SOURCE: Hsia, C. T. “The Military Romance: A Genre of Chinese Fiction.” In Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, edited by Cyril Birch, pp. 337-78. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1974.

[In this excerpt, Hsia attempts to define the genre of the military romance, distinguishing such novels from historical novels that focus on a popularized retelling of events. Hsia bases his arguments on novels from the Ming and Ching dynasties that detail, with some embellishment, the battles of the T'ang and Sung eras. Note that Chinese characters in the following essay have been silently removed.]

Students of traditional Chinese fiction have customarily divided historical novels into two categories: those which approximate the spirit and form of a popular chronicle and those which, despite their celebration of historical personages and events, make no pretensions to be serious history. Most, if not all, of the titles forming the latter category could be properly called military romances insofar as they tell of an individual, a family, a brotherhood, or a new dynastic team engaged in a large-scale campaign or a series of such campaigns. The popular chronicle, too, has frequent occasion to depict military engagements, but it rarely employs the language of fantasy which stylizes the battle scenes in a military romance. Nor does it concern itself with such engagements to the undue neglect of other matters of historical interest.

Even in a military romance, of course, the principal hero is given a good deal of biographical attention. We are told of his pre-military career, his friends and enemies, and his trials as a loyal servant of the throne. But sooner or later, the hero embarks upon a campaign, which tends to supplant him as the object of primary interest and beget a cluster of subsidiary themes relative to its prosecution. Preoccupation with warfare, then, is at once the principal characteristic of the military romance and the main cause for its failure to reach the status of serious fiction. It shares its fate with detective fiction, science fiction, and other such types of fiction in that its conventionalized overconcern with a special type of human activity has inevitably led to the neglect or stereotyped representation of ordinary human concerns and passions.

In the present paper I shall comment on several Yuan and Ming works of fiction essential to an understanding of the evolution of the genre and then proceed to describe its specific themes and concerns mainly with reference to romances about the T'ang-Sung periods dating from the Ming and Ch'ing. Since for most story cycles it is usually their latest versions that are most characteristic of the military romance, I shall dwell upon such works rather than their predecessors, which are as a rule more reflective of the tradition of oral storytelling or popular chronicle. Thus for the T'ang period I shall focus on Shuo T'ang ch'ien-chuan (hereafter abbreviated as Shuo T'ang), Shuo T'ang hou-chuan (commonly reprinted today under two consecutive titles as Lo T'ung sao-pei and Hsüeh Jen-kuei cheng-tung), Shuo T'ang cheng-hsi san-chuan (better known as Hsüeh Ting-shan cheng-hsi, hereafter Cheng-hsi), and their sequels,¹ though, for comparative purposes, I shall have occasion to refer to such earlier works as Ta-T'ang Ch'in-wang tz'u-hua, T'ang-shu chih-chuan, Sui-T'ang liang-ch'ao chih-chuan, Sui-shih yi-wen, and the culminating title in this series of popular works characterized by their intermixture of history and legend, Ch'u Jen-hu's Sui T'ang yen-yi.² Likewise, for the Yüeh Fei saga I shall discuss Ch'ien Ts'ai and Chin Feng's Shuo Yüeh ch'üan-chuan (hereafter Shuo Yüeh) rather than such earlier and more historic versions as Ta-Sung chung-hsing t'ung-su yen-yi.³ The saga of Yang Yeh (Yang Chi-yeh)⁴ and his progeny, despite its continuing popularity to the present day, has undergone no further development as written fiction since the late Ming: accordingly, my attention will be confined to two crude but highly influential embodiments of that saga dating respectively from the Chia-ching (1522-66) and Wan-li (1573-1619) periods: Pei-Sung chih-chuan t'ung-su yen-yi (hereafter Pei-Sung chih-chuan) and Yang-chia-fu shih-tai chung-yung t'ung-su yen-yi (hereafter Yang-chia-fu), with a preface by Chi Chen-lun.⁵ In contrast, the Ti Ch'ing novels to be discussed in this paper, viz. Wu-hu p'ing-hsi (hereafter P'ing-hsi), Wu-hu p'ing-nan (P'ing-nan) and Wan-hua lou, are publications of the Chia-ch'ing period (1796-1820). It was at this time that the saga of Ti Ch'ing first received full-scale fictional treatment, although it was mentioned as a subject for storytellers in Lo Yeh's Tsui-weng t'an-lu and subsequently embodied in drama. With the exception of Yang-chia-fu all the above-mentioned military romances remain very popular, and they provide a double advantage for discussion in that, if we add Shui-hu chuan, the romances about the Sung generals form as much an unbroken period of history as the romances of the T'ang and that, since their dates of first publication are at least roughly ascertainable, they enable us to chart the evolution of the genre with some degree of assurance.

With the exception of Shui-hu chuan and Feng-shen yen-yi (though they are usually categorized under different genres),⁶ the military romance has received little scholarly attention. But it is usually neglected for the wrong reasons. Ch'ing scholars have frequently called attention to the absurd distortions of history to be seen in military romances,⁷ and the prejudice still prevails insofar as the more reliable chronicles are invariably regarded with greater critical respect. But in departing from history, the military romancers are not so much willfully ignorant of history (though many of them, I would gather, were not well educated) as obedient to the dictates of the genre. To judge the military romance by the standards of history is to misapprehend its character. I would maintain that the genre has suffered as a whole not because it has failed the demands of history, but because it has failed to explore fully its possibilities as fiction.

Even the popular chronicle, of course, has to be ultimately judged by the standards of fiction. Like the military romance, it draws to a significant extent upon a common heritage of hero-legends irrespective of whether these legends already existed in a written form or remained in a fluid state as oral tradition, and it has to aim at fullness of fictional detail if it is to rise above being a mere recompilation of available historical facts in more popular language. Tung Chou lieh-kuo chih, a most reliable chronicle, has been deplored precisely for its dry recital of crowded facts which leaves no room for the vivid re-creation of character and event. San-kuo-chih yen-yi, on the other hand, is highly praised because it frequently meets the challenge of fiction. In narrating such events as the Battle of Red Cliff and Liu Pei's three visits to Chu-ko Liang's retreat, Lo Kuan-chung has first of all employed the arts of fiction to create an illusion of reality (and in this respect the good novelist is no different from the good biographer or historian), and secondly, he has drawn upon legend and folklore. Though logically there is no reason why the legendary material should be so favored, in nearly all good historical novels it is this material which has received the most extensive elaboration.⁸ It seems that unless he had received a historical episode in a legendary form, the chronicler could not on his own initiative develop it at great length.

The tendency to elaborate upon legendary material can equally be observed in the military romance. Though their source materials differ to the extent that the chronicler relies far more upon official and anecdotal history than the military romancer, the latter is also at his best when, in his portrayal of a hero, he can draw upon a legend of human significance. The legendary hero is usually idealized: he is braver and more virtuous than his historic counterpart and he comes upon stranger adventures and suffers worse tribulations at the hands of blacker villains. But to a reader of fiction, it matters little whether a given legend agrees or disagrees with the hero's official biography; what matters is that, thanks to the rich mytho-realistic episodes provided by the legend, the hero may emerge as a real person in a real setting even though his character may in the process become simplified. Since the hero's official biography usually contains little information about his childhood and youth, the legend is of special service to the romancer (as to the chronicler) in investing his early years with an abundance of incident and detail. Little wonder that in most romances and chronicles the youthful adventures of the hero provide the most compelling narrative. (The military romancer was often a legend-maker in his own right. If his hero had attracted little folkloric attention, he could borrow episodes from other hero-legends and concoct a biography of his youth which, if it were not too synthetic, could in time become accepted as a legend.)

In a military romance, however, once the hero has emerged from obscurity, his career tends to be stereotyped since it is now mainly identified with military action. (In a good chronicle, a hero's historical career can be as interesting as his legendary youth.) Committed to a recital of his military exploits, the author now has to provide the details of a campaign for which neither the historical nor the legendary sources provide sufficient information. He must invent the circumstances of every battle, but usually his inventions betray a derivative character. I suppose it was the dynastic storytellers who first conventionalized the description of warfare to be seen in Chinese fiction, though the conventional battle, insofar as it focuses attention on two warriors in a stylized combat, also betrays the influence of the stage representation of military engagements.⁹ In their subsequent inventions and innovations, the military romancers have further exaggerated the conventional character of warfare in the direction of fantasy.

In a military romance, therefore, two types of material wrap around the core of historical truth: legendary and fantastic. If the hero-legend opposes good and evil in an unambiguous conflict and simplifies history in the direction of melodrama, the campaigns themselves embellish history in the spirit of fantasy. The two modes do not necessarily mix. If the plots hatched by a villain to trap a hero make for good melodrama, the fantasy of warfare disrupts that melodrama to the extent that the hero will be for the duration engrossed in the military business at hand. To the author of a standard military romance, the legends and intrigues prepare for, and provide a diverting respite from, the campaigns, which are regarded as the main attraction of his work; but to a modern reader less impressed by fantastic warfare, it is precisely the lengthy campaigns which prevent the author from developing to the full the melodramatic potential of the hero-legend. By the Chia-ch'ing period, when the author of P'ing-hsi subordinates military fantasy to melodrama in full realization that melodrama is intrinsically more exciting than the specialized kinds of interest warfare offers, he is effecting the transformation of the military romance.

I. THE EARLY ROMANCES; MAGIC WARFARE

If the six extant p'ing-hua of the Yuan dynasty are fairly representative of the oral narrators of history in their subject-matter if not in their artistry, then it would seem that the split between popular chronicle and military romance had become apparent long before any novel was compiled or printed. These p'ing-hua fall into at least three types of narrative. Ch'in ping liu-kuo p'ing-hua is a popular chronicle with a military emphasis, but it conforms to the outline of the known facts of history with minimal stylization in the direction of a military romance. Wu-tai-shih p'ing-hua, while also a military chronicle, pays particular attention to the legendary youth of its several prominent heroes (this emphasis remains characteristic of subsequent narratives of the Five Dynasties period as witness the long recital of Chao K'uang-yin's career prior to his accession to the throne in both Nan-Sung chih-chuan and Fei-lung ch'üan-chuan).¹⁰Yüeh Yi t'u-Ch'i ch'i-kuo ch'un-ch'iu hou-chi, however, is already a pure if embryonic military romance with its emphasis on magic warfare and its total disregard of historical accuracy in its recital of the career of Sun Pin after his cruel mutilation by his rival in military wizardry, P'ang Chüan The ch'ien-chi of Ch'i-kuo ch'un-ch'iu, which must have been about their feud, is unfortunately not extant, but on the evidence of a later military romance, Sun P'ang yen-yi it must have been fully as fantastic as its sequel. Wu Wang fa Chou p'ing-hua, too, is notable for its tendency toward military romance.¹¹

Judging by the inadequate evidence of these p'ing-hua, then, it would seem that, whereas storytellers were relatively restrained in their embellishment of history for well-documented periods like those of the Three Kingdoms and Five Dynasties, they, like the romancers after them, tended to resort to wholesale invention of a fantastic character in their treatment of shadowy periods or celebrated figures about whom there is actually little historic information. And though we cannot be sure how much of that invention was actually folklore, the storytellers appeared especially fond of assigning fantastic deeds to characters long identified in the popular mind for their prescience and magic powers (Sun Pin, Chiang Tzu-ya, and, to a lesser extent, Chu-ko Liang). To account for their wizardry, Ch'i-kuo ch'un-ch'iu hou-chi assigns to Sun Pin and P'ang Chüan a common teacher, the celestial Kuei-ku-tzu. The latter thus appears to be an archetypal figure since in subsequent romances about the T'ang and Sung, many heroes would undergo a period of celestial tutelage before rising to fame on the battlefield.

To turn from p'ing-hua to novel-length fiction, we must first reckon with San-kuo-chih t'ung-su yen-yi. It was the earliest novel to appear in print, and scholars are agreed that, of all the romances traceable to the authorship of Lo Kuan-chung, it bears the closest resemblance to his original version. Though a popular chronicle in form and intent, the work contains elements of the military romance and must have proved highly useful to later military romancers as the first complete manual of conventional (i.e., non-supernatural) warfare. In the novel a general exchanges blows with another and may adopt certain ruses to overpower him. Aside from pitched battles, one may stealthily conduct a night attack or stage an ambush at a narrow pass where enemy troops will have little chance to escape. The military counselor (chün-shih) plans somewhat more advanced forms of strategy. Chu-ko Liang, the paragon of all counselors, however, at times resorts to magic or invokes supernatural aid, as do the sorcerers (leaders of the Yellow Turbans) and barbarians (Meng Huo and his allies). It is noteworthy that the later romancers gave the freest rein to their imagination when describing warfare involving precisely such counselors, sorcerers, and barbarian chieftains of magic power.

