The calligrapher Chung Yu (ca. 163-230) and the demographics of a myth.

Goodman, Howard L.

During the 1910s and 20s, Lu Pi (1878-?) collated and arranged Ming- and Ch'ing-era glosses on the primary texts of San-kuo (Three Kingdoms) history. At one point in his major opus,(1) Lu was forced to mediate a textual dispute among the past masters about what seems a very small matter of biographical sources. Chao I-ch'ing (1711-64), Ch'ien Tachao (1744-1813), and P'an Mei (fl. 1670s) all thought that P'ei Sung-chih (372-451) in his day had erred by describing Chung Yu (ca. 165-230) as the grandson of Chung Ti.(2) Yu, they thought, was actually Ti's son. Lu Pi not only agreed with those scholarly giants, he also cited Shu-tuan (Synopses of Calligraphy), a T'ang-era work on the history and aesthetics of calligraphy, to provide additional weight.(3) The rang work said that Chung Yu died at the age of eighty sui; this allowed Lu to confirm a fairly common opinion that Chung Yu was born in A.D. 151, a computation based on a firm depth date of 230.

Lu Pi may have been thinking demographically at this point. There is a normative age in any society at which males are accustomed to sire their first children. Lu's position about Chung Yu implied that Shu-tuan's "eighty" seemed true only by assuming that Yu had been a son of Ti, not a grandson. TV demographic sense of this is seen by considering appendix 1, (especially, generations two and three). If Yu were to have been both the grandson of Ti and seventy-nine (the Western equivalent of the Chinese "eighty") at death, then a proposed demographic rule of thumb is stretched to its outer limit.

The rule in question - a hypothesis worthy of future testing - holds that men of the leading families in the late-Han and Three Kingdoms era received their junior, or cadet, posts in the state bureaucracy beginning at about age nineteen or twenty and their substantive civilian offices much later - about their late twenties and thirties. They normally did not marry and sire their first children until their early twenties. For Chung Yu to have been born in 150, every male ascendant for three previous generations would have had to sire his first son when about nineteen or twenty.

Lu Pi does not explain that the Chung genealogy had presented a problem to biographers as early as the third century, and that the earliest sources, in fact, gave several alternatives susceptible to interpretive mix and match - either son or grandson, either seventy-nine, sixty-nine, or neither. For us, the matter must be resolved by examining the oldest available sources of Chung-family history, and not through reliance on Shu-tuan, which is, as I shall show, basically a hagiographic and derivative work. We must make our own demographic deductions, use our own style of social history of the Chungs, and consider carefully P'ei Sung-chih's relationship with his sources. P'ei was not only attuned to people's ages and age differences, but he was also an evidential critic who delved into textual problems. Unfortunately, he was not able to resolve the matter of Chung Yu's age, and instead waffled the question. His unusual handling of it inspired centuries of myth about Chung Yu, including that found in Shu-tuan.

Chung Yu was most likely the grandson of Chung Ti. Yu furthermore was probably only about sixty-five when he died, that is, born somewhere around 165 (give or take a year). This revised dating defies the treatment of him in nearly all the modem biographical tool@ books, especially histories of calligraphy.,' But such works are sometimes slipshod and need to be corrected on occasion, if merely to examine their habits of compilation. (See appendix 2 for the traditions that compilers have followed regarding Chung Yu.)

At an early point in time, Chung Yu's biography jumped from the track of historiography and historical commentary and assumed a place in the mythologies of literary and artistic figures - probably during the three centuries before the writing of Shu-tuan in the 700s. Masters of calligraphy, especially those from the fourth and fifth centuries, were often considered special men whose art brought them close to the Taoist divinities and to Taoist revelations.@ Thus, Chung Yu was transformed. He started as a beset member of a politically pressured family, which is the picture one gains from analyzing the historiography. He was transformed to a master of the brush who at seventy-five fathered yet another great Chung-family calligrapher. The tropes in this myth are: transcendent artist, longevity, and old@ age virility, the combination of which makes for a type of Taoist epitome.

