting as frost, brought them shining prestige and praise. How different their accomplishments were from those of the narrowminded, conventional bureaucrats! Thus Yen Yen-nien scoffed at the methods of Huang Pa, and the officials in Mi laughed at the policies of Cho Mao.71 But even though they used extreme harshness,such men were still unable to cope with some crimes. On the other hand, in the districts ruled by Chu Yi, who never subjected others to whippings or humiliation, and Yuan An, who never prosecuted a man for
Hou Han shu 77.2502. That is, in "punishment by effigy" that was reserved for dignitaries; see Po hu t'ung bM (Pao-chingt'ang ts'ung-shued.), 4A.6b (tr. Tjan Tjoe Som, Po hu t'ung, The Comprehensive Discussionsin the White Tiger Hall [Leiden: Brill, 1952], ii, 604). (Li Hsien, Hou Han shu 77.2502) 71 For Yen Yen-nien see Han shu 90.3670, and for Cho Mao see Hou Han shu 25.870.
70

69

381

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corruption, wicked scheming came to an end by itself and the people stopped outsmarting each other.72 Why was there this difference? Once intimidating laws are adopted, attempts to evade them flourish. But when the way of kindness and trust prevails, the people are filled with gratitude. When the people set their minds on evasion, then as soon as there is a crack in the ruling authority, lawlessness appears. But when their feeling is one of gratitude, then even after their superior dies the people still cherish his memory. Now, if one extrapolates from single districts and considers the government of the entire empire, then the relative merits of dispensing with punishments or of having court cases be numerous should be self-evident.

INTRODUCTION

TO THE BIOGRAPHIES

OF EUNUCHS73

The Book of Changes says, "Heaven displays configurations and the sage patterns himself after them."74 The four stars that symbolize eunuchs are right beside those of the Emperor's seat, hence in the hierarchy of officials described in the Rituals of the Chou Dynasty eunuchs are fully represented: there are eunuch gate-keepers to maintain the prohibitions at the inner-palace entrances, and eunuch attendants to enforce the rules for female servants.7r The text also says, "There are five eunuchs inside the royal bedchambers."76 In the "Monthly Regulations" it says, "In the second month of winter, orders are given for the eunuchs to examine the inner and outer palace doors and to carefully inspect the inner apartments."77 Likewise, in the "Hsiao ya" section of the Book of Songsthere is an ode by the Director of the Inner Lanes criticizing slander.78 Thus it is clear that eunuchs have long been used at the royal court. Is
For Chu Yi see Han shu 89.3653, and for Yuan An see Hou Han shu 45.1518. 50.4a-9a. Hou Han shu 78.2507-11 and Wenhsaian 74 Choui, p. 44a. 75 Chou 1i (Shih-san ching chu-shu [Taipei: 1-wen yin-shu kuan reprint of the Hunan, 1892 ed.]), 7.19b-23a. 76 Chou 1i 10.17a. 77 Li chi (Shih-san chingchu-shu[Taipei: 1-wen yin-shu kuan reprint of the Hunan, 1892 ed.]), 17.17b. 78 Ode no. 200. The "Little Preface" to the Book of Songs explains that the Director of the Inner Lanes was a eunuch.
72 73

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it not because, lacking full natural virility, their emotions are stable and their intentions trustworthy, so that as they associate with the palace ladies they are easy to order about? However, as they continued to be used in later times their responsibilities broadened considerably. Among the able ones there were Po-tiao and Kuang Su, who achieved merit in Ch'u and Chin,79and there were Ching Chien and Mou Hsien, who served with distinction in Ch'in and Chao.80 Among the bad ones there were Shu-tiao, who toppled the government in Ch'i, and Yi-li, who
caused clamity in Sung.81 When the Han dynasty began, Palace Regular Attendants were appointed, following the practices of the Ch'in. However, regular officials were also appointed to this post, to serve together with the eunuchs. They all wore caps studded with silver ornaments and decorated with sable tails on the left side, and they attended to matters within the palace. When Empress Lu ruled as Empress Dowager [187-180 B.C.], she appointed the eunuch Chang Ch'ing to be her Grand Internuncio. He passed freely in and out of her bedchamber, promulgating Imperial summonses and decrees. During the reign of Emperor Wen [179-157 B.C.], the eunuchs Chao T'an and Pei-kung Po-tzu enjoyed considerable Imperial favor. Emperor Wu [r. 140-87 B.C.] was similarly fond of the eunuch Li Yen-nien. Since Emperor Wu frequently held banquets in the women's quarters, and went on secret pleasure trips to his outlying palaces, most of the petitions and memorials concerning sensitive matters of state were handled by palace attendants. During the reign of Emperor Yuan [49-33 B.C.], the eunuch Shih Yu, who was
'9 These are two Spring and Autumn period eunuchs. Po-tiao "g (otherwise referred to as Eunuch P'i J<Af) once saved the life of Duke Wen of Chin; see Tso chuan,p. 123, Classics,v, 191a). Kuang Su is said to have advised and lines 1-8 (tr. Legge, The Chinese assisted King Kung of Ch'u; see Hsin hsiu(SPTK ed.), 1.3b-4a. 80 These are two Warring States period eunuchs. Their accomplishments are referred to in Shih chi 68.2228 and 81.2439, respectively. 81 Upon the death of Duke Huan of Ch'i in 644 B.C., Shu-tiao TJ1 (otherwise referred to as Eunuch Tiao EJAM) conspired with others to oppose the late Duke's designated heir and to install another of his sons on the throne; see Tso chuan,p. 113, para. 5 (tr. Legge, The ChineseClassics, v, 173b). Yi-li tricked Duke P'ing of Sung into arresting the heir apparent and forcing him to take his own life; see Tso chuan,p. 311, par. 6 (tr. Classics,v, 525b). Legge, The Chinese