These romancers, however, have not enlarged the stock of conventional tricks and stratagems to be seen in San-kuo; nor have they advanced beyond the conventional realism of its battle scenes, though in some romances with descriptive passages in verse, especially the undeservedly neglected Ta-T'ang. Ch'in-wang tz'u-hua, that conventional realism is decked out in pageantry and charged with considerable excitement.¹² On the whole, descriptions of battle remain stereotyped in later romances, though their authors have considerably enhanced the prowess of their warriors and diversified their weaponry.

Compared with San-kuo, Shui-hu chuan, another work traceable to Lo Kuan-chung, shows a far wider gap between realism and fantasy. Its early chapters detail the pre-Liangshan careers of individual heroes with realistic distinction, and if it had continued in the picaresque vein, it would not have become a military romance. But as it is, it is far more a military romance than San-kuo since by chapter 33 it begins to depict in earnest the Liangshan band's major military operations, at first against and then for the government. Even though two of its expeditions—against T'ien Hu and Wang Ch'ing—are later additions written under the influence of other military romances, the campaigns that take place before chapter 71 are already none too distinguished and cater to an audience which finds the depiction of war intrinsically satisfying even in the absence of other types of serious interest. The novel makes use of all the standard ruses and stratagems seen in San-kuo and places greater stress on the magical element. It further widens the split between muscle and brains (already noticeable in San-kuo) by having Wu Yung and Chu Wu, inheriting the mantle of Chu-ko Liang, map out each battle to be fought by the brave heroes. Among its other features copied by later military romancers are the close bond between the suffering hero of unshaken loyalty (Sung Chiang) and his rowdy companion of anarchic temper (Li K'uei), and the idea that, when the government is dominated by corrupt ministers, it is not dishonorable to occupy a mountain and turn bandit.¹³

Both San-kuo-chih t'ung-su yen-yi and the Kuo Hsün edition of the 100-chapter Shui-hu chuan were printed in the Chia-ching period. In view of the large quantity of novels produced subsequently during the Ming, it is understandable that modern scholars have begun to assess individually only such famous titles as Hsi-yu chi, Chin P'ing Mei, and Feng-shen yen-yi. Especially, the many works of historical fiction, with all their competing versions, are still awaiting critical attention, despite the pioneering efforts of such scholars as Sun K'ai-ti and Liu Ts'un-yan to straighten out their bibliographic data. And since this body of historic fiction has earlier appeared as topics for storytellers in Tsui-weng t'an-lu and provided themes for Yuan and Ming tsa-chü, the task of evaluation is rendered more difficult by the need to study it in comparative terms with reference to an oral tradition informing both written fiction and drama.

Nevertheless, through all this period of growth for historic fiction, we may single out for honor the name of Hsiung Ta-mu (Hsiung Chung-ku), an industrious author and editor of the Chia-ching period. He stood squarely in the tradition of Lo Kuan-chung and, in the absence of reliable information concerning the interim period, he must be regarded as a worthy successor responsible for a large body of historical and pseudo-historical fiction, much of it traceable in earlier form to Lo. T'ang-shu chih-chuan, Nan-Sung chih-chuan, Pei-Sung chih-chuan, and Ta-Sung chung-hsing yen-yi are all his compilations. An examination of these works on microfilm leads me to the belief that Hsiung was a popular historian who genuinely wanted to edify the less educated public (including juvenile readers) of his time. By and large he adhered to history, though legendary material that would enhance narrative interest was freely admitted. In comparison with Shuo Yüeh, a military romance in the ripe manner, Ta-Sung chung-hsing yen-yi appears a remarkably sober narrative of history, and since no precedents to this work are known, Hsiung was most probably its original author.

There is, however, one exception to my description of Hsiung's work: Pei-Sung chih-chuan, which has all the features of a military romance. According to Hsiung's preface, it has incorporated a work given in short title as Yang-chia-fu, among other unspecified romances (chuan). Hsiung must have used this because there was no detailed historic record of the Yang family to fall back on, and the Wan-li edition of Yang-chia-fu must also have been an adaptation of the same old source, in all probability a more faithful one, though we cannot know whether the Taoist idea of abjuring government service to cultivate oneself, conspicuous in the new work but absent from Pei-Sung chih-chuan, also informs that version.¹⁴ A full comparison of the two extant novels of the Yang family must await another occasion, but it may be noted that, whereas Yang-chia-fu gives a full account of that family, Hsiung has assigned the early career of Yang Yeh to Nan-Sung chih-chuan and begins its sequel with the life story of Hu-yen Tsan, another Northern Sung general of legendary fame, and that the later campaigns of the Yang family, ineptly narrated in Yang-chia-fu, are omitted altogether by Hsiung in favor of a grand expedition against the Ta-ta Kingdom.¹⁵

In any event, the old version of Yang-chia-fu must have been a seminal military romance both for its depiction of the tribulations of the Yang family despite its indispensable service to the throne and for its emphasis on magic warfare. Historically, Yang Yeh's matchless bravery has made him an object of envy, and his final defeat and suicide in a foredoomed battle against the Liao are brought about through the machinations of his commanding generals P'an Mei (P'an Jen-mei in fiction) and Wang Shen Even his sixth son, Yang Yen-chao, who succeeds his father as a guardian of the frontier, is a repeated victim of calumny and imperial reprimand.¹⁶ Out of such historical facts it is inevitable that storytellers should have woven a saga of outstanding generals loyal to the throne but meeting with repeated slander and punishment. The influence of this saga on the Liangshan legend must have been considerable if we assume that Yang Yeh and his sons had exercised the popular imagination at an earlier date than had Sung Chaing. This hypothesis at least explains why Sung, a minor rebel, could have been transformed into a tragic hero of outstanding military achievement leading repeated expeditions against the enemies of the state. And we may further maintain that the Hsüeh family as we know it in fiction must have been patterned after the Yang family since, historically, Hsüeh Jen-kuei's long career was sustained by imperial favor except for a few minor setbacks. The Yang saga must have also strengthened the role of villainy in the lives of Ti Ch'ing and Yüeh Fei as subsequently retold in fiction.

Judging by its subsequent adaptations, the old version of Yang-chia-fu must have delighted in magic warfare, especially in the form of mazes (chen). Such chen already play a conspicuous role in Ch'i-kuo ch'un-ch'iu hou-chi so that we can be sure that narrators of certain periods of history had long capitalized on magic warfare as a regular feature of their storytelling. But still, to trace the increasing prominence of such warfare in several formative military romances is to illuminate an essential aspect of the evolving genre.

In conventional warfare chen refers to the formation of troops in a set manner in preparation for battle. Whereas the duel between two generals on horseback is mainly a contest of physical strength and dexterity, the kind of engagement involving the array of troops in a prescribed manner usually invites the exercise of brains rather than brawn. The preparation of chen and the methods of throwing them into confusion are supposedly recorded in military manuals.¹⁷ We often read, therefore, that a general will on purpose set up a chen to test his opponent's military erudition. While to recognize a chen is tantamount to asserting one's ability to confound it, a general really skilled in warfare will be able instantly to transform his chen into another one so as to confuse and trap the attacking troops. Ten numerically ordered arrays, starting with the simplest snake formation (Yi-tzu ch'ang-she chen) are frequently mentioned in historical novels. But even though such formations employ only conventional soldiers, nevertheless the symbolic language used in their description suggests a utilization of esoteric lore drawn presumably from the Book of Changes and the yin-yang and Taoist schools of learning. In Chapter 36 of San-kuo, Ts'ao Ts'ao's general Ts'ao Jen sets up a chen to test the military knowledge of Liu Pei Liu Pei's counselor, Hsü Shu, however, is learned in warfare, and tells his lord (in the somewhat free translation of C. H. Brewitt-Taylor).

The arrangement is called “The Eight [Locked] Gates,” and each “gate” has a name. If you enter by one of the three named “Birth,” “Bellevue” and “Expanse” you succeed; if by one of the gates “Wounds,” “Fear” or “Annihilation,” you sustain injuries. The other two “gates” are named “Obstacles” and “Death,” and to enter them means the end. Now, the eight “gates” are all there quite correct, the central “key-post” is lacking and the formation can be thrown into confusion by entry from the south-east and exit due west.¹⁸

The description is none too clear, though we are aware that the symbolic gates refer to points of varying degrees of vulnerability in the formation. In subsequent military romances what is figurative in the description here will become literal so that in its simplest form a magical maze is nothing but an enclosure with gates allowing for entrance and exit. Inside this enclosure usually stands a platform or elevated structure (t'ai or chiang t'ai) which serves as its keypost. A pennant or pennants of symbolic color and sinister significance rise high above the t'ai, visible to attackers outside the enclosure. The presiding general or sorcerer, stationed atop the t'ai, directs the military and magical defense of the chen, and he usually descends to engage in actual combat when the enemy seems to be gaining an upper hand in his struggle against the soldiery and/or magic forces in the chen.

Chu-ko Liang has been long celebrated in literature for his setting up of a pa-chen-t'u, which, I suppose, is something of a Maginot Line against potential invaders of his country. In San-kuo this is described as a formation of rocks, but these rocks are so arranged as to actuate the mysterious forces of the universe. Following his smashing victory over Liu Pei's invading forces, the Wu general Lu Sun leads his army into Shu territory and comes upon these rocks. He sees sinister vapors hovering above them, but he enters the maze nevertheless and would perish if he were not guided out of it by Chu-ko's kind-hearted father-in-law.¹⁹ I suspect that the recital of this episode by Sung and Yuan specialists in the Three Kingdoms period must have stimulated their competitors to make up stories about similar mazes for their own dynastic cycles.

Shui-hu chuan has far more occasions than San-kuo to describe both types of chen. In chapter 76 Sung Chiang sets up a Nine-constellation Eight-trigram Formation (Chiu-kung pa-kua chen) against the imperial army of T'ung Kuan. The verse passages descriptive of the pageantry of the array praise its utilization of the mysterious forces of nature, but actually Sung Chiang resorts to no magic because T'ung Kuan's army is easily routable even in the absence of supernatural aid. In chapters 87-88, Sung Chiang, then leading an expedition against the Liao, again prepares the Nine-constellation Formation to display his might.²⁰ In his turn, the king of the Liao throws in all his forces to form the T'ai-yi hun t'ien-hsiang chen, which proves impregnable. The goddess Chiu-t'ien Hsüan-nü, who had earlier given Sung Chiang a heavenly book (T'ien-shu) in chapter 42, now tells him how to destroy the chen. It is duly destroyed and the king of the Liao surrenders to the Sung. In subsequent romances the foreign king or chieftain usually sets up one or two major chen whose destruction spells the grand finale of a major campaign.

Neither Pei-Sung chih-chuan nor Yang-chia-fu claims the literary distinction of Shui-hu chuan, but thanks to Peking opera, the average Chinese is far more familiar with the Seventy-two Heavenly-gate Formation (Ch'i-shih-erh-tso t'ien-men-chen)²¹ set up by the queen-dowager Hsiao against the Sung forces than with any of the formations prepared by Sung Chiang or his opponents. The Heavenly-gate Formation, to be sure, is far more remarkable on three counts. First, the queen dowager not only throws into the complex network of mazes all her military resources but enlists the assistance of five neighboring states also, each sending fifty thousand troops headed by a prince, princess, or marshal. Second, some of the mazes forming the major chen are distinctly weird or grotesque in their set-up, though in this respect they merely confirm a trend already observable in Ch'i-kuo ch'un-ch'iu hou-chi. (In one maze, for example, a princess stands in the nude, holding in her hand a skeleton or part of a skeleton, and she is supposed to burst into crying whenever the enemy troops enter; seven pregnant women are buried under the ground of another maze and they are supposed to be able to suck the souls out of the entering troops.)²² Third, the human battle around the Heavenly-gate Formation actually represents a feud between two of the Eight Taoist Immortals, Chung-li Ch'üan and Lü Tung-pin. Chung-li once berates Lü for his licentiousness; out of pique Lu descends to earth to help the queen dowager Hsiao just because Chung-li has already foretold the failure of her struggle against the Sung emperor Chen-tsung. This feud would certainly seem to echo that between the rival wizards Sun Pin and P'ang Chüan. But far more importantly, the T'ien-men chen episode anticipates the involvement of a far greater number of celestials and demons in Feng-shen yen-yi, the first full-blown military romance of single authorship.