THE CHUNGS OF YING-CH'UAN

The careers of the Chungs intersect with the complicated national events of the late-second and third centuries. Although later impressions of the Chungs centered on the aesthetics of calligraphy, we must not forget their roles as advisers to the Ts'ao and Ssu-ma courts. Contemporaries of the Chungs would have interpreted the family's actions in the latter context. For five generations (see the appended genealogy of the Chungs) they overcame political reversals by keeping a strong profile in military affairs, court policy speeches and scholarship, and by producing and protecting their males.

The Chungs were the type of family to have expected high status. Their roots were as a landed and multi-branched Ying-ch'uan // family connected to other families of that commandery, which encompassed Lo-yang and the area to its south and east (partially present-day Honan). Chung-family ascendants had been critics of the Eastern Han government, and by Chung Yu's time were known also as military leaders. However, along with countless other families, the Chungs had suffered during the Han court's tang-ku persecutions of critics from the late 160s to about 190. Not even the fame gained by having been martyrs to the cause of pure criticism,, could ensure a steady rise in their status after 190. They were temporarily shut out of Ts'ao P'i's new government in 220, and in 264 Chung Yu's son led a brief and aborted plot to take control of the throne while leading a western military campaign. He was killed, and the family was for a moment on the verge of losing all of its junior members in Yu's sublineage as a result of the ensuing investigation and punishments.

We can trace the Chungs to the Eastern Han scholar and teacher Chung Hao , a man of local influence, means, and a literary reputation. (All biographical references cited in appendix 1) History records a nucleus of about five or six powerful Ying-ch'uan families who communicated, shared certain resources, and supported each other through intermarriage and patronage. In addition, they sought patronage and power from one of the various generals who, beginning in the 180s, perceived Ying-ch'uan as a strategic region and waged war there. For example, during this period Chung Yu formed alliances with the Ying-ch'uan Hsuns and Ch'ens . The Hsuns had estates and raised troops in support of Ts'ao Ts'ao. Hsun Yu brought both his relative Hsun Yu it and Chung Yu into Ts'ao's service. Chung and Ch'en women married Hsuns (who seem to have been the major receivers of intermarriage offers), and young Hsun and Chung men are known to have associated as intellectual peers later, in the 230s and 240s.(6)

We receive only a bare sketch of Chung Hao's life and career in the extant sources. He was known as a strict moralist - during that era a popular slogan applauding the political reputations of educated men. He refused service and remained a rusticated scholar, tending to "thousands of students" in a remote location. He was probably associated generally with Ying-ch'uan anti-eunuch conspirators.(7) The salient point in his life, because it has to do with family strategy and political status, is his seeking support within his own family and with Ying-ch'uan men, for example, Li Ying Ch'en Shih , and his nephew Chung Chin .(8)

Most of the information concerning Hao is taken from Fan Yeh's (398-445) Hou Han-shu , a compilation done later in time than that of P'ei Sung-chih, the great commentative expander of Ch'en Shou's (233-297) San-kuo chih , even though Fan's biographical subjects are generally earlier, ranging from roughly A.D. 20 to about 220.(9) Naturally, Fan drew on many of the same sources. Hao's brief notice in Hou Han-shu is found inside a chapter that features Ying-ch'uan leading families.

Fan took note of Chung Hao's friendship with the well-known scholar Ch'en Shih. The Chungs and Ch'ens represented Ying-ch'uan networks. Throughout China during the first and second centuries A.D. members of such families began to define a new sort of ethos of local leadership and nobility, something that historians today treat as a signal development in the social history of medieval China.(10) Furthermore, the friendship of Chung and Ch'en revealed the way that older men could associate with younger ones without having to become bogged down in social etiquette or social confusion. Fan's biography of Chung Hao tells us that Ch'en was "not as old as Hao" . His point is that Hao was considerably older, since the context here concerns friendship with ones juniors. We also learn that Chung died at home, rather than under such pressures as military campaigns or court exile, at the age of sixty-eight. Ch'en's dates are stated elsewhere in exact terms. he also died "at home" at eighty-two years (thus giving us 104-187).

