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發表於 2005-3-18 23:17:13
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Inventing the Romantic Kingdom in its Initial Stages:
The Resurrection and Legitimization of the Shu Han Kingdom
Before the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (3 of 4)
Simon Shen
III. Legitimization
Although Shu Han surpassed Wu and other regional powers in being resurrected by insurgent rulers in the fourth century, the kingdom was still illegitimate in the view of traditional historians, who applied the “rule of the central capital (shou dou lun),” which judged the legitimacy of regimes by the possession of the central (i.e. national) capital. When the Wei Kingdom controlled the central regions of China, including the ancient capitals of Loyang and Changan, most contemporary historians, like Chen Shou, treated Shu Han rulers as usurpers in a subordinate status to Wei. The Jin court acknowledged Wei’s legitimacy in the Three Kingdoms era also because it theoretically inherited the Mandate of Heaven from the former. Fortunately for Shu Han, after Jin’s exile to the south in 316AD, Jin and subsequent southern regimes gradually reevaluated their assessments of the Three Kingdoms, and finally replaced Wei with Shu Han as their legitimate predecessor prompted by two political impulses.
First, northern China was gradually unified by the Northern Wei Kingdom (386-556AD) founded by the Xianbei minority. At the same time, southern China was never seriously divided, as Eastern Jin and four consecutive dynasties dominated the region, known as the southern dynasties (c.420-589AD). Consequently, the power distribution in China gradually converted from a multi-polar equilibrium to a north-south bipolar status from the late fourth century on. Subtly, the north and the south exchanged their historic status, with the previously “barbaric” south home to the civilized Jin Dynasty, while the former cultural centers in the north fell into the hands of non-Han minorities. Thus, continuing the legitimate status of Wei inevitably implied the same status for the northern dynasties in general, and the Northern Wei Kingdom in particular. Even worse, doing so meant demeaning the southern dynasties, reducing them to the same “barbaric,” or insurgent status that Chen Shou had previously assigned Shu Han, which was intolerable for the southern elites. As a result, legitimizing Shu Han simply meant symbolizing the southern regimes as the central legitimate government in China. As Robert Hegel argues in the introduction of Taylor’s translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms,
“…during periods when China was threatened by invasion from the north – or was divided or occupied by northerners – sympathies tended to extend that favored position to [Shu Han]. Those who did not question the rectitude of the so-called “conquest dynasties” who took power by main force have generally remained pro-Wei in their reading of history; in times of national division, Liu Bei and his forces became emblematic of Han Chinese national sentiment.”
Following Hegel’s comment, we can notice that an ethnic consideration was also included in the romanticization. To the ethnic Han scholars, particularly before the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368AD), legitimacy should – or would – never fall into the hands of minorities, because they had long developed discriminatory attitudes toward the latter. Even Confucius said, “Barbarian tribes with their rulers are inferior to Chinese states without them.” Because most northern regimes in the period of disunion were founded by minorities, they were naturally barred from attaining legitimacy from the point of view of contemporary Han scholars, most of whom placed their ethnic consciousness above other political preferences.
In searching for arguments to legitimize the Shu Han Kingdom, the southern scholars turned to the “rule of inheritance (xue tong lun),” which granted legitimate status to regimes with blood heritage from the last dynasty. Throughout his life, the Shu Han founder Liu Bei repeatedly asserted his legitimacy by inheritance from the Eastern Han royal family, claiming himself to be the direct descendent of the fourth Western Han Emperor Jing (157-141BC) and the uncle of the last Eastern Han Emperor Xian (189-220AD). Chen Shou recorded, perhaps apocryphally, Liu Bei’s aspiration since childhood was to be an emperor:
Liu Bei’s home had a tree five-feet tall that looked like a crown when seen from faraway. People thought that the tree represented a noble man… When Liu was playing chess when he was young, he told his playmates, “I will surely sit in a royal cart in the future.”