This episode (given identically in Pei-Sung chih-chuan and Yang-chia-fu) is of further great interest in that a more terse account of the same story is found in Tung-yu chi, a book about the Eight Immortals now forming part of the omnibus volume Ssu yu chi but enjoying an independent existence during the Ming. Its earliest extant edition, its authorship attributed to Wu Yüan-t'ai by the publisher Yu Hsiang-tou, dates from the Wan-li period. But since, judging by its style and format, the work must have been composed earlier,²³ and since it has certainly drawn upon a folklore of some antiquity, it is difficult to say whether the T'ien-men chen episode originally belonged to the Yang saga or to the legend of Lü Tung-pin. While the altercation between the two Immortals appears very natural in Tung-yu chi because it is immediately preceded by an account of Lü's escapades, the same quarrel is quite arbitrarily introduced in the novels of the Yang family and the reader remains in the dark about its antecedents. On the other hand, the battle against the T'ien-men chen would seem to enjoy far greater relevance in the Yang saga than in the lore of the Eight Immortals. Whatever the eventual scholarly solution to this problem, it is of crucial importance to note the context of Taoist mythology for the development toward fantasy of the Yang saga, which must have begun in the Northern Sung without the palpable element of the supernatural.

The close kinship between Taoist lore and military romance is even more apparent in Feng-shen yen-yi. If its author is indeed Lu Hsi-hsing, as Liu Ts'un-yan maintains,²⁴ then we can see why he commands incomparable freedom and the requisite erudition for the creation of this massive military romance. While Lu has adapted portions of Lieh-kuo chih-chuan, a popular chronicle, and inherited an oral tradition as represented by Wu Wang fa Chou p'ing-hua, at the same time he has consciously followed the tradition of Ch'i-kuo ch'un-ch'iu hou-chi, Shui-hu chuan, and the novels of the Yang family and developed the legend of the conquest of the Shang in the direction of military fantasy. With his erudition in Taoist and Buddhist lore, he would have no difficulty in making up the names and deeds of a great many of his characters, who come in all sizes and shapes, each with his distinctive magic weapons and powers. Nevertheless, with all his inventiveness, the major element of his plot—the feuding of two sects of Taoist immortals in support of the mundane struggle between the Shang and Chou—is squarely in the tradition, as is his increasing reliance on magical formations in his depiction of that struggle. The celestial and demonic friends of the Shang set up altogether three major chen (the Ten-exterminating Maze, the Celestial-slaying Maze, and the Myriad-celestial Maze) and two lesser ones (the Yellow River Maze and the Plague Maze). In contrast to mazes in earlier works, the majority of these chen are conspicuous for the absence or merely residual presence of soldiery: what counts is their magic equipment. The Celestial-slaying Maze, presided over by T'ung-t'ien Chiao-chu, the principal deity siding with the Shang, is an enclosure bare of equipment except for four magic swords, each guarding one side of the wall. But, on the other hand, the Myriad-celestial Maze appears empty of magic paraphernalia following the routine destruction of three of its constituent chen: it is simply a battlefield in which the myriad gods and demons engage in mortal combat without reference to any specific formation that has to be destroyed.

All subsequent military romancers have adopted the defense and destruction of a chen as a standard feature of their work, but in their failure to surpass the author of Feng-shen yen-yi in inventiveness, their descriptions appear derivative and eventually perfunctory, and they have to exploit other sources of interest to keep the genre alive. Ironically, the only novelist who has turned this standard feature of a military romance to good literary account is Li Ju-chen. In Ching-hua yüan he describes with learned humor and vivid realistic detail four allegorical mazes illustrative of the dangers of drinking, sex, greed, and anger.

II. HEROES AND VILLAINS

Having traced the growth of the military romance till Feng-shen yen-yi by reference to one of its standard attractions, we shall now examine its other features in a less chronological fashion by focusing mainly on the romances of the T'ang and Sung periods. San-kuo, Shui-hu chuan, and Feng-shen yen-yi all present a great many warriors. But if we were to single out for each work a principal hero, then the respective logical choices should be Chu-ko Liang, Sung Chiang, and Chiang Tzu-ya—all military commanders who are involved little if at all in actual fighting. Starting with Pei-Sung chih-chuan, however, every cycle of T'ang-Sung romance owed its rise to its fascination with a general distinguished for bravery and prowess, even though that fascination would inevitably extend to his sons and grandsons, who are in many cases entirely fictitious. The principal heroes of historical interest in these romances are, therefore, Ch'in Shu-pao, Hsüeh Jen-kuei, Yang Yeh, Yang Yen-chao,²⁵ Ti Ch'ing, and Yüeh Fei. Each was accorded the honor of principal hero clearly because he had already become the subject of legend, but it certainly bespeaks the Chinese predilection for a definite type of hero that the man of prowess in each case should also be a loyal servant of the throne and, in some instances, a filial son as well.

The choice of a principal hero does not always abide by the verdict of history. While Yüeh Fei is without a doubt the preeminent hero of his time, Ch'in Shu-pao is but one of many flourishing during the late Sui and early T'ang. Ch'in and Yü-ch'ih Kung are equally distinguished as warriors, and judging by the evidence of Yuan drama, Yü-ch'ih certainly appeared to be a greater favorite with the people.²⁶ And in actual history, both Li Ching and Li Chi (Hsü Chi or Hsü Shih-chi, better known in fiction as Hsü Mao-kung) are statesmanlike generals of greater stature and military achievement. Their official biographies are fuller and they figure more frequently in the anecdotal and fictional literature of the T'ang period.²⁷ But precisely because the achievements of these men of greater intellectual powers are more difficult for the popular mind to comprehend, Li Chi is assigned the position of a prescient military counselor (chün-shih) in Shuo T'ang, while Li Ching suffers an even worse fate—he becomes a Taoist immortal only intermittently concerned with T'ang affairs. In both cases, a comparison with Sui T'ang yen-yi and its predecessors shows that the author of Shuo T'ang has actually pruned the available legendary material to make these two heroes fit into certain stereotypes of the military romance.

The principal heroes share certain basic experiences in their youth.²⁸ We are usually told of their astral origin, the unusual circumstances attending their birth and infancy, their tutelage under a human or celestial master, their acquisition of a steed and weapons which will stand them in good stead in their years of military glory, their sworn brotherhood with several lifelong friends and their persecution by villains enjoying powerful positions at court, and their initial participation in a public contest which attracts more than transient attention. Thus Yüeh Fei is the Garuda (a celestial attribution suggested by his names).²⁹ His village is flooded soon after his birth, causing the death of his father. He floats with his mother to another village where he makes friends with four boys who serve him loyally as sworn brothers and comrades-in-arms. He is taught and adopted as a son by Chou T'ung (since most such teachers are celestials, the author of Shuo Yüeh has made the historic Chou T'ung also the teacher of Lin Ch'ung and Lu Chün-yi, among the mightiest heroes of an earlier generation.)³⁰ He conquers a wondrous serpent which turns into a lance (it is eventually reclaimed by a monster in a river). He marries and goes to the capital with some rowdy friends (a recurrent experience in the hero-legends, because these friends will involve the more prudent hero in some disaster), and receives as a gift a magic sword once owned by Hsüeh Jen-kuei. As a candidate for the highest honors in the military examination, he earns the patronage of an aging but loyal general (a chung-ch'en) but at the same time contracts the hatred of three co-examiners, who are all treacherous ministers (chien-ch'en). At the examination he is goaded into killing a prince, causing a riot in the capital.

As with Yüeh Fei, all principal heroes are attended by companion-heroes. Some of these have legends of their own, but many do not. In Shuo T'ang, Ch'in Shu-pao pledges brotherhood with thirty-eight heroes; many of these, like Hsü Mao-kung, Ch'eng Yao-chin, and Lo Ch'eng.³¹ play important roles in their own right. In his humble position as a cook-soldier (huo-t'ou chün), Hsüeh Jen-kuei has eight sworn brothers of lesser ability who stay in his service. Ti Ch'ing has four sworn brothers and two attendant generals who go with him on every campaign. Among these companion heroes, the most lovable is the comic hero of bandit origin—coarse, honest, and extremely resilient. Though he is often seen in the guise of a clown, he voices the sentiment of disaffection or rebellion against an ungrateful emperor.

It is an article of faith with military romancers that though their heroes may die a tragic death, their sons and grandsons and their descendants many generations hence will carry forward the heroic spark, ready to re-emerge from the greenwood to serve the dynasty in crisis. In the novels of the Hsüeh family, the sons, the grandsons, and the great-grandsons of the founding heroes of the T'ang—Ch'in Shu-pao, Yü-ch'ih Kung, Ch'eng Yao-chin, Hsü Mao-kung, et al.—continue to serve the dynasty until the Wu Tse-t'ien faction is completely exterminated. It so happens that Hsu Ching-yeh, the grandson of Li Chi, did start an abortive rising against Empress Wu, resulting in the almost total extinction of the Hsü clan. But according to Fan-T'ang yen-yi, two of Hsü Ching-yeh's sons have escaped unharmed to continue their rebellion. Fen-chuang lou, a Ch'ing novel which can bear no relation to the work of the same title attributed to Lo Kuan-chung, chooses to celebrate Lo Ch'eng's descendants, Lo Ts'an and Lo K'un, but sharing their honors and exploits are nearly all the scions of the founding heroes, including those of Li Ching, Ma San-pao, and Yin K'ai-shan.

Because Shuo Yüeh was in a sense written as a continuation of Shui-hu chuan, the roster of heroes rallying to the cause of patriotism, mostly under Yüeh Fei, is especially impressive. Fighting against the Chin invaders are the scions of Chu-ko Liang and Kuan Yü (the Three Kingdoms period), of Lo Ch'eng (the Sui-T'ang period), and of Cheng En, Kao Huai-te, Yang Yeh,³² and Ti Ch'ing (Northern Sung). In addition, Hu-yen Cho Juan Hsiao-erh, Yen Ch'ing, and An Tao-ch'üan, formerly of the Liangshan band, are still alive, and the sons of Kung-sun Sheng, Tung P'ing, Han T'ao, and the Vegetable Gardener Chang Ch'ing also contribute to the war effort. Little wonder that with these replicas of famed heroes assisting Yüeh Fei and his historic companions, the Chin invaders are easily routed. After the death of Yüeh Fei, the children of his followers claim our attention so that, in effect, the authors celebrate two generations of such fictitious heroes.

In reading the romances about the T'ang and Sung periods, one gets the impression that a self-perpetuating community of heroes could be called upon to meet any national emergency. In auspicious times, they indeed serve with alacrity, but very often they are hampered by villainous commanders or treacherous ministers or both, so that, even if their campaigns are successful, their loyalty and devotion to the throne are nevertheless put to trial. Unlike Chiang Tzu-ya and Chu-ko Liang, who enjoy the complete trust of their superiors, they suffer imprisonment, torture, poisoning, exile, and at times the wholesale slaughter of their families. In the long run, of course, they or their survivors are duly restored to honor, but in the short run, they are the pawns of scheming villains determined to discredit them before the emperor.

In these romances there are few enlightened emperors. It is true that as the Prince of Ch'in, Li Shih-min merits the love and devotion of his followers; but his father is then emperor, as easily imposed upon by his sons and concubines as any emperor in Chinese history. And after Li Shih-min has ascended the throne, he shows none of his historic brilliance and is readily deceived by his uncle Li Tao-tsung, the determined enemy of Hsüeh Jen-kuei.³³ But for Yü-ch'ih Kung, who forfeits his life to remonstrate against the emperor, Hsüeh Jen-kuei would have been executed. He is eventually released from prison when a new crisis at the frontier requires his service. But the unmasked villain, Li Tao-tsung, is only nominally punished whereas the innocent heroes are too often maligned and suffer unmerited punishment. Both Yang Yen-chao and Ti Ch'ing rise from their supposed state of death (a ruse adopted to avoid further persecution by their enemies) only when a new invasion at the frontier makes their services indispensable.

In military romances, therefore, it is not the utterly evil and dissolute rulers that infuriate us. Few true heroes would serve a Chou-hsin, a Yang-ti, or an Empress Wu, and even if some are tragically caught in their web of tyranny, their plight is nevertheless understandable. It is the weak-willed, soft-eared emperor (hun-chün) who exasperates us with his fitful appreciation of the heroes, his forgetfulness of their past merits, and his proneness to punish them at the instance of his favorites in the harem and at court. This emperor is of course a stereotype designed to enhance our appreciation of the heroes' dogged loyalty, but the fact that this stereotype should have arisen and become accepted by readers amounts to a serious reflection on the absolute monarch. It implies that, living a life of ease surrounded by people intent on flattering and deluding him, even an emperor of good will cannot tell truth from falsehood, patriots from traitors. While the completely wicked emperors have lost their mandate of Heaven and invite their own overthrow, these blind emperors usually reign with a clear conscience. They are not openly attacked, and their acts of caprice and cruelty are to be endured by the heroes as best they can.