Chung Hao's dates become exact with another bit of evidence. Something like twenty or thirty years before Fan Yeh, P'ei Sung-chih had quoted a passage from a third-century compendium of biographies titled "Hsien-hsien hsing-chuang" .It specified that Ch'en was seventeen years younger than Chung. Fan almost certainly drew directly on the same work when making his own remarks. Calculating "seventeen years younger than" against Ch'ens dates, we can deduce Chung Hao's dates as A.D. 87-155.

EARLY DEMOGRAPHIC REMARKS

The matter of Chung Hao's age brings us to the question of demographic observations in early China. Demography, in my view, is not only the counting of populations and comparing of subgroups, or the use of statistics to hypothesize about changing population bases. It is first and foremost about life stages. when do women in a given society bear (and fathers sire) their first children; how many people live in a so-called household; in what circumstances do generation-cohorts consider someone an outsider?(11) For early Chinese history these social patterns must be deduced through textual analysis, after which statistical demography can proceed only when data pools are large enough.

Fan Yeh and P'ei Sung-chih lived in a time when historical writing, as well as belles lettres in general, grew in scope and acquired new aims. This trend started before them - roughly in the second century, and it is important to remember that P'ei and Fan used late-second- through fourth-century texts that themselves frequently spoke in terms of demographic patterns and problems. Ch'en Shou had placed such thoughts into his San-kuo chih (completed in the years before 297). For example, he took time to explain how a famous writer, K'ung Jung , fit socially into the Ch'en family, since K'ung had been friendly with both a Ch'en father and son.(12)

Ch'en Shou was far from alone in this kind of recording. Of the many dozens of early documents quoted by P'ei in his commentary to Ch'en Shou's work, we see, for example, an item about the relative ages of members of the Hsun family in "Wei-shu" (compiled roughly ca. 250s-60s);(13) remarks about the appropriateness of an action in the context of one's life or career stage;(14) and about display of etiquette between age (or generational) cohorts.(15) In short, the historiography of the second through fourth centuries consistently noted peoples ages, and compared age and career expectations among peers. The compilers often emphasize links that occurred through descent groups. for example, a circle of friends all having been the sons of a circle of friends. Sometimes a link was established through home-area proximity, or an age-cohort. As an aside, such generational and demographic multivalence helped to establish an ironic tone in San-kuo chih. The irony was, I believe, present in Pe'i's style of compilation and then came out more clearly in Sung and Yuan shih-hua and shih-p'ing genres. Finally, it became a feature of the Ming literati novel San-kuo chih yen-i.(16) The point is that the San-kuo dilemma pictured on ming stages and in Ming novels stemmed from third-century historians and compilers, who described a breakup not just of regions, but of generations and relationships.

P'ei Sung-chih was a tough evidential critic. He usually used the demographic observations found in his sources to criticize those same sources. In his entire chu compilation, P'ei enters his own thoughts, using the introductory rubric "Your servant Sung-chih opines (or says, or considers that)," exactly 215 times.(17) These opinions most often treat veracity, especially when the early sources presented evidential problems? why was such-and-such text cited by a certain person@ why did someone characterize another in such-and-so manner, or how could someone have predicted something correctly?(18)

In at least half-a-dozen entries he used early demographic observations in order to criticize the veracity of the early texts themselves. For example, P'ei linked Sun Chu'an with Ts'ao P'i in terms of brotherly deferences - itself an example of ironic tone.(19) But P'ei's main aim is to criticize. At one point in the collective biographies of Ts'ao princes of the blood, he says,