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the Prefect of the Yellow Gates,82 served with utmost diligence and loyalty, correcting deficiencies and improving the government. Later, however, when the eunuchs Hung Kung and Shih Hsien became intimate with the Emperor through their clever talk and guile, they brought Hsiao Wang-chih and Chou K'an to disaster [in 47 B.C.] and diminished and sullied the Emperor's majesty.83 At the beginning of the Restoration, eunuchs alone were selected as palace attendants, regular officials no longer being mixed in among them. During the Yung-p'ing period [A.D. 58-75], the number of offices became fixed: there were four Palace Regular Attendants and ten Junior Attendants of the Yellow Gates.84 Emperor Ho succeeded to the throne as a child [in 88], hence Tou Hsien and his sister [Empress Tou] usurped all power and authority. The Inner and Outer Court officials had no means to get near the Emperor. The only ones around him were eunuchs. So it was that the eunuch Cheng Chung managed to get a free hand within the Emperor's apartments and eventually did away with the great evil one [Tou Hsien, in 92].85 Afterwards, Cheng Chung was invested with fiefs and soared to the rank of palace minister.86 This marked the eunuchs' rise to preeminence. From the time of Emperor Ming [r. 58-75] down to the Yennien period [106], the eunuchs' duties grew constantly and their numbers increased until there were ten Palace Regular Attendants and twenty Junior Attendants of the Yellow Gates. Now they wore gold studded caps with sable tails on the right side, and they took over all ministerial functions. When Empress Teng took charge of
82 The Prefect of the Yellow Gates had disciplinary authority over all the eunuchs in the palace (de Crespigny, The Last of the Han, p. 389, n. 12). 83 Hsiao Wang-chih and Chou K'an tried to persuade the Emperor to restrict the eunuchs' administrative responsibilities, but they were slandered by the eunuchs. Chou K'an was eventually dismissed, and Hsiao Wang-chih was forced to commit suicide; see and Commoner in AncientChina,pp. 215-21). Han shu 78.3284-89 (tr. Watson, Courtier 84 These were the two highest eunuch ranks, the first being the higher of the two. For a description of their functions see Rafe de Crespigny, "The Harem of Emperor Huan," Paperson Far EasternHistory (Australian National Univ.), 12 (1975), 9-10. 86 Hou Han shu23.819-20. In addition to usurping control of the government, Tou Hsien and others plotted to assassinate the Emperor. and 86 His formal title was Grand Prolonger of Autumn (Ta-ch'ang-ch'iu ;k-A), he acted as the chamberlain to the Empress. (For the office see de Crespigny, The Last of the Han, p. 363, n. 12.)

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the government as Empress Dowager [in 105], she managed all the weighty and far-reaching affairs of the realm.87 The court advisors, trying to give counsel, had no means to influence decisions made within the inner-palace curtains; and the Empress Dowager, as she issued decrees and proclamations on the Emperor's behalf, never emerged from behind the doors to the women's quarters. Thus she could not but use eunuchs, entrusting them with all state orders. Once they had the royal insignia in their hands and the Imperial decrees on their lips, the eunuchs never again looked after the Lateral Courts and Long Lanes88 or kept watch over the doorways to the women's quarters. Later, the eunuch Sung Ch'eng effected the installation of Emperor Hsiian [in 125], and the eunuch Ts'ao T'eng participated in the choice of Emperor Huan [in 146]. Subsequently, the five eunuch lords planned together, with the result that Liang Chi was beheaded [in 159].89 Their action stemmed from loyal and just motives and it earned them the lasting favor and trust of the sovereign. Everyone inside and outside the court submitted to them; both high and low officials held their breath. Some said that the good deeds of Yi Yin and Huo Kuang had not expired in ages past,90 and others claimed that the clever strategems of Chang Liang and Ch'en P'ing had been reborn in the present day.9- Although from time to time truly loyal officials appeared at the court, in the end they were all driven away. With a wave of their hands the eunuchs shook the mountains and seas, and with a breath from their mouths they evaporated frost and dew. Those who compromised themselves and bent to the eunuchs' demands won prominence and Imperial favor for their clans to the third degree, while those who remained true
See note 36 above. The Long Lanes and Lateral Courts were names of sections of the women's apartments (de Crespigny, "The Harem of Emperor Huan," p. 10, n. 11). 89 Liang Chi held the rank of General-in-Chief before his execution and virtually controlled the government. The young Emperor Huan struck out against Liang Chi in 159 with the help of five of his eunuchs; see Hou Han shu 78.2520 and Rafe de Crespigny, "Political Protest in the Later Han," Paperson Far EasternHistory, 11 (1975), 3-7. 90 Yi Yin served as a minister under King T'ang, the founder of the Shang dynasty. Huo Kuang (d. 68 B.C.) served under Emperor Wu and was selected by him to rule as regent upon the succession of his young son, Emperor Chao. 91 Chang Liang and Ch'en P'ing were Emperor Kao-tsu's (r. 206-195 B.C.) brilliant military strategists.
87
88