Sung Kao-tsung is in one sense a true emperor (chen-ming t'ien-tzu) since it is with Heaven's miraculous protection that he escapes alive from the Chin camps to serve as a rallying point for all loyalists. But once he sets up his quarters in Nanking, he lives a life of indolent hedonism and shows no interest whatever in regaining the lost territory. During the trials of Yüeh Fei, Yüeh Yün, and Chang Hsien, the authors of Shuo Yüeh carefully avoid mentioning Kao-tsung's name and we do not know whether he abets or deplores Ch'in Kuei's treachery. But at the same time the authors make it clear that every citizen in Hangchow is burning with indignation over the shameful trials. Could it be possible that the emperor has not heard, or that if he has heard, he could let the heroes die? Later, Ch'in Kuei and his wife are hounded to death by their own consciences; they have not received a word of reprimand from the emperor. Yet precisely because the authors have shielded Kao-tsung, his crime in countenancing the heinous deeds of Ch'in Kuei appears all the more inexcusable.

On the surface, therefore, an emperor rarely turns against a hero on his own initiative unless his pride is affronted or his kinsmen are killed; the actual crime of persecution is assigned to several kinds of villains whose hatred for the hero is usually explainable in personal or supernatural terms. Hate, then, sets in motion nearly all the events in a military romance which make for melodrama. Though the principal hero (as contrasted with the comic hero) never thinks of retaliating against the emperor, he or his descendants are equally eager to clear his name and bring his enemies to justice. Hence the wheel of karma ceaselessly turns, and generations of heroes and villains are engaged in a feud. Ostensibly, the novelist laments this perpetual display of enmity. In a doggerel the author of Lo T'ung sao-pei records a sentiment shared by all military romancers:

Why should we keep on contracting enmity and hatred?
Vengeance begets new vengeance—when will this process ever end?
If we keep on tying these knots and make no attempt to loose them,
Generation after generation, the hatred will never cease.(34)

But in reality, he delights in exploiting the theme of hatred precisely for its melodramatic interest.

From Lucifer to Iago, the classic cause for hatred in Western literature is envy. To an objective observer, the envious person has little cause to harbor an undying hatred against one who surpasses him in goodness, knowledge, or beauty, but it precisely speaks for the meanness of his soul that he should do so. In military romances most villains have reasons closer to home for hating the hero, but subconsciously they are all envious. The classic case of envy in Chinese folklore is P'ang Chüan, who, as we have seen, hates the superior attainments of his fellow disciple Sun Pin. The author of Feng-shen yen-yi must be under the conscious influence of the legend in developing the feud between Chiang Tzu-ya and Shen Kung-pao, both disciples of Yüan-shih T'ien-tsun. Out of spite, Shen supports the Shang house just because Chiang Tzu-ya is leading an expedition against it. He persuades one after another of his numerous friends in the human, demonic, and celestial worlds to block Chiang's path. By the time he meets his doom (in chapter 84), he has incited three major confrontations between opposing camps of celestials.

A comic variety of the envious person is the small-minded general acutely aware of his own limitations and determined to obstruct the advancement of any man under him possessing greater merit. Such a person is Chang Shih-kuei, commander of the vanguard in T'ai-tsung's expedition against Korea. Serving under him is Hsüeh Jen-kuei, the young warrior in white who has earlier appeared to T'ai-tsung in a dream as his savior. In two Yuan tsa-chü Chang Shih-kuei has already appeared as a comic figure who suppresses Hsüeh's identity and claims all feats of valor as his own.³⁵ In Cheng-tung Chang Shih-kuei assigns all of Hsüeh's merits to his son-in-law, Ho Tsung-hsien, maintaining that the latter is indeed the young warrior in the emperor's dream. His transparent deception, however, neither impedes the progress of the expedition nor deters Hsüeh from achieving mighty deeds, and until he turns traitor, Chang Shih-kuei's villainy and the attempts made by Yü-ch'ih Kung and others to expose him provide some of the breeziest comedy to be seen in a military romance.

Chang Shih-kuei, his son-in-law, and three of his four sons are all punished with death. But even if they deserve their sentences, their survivors are now committed to a course of vengeance. The surviving daughter, a concubine of Li Tao-tsung, soon implicates Hsüeh in a capital crime, and Chang Chün-tso, a descendant of Chang Shih-kuei's surviving son, serving as a high minister under Kao-tsung and Empress Wu, succeeds in bringing about the execution by imperial order of the entire Hsüeh clan. The immediate cause, however, is that Hsüeh Kang, the unruly son of Hsüeh Ting-shan, has killed Chang's son, the bully Chang Pao. Many an implacable enemy of the hero, in fact, embarks on his course of villainy primarily to avenge the death of a son or a father. In Pei-Sung chih-chuan P'an Jen-mei, best known for his implacable hatred of the Yang family, also plots repeatedly against Hu-yen Tsan who has killed his son in battle. Because his father was justly executed by Ti Ch'ing's grandfather, Sun Hsiu wreaks vengeance upon the Ti family, and with the cooperation of his father-in-law, the powerful minister P'ang Hung, succeeds in involving Ti Ch'ing in no end of trouble.

In their determination to kill Ti Ch'ing, P'ang Hung and Sun Hsiu eventually collaborate with the foreign government at war with China. They are willing to hurt their own country in order to satisfy their private vengeance. In military romances, traitors are usually the lowest of villains. In Pei-Sung chih-chuan, Wang Ch'in, a Chinese in the service of the Liao government, volunteers to serve as a secret agent at the Sung court.³⁶ He rises to the position of a prominent minister and does everything possible to injure the Yang family and other upright servants of the throne. According to Shuo Yüeh, Ch'in Kuei, serving under the Chin conquerors, is sent back to the Sung capital for the express purpose of gaining total victory for his masters. It is of further interest to note that both Wang Ch'in and Ch'in Kuei are described as clever and accomplished scholars; Ch'in Kuei is a chuang-yüan.

As a traitor, Ch'in Kuei's hatred for Yueh Fei is perfectly explainable. But in a military romance, all such cases of deep hatred which cannot be assigned a personal motive are usually traceable to a feud existing between hero and villain in an earlier celestial or mundane existence. Thus Ch'in Kuei's crime is blamed on his wife, who is a heavenly bat (Nü-t'u-fu)³⁷ prior to her exile on earth. She gives forth a fart while the Buddha is expounding the Lotus Sutra, and the enraged Garuda (Yüeh Fei), also in the service of the Buddha, forthwith kills her. For his crime, the Garuda is exiled, while the Bat also seeks human form to avenge herself. In the same novel (chapter 73) we are shown a vision of Hell in which both Ch'in Kuei and his wife are suffering the worst possible torments along with other traitors in Chinese history. We are further informed that after three years of such torment Ch'in's wife will face the butcher's knife in endless reincarnations as a sow. Now if Ch'in's wife were really a minor celestial being with just cause against the Garuda, then her punishment would appear too severe. But since Hsiung Ta-mu had already described her suffering in Hell in Ta-Sung Chung-hsing yen-yi,³⁸ Ch'ien T'sai and Chin Feng have most probably superimposed a tale of their own invention about the celestial feud upon the older tale without seeing their inherent contradictions.

If a grievously wronged individual has left no heir to avenge his death, it is possible for him to be reborn into his enemy's family and plot its destruction. Fan Li-hua, a warrior of great magical prowess, detests her fiancé, the hideous Yang Fan, and deserts her own country (the Ha-mi Kingdom) to marry Hsüeh Ting-shan.³⁹ Later, she and her adopted son, Hsüeh Ying-lung, kill Yang Fan in battle. In retaliation, Yang Fan is reborn as Hsüeh Kang, Li-hua's own son, who brings death and disaster upon the Hsüeh family, even though he himself lives on to exemplify the Hsüeh tradition of loyal service to the T'ang house.

Against the “soft-eared” emperor and evil ministers, the principal hero usually has no recourse except to submit to the test of time to vindicate his integrity and honor. In the military romance, therefore, the forthright hero uneducated in Confucian decorum is heard as the principal voice of protest against such authorities. A favorite with storytellers' audiences, this savage and eventually comic hero has been early endowed with a recognizable personality. In San-kuo chih p'ing-hua, Chang Fei appears as the dominant hero, and it is Lo Kuan-chung's better sense of historic proportion which assigns him a position of lesser importance in San-kuo yen-yi. Li K'uei appears as the favorite character in the extant Yuan plays about the Liang-shan heroes, and in Shui-hu chuan he is probably the most completely individualized character. Subsequently, this archetype appears as Cheng En in Nan-Sung chih-chuan and Fei-lung ch'üan-chúan, as Chiao Tsan and Meng Liang in the novels of the Yang family, as Niu Kao in Shuo Yüeh, as Ch'eng Yao-chin (and Yü-ch'ih Kung) in Shuo T'ang and its sequels, and as Chiao T'ing-kuei (Chiao Tsan's son) in the novels about Ti Ch'ing.

In Shui-hu chuan, Li K'uei repeatedly urges Sung Chiang to kill the evil ministers and assume the throne himself. In moments of anger and humiliation, his comic successors have similarly echoed the sentiment. Thus Niu Kao to his friends, after the riot at the capital: “Don't get panicky. Let's turn back and slaughter our way into the city. Let's first kill all the treacherous ministers and capture Pien-liang. Elder Brother Yüeh will then take over as emperor and the four of us will become marshals. Won't that be much better? Then we won't ever have to suffer under those rascals, and who would still have to compete for top honors in the military examination?”⁴⁰ After Yüeh Fei's death, Niu Kao exhorts his comrades, “Our elder brother has been treacherously put to death by evil ministers. Let's march to Lin-an, seize the traitors, cut them into ten thousand pieces each, and avenge our elder brother.”⁴¹ But it is the spirit of Yüeh Fei, forever loyal, who forcibly stops them from crossing the Yangtze River and carrying out their threat. In consequence, two of his sworn brothers immediately commit suicide rather than live on in shame:

They saw that Yüeh Fei was in great anger. He waved his sleeves; instantly a mighty storm overturned three or four ships, and the rest could not proceed. Yü Hua-lung shouted, “Since our elder brother does not allow us to carry out our task of revenge, how could I have the face to live on!” With one loud yell, he drew his sword and killed himself. Ho Yüan-ch'ing also cried, “Since Brother Yü has gone, I will join him.” He raised his silver ch'ui and smashed his own head, and he, too, was dead. Seeing that two of his comrades had committed suicide, Niu Kao burst forth into a loud fit of crying and jumped into the Yangtze River.⁴²

But Niu Kao does not die. He lives on to guide the younger generation of heroes against the Chin and to intercede for the full restoration of honors due the Yüeh family. Despite his bandit origin and his anarchic temper, he is further stereotyped as a fu-chiang (lucky general), who can survive in the battlefield against the greatest odds. In Shuo T'ang the misadventures of Ch'eng Yao-chin as a fu-chiang are even more fully delineated for their comic value. (While suffering from a severe case of diarrhea, he faces an enemy general and beats him off with his axe. Then Ch'eng goes into the woods to relieve himself. The enemy comes upon him while the squatting hero is completely off guard. Nevertheless, trousers in hand, he manages to slay his opponent.)⁴³ Moreover, he is a prankster and buffoon, and dies laughing at the ripe old age of 120. To what extent the subjection of the anarchic and rebellious hero to a deliberate comic treatment is due to the storytellers' and novelists' fear of government censorship and persecution is difficult to say. But it would seem that so long as the principal hero pledges complete loyalty to the throne, the comic hero is rendered relatively harmless despite his outspoken criticism of the emperor and the government.