These [several] biographies use the exaltedness or baseness of [men's] mothers as the order [of their appearance], and do not [do so simply on the basis of] calculating the ages of the [princely] brothers. Therefore, although [Ts'ao] Piao ,prince of Ch'u, was older, his biography is after that of [Ts'ao] Kan . By examining the biography of Chu Chien-p'ing , we know that Piao was older than Kan by twenty years.(20)

In another instance, he comments about the life of Tung Hui in terms of the expected stages in one's career. According to the text of Hsi Tso-ch'ih's (d. ca. 383) "Hsiang-yang chi" Tung, on a mission from Shu to Wu, once offered a smart retort to a drunken Sun Ch'uan and subsequently was rewarded by the Shu regime with promotion to grand administrator. P'ei commented,[21]

"Han Chin ch'un-ch'iu" also carries this speech. But it doesn't say what Tung Hui taught [Sun] (via his retort), and its phrasing also carries minor differences. Both of these works are products of Master Hsi [Tso-ch'ihi], yet are different in this fashion. The biography [that I have quoted] says "Hui was young and his official [post] was slight." If he were already on the staff of the chancellor and was sent out to be [grand administrator of] Pa-chun, then his offices indeed were not slight. Because of this I suspect that Master Hsi's texts were unresearched.

I have spent time on P'ei Sung-chih's techniques of textual evaluation in order to show how it is that the earliest sources in the post-Han era used demographic methods, and how the later commentative tradition founded by P'ei continued in that vein and developed a sharp method of criticism. This fact becomes important when we try to determine how P'ei may have chosen sources in regards to Chung Yu's place in the family tree and his age.

THE CHUNGS' POLITICAL REVERSALS

Let us continue through the generations of the Chung family. Chung Ti (see genealogy, below, and appendix 1) was a direct ascendant in Chung Yu's sublineage, but we know virtually nothing about him save for one note concerning his official career. P'ei Sung-chih's commentary quotes "Hsien-hsien hsing-chuang" to the effect that "because of the tang-ku [suppression], neither Ti nor his brother served [in office]." This leaves the impression that Ti had been young at the time of tang-ku, and had not even had earlier cadet posts. Later, however, Fan Yeh used a similar source (perhaps a parallel version of the same source) to the effect that Chung Ti had had a cadet post. Fan's quotation of this early source is, I believe, the preferred interpretation, and it implies that Ti was born in about 125 (see appendix 1, generation 2).

The Chung family by the time of the tang-ku (the 170s and 180s) had already suffered heavily. Earlier, Chung Hao had chosen not to serve, perhaps having been caught up in politically dangerous Ying-ch'uan associations. At the age of about forty, Chung Ti was barred from substantive office. His cousin Chin, known to the grandfather Hao,(22) seems not to have had an official career, but was recognized for his moral bearing. To make matters worse, the next generation (those Chungs born in the 140s) are ciphers in the historical sources. There may have been extremely few of them, or some may have separated off and lost contact because of warfare.

In summary, by about 185 a once-influential family - stentorian critics of the government and competent scholars from an active region of landed, self-supporting estates - had lost continuity of access to high office and had been constricted by political upheaval. Moreover, its male members seem to have been few and far between, and their third generation may have been politically unknown and acted only at the local, Ying-ch'uan, level.

In the following pages, I concentrate on Chung Yu and briefly introduce Chung Hui, whose life requires a longer, separate, treatment. This father and son are a key to understanding the Chung family in wider terms. Both drew on military ability; both were conscious of the dearth of males in their extended family and acted to correct the situation; and both used calligraphy in important political moments. It is clear that they did all these things in order to put their family on a better track for the. coming decades.