Lacking technology to confirm genetic information, southern scholars – although rarely explicitly confronting the Wei legitimacy – obliquely agreed with Liu’s claim of Han royalty. For example, in commenting on Chen Shou’s San Guo Zhi, Eastern Jin scholar Xi Zaochi acknowledged Shu Han as the legitimate regime by using its years as the dating entries in Han Jin Chun Qiu (History of Han to Jin). In fact, the legitimization of Shu Han became unconsciously eased by traditional Chinese historiographic methodology. Because Chinese historians had no universal dating system other than using emperor titles in recording years, the controversy of legitimacy was not only a symbolic issue but also a practical one for them to create a timeline in their literature. As Sima Guang suggested, some historians granted legitimate status to regimes simply from convenience in recording history, and did not impose value judgments.
The choice of Shu Han to be the target of legitimization was also owing to the political appeal of its specific leaders to the contemporary world order. The historic accounts of the Shu Han leaders conveniently turned them into role-models of ethnic Han people, whose ultimate aim was to fight the evil northern enemies. In a rough manner, three typical Confucian moral values – righteousness (yi), benevolence (ren) and wisdom (zhi) – could be said to have been represented by three Shu Han founders respectively. For instance, the value of yi, a prerequisite of the southern dynasties to guarantee exclusive support of ethnic Han elites, was represented by the absolute loyalty of Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, two famous Shu Han generals, to Liu Bei. To further consolidate the cult of yi, Guan Yu, in particular, was even gradually elevated to a god serving the Heaven’s court. Ren, the value at the center of political propaganda contrasting the “civilized” southern dynasties against its “barbaric” northern counterpart, was represented by the idealized image of Liu Bei as a benevolent ruler. Zhi, an element the militarily inferior southern dynasties largely needed to balance against the northern aggression, was represented by the Shu Han chancellor Zhuge Liang in the division of labor, as Zhuge was also facing a militarily-superior northern army.
The legitimization of Shu Han was basically completed when the Sui Dynasty (589-618AD) reunified China. Most later scholars echoed such an attitude, with the notable example of Zhu Xi, the synthesizer of Neo-Confucianism in the Southern Song Dynasty (1128-1279AD). In Tong Jian Gang Wu (Abridged View of the “Zi Zhi Tong Jian”), his commentary on Sima Guang’s chronicles which soon became an authorized version of history in China, Zhu presented a thorough list of legitimate regimes in Chinese history, which included Shu Han in a place between the Eastern Han and Jin. Thus, subsequent Chinese historians using Shu Han years did not necessarily agree with Shu Han’s legitimacy, but might rather follow the fait accompli.
* * *
Ironically, as neither Sima Guang nor Chen Shou recorded a popular echo to Liu’s royal assertion, most Shu Han contemporaries, other than Liu’s followers, were probably skeptical of Liu’s alleged royal status for two possible reasons. First, except for a doubtful family annal, even Liu Bei was unable to provide any evidence to prove his relationship with the last Eastern Han Emperor. As recorded in the San Guo Zhi,
Liu Bei was an orphan when he was young, and could only earn his living by making straw sandals… He was not interested in studying, but rather enjoyed horse-racing, music, and fine dressing…
In other words, Liu’s family was extremely poor when he was born, and making straw sandals was not a practice that uncles of emperors often engaged in.
Moreover, many other contemporary warlords with proof of prominent backgrounds also belonged to the Han royal family, including: Liu Yu, who ruled present day-Beijing (youzhou); Liu Biao, who ruled present-day Hunan (jingzhou); Liu Yao, who ruled present-day Jiangsi (yangzhou); and Liu Zhang, who ruled Sichuan (yizhou) before being expelled by Liu Bei. The Lius were at times in an undeclared natural alliance against anti-Han warlords, such as Dong Zhuo, who murdered a young Eastern Han emperor, and Yuan Shu, who once briefly claimed the title of emperor. More crucially, no historic records showed the Lius ever attacked one another in this period. But suspiciously, although Liu Bei tried to use his claimed Han ancestry to accumulate political capital, he was the only Liu who attacked other royal lines for power. The Zi Zhi Tong Jian recorded an ample amount of evidence about how he assisted an allied warlord Gongsun Zan’s attack on Liu Yu in 191AD, replaced Liu Biao’s son as governor general as the latter surrendered to Cao Cao in 208AD, and seized Liu Zhang’s Sichuan by military force in 212-214AD. Liu Ba, Liu Zhang’s minister, who later served Shu Han, once warned his old master,
Liu Bei is the most evil leader of our generation. When he comes to Sichuan, he will surely harm our interests!