III. THE ROMANTIC ELEMENT

The sons (and daughters) of the principal heroes are a privileged lot. While their fathers suffer many hardships to reach their deserved eminence, they are early wafted to a celestial mountain to be taught military and magic arts by an immortal. Or else they have inherited a strength equal to or surpassing their fathers'. They have few adventures during their childhood, but they are all eager to prove their usefulness at the frontier, despite their mothers' apprehensions. To facilitate their rise, the heroes of an earlier generation will be conveniently besieged (usually, along with the emperor) by the enemy while a messenger, usually the fu-chiang, dashes to the capital with an urgent request to raise the siege. A new expeditionary force will be assembled, headed by the younger heroes. After the siege is broken, while the principal hero still exercises nominal commandership, his son usually supplants him as the military hero because of his greater command of magic. With psychological justification, therefore, the novelist often plays up the antagonism between father and son. The father (Hsüeh Jen-kuei, Yang Yen-chao, Ti Ch'ing, and even Yüeh Fei) is prepared to behead his son, sometimes over the slightest infraction of military discipline, though he will relent when other generals intercede in his son's behalf.⁴⁴ Sometimes, however, the novelist adapts or makes up a story which has true Oedipal implications. Upon returning home after twelve years at war, Hsüeh Jen-kuei, aiming his arrow at a strange beast, accidentally shoots his son Ting-shan, who is immediately succored by an immortal and wafted to his celestial quarters. Many years later, Hsüeh Jen-kuei is trapped in a mountain; Ting-shan comes to the rescue and fatally shoots a white tiger, which turns out to be his father's astral self.

The son arouses his father's anger especially over his romantic involvement with a female warrior of the opposite camp. The latter, usually a foreign king or chieftain's daughter, plays an important role in some of the later romances, and to trace her lineage is further to enhance our awareness that the military romances composed a self-conscious tradition. In San-kuo Lady Chu-yung, Meng Huo's wife, is the only woman to participate in a battle, though Liu Pei's third wife is distinguished for her martial temper. The female warriors do not play a big role in Feng-shen yen-yi either, but there is one minor heroine who anticipates the more romantic ladies to come. Princess Lung-chi, a celestial exiled on earth, captures the enemy general Hung Chin. We know nothing of his age and appearance and there are no indications that they are enamoured of each other. When he is about to be executed, however, the Old Man in the Moon (Yüeh-ho Lao-jen) descends and announces his predestined marriage to the princess. Lung-chi reluctantly agrees. The episode appears very crude and bears no comparison to similar episodes in later romances. The T'ien Hu episode was a late addition to the Shui-hu chuan and may have been composed after the publication of Feng-shen yen-yi. Ch'iung-ying, the foster daughter of T'ien Hu's uncle, throws pellets with deadly precision, and so does the Featherless Arrow Chang Ch'ing. Their marriage is foretold in dreams, and the two duly fall in love at first sight. With her help, Chang Ch'ing infiltrates the enemy camp as a doctor's brother, and Ch'iung-ying is only too happy to kill her evil foster father and the rebel chief. Many love episodes in later military romances show the influence of this tale.

In Feng-shen yen-yi we find an amatory episode of the comic variety which serves as a definite link between Shui-hu chuan and later romances. In Shui-hu, Wang Ying the Short-legged Tiger (Ai-chiao hu) is short and lecherous. He is captured in battle by Hu San-niang and eventually married to her. In Feng-shen yen-yi, T'u-hsing Sun is a dwarf barely over four feet tall and eager to get married to his commander's daughter, Teng Shan-yü. Though her father has earlier granted him permission to marry her, he nevertheless has to apply force to consummate his marriage because Shan-yü finds the prospect of being married to a dwarf highly repugnant. In Hsüeh Ting-shan cheng-hsi, Tou I-hu (One-tiger Tou), a three-foot dwarf, sees Hsüeh Chin-lien in the battlefield and instantly falls in love. Like Wang Ying, he is originally a bandit, and like T'u-hsing Sun, he can vanish and travel below ground. He, too, proves to be an unwelcome suitor. To complicate matters, a fellow dwarf, Ch'in Han (the grandson of Ch'in Shu-pao) falls in love with a foreign princess while in battle. His specialty is to fight while hovering in the air. The two dwarfs eventually manage to have a double wedding. If it affords some comic diversion to have a dwarf marry a beautiful girl (the Aphrodite-Hephaestus myth), it is even more fun to have two amorous dwarfs wooing their ladies. Many military romancers innovate in this mechanical fashion.

But the female warrior is far more often the wooer than the wooed. Judging by her best-known exemplars, she has studied under a female celestial since early childhood and is in command of greater magical power than the man she is destined to marry. As a barbarian, she is unashamed in her pursuit of love and unhindered by the kind of moral scruples that would beset a Chinese girl. While impressed by her heauty and power, the object of her love is usually too shocked to want to acknowledge his interest. The romancers consciously exploit this love situation as a clash between two ways of life.

That the female warrior should have gradually gained ascendancy appears inevitable when one realizes that each romancer, while inheriting the formulas from his predecessors, was also obliged to depart from the familiar and offer something new. Already in Feng-shen yen-yi, Chiang Tzu-ya warns his generals, “In battle you should exercise special caution against three types of opponents: Taoist priests, monks, and women. These three types of warriors, if they do not belong to heretical sects, usually command magic arts. Since they rely on such arts, you will certainly be injured if you are not careful.”⁴⁵ In a romance where most warriors have to rely on magical arts to excel, this warning is perhaps unnecessary, but even there these three types depart from the norm of an armored male warrior who may or may not use magic. To these three categories Chiang Tzu-ya should perhaps have added the child or juvenile warrior whose small size belies his superhuman strength or magical prowess.

In point of time, the female warrior first gains prominence in the saga of the Yang family. Yang Yeh's widow, She T'ai-chün or Yü T'ai-chün, is herself a mighty warrior and accompanies her family on many expeditions during her long life.⁴⁶ By the time Yang Yen-chao commands his first expedition against the Liao, all of his six brothers have either died or withdrawn (although his fifth brother occasionally leaves his monastery on Mt. Wu-t'ai to help him) and he has to count on the female members of his family to destroy the T'ien-men chen. Luckily, during this as during his second expedition against the Liao, several ladies proficient in the martial arts join the family (including two as his wives)⁴⁷ and the Yang women become even more formidable as a fighting team. After the death of Yen-chao, as we have seen, twelve widows launch a victorious campaign against the Ta-ta Kingdom. In P'ing-nan, when Ti Ch'ing is beleaguered by Nung Chih-kao, the Yang family, composed mainly of women, twice come to his rescue. The second expedition is led by a young girl named Yang Chin-hua. She is assisted by Lung-nü, a hideous kitchen-maid only three feet in height. Since female warriors are usually handsome, this dwarf adds another twist to the formula. Upon the conclusion of the campaign, she is ordered by the emperor to marry Wei Hua, a nine-foot-tall retainer of the Yang family who has also distinguished himself in battle.⁴⁸

Thanks mainly to her colorful presence on the Chinese operatic stage, by far the most famed of the Yang women is Mu Kuei-ying.⁴⁹ But in neither Yang-chia-fu nor Pei-Sung chih-chuan is she too colorful or important, though in her determined pursuit of Yang Tsung-pao, the handsome son of Yang Yen-chao, she rightly appears as an archetypal figure of consequence to subsequent military romances. Early taught by a goddess (shen-nü) in archery and in the use of flying swords, she is the daughter of a chieftain in possession of two pieces of Dragon-subduing Wood (hsiang-lung mu). She instantly falls in love with Tsung-pao when he comes on a mission to obtain the wood, which is indispensable for the purpose of slaying the mighty Liao warrior Hsiao T'ien-tso, a dragon in disguise. Tsung-pao agrees to marriage with alacrity, but when he goes back to report the news, the infuriated Yang Yen-chao orders his execution. He relents somewhat only when his own mother intercedes for the grandson's life; still Tsung-pao is put in prison. Soon after, Yen-chao faces Mu Kuei-ying in battle and is captured. Realizing the importance of obtaining the wood, he gives his consent to the marriage, and the new daughter-in-law soon distinguishes herself in the battle against the T'ien-men chen.

In the sequels to Shuo T'ang we have several instances of the infatuated foreign princess. On his expedition against a northern state, Lo T'ung encounters Princess T'u Lu, daughter of its prime minister, who falls madly in love. But since she has earlier killed his younger brother, Lo T'ung hates the girl, although he swears a false oath of love (all such oaths are eventually fulfilled, as in the Indian epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana)⁵⁰ in order to secure her help to overturn her country. T'u Lu gladly turns traitor to her own country, and upon its pacification, Emperor T'ai-tsung and the foreign king are equally happy to see the handsome warrior marry the princess. But on their wedding night, Lo T'ung denounces her not only for her murder of his brother but for her unfilial and unpatriotic behavior:

Harlot, as a subject of your king beholden to his bounty, instead of returning his kindness, you shamelessly ran away from the battlefield to a deserted mountain in order to plight troth with me. In doing so, you have shamed your family—this is filial impiety. You opened wide the gates of the pass to let our troops trample upon your camps. You are a traitor to your country—this is the reverse of loyalty.⁵¹

Put to shame, the princess kills herself. As punishment for spurning the love of a selfless princess, Lo T'ung is forced to marry a demented girl of utter repulsiveness. But the author hates to carry a practical joke too far; on her wedding night, she is transformed into a beauty.

Fan Li-hua, perhaps the most famous of all female warriors in Chinese fiction, is also the most determined wooer. Hsüeh Ting-shan has earlier aroused the passion of two female warriors of magic skill and married them, to the subsequent consternation of his father.⁵² Now at Han-chiang Pass, Ting-shan encounters the magic might of Fan Li-hua, who has been told by her celestial teacher that this man is her predestined husband. Already betrothed to Yang Fan, Li-hua feels all the more reason to secure her happiness and is infinitely patient with her stubborn lover. She liberates him three successive times on his false word of promise. Because they oppose her union with Ting-shan, Li-hua unintentionally kills her father in a fight and slays her two brothers in self-defense. On their wedding night, therefore, Ting-shan is even more self-righteous than Lo T'ung. He draws his sword to avenge her father and brothers. Not easily abashed, however, Li-hua fights back. Eventually Ting-shan repudiates her, and she has to pretend death to earn his love and retaliate against his repeated acts of humiliation.

Li-hua's courtship of her husband is the most interesting long episode in Cheng-hsi, a sequel to Shou T'ang hou-chuan and almost certainly by the same author. Having played several variations on the theme of a female warrior in love, he has deliberately drawn a most complicated case of courtship for the reader's enjoyment. Even in the story of Princess T'u Lu, the crude melodrama opposing instinctive passion to Confucian honor is redeemed by irony. If her determination to stake everything for love is highly repugnant to Lo T'ung's Confucian sensibility, she is at least trustful and honest whereas the Chinese hero has stooped to expediency and proved to be false. In the story of Fan Li-hua, the conflict between passion and honor is taken less seriously. There is a suggestion that Ting-shan rejects her not because of her disloyal and unfilial behavior but because she is his superior as a warrior and he finds it difficult to adjust his sense of male superiority to this reality. Whereas Hsüeh Jen-kuei has objected to his son's two earlier marriages, he is eager to have a daughter-in-law of Li-hua's unsurpassed might to facilitate his conquest of the Ha-mi. This paternal pressure Ting-shan also resents. His stubbornness is therefore quite understandable. A proud and fascinated male at first shocked by the amorality of a determined pursuer and later won over by her repeated proofs of devotion, Ting-shan is almost the hero of a comedy of manners.

The foreign princess in love receives an even more memorable embodiment in the novels about Ti Ch'ing. His twin sons, Ti Lung and Ti Hu, both marry magical warriors of the opposite camp, but coming as late as he does in the tradition of the military romance, the hero Ti Ch'ing has himself become an object of romantic attention. His light of love is Princess Sai-hua (or Pa-pao Kung-chu). On his expedition against the Hsi Liao, Ti Ch'ing has followed his blundering vanguard into the Shan-shan Kingdom,⁵³ which is at peace with China. He must take pass after pass until he encounters the princess. They fall in love at first sight, and after due complications, they are married. But Ti Ch'ing cannot long stay at a foreign court when it is his mission to pacify the Hsi Liao. One morning, pretending to go on a hunting trip, he escapes, but the princess, then already pregnant, soon overtakes him. He gives her the real reasons for leaving her in precipitate haste; she understands and lets him go. Unlike Lo T'ung and Hsüeh Ting-shan, who denounce their wives for their betrayal of Confucian principles, Ti Ch'ing is truly torn between love for his wife and duty to his country. Though she possesses great magical powers and resembles Fan Li-hua in other superficial respects, Princess Sai-hua is far more distinguished for her humanity. In observing an old formula, the author of P'ing-hsi has discovered genuine tenderness between a Chinese general and his princess-wife.