CHUNG YU AND CHUNG HUI: FAMILY STRATEGY AND POLITICS

Chung Yu came from a powerful Ying-ch'uan family that had had close ties with the Ying-ch'uan Hsuns.(23) As a boy Chung studied classics with a Chung elder, Yu (see genealogy), who was a textual master, and later was nominated as hsiao-lien ("filial and incorrupt"). At this time, to infer from an early tradition (see appendix 2, under "Chung Yu in the Early Traditions of Calligraphy and Biography"), Yu may have studied calligraphy with a Ying-ch'uan native, Liu Te-sheng. In the 190s Chung Yu served in campaigns in the central plain. he supplied a shipment of horses to Ts'ao Ts'ao during the Kuan-tu campaign of 199-200, and he fought the Hsiung-nu at P'ing-yang. He also was among those sent to attack Chang Lu in a major western thrust led by Ts'ao Ts'ao in 211. Beginning at that time, however, Chung received almost entirely civilian offices, rising to chancellor of state in 213, when the Wei kingdom was founded. This office was considered one of the "Three Excellencies," the highest honorary rank in the bureaucracy, reserved for the personal counselors of the emperor. Furthermore, Chung Yu was one of thirty or more who that year exhorted Ts'ao Ts'ao to accept honors as duke of Wei.[24] In summary, he had brought his family's reputation into the center of power in the Ts'ao-dominated court. Probably around this time he fathered his older sons Yu and Shao, more than likely by his earlier consort, Lady Sun.

In 219, however, Chung Yu suffered a political reversal. He was investigated following the failed Wei Feng plot against Ts'ao Ts'ao, and he was stripped of his offices. He began to regain lost ground in the spring of 220 when Ts'ao Ts'ao died and Ts'ao P'i became king of Wei. We learn in his San-kuo chih biography that his offices were restored, but we are not told which ones, specifically, nor the exact date.

In the past Ts'ao Pi had regarded Chung Yu highly. He once had an inscription made for Chung and granted him special ceremonial perquisites.(25) Yet when Ts'ao Pi was in his first months as Wei emperor, he could not, or did not, restore Chung Yu to his former honors. A close examination of the dynastic stele of A.D. 221, inscribed and erected to honor Ts'ao P'i's becoming the emperor Wen of Wei, reveals circumstantial evidence that Chung Yu's career was not fully rehabilitated by 221, a time when courtiers and allies of the Ts'aos were awarded noble statuses.(26) On the stele, Chung's name is not among the stele announcers (that is, the first three signers-the court's current Three Excellencies@, but in the group of Nine Ministers, whose names appear further down in the stele text. Chung could not at that time be named as an Excellency, since those slots were occupied. He was in a bureaucratic no-man's land, coming back from cashiered status, but not able to take his old posts. Only later in Wen-ti's reign did he replace Chia Hsu as Grand Commandant (an Excellency post.)(27)

In 224 or 225 Chung Yu added a young consort to his household and began a new family. The sources specifically state (see appendix 1) that this woman, Lady Chang, after losing her parents early in life, came to "fill out Chung Yu's household."(28) Yu was then about 60, and after he expelled his "honored consort", Lady Sun, for having nearly poisoned Chang (in about 225) he took still another consort of a different type. The commentator P'ei Sung-chih noted:(29)

At that time Chung Yu was indeed "old."(30) His imminent [plans to] take in [a new] [clan-]presiding wife [Lady Chia ] in general [conformed to the] idea of Li-chi, which states: "[Confucius said] `the eldest son, even though seventy (sixty-nine by Western reckoning), should never be without a wife to take her part in presiding at the funeral rites. [If there should be no such eldest son, the rites may be performed without a presiding wife.]'"(31)

Chung's actually having been "seventy," following P'ei's suggestion, is not to be taken literally. P'ei in this case used Li-chi to show his readers how men of the time were consumed with questions of ritual propriety, especially concerning filial devotion.[32] Yet it was a haphazard reference. Normally, when using Li-chi in his writing, P'ei did so to bring together evidence to explain third-century debates on court ritual. In such instances he would quote other ritual texts, for example: Chou-li, various traditions of Confucian wisdom, Cheng Hsuan's commentaries, or contemporary ritual treatises now not extant.(33) Furthermore, he would sift the third-century problems carefully for the reader and judge the competence of the early speakers to understand their own material. It is clear that P'ei did not normally use Li-chi as a signal by which to embellish an evidential fact.