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to their convictions and went against the eunuchs' desires brought on the extirpation of their families to the fifth degree. The laws and regulations of the Han dynasty were thrown into utter chaos. Wearing the high caps and long swords of military leaders, and carrying the red ribbons and gold seals of civil ministers, the eunuchs packed the palace. Dozens of them received the sacred soil and the split tiger-seal of enfeoffment, ruling over others as noble lords. Their official residences and mansions were arrayed like chess pieces through the capital and outlying districts. Their retainers and relatives accounted for over half of the ranking officials in the provinces and kingdoms. Quantities of southern gold, Pien-ho jade, ice-tight silk, and mist-fine grain swelled their treasuries. Female attendants, maidservants, singing boys, and dancing girls filled their painted rooms. Their dogs and horses were draped in colorful silks. The walls and ceilings of their dwellings were covered with red embroidery. They whittled away at the commoners as they eagerly indulged their inordinate greed. They conspired to injure worthy men while seeking to extend their private factions. Then there were men who, pulling each other up, sought to attach themselves to the powerful eunuchs. They castrated and cauterized themselves, then reached their goal by boasting about what they had done. Possessed of the same perversity, they flocked to each other's support, and their numbers multiplied. They perpetrated more acts that did injury to the realm and that poisoned the government than could ever be recounted. The entire populace sighed bitterly and men of principle retired in poverty to the mountains. Then thieves and bandits moved in wherever authority had slackened and engulfed the entire nation in turmoil. Although good and trustworthy men, who were filled with resentment, occasionally stood up in anger, whenever they spoke out calamity ensued and they would be put to death together with their wives and children. Using the pretext of this criticism, the eunuchs went on to indict many members of the league of scholars [in 166 and 169], and to slander and smear one man after another.92 Eventually, not a single person of high repute escaped disaster and injury.
For the circumstances of the proscriptions of 166 and 169 (the second of which lasted until 184) see de Crespigny, "Political Protest in the Later Han."
92

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Tou Wu and Ho Chin, who were high-ranking ministers and Imperial in-laws, drew support from the entire empire's murmuring and rancor and had the power of the age's mightiest heroes behind them;93 but because they hesitated and failed to act they met death and defeat. This clearly forebode the end of the dynasty's Heavenly Mandate. Subsequently, Yuan Shao acted diligently on the sovereign's behalf and rooted out all traces of the eunuchs [in 189], but how could his conduct be commended since he went on to substitute rebellion for their oppression? First, the eunuch Ts'ao T'eng persuaded Liang Chi to install a witless child on the throne [Emperor Huan], and in the end Emperor Wu of the Wei [Ts'ao Ts'ao] transferred the dynastic divining-shell and tripods into his own court. How true the saying is that "My lord, you began with this and this is what will bring about your

end."94
DISQUISITION ON SCHOLARS95

From the middle of his reign on, Emperor Kuang-wu stored away
93 Tou Wu was General-in-Chief and the father of the Empress Dowager, Empress Tou. In 168, he and his supporters plotted to murder the palace eunuchs; however, the eunuchs seized the initiative and crushed the Tou clique; see Hou Han shu 69.2239-45 and de Crespigny, "Political Protest in the Later Han," pp. 21-33. Ho Chin was the younger brother of Empress Ho and was also appointed General-inChief. He tried to persuade his sister to have all the eunuchs dismissed and put to death, but before he could convince her to do so the eunuchs learned of his plans and assassinated him; see Hou Han shu 69.2246-53 and de Crespigny's translation of the relevant Tzu-chiht'ung-chien passage in The Last of the Han, pp. 42-52. 94 Ts'ao Ts'ao was the grandson of the eunuch Ts'ao T'eng (T'eng's adopted son, Ts'ao Sung, was Ts'ao Ts'ao's father). Fan Yeh is here using the link between this influential eunuch and the founder of the succeeding dynasty to emphasize the connection between the eunuchs' rise to power during the Later Han and the eventual demise of the dynasty. The saying is taken from Tso chuan,but the meaning is changed. In the original context, the phrase ,Lii.tt simply means "you must stay with it until the end":

[In the midst of the battle] the King caught sight of his right-handchariotcolumn. He was about to ride with it but [his driver] Ch'ii Tang stoppedhim saying, "My lord, you began the battle with this [the left-hand] chariot column, and you must stay with it until the end." From this time on, the left-handchariot column was given precedencein Ch'u. This seems to be an etiological anecdote about a detail of battle etiquette; see Tso chuan, p. 199, line 3 (cf. Legge, TheChinese Classics,v, 320a). The standard Tso chuantext now has rather than Fan Yeh's version of the phrase. tE'S1t 96 Hou Han shu 79B.2588-90.

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arms and armor little by little and devoted himself to the promotion of canonical texts. Thereafter, interest in such texts increased with each succeeding generation. Those who donned scholar's gowns and spoke of the ancient kings, those who journeyed to academies and congregated in schools-such men could be found in all parts of the empire. Wherever a master of the classics happened to reside, there were those who did not regard a thousand-mile journey thence as too distant. Whenever a lecture hall was opened even for a short time, there were always hundreds or even thousands who carried their own provisions on their shoulders to make the trip. Venerable and esteemed scholars who accepted students counted no less than ten thousand names on their registers. But each teacher adhered exclusively to his own scholastic tradition, never admitting anything from other traditions. They went to the extent of wrangling in the royal court and founding factions in their native towns, of writing prolix commentaries and boring into inaccessible crannies, all in order to confirm their own tenets. Yang Hsiung aptly said, "Men of learning nowadays do not only indulge in ornamentation, they even go on to embroider their sashes and kerchiefs." The fact is, truth contained in the written word is one and indivisible, and all interpretations must return to the same standard. However, men of erudition would not proceed towards it. Hence men of real understanding disdained their obstinancy. As Yang Hsiung said, "It is gabbling scholarship, in which each man sedulously apes his master."97 Besides, of all those who achieved renown by obtaining the highest grade, there were few indeed who managed to go far; so eccentric and hidebound they were. Nevertheless, what they talked about were, after all, the virtues of humaneness and decency, and what they transmitted were the norms of the sage kings. So it was that everyone came to understand the principles of the relationships between sovereign and subject and between father and son, and every family was shown the path that leads away from wickedness back to rectitude. From the reigns of Emperor Huan [147-67] and Emperor Ling
96

96

97

Yang-tsufa-yen(SPTK ed.), 7.2a. Yang-tzufa-yen7.2a.