Notes

1. The direct sequel to Cheng-hsi is Fan T'ang yen-yi chuan, (cf. Sun, I, pp. 46-47), which features Hsüeh Kang, Hsüeh Ting-shan's son, as hero. Fen-chuang-lou ch'üan-chuan (Sun, I, p. 47; Liu, I, pp. 264-265) may also be considered a sequel as it depicts the adventures of the descendants of Lo Ch'eng and other heroes of the early T'ang. In preparing this paper, I have consulted the popular Taiwan reprints of all the T'ang novels as well as the better Ch'ing editions available at the East Asian Library of Columbia University: Hsiu-hsiang shuo T'ang ch'ien-chuan; Hsiu-hsiang shuo T'ang hou-chuan (compiler, publisher, and date identical with those of the Ch'ien-chuan), comprising Shuo T'ang hsiao-ying-hsiung chuan and Shuo T'ang Hsüeh-chia-fu chuan; Shuo T'ang san-chuan; […] and Hsiu-hsiang cheng-hsi ch'üan-chuan. The last item, another edition of which is described in Sun, I, pp. 45-46, is a hybrid work of forty chapters offering a condensed version of Hsüeh Ting-shan's expedition against the Hsi Liao (but differing in detail from Cheng-hsi) and over thirty chapters copied from Sui T'ang yen-yi. For bibliographic information on all these romances see Sun, I, pp. 44-47, and Liu, I, pp. 260-265. Shuo T'ang ch'ien-chuan was originally titled Shuo T'ang ch'üan-chuan; but since this title is now used to cover both the Ch'ien-chuan and Hou-chuan, I have avoided it in this paper. (A list of abbreviations used in the notes appears at the end of this chapter.)

2. Ta-T'ang Ch'in-wang tz'u-hua is available in a photolithographic edition published by Wen-hsüeh ku-chi k'an-hsing she (Peking, 1956). I have consulted on microfilm the rare copies of T'ang-shu chih-chuan t'ung-su yen-yi and T'ang-chuan yen-yi (for data see Sun, II, pp. 34-38) as well as Sui-shih yi-wen. Unfortunately, the microfilm copy of the last title, preserved in Waseda University, contains only sixteen of its sixty chapters (ch. 1-10, 31-33, 51-52, 55). These microfilm copies were originally made by Professor James I. Crump for the University of Michigan Library. The East Asian Library of Columbia University now owns a duplicate set; it also owns a Xerox copy of Sui T'ang liang-ch'ao chih-chuan (Sun, II, pp. 38-41), made from a Xerox copy in the possession of Professor Liu Ts'un-yan. This work should perhaps be more appropriately known as Sui T'ang liang-ch'ao shih-chuan, the title that decorates the table of contents as well as the first page of most chüan. The preface by Yang Shen identifies the novel as Sui T'ang shih-chuan, while that by Li Han designates it as Sui T'ang chih-chuan.

3. For data on Ta-Sung chung-hsing yen-yi, see Sun, II, pp. 31-32. Again I have availed myself of the microfilm copy originally prepared by Professor Crump. In addition to a Hong Kong reprint of Shuo Yüeh, I have consulted a Chia-ch'ing edition of Shuo Yüeh ch'üan-chuan […] in the East Asian Library of Columbia University. This large-size edition of 1798 is definitely more valuable than the small-size edition of 1801 described in Liu, I, p. 273. It carries the presumably identical preface by Chin Feng, but its eighty chapters are divided into 20 chüan, each chüan consisting of four chapters.

4. Yang Yeh is better known as Yang Chi-yeh since he is so identified in Peking operas. The notes appended to the biography of Yang in Sung shih, chüan 272 (ES, p. 5229), cite one standard source which gives Yang's original name as Liu Chi-yeh and another which declares it to be Yang Chung-kuei. Since even the standard histories are in disagreement about Yang's name and origin, the biographical account given in Yang-chia-fu yen-yi (see n. 5) may be of genuine value as history. According to this source, a younger sister of Liu Chün, King of the Northern Han, was married to Hsüeh Chao and had a son by name of Chi-en. Because Liu Chün had no son of his own, he adopted Chi-en. Later, Liu's sister married Ho Yüan-yeh and had two sons, Chi-yüan and Chi-yeh, who were also adopted by Liu Chün. When Liu Chi-en became king, Chi-yeh soon distinguished himself as a general, especially for his repeated successes in repulsing the Sung forces sent to subdue the Northern Han. When Chi-yeh finally surrendered, he was given the new name Yang Yeh by Emperor T'ai-tsung. According to this account, then, the famed general was first called Ho Chi-yeh, then Liu Chi-yeh, and finally Yang Yeh.

5. Because only the front matter of Pei-Sung chih-chuan (Sun, II, pp. 43-46; Liu, I, pp. 268-269), including the table of contents, is available on microfilm at Columbia, I have consulted in its stead mainly the Tao-kuang edition of Pei-Sung chin-ch'iang ch'üan-chuan, which, according to Sun, I, p. 49, is identical in text. This work survives in Taiwan in a highly corrupt, abridged version known as Pei-Sung Yang-chia-chiang (Tainan, Ta-tung shu-chu, 1966). The Library of Congress has a microfilm copy of the Wan-li edition of Yang-chia-fu (Sun, I, p. 52; Liu, I, pp. 269-270). The title page identifies the work as Yang-chia-chiang yen-yi while Chi Chen-lun's preface designates it as Yang-chia t'ung-su yen-yi. It is uncertain whether Chi was also the editor or compiler of the work. The Wan-li edition credits him with the role of chiao-yüeh, while another version of Yang-chia-chiang yen-yi (Liu, I, p. 271) identifies him as editor (pien-chi). But judging by Liu Ts'un-yan's description of the work, I am positive that it is far more identifiable with Pei-Sung chih-chuan than with the Wan-li edition of Yang-chia-fu, which I have seen on microfilm. The latter is not available in reprint form in Taiwan or Hong Kong, and presumably it has been long out of print even in mainland China.

   In addition to popular Taiwan reprints, I have consulted the Ching-lun-t'ang edition of Ti Ch'ing yen-yi at Columbia's East Asian Library, comprising Hsiu-hsiang wu-hu p'ing-hsi ch'ien-chuan and Hsiu-hsiang wu-hu p'ing-nan hou-chuan. […] Sun K'ai-ti has seen the Ching-lun-t'ang edition of P'ing-hsi but not that of P'ing-nan. In the Columbia set, both novels still maintain their separate prefaces and tables of contents. To my great regret, I have not been able to consult a Ch'ing edition of Wan-hua lou […], but the two contemporary reprints I have used (Hong Kong, Kuang-chih shu-chü, n. d.; Tainan, Ta-tung shu-chü, 1965) are identical in text and appear not to have deviated from Ch'ing editions. For data on the Ti Ch'ing novels see Sun, I, pp. 53-54; Liu, I, p. 272; and the article “Wan-hua lou,” in Cheng Chen-to, Chung-kuo wen-hsüeh yen-chiu, vol. 1 (Peking, Tso-chia ch'u-pan-she, 1957).

   Tsui-weng t'an-lu, ch. 2, refers to Chu-ko Liang and Ti Ch'ing in the same couplet, which would seem to indicate the popularity and magnitude of the story cycle about the Sung general. We know that Shuo Ti Ch'ing once existed as a yuan-pen play of the Chin-Yuan period. The Yuan tsa-chü Ti Ch'ing fu-to yi-ao-ch'e is extant, though Wu Ch'ang-ling's play Ti Ch'ing p'u-ma has been lost. P'ing-nan chuan, about Ti Ch'ing's pacification of the South, was a theatrical spectacle often performed in the inner palace of Ch'ing emperors. See Ch'en Ju-heng, Shuo-shu shih-hua (Peking, Tso-chia ch'u-pan-she, 1958), pp. 69-70.

6. Thus in Chung-kuo hsiao-shuo shih-lüeh Lu Hsün lists Shui-hu among works of chiang-shih and Feng-shen yen-yi among shen-mo hsiao-shuo Sun K'ai-ti agrees with Lu Hsün in identifying Feng-shen as a ling-kuai hsiao-shuo, but places Shui-hu under the hsia-yung category of Shuo kung-an.

7. See comments culled from various sources on nearly all military romances in K'ung Ling-ching, ed., Chung-kuo hsiao-shuo shih-liao (Taipei, Chung-hua shu-chü, 1957).

8. For many historical novels, of course, it is difficult to tell whether their authors are elaborating on a legend in their own words or merely copying an old text which had been lost or to which few scholars have access. Thus, read on its own, Sui T'ang yen-yi is an excellent novel, and I have accordingly lavished praise on its treatment of the legend of Ch'in Shu-pao in The Classic Chinese Novel (New York, Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 342. In the summer of 1970, however, Mr. Robert E. Hegel, who is completing a dissertation on Sui T'ang yen-yi and its sources under my supervision, alerted me to the fact that the first fifty chapters of the novel are nearly all copied from either Sui-shih yi-wen or Sui Yang-ti yen-shih (see Sun, I, p. 43; Liu, I, pp. 259-260). My subsequent reading of Sui-shih yi-wen, which itself is an adaptation of an old source now lost, has confirmed his discovery that the whole legend of Ch'in Shu-pao contained therein has been copied, for the most part verbatim, into Ch'u Jen-hu's novel. On the evidence of such wholesale copying, Sui-T'ang yen-yi would seem to forfeit much of its intrinsic merit, though it will continue to be enjoyed as one of China's best novels. There can be no doubt, of course, that Ch'u Jen-hu is a most skillful adapter who was able to improve his sources beyond recognition: cf. the essay “Yi-tse ku-shih, liang-chung hsieh-fa”, in Hsia Tsi-an hsüan-chi, Taipei, Chih-wen ch'u-pan-she, 1971.

9. For a description of the early Chinese military opera see James I. Crump, “The Elements of Yuan Opera,” Journal of Asian Studies, XVII, No. 3 (May 1958), pp. 431-433. Ming cognoscenti of fiction were themselves aware of the indebtedness of historical novels to the theater. Thus in his preface to P'ing-yao chuan, Chang Wu-chiu dismisses novels about the Seven Warring States, Han, T'ang, and Sung periods as bad plays of the Yi-yang school (Sun, II, p. 93). Unlike the more refined K'un-ch'ü, Yi-yang Opera is known among other things for its emphatic use of drums and gongs and for its acrobatics and mock representation of battle.

10. It is curious that, with the long tradition of storytellers specializing in the Five Dynasties period, there should have been no full-scale military romance about this colorful era. It would certainly seem that by the late Ming popular interest in the period had waned. The extant Ts'an-T'ang wu-tai ch'üan-chuan (Liu, I, pp. 266-267), attributed to Lo Kuan-chung, is a crude chronicle containing elements of an incipient military romance. Actually, by limiting my examples to the T'ang-Sung romances and a few other works, I have not slighted any major military romances with the possible exception of the novels about the rise of the Ming. For data on the latter see Sun, I, pp. 56-58, and Liu, I, pp. 273-276.

11. Liu, II, ch. 2, gives a complete translation of the work with notes on its connections with Feng-shen yen-yi.

12. Cf., particularly, Ch'in Shu-pao's duels with Yü-ch'ih Kung in ch. 29-30. The battle by the Mei-liang River (in Ch'in-wang tz'u-hua) which sees Ch'in desperately trying to save Li Shih-min from Yü-ch'ih's hands is a high point in all subsequent chronicles about the Sui-T'ang period. Even Hsiung Ta-mu's T'ang-shu chih-chuan, usually a pedestrian narrative, gives an animated account of the battle in chüan 4, sections 31-33, which must have been written under the influence of the storytellers. The author of Shuo T'ang, a military romance, has deliberately mocked the battle. It would be instructive to make a comparative study of the battle from the pageantry of Ch'in-wang tz'u-hua to the intentional parody of Shuo T'ang.

13. For a study of Sung Chiang and Li K'uei as a double character cf. The Classic Chinese Novel, pp. 106-114. Later in the paper I maintain that the saga of the Yang family must have influenced the formation of the Shui-hu story. Perhaps even the idea of honorable banditry had first appeared in the Yang saga. After the treacherous minister Wang Ch'in (see n. 37) has assigned old and decrepit troops to Yang Yen-chao to guard Mt. Chia, Yang rebuilds his strength by recruiting bandits, prominently Meng Liang and Chiao Tsan. Soon after, when Yang Yen-chao gets into trouble and has to live in hiding, nearly all his lieutenants turn to banditry in the mountains. Cf. Yang-chia-fu, chuan 2-4.