I believe that P'ei was just as stumped by the problem of the Chung family-tree as were his earlier sources. Yet because he used both a quotation from Li-chi and an allusion to Li-chi's phrasing of "old," he may have been indicating to his readers that he thought "seventy" was a solid classical solution. For some reason he did not say "I do not know," which he does say elsewhere, on occasions involving factual discrepancies.

More pertinent to our discussion of social history, however, is Chung Yu's old-age fathering. We see here that his family's ceremonial functions required the addition of a secondary wife. But Chung was gaining far more than a new wife. He was gaining the opportunity for more sons, so that in the long term the family could rise again in status and not require the good will of a court that had earlier put them out of favor. In addition, other kinds of strategy operated - namely the family's maintenance of scholarly ("Confucian") and literary skills. Chung Yu was was one of only two signers of the dynastic stele of 221 who was a true polymath - a man learned in several humanistic arts. In addition to court prose, he was also a legist (skilled in legal cases, theories, and precedent texts). Sometime after A.D. 220 he instituted important court debates concerning corporal punishment.[34] Last, he was an expert in jade and ting inscriptions, and was known to have used his calligraphic art as a legal tool.(35) The Chung family passed along all of their skills, as well as a style of textual pedagogy, to several generations and lines of the family.(36)

Beginning in the T'ang, one opinion among epigraphers held that Yu was the calligrapher of the Wei's dynasty-founding stele, mentioned above, since his name appears on the signers, list and he was particularly famous for executing stele calligraphy during that era. His having calligraphed the Wei stele was probably true enough, but it is unlikely that he wrote its text, since during the month and a half during which Ts'ao P'i debated with his prominent advisers about becoming emperor, Chung Yu was not to be heard. He is mentioned nowhere in the many documents surrounding those discussions, and other evidence points elsewhere for the authorship of the stele text.(37)

Because Yu's son Hui attempted a coup d'etat in 264, we need to look closely at Chung Yu's military achievements and noble rewards in order to comprehend his own social and political position before he fathered Hui late in life. We also should compare and contrast his career with those of the other Nine Ministers in December of 220, at the time of the writing of the stele text.

In a previous study I surmised that the political actions of the Chungs were driven partly by dissatisfaction over the level of their military commissions and, implicitly, the expected military honors. Here I would add that the disappointment was also based upon a general pressure felt by eminent families to maintain access to high civilian offices, as part of their long-range plans for court leadership after Ts'ao Ts'ao's war campaigns. Such pressure would have involved producing males. Just as Chung Hui went forward on his 263-64 campaign against the state of Shu, his older brother Yu, who was heir to his father's titles, died. This situation may have motivated Hui, now one of very few Chung males, to extraordinary efforts for himself and his family's sublineages. The coup plot may have been one such tactic, especially since Hui's adopted sons tone of whom probably was brother Shao's orphaned son) were treated in 263-64 as hostages by the Ssu-ma-dominated court and were eventually executed after Hui's demise. It is possible that the Ssu-mas had been yearning to chop away a line of the Chung family as a violent response to Chung Yu's and Hui's earlier actions.(38)

Chung Yu's military career provides further evidence of political dissatisfaction. In the 190s, as we saw, Chung Yu was active militarily. He was associated with Hsia-hou Yuan ling and Hsu Huang (both signers of the national stele in 221) in the 211 campaign against Chang Lu.(39) However, the cashiering that Chung Yu suffered in 219 was not the only change in status. After the above military contributions, he did not receive further campaign commissions. To make matters worse, he apparently received no specific increase in noble title or in service fiefs (units of income land) on or just before Ts'ao P'i's accession, as had over a dozen other stele signers, including several of the Nine Ministers.