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[168-89] on, the royal way decayed: the court's discipline declined daily and fissures in the realm opened frequently. From men of mediocre intelligence on down, all could detect the eventual collapse and dissolution. And yet mighty and powerful ministers put aside their usurpative schemes, while preeminent leaders bowed to dissuasions given by humble scholars. It was simply because everyone was constantly reciting the words of the ancient kings, hence subordinates feared to transgress and complied with their lot. There were even such men as Chang Wen and Huang-fu Sung: each of them conquered half of the empire and their renown dashed beyond the four seas, so that they each could have founded a new dynasty with a mere nod of the head or a backward glance;98 and yet they prostrated themselves at the feet of a benighted sovereign and suffered the indignity of obeying a summary summons. They disbanded their armies and submitted to the law, never harboring any regret. When the scraping and breaking of the edifice came to its own end, when the realm's appointed time was finished in the eyes of men and gods, then and only then did the crowd of stalwarts ride on the crest of the times so that the hereditary power reached its termination. Now, if we trace the causes of the decline and fall, the fact that the dynasty was able to postpone its demise so many years-was this not the effect of school learning? For this reason, the merit Confucius achieved by transmitting the canonical texts and commending and urging scholars on is indeed great and well deserved. If one does not take the Spring and AutumnAnnals as a guide, then when matters come to the worst and one finds oneself amidst assassins and rebels, might not one perhaps be tempted?
ON THE WESTERN BARBARIANS99

DISQUISITION

Trouble with the Ch'iang and Jung barbarians was at its height
98 Chang Wen's power reached its height when he was appointed Grand Commandant (T'ai-wei t% the most senior of the Three Dukes) in 186, while he was leading a campaign against the rebels west of Ch'ang-an. However, later that same year he was recalled to the capital and in the following year he was dismissed from office. He was eventually slandered by Tung Cho, in 191, and flogged to death; see Hou Han shu 72.232022, 30-31 and 8.352-54.

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during the Hsia, Shang, and Chou dynasties. During the Han dynasty they were weaker and fewer than the Hsiung-nu. Still, after the Restoration the disturbances they caused on the borders grew ever more serious. Court policy was unable to maintain peace through gentle guidance, and the border commanders violated the trust of agreements made with them. Of the barbarians who lived within the borders, some were impoverished and oppressed by local leaders while others were forced to toil as slaves and servants. Thus when the frontiers were at peace they harbored bitterness and longed to revolt, and as soon as drumsticks and armor were taken up, they strapped quivers on their backs and scattered like birds. During the Yung-ch'u period [107-14], all the barbarians arose in swarms. They put their mutual enmity and distrust aside and swore oaths of allegiance together. Then they called out the warriors who were hiding in the mountains, signaling a muster with their shrill whistling. They carried timbers as their halberds and wore twigs for armor. Their war-horses kicked up clouds of dust as they galloped about in San-fu; 100 they proclaimed a new dynasty and issued their own proclamations, venting their anger in Pei-ti.11 They swept eastward into the suburbs of Chao and Wei and invaded southward as far as the outlying districts of Han and Shu.102 They occupied Huang-chung and cut off the Lung-hsi Road.103 They burned the Imperial tombs and put entire cities to the sword. Our armies suffered one rout after another, and urgent reports arrived daily at the court. The troops in the northwestern provincesl04
Huang-fu Sung achieved renown with successive victories over the Yellow Turban rebels in 184. His biography (Hou Han shu 71) records several occasions on which others tried to persuade him to rebel, but he remained loyal to the throne. He too eventually rose to the position of Grand Commandant.
99

HouHanshu87.2899-901.

100San-fu was the name for the Former Han capital area, namely the three Commanderies of Ching-chao (Ch'ang-an), Yu-fu-feng, and Tso-p'ing-i. 101Pei-ti Commandery had its headquarters at Fu-p'ing, in modern Ling-wu hsien, Kansu. 102 Chao and Wei were Commanderies in the vicinity of modern Han-tan, Hopeh. Han (Han-chung) and Shu were Commanderies with headquarters in modern Nan-cheng hsien, Shensi and Ch'eng-tu hsien, Szechwan, respectively. 103 The name Huang-chung refers to an area in the southeast of modern Tsinghai.Lunghsi Commandery had its headquarters in modern Lin-t'ao hsien, Kansu. 104 Ping and Liang were two northwestern Provinces of the Later Han (there were thirteen Provinces in all).