In fact, Liu Bei acted more like a Cao Cao-type warlord aiming at expanding his sphere of influence as much as possible, than like Han royalty aiming at upholding the Lius’ authority and the central government. If Liu Bei’s battles against other Lius did not necessarily refute his royal heritage, they at least disclose his unfilial behavior to his ancestors.
Let alone the righteous loyalty of Guan Yu and Zhang Fei has no historic proofs to surpass other relationships between followers and their leaders at the time, the benevolent image of Liu Bei was perhaps the most distorted Chinese story. Liu was in fact infamous for his repeated betrayals of allies in his time. For instance, he attacked Cao Cao after Cao elaborately welcomed him as guest-of-honor when he was defeated by other warlords and sought help; he broke his alliance with Sun Quan and occupied Sun’s prefectures; and he seized Sichuan from Liu Zhang when the latter invited him to defend its boundaries against another warlord, Zhang Lu. Ever worse, Liu Bei was not particularly benevolent toward his followers: when he hypocritically stressed his unwillingness to accept the Shu Han throne in 219AD, he imprisoned army-secretary Fei Shi who supported his refusal to take the imperial title. In short, Liu Bei was merely a typical power-seeker who used both practices of “the fox and the lion” that Niccolo Machiavelli suggested. In fact, the strategy of Liu Bei recorded in the later Romance of the Three Kingdoms can be considered as the Prince of the East: according to Ruhlmann, it is “a mine of all tricks and stratagems needed in war and politics,” featuring Liu Bei as one of its best performers.
Moreover, concerning the Shu Han policies under Zhuge Liang, John Wills, a scholar who studies various Chinese heroes, concludes that Zhuge “proved to be an effective, tough state-builder whose policies were not very different from Cao Cao’s.” In other words, Wills believes that both Zhuge and Cao favored ruling by tough laws rather than the Confucian ideal of benevolence. Will’s assertion is supported by the Zi Zhi Tong Jian, which recorded that many indigenous people were discontent over Zhuge’s tough laws in governing Sichuan, especially following the previous Sichuan warlord, Liu Zhang, who was famous for his lenience. In short, in order to invent a benevolent country for emperors and ministers to imitate, Confucian scholars simply omitted all the Machiavellian practices of Liu Bei and ignored the legalist nature of Shu Han as a regime administrated by non-benign laws under Zhuge Liang. Zhuge may perhaps had been one of the most intelligent figures in Chinese history, but ironically his military talent – the talent stressed by the novel – was his weakest ability. As Chen Shou noted, probably as a fair comment, Zhuge was “strong in internal politics, and weak in military tactics,” describing how Zhuge failed to advance beyond the Shu Han border in his six military campaigns against Wei and disappointedly died in his last campaign in 234AD. As revisionist historian Bai Yang argues, Zhuge had already lost Shu Han’s golden chance to conquer the central regions of the Wei Kingdom because of his overcautious character in his first campaign in 227AD.
Nevertheless, the southern scholars’ legitimization of the Shu Han regime was a watershed for the latter’s image in history. Afterwards, Shu Han exchanged its previous position as usurper with Wei, and successfully replaced the latter as the legitimate regime of the Three Kingdoms era, thus overcoming this historic barrier to contention for legitimacy. In other words, at the end of the sixth century, the Shu Han Kingdom appeared as the legal continuation of the Eastern Han Dynasty instead of a new, insurgent regime from the fourth century on. The Shu Han leaders finally became the would-be-rescuers of the falling Han glory for the hagiography in the modern period, which already goes beyond the scope of this article. (3of4)
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發表於 2005-3-17 01:24:51
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