In 221 Chung Yu may have felt trapped at the Nine Ministers level. Although military men,(40) most of the ministers were no longer campaigning, nor had they any stature as landed gentry in such a prominent area as Ying-ch'uan. Chung, on the other hand, was a Ying-ch'uan man of military and literary fame. The hiatus in his court stature from 219 to early in the reign of Ming-ti (r. 226-237), when his titles and offices rose again, was in effect a drawn-out punishment. His new son, Hui, born in 225, may have been Yu's attempt to create a viable new line, one that could resolve the problems of the previous generations and in fact work the Chungs free of reliance on the Ts'aos.

HOW OLD WAS CHUNG YU AFTER ALL?

How old was Chung Yu when he died? The evidence above suggests that he was sixty (give or take a year) when he fathered Hui and thus sixty-five or so when he died. This would afford P'ei Sung-chih's reference to Li-chi a general sort of authority. But it should not be read as hermetic allusion. People of early China may have initiated schemes to reintroduce the ceremonies and forms of Li-chi into everyday life, but this was not necessarily done with legalistic exactitude except in rare cases and in instances of court debate.

But the problem does not end here. What should we make of another remark by P'ei? This occurred when Ch'en Shou's San-kuo chih "Biography of Hsun Yu" (d. 214) related a facet of Hsun Yu's life as follows:

Only Chung Yu knew about [a written collection of] Hsun Yu's twelve extraordinary stratagems taken from throughout his career. [From Hsun's death until 230] Yu did not finish making Lan edited] compilation of them, and then he died.

Immediately P'ei Sung-chih comments:

Chung Yu died sixteen years after Hsun Yu; what difficulty could there have been in compiling Hsun's extraordinary strategies? So, when [Chung's] years reached eighty [seventy-nine by our reckoning] he simply said that he wasn't finished, and this caused the world to lose a tradition of strategic military plans by Hsun Yu. What a shame![41]

I am nonplussed by this. P'ei's other remark ("seventy/ sixty-nine") corresponds fairly well with the Chung genealogy that I have worked out, if one does not quibble about perhaps four years, difference. One wonders if the passage referring to Chung Yu as "seventy" was written by P'ei before or after this passage referring to Yu as "eighty." The two remarks are attached to different sections of San-kuo chih - the "seventy" comes in chuan 28, and thus perhaps was written much later. In chuan 10 P'ei Sung-chih may have been annoyed with Chung Yu for his having failed as historian-editor, and thus exaggerated Chung's obstinacy. Then, years later while working on a later chapter, he may have gained a more judicious understanding. Of course, this is speculation.

In any event, Chung Hui (see the genealogy, generation 5; and appendix 1), orphaned at age five, was actually born in his nephews, generation. The earliest that his father Yu could possibly have begun his family and still have been the grandson of Chung Ti was 147-50; but I am arguing that Yu was born about 165 and that his two elder sons were born between about 200 and 210.(42) In fact, Hui, the youngest son, seems to have consciously attempted to deal with the problem of his being in a generational interstice by switching his pattern of associations. At first he preferred to associate with his older brother Chung Yu and Yu's peers, many of whom were perhaps fifteen to twenty years senior. For example, when Hui was about twenty-nine (in 254) the Ssu-mas arrested Hsia-hou Hsuan (b.209), a member of the most powerful military family to have allied with the Ts'aos. Yu was commandant of justice and was taking evidence from the imprisoned Hsia-hou, undoubtedly a gloomy task that put the Chungs on the political fence. Chung Hui went along with his brother but was rebuffed by Hsia-hou because he was young and was attempting to use mere social links and ceremonies to befriend him. I count seven court and scholarly associates of Chung Hui, and they yield a mix: three were of the older generation and four the younger (his own). Toward the last part of his life he returned to older-generation partisans of the Ssu-mas.(43)