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sustained the heaviest casualties: stalwart warriors left their bodies on the field of battle, and wives and daughters were bound up and taken off as prisoners. They plundered graves and exposed the corpses. Both the dead and living suffered grievously. Ever since the Western Jung invaded the Chou, there had never been such a fiery thrust into the central realm. Empress Teng was then ruling as Empress Dowager, and Imperial prestige no longer carried beyond the borders. The court advisors, fearing further decline in military strength, desired to negotiate whatever settlement they could. Some felt that the border districts were impossible to retain and urged that they be given up to the barbarians. But others feared that such a rotten morsel would gradually infect all around it, and that then there would be no way to check the infection's spread. The advisors vacillated and the military leaders were in a quandary. Eventually [in 111], the court relocated the populace of four of the Commanderies west of the Yellow Riverl05 to various Prefectures inside the Passes. Their houses were razed and their trees cut down to stifle their affection for the land. Their possessions were burned and their grain-stores destroyed to ensure they would not long to return. At this time, Generals Teng Chih, Jen Shang, Ma Hsien, Huang-fu Kuei, Chang Huan, and others strove to outdo each other in suggesting heroic plans of action. One after another they were commissioned to lead campaigns against the invaders, whereupon they levied soldiers and amassed huge armies, preparing to attack wherever they detected a weakness. They galloped about east and west, rushing to the rescue of now the head and now the tail, so that they engulfed several border districts in turmoil and used up one thousand cash each day. It went to the extent that they collected increased grain taxes from the people and borrowed stipends originally meant for enfeoffed noblemen. They procured valuable gold and silks and requisitioned quantities of grain, salt, and iron. In all, the money given to them as outright gifts or rewards, plus that used to finance supply transport and to succor the troops, amounted to several
105 Although Hsi-ho is elsewhere the name of a Later Han Commandery with its headquarters in modern Shansi, here it is evidently just a general name for the area west of the Yellow River in modern northern Shensi and Kansu. For the details of this relocation see Hou Han shu 87.2888.

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million cash. Moreover, when these generals vanquished the leader of a barbarian nation or crushed a tribal head, their surrendered prisoners lined the roads and their booty of oxen and sheep covered the hills. Thus their military reports to the throne spoke at great length about a tribe's rebellion before ever mentioning the relative merits of conducting a campaign against it. The fact is, the gains realized through all their actions did not offset the cost, and their successes were no match for the hardship they caused. They kept soldiers out in the field for years on end without achieving decisive victories. Civil officials had their resources exhausted and brave warriors went to their death in frustration. Later [in 159], Tuan Chiung received his commission and took full control of military operations.106 He was endowed with a savage, Western-frontier nature and was thoroughly familiar with both the appearance and the reality of Jung practices. In addition, he had mastered military strategy and developed his fierce valor to the utmost. Once he donned his feather-robe and took his position at the head of the troops, he personally confronted the enemy's fatal onslaughts. Braving ice and snow, he marched across the endlessly twisting roads. First he wiped out the western tribes, then he pacified the eastern rebels. As for the number of those he slaughtered or wounded in ambush or chased after until they collapsed, and the heads he cut off on ten-thousand-foot mountains or the limbs he ripped apart on high peaks-there were more of these than could ever be counted. Only one or two in a hundred managed to hide in the grass or conceal themselves in caves and thus escape his lance and arrows. However, just then [in 169], Chang Huan spoke out, declaring, "The Jung and Ti tribes are born of the same life-force we are and ought not to be wiped out. If flowing blood smears the plains it will do irreparable damage to the peace and bring on calamity." 107 How deluded such talk is! Although the Ch'iang barbarians are an external threat, in fact, they are more dangerous than an internal disease. To attack them but stop short of rooting them out entirely amounts to nurturing an infection within one's chest. What a pity
106 107

Hou Han shu 65.2146. Hou Han shu 65.2150.

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that just when this rapacious enemy was being brought under control the Heavenly Mandate of the Han was also waning. In antiquity, when the sage kings determined the boundaries of the nine provinces and separated the central realm from the outlying districts, they knew full well that the barbarians are different in temperament from us and cannot be controlled by goodness alone. Hence they located them far away from the Chinese states and made few tribute demands upon them, only requiring treaties and oaths from them. But the methods used during the Former and Later Han to deal with barbarians neglected these principles completely. Thus after the Hsien-ling invaded, Chao Ch'ung-kuo relocated them within our borders [in 61 B.C.], and when the Chien-tang went on their rampage, Ma Wen-yuan [Ma Huan] moved them into San-fi [in 35]. Being anxious to effect a temporary peace and trusting in the barbarians' compliance, these men only concerned themselves with the expedients of the day and had no thought for far-reaching policies of statesmanship. What man of perception would have adopted such policies? So it was that Chi-tzu wept when he learned of the ivory chopsticks,L08 and Hsin-yu sighed on the banks of the Yi River. 109
DISQUISITION ON THE SOUTHERN HSIUNG-NULL

At the beginning of the Han dynasty, the Hsiung-nu leader Mao Tun performed wicked and evil deeds, and all the barbarian tribes blazed with might. Emperor Kao-tsu's Imperial prestige covered the
108 The T'ang commentary suggests that Wei-tzu in the text should be emended to Chi-tzu. Both were ministers under the infamous King Chou of the Shang dynasty, and Chi-tzu is said to have sighed with sadness when King Chou first had ivory chopsticks made, because he took it as a portent of more serious extravagances in the future; see Han Fei-tzu chi-shih (Shanghai: Jen-min ch'u-pan she, 1974), i, 400, 438. Fan Yeh, however, evidently thought of the ivory chopsticks as a symbol of dependence on foreign tribute. 109 Tso chuan,p. 118,fu i:

Formerly,when King P'ing of the Chou [r. 770-720 B. C.] moved the capital to the east, Hsin-yu [a Chou dignitary]passedby the Yi River where he saw a man whosehair was untied sacrificingto a local deity. Hsin-yu said, "Within a hundred years I fear this place will be inhabited by Jung barbarians. Properceremonyhas alreadybeen lost here." In the autumn [of 638 B. c.], Chin transferredthe Jung of Lu-hun to the Yi River district. (Cf. Legge, TheChinese Classics, v, 182a-b.)
110

Hou Han shu 89.2966-67.