14. It is common knowledge that Yang Yeh's fifth son Yen-te early in his life becomes a monk on Mt. Wu-t'ai. But since Yang-chia-fu is a rare book, it is not generally known that, following the successful conclusion of his campaign against Nung Chih-kao, Yang Wen-kuang—historically (and in Pei-Sung chih-chuan) the son of Yen-chao, but in most fiction (including Yang-chia-fu) and drama the son of Tsung-pao and therefore the grandson of Yen-chao—has a mystical experience and becomes a Taoist adept. Following the death of his father largely as a consequence of Ti Ch'ing's villainy, (see n. 72), Wen-kuang publicly performs the miracle of turning himself into a crane and disappears, even though he actually goes home to cultivate the Tao, living in total obscurity. At the age of sixty he is ordered by the emperor to lead another expedition. Upon the conclusion of this campaign his son Huai-yü leads the whole Yang family to live on Mt. T'ai-hang in Taoist retirement. When a prince arrives at the mountain with an imperial request that he stay on in government service, Huai-yü excuses himself by reason of his father's frailty and goes on to recount the woes and indignities suffered by the family ever since Yang Yeh surrendered to the Sung.

15. In Pei-Sung chih-chuan, following its total defeat signalized by the destruction of the T'ien-men chen (discussed later in the paper), the Liao Kingdom again starts trouble at the instigation of its spy at the Sung court, Wang Ch'in. Yang Yen-chao has little trouble quelling this uprising, but he dies soon afterward, grief-stricken over the deaths of his comrades Meng Liang and Chiao Tsan. Then the Ta-ta Kingdom invades China, and the novel concludes with Yang Tsung-pao's victorious expedition against the kingdom with the assistance of the twelve widows of his family. (This episode is generally known as the Expedition against the Hsi Hsia. But the term Hsi Hsia as it appears in the expression “Hsi Hsia Ta-ta kuo” would seem to indicate the region in which the kingdom is situated rather than the historic Hsi Hsia Kingdom which plagued Sung China.) At that time Yang Wen-kuang is only fifteen years old. In Yang-chia-fu it is only when Wen-kuang has reached the age of sixty (see n. 15) that the twelve widows (not identical with those in Pei-Sung chih-chuan) lead a rescue operation to liberate him from his besiegement by Li Kao-ts'ai, the king of the Hsin-lo Kingdom. Earlier in the novel, the Yang family undertook a lengthy campaign against Nung Chin-kao.

16. The villainy of P'an Mei and Wang Shen is fully apparent from a reading of Yang Yeh's biography in Sung shih, chüan 272. Wang Shen is punished for not providing proper assistance to Yang, and even P'an is demoted though he is soon restored to high position. According to the biography of Yang Yen-chao in the same section of Sung shih, it is only because Emperor Chen-tsung appreciates his bravery and the distinguished service of his family that he is repeatedly spared more severe punishment.

17. While the Ching-chi chih of Chiu T'ang-shu lists only 45 works on warfare and strategy (ping-shu) comprising 289 chüan, the Yi-wen-chih of Sung shih, chüan 207, lists 347 such works comprising 1,956 chüan. Many of these works deal with chen-t'u and chen-fa, […]. ES, pp. 3266, 5001. We may assume that the Sung storytellers' interest in things military, and not merely the chen, must have reflected the government's concern with national defense, as is seen in the marked increase in the production of military manuals.

18. C. H. Brewitt-Taylor, tr., Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Vol. I (Rutland, Vt., Tuttle, 1959), pp. 375-376. I have amended “Docked,” an obvious misprint, to read “Locked.”

19. San-kuo yen-yi, ch. 84. It is of interest to note that in describing the maze to Lu Sun, Chu-ko's father-in-law refers to also eight gates. These gates recur in descriptions of various chen in subsequent romances.

20. In the tsa-chü Sung Kung-ming p'ai chiu-kung pa-kua chen, Sung Chiang sweeps forward to a great victory against the Liao forces by means of this chen. Along with many other military plays, this play is reprinted in KYT, III, which provides a mine of information for comparative studies in the military romance. According to Ma Tai-loi, Ming Pao Monthly, II, No. 1 (January 1967), Chiu-kung pa-kua chen is a Ming play written after the publication of Shui-hu chuan. He doesn't specify which edition, however.

21. For a description of this complex of mazes see Pei Sung chin-ch'iang ch'üan-chüan, ch. 33. The account given in Yang-chia-fu is identical in detail, if not in wording. Lü Tung-pin builds the chen according to a blueprint (chen-t'u). Seventy-two general's platforms (chiang-t'ai) are erected along with five altars (t'an) of greater strategic importance, though the number of individual chen inviting attack amounts to only seven or eight. The corresponding T'ien-chen in the play Yang Liu-lang tiao-ping p'o t'ien-chen, included in KYT, III, comprises 142 constituent chen.

22. The naked princess guarding the T'ai-yin chen is Huang-ch'iung-nü daughter of the king of Hsi Hsia. She soon deserts the Liao to marry Yang Yen-chao. The chen with seven buried pregnant women is known as Mi-hun chen. A chen by this name is frequently seen in military romances. Its earliest appearance is in Ch'i-kuo ch'un-ch'iu hou-chi, chüan B. Prepared by Yüeh Yi's teacher Huang Po-yang, this chen calls for the burial in seven places of seven foetuses ripped from the wombs of pregnant women. Sun Pin stays captured in the chen for a hundred days.

23. Liu Ts'un-yan has examined with great care the early independent editions of what are now the four constituent parts of Ssu yu chi. He thinks that “they were all early storyteller's prompt-books which have probably been in circulation ever since the early Ming.” Liu, I, p. 138. See also his discussion of a fragmentary Ming copy of Tung-yu chi on pp. 199-202.

24. Cf. Liu, II.

25. The legend of Yang Yeh as retold in the novels of the Yang family is faithful to history at least in its broad outline. It is around his son Yen-chao that storytellers wove the kind of fantasy romance that later distinguished the fictional careers of Hsüeh Jen-kuei, Hsüeh Ting-shan, Yüeh Fei, and Ti Ch'ing. There can be little doubt that the original Yang-chia-fu as well as several Yuan-Ming plays about the Yang family depicts the fictitious career of Yen-chao in accordance with the storytellers' tradition.

26. Of the extant Yuan tsa-chü about Sui-T'ang heroes, Yü-ch'ih Kung figures as a hero in four: Hsiao Yü-ch'ih, Ching-te pu-fu-lao Tan-pien to-shuo, and Yü-ch'ih Kung san-to-shuo. Ch'in Shu-pao also appears in the last two plays. Hsü Mao-kung chih-hsiang Ch'in Shu-pao (KYT, III) is most probably a Ming play since it is not included in Yüan-ch'ü hsüan wai-pien.

27. Chiu T'ang-shu, chüan 67, is devoted to the lives of Li Ching and Li Chi, whereas Yü-ch'ih Kung and Ch'in Shu-pao share biographic attention in chüan 68 with three other generals. Li Chi, especially, emerges from his biography as an outstanding human being passionately devoted to his friends. His grief over the death of Li Mi and Shan Hsiung-hsin is especially moving. The Ch'in Shu-pao of legend, too, is distinguished for his great friendship with Shan; there can be no doubt that storytellers had transferred this endearing trait from Li Chi to Ch'in, who is known in official history primarily as a peerless warrior. Even in T'ang times Li Ching had become a legendary hero in ch'uan-ch'i fiction; for other anecdotes of Li Ching and Li Chi see such works as Sui T'ang chia-hua, collected in T'ang-tai ts'ung-shu. In the comic play of the Yuan-Ming period, Shih-yang-chin Chu-ko lun-kung (KYT, III), Li Ching and Li Chi are listed among the thirteen greatest military geniuses of all time, on a par with Chiang Tzu-ya and Chu-ko Liang. But whereas both Chiang and Chu-ko have romances of their own, it is a quirk of fate that the two Lis should have played only subordinate roles in the novels about Ch'in Shu-pao and Hsüeh Jen-kuei.

28. The exception is Yang Yeh whose birth and early youth are only baldly summarized in both Nan-Sung chih-chuan and Yang-chia-fu. Had the Yang saga received further expansion after the late Ming, Yang Yeh's early career would certainly have been romanticized.

29. Yüeh Fei's courtesy name is P'eng-chü […].

30. In Ta-Sung chung-hsing yen-i Hsiung Ta-mu faithfully follows the official biography (Sung shih, chüan 265) in his treatment of Yüeh Fei's birth and boyhood. Thus we find that his father did not die in the flood and that, although Yüeh Fei showed almost filial regard for the memory of his teacher Chou T'ung […], the latter had not been his adopted father. That Yüeh Fei's boyhood should have been romanticized (as we have seen in Shuo Yüeh) would seem to be inevitable in the formation of any hero-legend. It may be of further interest to note that since the publication of this novel Chou T'ung himself has grown in stature as a teacher of heroes. We read in Wang Shao-t'ang, narrator, Wu Sung (Nanking, Kiangsu wen-yi ch'u-pan-she, 1959), Vol. I, ch. 2, sec. 7, that before Wu Sung returns home to find his elder brother murdered, he spends a month with Chou T'ung mastering his use of the sword. Thus, according to the foremost present-day storyteller of the Yangchow school, Wu Sung has joined Yüeh Fei, Lin Ch'ung, and Lu Chün-yi as a disciple of Chou. Wang Shao-t'ang further depicts Chou as a man over fifty and a sworn brother of Lu Chih-shen.

31. The legend of Lo Ch'eng is most interesting. According to Ch'in-wang tz'u-hua, Ch'eng is the given name of Lo Shih-hsin, even though his biographies in Chiu T'ang-shu, chüan 187A, and Hsin T'ang-shu, chüan 191, make no note of this fact. This brave young warrior was born in Li-ch'eng, Ch'i-chou, and was early distinguished together with his fellow townsman Ch'in Shu-pao when serving under the Sui commander Chang Hsü-t'o. Lo died at the age of twenty as a T'ang general captured by Liu Hei-t'a Ch'in-wang tz'u-hua maintains, however, that though he dies fighting against the forces of Liu, his death is actually contrived by Li Shih-min's evil brothers Chien-ch'eng and Yüan-chi, the commanders in charge of an expedition against Liu. The author of Shuo T'ang, who has elevated Lo Ch'eng to be the seventh mightiest hero of the Sui-T'ang era, follows this account of his tragic death. Two earlier works, T'ang-shu chih-chuan and Sui-T'ang liang-ch'ao chih-chuan, record Lo Shih-hsin's deeds and death without, however, further identifying him as Lo Ch'eng. In Sui-shih yi-wen the fictitious Lo Ch'eng and the historical Lo Shih-hsin have become two separate persons. Lo Ch'eng is made the son of Lo Yi, a famous general of the Sui who eventually joined the T'ang cause and then rebelled. And since Lo Yi's wife is supposed to be an aunt of Ch'in Shu-pao, Ch'in pays her a visit and comes to know Lo Ch'eng when the latter is only a boy. In adapting Sui-shih yi-wen, Ch'u Jen-hu has further made Lo Ch'eng into a romantic hero while retaining Lo Shih-hsin as a historic character of minor importance. To the average Chinese it is the Lo Ch'eng of Shuo T'ang and Peking Opera who appears most familiar—a handsome young warrior who died tragically.

32. Yang Tsai-hsing is one of the bravest generals under Yüeh Fei. According to Shuo Yüeh, he is a descendant of Yang Yeh, but his ancestry is not mentioned in his biography in Sung-shih, chüan 368.

33. Li Tao-tsung once provoked the wrath of Yü-ch'ih Kung at a dinner and may on this account have earned his notoriety as a villain in popular literature. This incident is related in Yü-ch'ih's biography in Chiu T'ang-shu (ES, p. 3313) and is further elaborated on in the Yuan tsa-chü Ching-te pu-fu-lao. Despite his distinguished record in battle, Li Tao-tsung was once imprisoned for accepting bribery, which may have further tarnished his reputation. His own biography appears in Chiu T'ang-shu, chüan 60.

34. Lo T'ung sao-pei, ch. 12, p. 53, in Cheng-tung, Cheng-hsi, Sao-pei (Taipei, Wen-hua t'u-shu kung-ssu, n. d.). This quatrain does not appear in the corresponding chapter 13 of Shuo T'ang hsiao-ying-hsiung chuan (see n. 1). The Taipei edition appears to be a reprint of a fuller version; in any event, verse passages of identical sentiment are not uncommon in military romances.