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four seas, but even he was trapped in the siege at P'ing-ch'eng.111 Emperor Wen [r. 179-158 B.C.] virtually dispensed with all punishments, and so he failed to avenge the shame of this earlier outrage and humiliation. However, Emperor Wu [r. 140-88 B.C.] initiated one after another border campaign, aspiring to vanquish the Hsiung-nu. With shining majesty, he commissioned generals, and military banners filled the sky like stars. Guards were stationed throughout the metropolitan regions, and beacon fires reached to the Kan-ch'iian Palace.112 But the Hsiung-nu still made their arrows whistle and kicked up the dust, galloping in and out of the central realm. In the end, all of the realm's military strength was sapped and all of its resources exhausted as the Imperial armies did battle with the Hsiung-nu every year for a decade. Although thp enemy was nearly wiped out, the losses and deprivations that the Han suffered were equally heavy. During Emperor Hsuian's reign [73-49 B.C.], the barbarian seat was beset by internal strife, and Hu-han-yeh came to submit himself as a subject.113 The Emperor thought it expedient to accept this voluntary submission, and so he set Hu-han-yeh up as a defender of the border, abolishing the Chinese guard at the passes and bringing an end to the hardship of the soldiers and the people. The Emperor ascended the dragon carriage in his Imperial gown, and gongs and drums were sounded on the banks of the limpid Wei River [in 51 B.C.] ;114 there, he enthroned himself and received the Shan-yii [Hu-han-yeh] as his subject. Not a single barbarian horse left its hoofprints on the northern border regionsll5 for the next sixty years.
111 In 200 B.C., Emperor Kao-tsu was trapped for seven days by Mao Tun at P'ingch'eng (in modern Ta-t'ung hsien, Shansi), and was only saved by an ingenious strategy devised by Ch'en P'ing; see Shih chi 8.384-85 and 56.2057. 112 One of Emperor Wu's outlying palaces, which was northwest of Ch'ang-an, in modern Ch'un-hua hsien, Shensi. 113 Hu-han-yeh was one of the five Hsiung-nu chieftans (Shan-yii) at the time, the head of a southern Hsiung-nu tribe. 114 Emperor Hsiian first received Hu-han-yeh at the Kan-ch'iian Palace, then met him again and reviewed his troops at the Wei Bridge; see Han shu 8.271 and 94B.3798. 115 Shuo-fang was a Commandery with its headquarters near modern Huhehot, Inner Mongolia, and Yi a was a Prefecture northwest of modern Hsiung hsien, Hopeh. Here, I take them to refer collectively to the northern border regions.

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Subsequently, Wang Mang usurped the throne, disturbing the barbarian's peace. Next, there was the turmoil of the Keng-shih period [A.D. 23-24], when the Chinese lands were rent apart like cloth.116 From that time on, the Hsiung-nu had their way, their wolves' hearts rekindled. They invaded wherever they saw a weakness and spread devastation across the borderlands. At the start of the Restoration [25], friendly relations with the Hsiung-nu were reestablished. An unbroken string of messages went out to them, and gifts of gold and silks for them were borne along the roads. However, the Shan-yui grew ever more arrogant and his violent tendencies became more deeply ingrown. Because Emperor Kuang-wu was busy coping with trouble inside the realm, he had no time to deal with problems beyond the Gobi Desert. He bore all of the Shan-yii's insults, knowing full well the difficulties he could cause, and simply sent notes of response. Later [in 37], the Emperor transferred people out of the northern provinces and augmented the forces at the border garrisons.1"7 Once the area east of the Passes was conquered and the lands of Lung and Shu pacified, -18 the Emperor's fierce soldiers and warlike generals all stamped their feet and flailed their arms, and vied with each other as they spoke about the campaigns undertaken by Wei Ch'ing and Kuo Ch'iiping.'-, But the Emperor had had enough of military action and wanted time to perfect his civil leadership; therefore he denied their requests. Later, the various Hsiung-nu tribes fought over their line of succession, and the Jih-chu Prince took refuge in our land,120 wanting to cultivate the same friendly relations with us that Hu-han had formerly enjoyed, in order to prevent attacks upon his people by the barbarians further north. He requested to become a frontier vassal, pledging to serve for ever after as a defender of the border. The Emperor consulted all the memorials submitted on this matter, then expressed his friendship and accepted the Jih-chu Prince [in 48].
116That is, in the civil wars that followed Wang Mang's death. Hou Han shu 89.2940.

117

118 For Lung (Lung-hsi) and Shu see notes 102 and 103 above. 119Wei Ch'ing (d. 106 B.c.) and Huo Ch'u-ping (145-117 B.C.) were generals under Emperor Wu who led campaigns against the Hsiung-nu; see Han shu 55. 120 Jih-chu fi a was the name of one of the Hsiung-nu tribes.

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He directed his ministers to open up a portion of the northern frontiers and to install the Prince there, selecting the most fertile land available and surveying the rivers and grazing areas. Then the Emperor dispatched a Gentleman of the Imperial Household to go to the Prince to honor him in accordance with usages and precedents: he set regulations regarding his dress, presented him with a full complement of ritual articles, and gave him an Imperial seal and tassel, formally installing him as the Shan-yui. Thus, the Hsiung-nu were split, and for the first time there was one northern and one southern Hsiung-nu seat. Now that the enmity and breach between the Hsiung-nu tribes had become intense, they began to spy on each other and to take advantage of every opportunity they detected. Drawing their bowstrings and raising their swords, they kept on the lookout for untoward developments. Converging like clouds and scattering like birds, they raided each other's lands. There was not a single year without routings or casualties, while the Han borders were completely quiet. Later [in 89], our court frequently sent troops out on the Southern Hsiung-nu's behalf, joining with theirs to carry out punitive expeditions. Tou Hsien, Keng K'uei, and others were commissioned to lead one joint campaign after another. They used daring strategems and extraordinary tactics, proceeding along different routes only to combine their forces later. They searched out and blocked up the Northern Hsiung-nu's lairs, then chased more than a thousand miles after those who had escaped. Eventually, they destroyed the Northern Hsiung-nu's Dragon shrine, burned their woolen tents, buried the Shan-yii's brothers and sons alive, and took his mother captive. Then they raised up a stele with an inscription commemorating their achievement, gave a victory cheer, and marched back. 121 The Northern Shan-yiu shook with fear and held his breath. He covered himself with felt and fled to the Wu-sun tribes. The northern steppe was left vacant. Would that we had taken advantage of these developments and
121 The stele was raised on the Yen-jan t Mountains (the modern Khangai Range), north of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. The Inscription, written by Pan Ku, is reproduced in Tou Hsien's biography (Hou Han shu 23.815-17) and was subsequently anthologized in Wen hsiian (chiian56).

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the territory's vacant condition to transfer the Southern Hsiung-nu back up to the Yin Mountainsl22 and to restore to Chinese jurisdiction the upper reaches of the Yellow River. This would have reinstituted Emperor Kuang-wu's wise policy of meeting the needs of the moment, at the same time preventing the subsequent calamitous invasion of China by the Jung and Chieh tribes [at the end of the Western Chin dynasty]; it would have shown that Keng Kuo's earlier strategy was not mistaken,123 and ensured that Yuan An's advice would always be heeded by later sovereigns.124 Being the most soothing and correct thing to do, this action would indeed have had far-reaching results. But Tou Hsien, who waxed arrogant as a result of his repeated victories, brushed aside all principles of good government. He was perversely wild and immoral, and usurped Imperial authority to punish and reward. In the end, he had the Northern Hsiung-nu reinstated and returned to their former seat [in 91]. He bestowed Imperial grace and protection upon both Hsiung-nu seats so that he might thus aggrandize his personal fortune. He rejected and despised the Heavenly Lord as he blithely established a great evil force. Whenever we consider this ancient turn of events, our indignation is truly profound. 125 After the statesmanship toward the barbarians became erroneous, they continuously vacillated between submission and revolt. The amount of suffering they caused could never be fully described. People of later ages became accustomed to the affliction as a commonplace.
122 The Yin Mountains stretch along the southern border of the Inner Mongolian Plateau. 123 Keng Kuo was the official who had advised Emperor Kuang-wu in 48 to accept the Jih-chu Prince as a vassal and to install him as the southern Shan-yu (see Hou Han shu 19.715-16). 124 After the victories over the Northern Hsiung-nu in 89, Yuan An advised against accepting them as a tributary state or reestablishing their court, but he was opposed in these matters by Tou Hsien and his counsel was not adopted; see Hou Han shu45.1520-21. 125 Tou Hsien was the older brother of Empress Tou. The Tou clan controlled the government of Emperor Ho until 92, when they were overthrown. Then, several of them, including Tou Hsien, were forced to kill themselves (see page 384 and note 85 above). Tou Hsien's decision to reestablish the Northern Hsiung-nu court seems to have been designed to augment further his own power and prestige: he installed one of the Hsiung-nu princes who had surrendered to him as the new northern Shan-yiu; see Hou Han shu 45.1520-21. The "great evil force" refers to the Northern Hsiung-nu.

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Eventually, the barbarians chewed and swallowed the sacrificial offerings and reduced the Imperial palace to ruins [at the end of the Western Chin dynasty]. How true it is that a difference of one thousand miles may begin with the difference of but one inch in direction, and that the wisdom or folly of an initial decision may have consequences that last a hundred generations.
ON THE TWENTY-EIGHT OF THE RESTORATION126

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GENERALS

In earlier generations it was believed that the twenty-eight generals of the Restoration were the earthly counterparts of the twenty-eight lunar mansions, but there is no way of knowing whether or not that is true. However, this much is clear: they managed to muster all the power of their age behind them as they exercised their ingenuity and valor to the full so that they came to be renowned as cofounders of the dynasty. They were, indeed, resolute and able men. Many people criticize Emperor Kuang-wu for failing to appoint these meritorious followers to administrative posts and thus allowing men of such heroic deeds and superb accomplishments to be cast aside. However, if we trace his profound planning and far-reaching calculations, there is bound to be some reason behind his action. From the time that the royal way first began to decline down through the era of the hegemons, rulers were still able to make appointments according to ability and to give both meritorious men and wise men their proper place. So it was that Kuan Chung and Hsi P'eng served under Duke Huan successively, and Hsien Chen and Chao Shuai both held positions in Duke Wen's court.127 This was to succeed on both counts.
Hou Han shu 22.787-88 and Wenhsiian50. lb-4a. Among these four ministers, Hsi P'eng and Chao Shuai are evidently the meritorious ones and Kuan Chung and Hsien Chen the wise ones. Kuan Chung had such outstanding talents that Duke Huan of Ch'i appointed him chancellor even though he had once tried to kill Duke Huan (before the Duke ruled in Ch'i), shooting him in the belt buckle; see Shih chi 32.1485. When Kuan Chung was on his deathbed, he is said to have recommended Hsi P'eng as his replacement; see Kuan-tzu (SPTK ed.), 10.4a. Chao Shuai accompanied Duke Wen (Ch'ung-erh) of Chin during his long exile and was one of his closest followers, but when the Duke later tried to reward him with an
127