35. The two plays are Hsüeh Jen-kuei jung-kuei ku-li and Mo-li-chih fei-tao tui chien. A comic monologue of Chang Shih-kuei from the latter play has been translated in Crump, op. cit., p. 433 (see n. 10). In Shih-yang-chin Chu-ko lun-kung (n. 28), too, Chang appears as a boastful clown along with the brave Wei general Hsia-hou Tun. Chang's brief biography in Chiu T'ang-shu, chüan 83, presents a praise-worthy record of his generalship, but the fact that it was he who recruited Hsüeh Jen-kuei for the Korean expedition may have led the storytellers to paint him as a buffoon or villain in contrast to the young warrior's shining innocence and bravery. In T'ang-shu chih-chuan Chang is given his due as a general. Upon the completion of the Korean expedition, however, he advises T'ai-tsung against giving Hsüeh too many honors and too high a promotion, and the emperor agrees. (Jen-kuei is duly appointed Wu-wei chiang-chün). In Sui-T'ang liang-ch'ao chih-chuan, ch. 86, Chang is exposed by Yü-ch'ih Kung for claiming Jen-kuei's distinguished record as his own. There he appears as a villain, but not a comic one.

36. While P'ang Hung suggests P'ang Chi (Sung-shih, chüan 311) on the strength of his surname and his official prominence at Jen-tsung's court, there can be no doubt that the Wang Ch'in of the Yang family saga stands for Wang Ch'in-jo (Sung-shih, chüan 283), the cunning and evil prime minister under Chen-tsung. He and four members of his clique were known to their contemporaries as the “Five Devils” (wu-kuei). Though not a traitor, Wang was opposed to such upright ministers as K'ou Chun, who is depicted in the novels as a champion of the Yang family. In the play Yang Liu-lang tiao-ping p'o t'ien-chen, Act 1 (see n. 22), Yang Yen-chao gives an autobiographical monologue in which he names Wang Ch'in-jo as the chien-ch'en who fabricates an imperial order for his execution. In the prologue (hsieh-tzu) of the tsa-chü Hsieh Chin-wu (included in Yuan-ch'ü hsüan, Wang Ch'in-jo reveals himself as a Liao spy sent to the Sung court by Queen Dowager Hsiao. His real name is Ho Lu-erh, and he is presumably a Liao Khitanese. Foiled in his attempt to execute Yang Yen-chao and Chiao Tsan, he is later exposed in the play as a spy and punished with lingering death. For the plot of Hsieh Chin-wu and a discussion of its sources see Lo Chin-t'ang, Hsien-ts'un Yuan-jen tsa-chü pen-shih k'ao (Taipei, Chung-kuo wen-hua shih-yeh kung-ssu, 1960), pp. 363-366.

    Wang Ch'in-jo's name has been shortened to Wang Ch'in in both Pei-Sung chih-chuan and Yang-chia-fu. While the latter agrees with Hsieh Chin-wu in identifying Wang as a Khitanese by name of Ho Lu-erh, the former describes him as a man of Chinese origin initially serving at the Liao court. We may assume, therefore, that, while the legend of Wang Ch'in as given in Hsieh Chin-wu and Yang-chia-fu represents an older tradition, Hsiung Ta-mu must have revised it in Pei-Sung chih-chuan in order to restore Wang's Chinese identity and make his treachery look more heinous.

37. Nü-t'u-fu (Female earth bat) stands for Aquarius; see Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 1177. Many characters in Chinese fiction, not necessarily female, are supposed to be incarnations of Aquarius. Thus Li Yüan's principal wife, Empress Ch'ang-sun, is described as a Nü-t'u-fu in Ta-T'ang Ch'in-wang tz'u-hua, vol. 1, p. 36.

38. The scholar Hu Ti witnesses the torture of the Ch'in Kuei family during his guided tour through Hell in the concluding section of the novel. Hsiung Ta-mu must have adapted this episode from a storytellers' hua-pen which subsequently appeared in print as Tale 32 of Ku-chin hsiao-shuo. In both versions the hero is a native of Chin-ch'eng (Ch'eng-tu) who waxes indignant over heavenly injustice after reading a work known as Ch'in Kuei tung-ch'uang chuan, but the independent tale further specifies that Hu-mu (or Hu-wu) Ti flourished during the reign of Shun-ti, the last Yuan emperor. In Shuo Yüeh, ch. 73, Hu Ti appears as a citizen of Lin-an (Hangchow) at the time of Yüeh Fei's execution and is given the additional name Meng-tieh.

39. The author of Cheng-hsi must have named her Fan Li-hua because Hsüeh Ting-shan's father has a secondary wife called Fan Hsiu-hua. Prior to his expedition to Korea in Shuo T'ang hou-chuan, Hsüeh Jen-kuei rescues Hsiu-hua from the hands of three bandits and promises to marry her himself. By the time he returns from the expedition he has forgotten about the girl; nevertheless, he marries her after her father has escorted her to his official residence at Chiang-chou. Having created a thoroughly colorless character in Fan Hsiu-hua, the author of Shuo T'ang hou-chuan nevertheless proceeded to invent in its sequel a most fascinating wife for Hsüeh Ting-shan.

40. Shuo Yüeh ch'üan-chuan (see n. 3), chüan 4, ch. 13, pp. 2b-3a.

41. Ibid., chüan 26, ch. 63, p. 35b.

42. Ibid., ch. 63, pp. 36a-b. This and the two preceding quotations can more easily be found in Shuo Yüeh ch'üan-chuan (Hong Kong, Kuang-chih shu-chü, n. d.), chüan shang, p. 54; chüan hsia, pp. 107-108.

43. Shuo T'ang ch'üan-chuan, ch. 48, pp. 122-123. This title constitutes Part I of Ta T'ang yen-yi (Tainan, Ya-tung shu-chü, 1963). The episode appears in identical form in the Kuang-hsü edition of Shuo T'ang ch'ien-chuan (see n. 1), chüan 8, ch. 49, pp. 2a-3b. The slain general is named Wang Lung.

44. In this connection it is of interest to read the tsa-chü Shou-t'ing-hou nu-chan K'uan P'ing (KYT, III), in which Kuan Yü, too, wants to execute his own son Kuan P'ing and finally relents only when other generals intercede for him. In San-kuo yen-yi Kuan P'ing is described as Kuan Yü's foster son.

45. Feng-shen yen-yi, vol. 1 (Peking, Tso-chia ch'u-pan-she, 1955), ch. 53, p. 505.

46. Most Chinese call her by the title She T'ai-chün since she is usually so identified in Peking Opera. She plays an important part in the play Hsieh Chin-wu and identifies herself there as She T'ai-chün. In the Ti Ch'ing novels, too, she is known by this title. But in both Pei Sung chih-chuan and Yang-chia-fu her surname is Yü rather than She, though she is commonly referred to as Yang Ling-p'o (her husband is Yang Ling-kung). In Pei-Sung Yang-chia chiang (see n. 5), ch. 10, p. 19, she is unaccountably called Lü shih and not Yü shih, as in the corresponding chapter in Pei Sung chin-ch'iang ch'üan-chuan.

47. Yang Yen-chao's principal wife is known as Ch'ai Chün-chu, a descendant of the imperial family of the Later Chou dynasty. During his first expedition against the Liao, Yen-chao acquires his second wife Huang-ch'iung-nü (see n. 23). His third wife is Ch'ung-yang-nü, who joins forces with him during his second Liao expedition. Both of these ladies are supposed to have been promised to Yen-chao during their childhood.

48. In Yang-chia-fu, chüan 6, Wei Hua commands the vanguard of Ti Ch'ing's expeditionary forces against Nung Chih-kao. When Ti Ch'ing is besieged, Wei Hua dashes through the enemy lines to get help from the capital, and a new army led by Yang Tsung-pao and Yang Wen-kuang is duly sent. Subsequently, in chüan 7, with Wen-kuang trapped by Nung's forces and Tsung-pao immobilized by a foot injury, Wei Hua again goes to the capital to fetch the Yang ladies, who finally quell the rebellion. Wei Hua also accompanies Wen-kuang on his mystic journey (see n. 15). It is through these connections, I suppose, that Wei Hua is eventually reduced to the status of a retainer (chia-chiang) of the Yang house in P'ing-nan.

    In his concluding commentary to Pei Sung chin-ch'iang ch'üan-chuan, Yüan-hu fei-hsien chu-jen of the Tao-kuang period says that Yang Ling-p'o will not be granted first-rank imperial honors until after the return of Yang Wen-kuang from his southern expedition, presumably against Nung Chih-kao […]. So presumably the commentator knows of a novel about Wen-kuang's southern expedition. While I have not seen the Kuang-hsü edition of P'ing-Min ch'üan-chuan (Sun, I, p. 53), which is about Yang Wen-kuang's pacification of Min, it is good to know that P'ing-nan itself fears an additional title, Yang Wen-Kuang kua-shuai (n. 6). As I suggest below, P'ing-nan must have drawn upon a novel about Wen-kuang's expedition against Nung. And in that work Wei Hua must also have played a part.

49. Mu Kuei-ying is known to most Chinese as a martial lady of romantic pluck through the following series of Peking operas: Mu-k'o-chai Ch'iang t'iao Mu T'ien-wang, Yüan-men chan-tzu, and Ta-p'o T'ien-men-chen. Two new operas, Mu Kuei-ying kua-shuai and Yang-men nü-chiang, frequently seen in mainland China before the Cultural Revolution, have further enhanced her popularity. Unlike Fan Li-hua, however, she did not have an auspicious start as a fascinating character in fiction. In Yang-chia-fu, chüan 5, the home base of Mu Kuei-ying is Mu-ko-chai, rather than the exotic-sounding Mu-k'o-chai of Peking Opera. Her father is known by the name Mu Yü and the title Ting-t'ien-wang. Though the novel calls her by the name Mu Kuei-ying throughout, we are initially told she is Mu Chin-hua, also named Mu Kuei-ying […]. In Pei Sung chin-ch'iang ch'üan-chuan, chüan 35, p. 283b, and presumably in Pei Sung chih-chuan as well, we are given identical information except that Chin-hua is identified as the heroine's hsiao-ming and Kuei-ying as her pieh-ming. As a Tao-kuang publication, however, Chin-ch'iang ch'üan-chuan has printed her name as Mu Kuei-ying in the couplet heading ch. 35. The Taiwan edition of Pei Sung Yang-chia-chiang has consistently changed her surname to Mu.

50. In Sao-pei, ch. 11, Lo T'ung swears to the princess that if he is false, he will eventually die at the sharp point of a spear (ch'iang) held by a man in his seventies or eighties. In Cheng-hsi, ch. 20, he meets in battle a ninety-eight-year-old general named Wang Pu-ch'ao With his spear (mao) Wang slashes open his opponent's abdomen, causing his intestines to tumble out. Furious, Lo wraps them tightly with a piece of cloth, resumes battle with Wang, and decapitates him. It is not until he has reached his own tent that he drops dead. This famous episode, known as “P'an-ch'ang ta-chan” has a fuller text in Shuo T'ang san-chuan (see n. 1), ch. 20. The fact that, allowing for minor discrepancies of detail, Lo T'ung's death fulfills his oath provides almost certain proof that the hou-chuan and san-chuan of Shuo T'ang were by the same author. Lo T'ung is the son of Lo Ch'eng.

51. Sao-pei, chap. 14, p. 66, in Cheng-tung, Cheng-hsi, Sao-pei. The corresponding passage in Shuo T'ang hsiao-ying-hsiung chuan, ch. 15, p. 26 b, is identical except for three characters.

52. Hsüeh Ting-shan's first two wives are Tou Hsien-t'ung and Ch'en Chin-ting. The first is beautiful and the second ugly, but both are disciples of goddesses.

53. The Shan-shan Kingdom is, of course, fictitious. I have romanized [it] as Shan-shan because at least once upon a time there was a Shan-shan Kingdom (see Han shu, chüan 96A).

Abbreviations

ES Erh-shih-wu shih. 9 vols. Reprint: Taipei, K'ai-ming shu-tien, preface dated 1934.

KYT, III Ku-pen Yüan-Ming tsa-chü, vol. 3. Peking, Chung-kuo hsi-chü ch'u-pan-she, 1957.

Liu, I Liu Ts'un-yan. Chinese Popular Fiction in Two London Libraries. Hong Kong, Lung Men Bookstore, 1967.

Liu, II Liu Ts'un-yan. Buddhist and Taoist Influences on Chinese Novels. Vol. I: The Authorship of the Feng Shen Yen I. Wiesbaden, Otto Harrassowitz, 1962.

Sun, I Sun K'ai-ti. Chung-kuo t'ung-su hsiao-shuo shu-mu. Reprint: Hong Kong, Shih-yung shu-chü, 1967.

Sun, II Sun K'ai-ti. Jih-pen Tung-ching so-chien Chung-kuo hsiao-shuo shu-mu. Reprint: Hong Kong, Shih-yung shu-chü, 1967.