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Subsequently, in the time of the Ch'in and Former Han dynasties, the world relied upon force of arms, and it was military men who came to the fore as the assistants and supporters of sovereigns. Among them were shiftless and crafty fellows who formerly peddled silk or butchered dogs for a living,128 and these men were honored with rewards of adjoining cities or entrusted with the position of chancellor. Now, once excessive power inspires suspicion then discord develops, and if there is no hierarchy of power this brings on rebellion. Is this not precisely why even Hsiao Ho and Fan K'uai soon ended up in fetters, and why even Han Hsin and P'eng Yiieh eventually suffered execution ?129 Subsequently, those who served as chancellor under the next five sovereigns, down through the reign of Emperor Wu, were all meritorious noblemen. Thus the path of advancement for civil officials was blocked, and wise and competent men were kept in obscurity. At court there was favoritism for successive generations of certain clans, while outside the keepers of the gates harbored bitterness. It would be impossible to list all those who, holding fast to their principles and deprived of fame, lived out their days amid the tangled grasses. Emperor Kuang-wu examined the errors of past practices and resolved to correct the wrongs. Hence even men of such magnificent accomplishments as K'ou Hsuin and Teng Yii, and those of such soaring deeds as Keng Yen and Chia Fu, received no more than four large Prefectures in enfeoffment and were given only the honorary
appointment as a minister of state, he deferred to Hsien Chen, noting that Hsien was good at devising strategy; see Kuoyul (SPTK ed.), 10.22b and Tso chuan,p. 130, line 4. 128 Kuan Ying is said to have been a silk merchant and Fan K'uai a dog butcher before they attached themselves to Liu Pang and helped him to overcome his rivals; see Shih chi 95.2651, 2667. 129 All four of these men had served under Liu Pang and were rewarded upon the founding of the Han dynasty with noble titles and positions. Chancellor Hsiao Ho was put in chains when Emperor Kao-tsu suspected him of enriching himself at the people's expense while Kao-tsu was off suppressing Ch'ing Pu's rebellion (in 195 B.C.). Hsiao was later pardoned. Fan K'uai was arrested in the same year, after someone accused him of plotting to join with Empress Lu to murder Lady Ch'i and her son, the Prince of Chao. Fan was also eventually pardoned, after Kao-tsu's death; see Shih chi 53.2017-19 and 95.2659. Han Hsin and P'eng Yueh were both put to death in 197 B.c.,when they were suspected of collaborating with the rebel Ch'en Hsi; see Shih chi 92.2629 and 90.2594.

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titles of Distinguished Minister and Court Participant.130 Judging from the way Emperor Kuang-wu brought peace to the empire and managed the government, as well as how he evaluated officeholders and admonished those who failed in their duties, he exemplified the ideal of "guiding the people with laws and keeping them in order with punishments."131 Now, if he had given positions of responsibility to men who had served him in the past it would have done great harm. The reason is that once you regulate such appointees strictly you ruin your goodwill and long-standing friendship, while if you indulge your affection for them then you violate the regulations. If you select for appointment those who are wise their former service may be slight, but if you select only those who have served you in the past they may not be wise men. And if you appoint both wise men and meritorious men it will be impossible to satisfy everyone's ambition, moreover the downfall of the meritorious ones will be imminent.132 Instead, you must judge each man's abilities, measuring him against the duties involved. Large endowments and substantial honors will suffice to recompense fully those of outstanding service, and strict rules and harsh codes can then be used to discipline and perfect the administrators. During the Chien-wu period [Emperor Kuang-wu's reign], there were over one hundred deserving men who were enfeoffed as noblemen, but only a few of them were allowed to participate in determining state policy and distinguishing good from evil.-33 As for the rest, since they all flourished under their lenient treatment and were able to maintain their fiefs and stipends, they succeeded in preserving their good names to the end of their days and in bequeathing good fortune to their heirs. Formerly, the Lord of Liu [Chang Liang] pointed out that Emperor Kao-tsu had given appointments only to his old friends Hsiao
130 The men named in this sentence are four of the twenty-eight generals who are the subject of this Disquisition. They have biographies in Hou Han shu 16 (Teng and K'ou), 17 (Chia), and 19 (Keng). 131 Lunyii 2/3, though it is not an ideal in the original passage. 132 Understanding the expression ts'ao jen Affi and ping lieh j IJ to be synonymous. For the several other possible interpretations of this sentence see the "liu ch'en" Wen hsuan commentary and also Li Hsien's Hou Han shu commentary. 133 That is, Kao Mi, Ku Shih, and Chiao Tung; see Hou Han shu 17.667. (Li Hsien, Hou Han shu 22.789)

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Ho and Ts'ao Shen,134 Kuo Chi criticized the fact that so many Nan-yang natives had become prominent,'"3 and Cheng Hsing warned against filling all the posts with men of past service.136 If august Imperial grace is given only to a few, then the sovereign will easily make the mistake of favoring the incompetent. However, if everyone is treated with absolute fairness, then the sovereign will widen the road along which able men can be recruited for office-is this not so?

134 Chang Liang's comment is made one day when, soon after Kao-tsu had defeated Hsiung Yu, Kao-tsu notices that several of his unrewarded followers are talking together, and Chang Liang predicts that they will rebel if Kao-tsu persists in honoring only his old companions; see Shih chi 55.2041-42. 135 Nan-yang (a Commandery in modern Honan) was Emperor Kuang-wu's native district. In the eleventh year of Kuang-wu's reign, Kuo Chi had an audience with him and urged him not to select so many Nan-yang natives when appointing officials. Kaotsu is said to have heeded his advice; see Hou Han shu 31.1092. 136 The warning is contained in a memorial that Cheng Hsing, the Chief Palace Grandee, submitted to the throne in 31; see Hou Han shu 36.1221.