Chung Hui became somewhat notorious in history for having served the Ssu-mas as moral judge (he was the man who railroaded Hsi K'ang ). But his being between sets of generational cohorts might give us pause to consider other motives for his 264 coup attempt besides political honor and loyalties. First, as a man who seems not to have married and fathered, he was protecting and coordinating the males in his family: his elder brother Shao was most likely already dead, because Hui had adopted his son I; his elder brother Yu was old and died while Hui was away on the campaign to Shu; and on that campaign Hui was accompanied by yet another nephew, Yung, perhaps also one of his adopted sons. In short Hui, his adopted sons, and his brother Yu's sons were the dwindling hope of the Chung family. Second, I suspect that Chung Hui was not sure of his future with the Ssu-mas and thus rebelled to reestablish the Ts'aos on the throne (over whom he could become regent), or to install his own family as dynasts. Further careful reading of the sources may show a chronology of political mistrust developing between Hui and the Ssu-mas. Ssu-ma Chao's levering. Chung Yi away from his brother is certainly a solid indication of this.(44)

At the end of the Shu campaign, when Chung Hui decided to defy he court, he used calligraphy to accomplish his deed. After receiving a disturbing order from Ssu-ma Chao to hold off capturing the chief rebels in Shu and to wait for Lo-yang troops, Hui forged a palace document of the recently deceased Ts'ao empress-dowager that purportedly empowered Hui to dismiss Ssu-ma Chao. He showed this to everyone, got them to sign on, and changed the troop commanders. I do not believe that biographical myths produced these details, which were transmitted in San-kuo chih and then Tzu-chih t'ung-chien. Calligraphic imitation was a hallmark of the early calligraphers: they all copied their teachers, and great forbears, works.(45) Here we see Hui covering himself in a mock legal fashion by showing the forged letter around and eliciting approval. Moreover, the general that did not go along with Hui's ruse, but who held back and reclaimed his loyalties after Hui's plot failed, was Wei Kuan , an old friend of Hui and also a famous calligrapher.(46) He may have been the only one capable of understanding forgery and so needed to be distant from the showing of the document. All of these indications are culturally and politically quite acceptable. We can accept their veracity and their use in historiographic writings as stemming from a motive to elucidate details, and not strictly from an impulse to transform Hui into a larger-than-life tragic figure.

CONCLUSION

The treatment of Chung Yu and his son Hui in the eight-century Shu-tuan by Chang Huai-kuan captures none of the mundaneness of the Chung family's struggles.(47) Chang claims that Chung Yu spent three years in the mountains studying calligraphy, and was unscrupulously zealous in obtaining calligraphy samples from his artistic betters (see appendix 2). These facts are supported nowhere in the, earliest sources. I suspect that tales like this stem from previous Chang-family myths, no doubt redoubled by Wang Hsi-chih and his peers a century later.

After establishing Chung Yu's place among his era's calligraphic masters (ranking below Wang Hsi-chih in running script), Chang treats biographical details of immediate interest to us:

But as for pa-fen [a derivative of square-style, or k'ai-shu], he made the "Stele for the Wei Dynasty's Receipt of the Accession Ceremonies" [a stele that was erected at the same time as the one that I have mentioned above]. I call this his very best. [Yu] died in the fourth year of Tai-ho (230). He had indeed reached eighty. Yuan-ch'ang's [i.e., Yu's] li-[shu] running [script] is entered into the divine [category] [the highest]. His grass pa-fen [script] is entered into that of exquisite [the next]. "There are twelve examples of Chung's calligraphy. The skilled exquisiteness is beyond imagination, and the many surprises are unique".(48)

Where Chang Huai-kuan makes his remark about Chung Yu's age, it is not impossible that he elided the two contradictory remarks of P'ei Sung-chih. Chang would have known about the places in San-kuo chih chu where P'ei remarked on Chung Yu's age - after all Chang was as much a biographer as an aestheticist critic. The rhetoric of P'ei's Li-chi remark, where Chung's longevity and virility came into play, coupled with P'ei's scolding the "eighty-year-old" Chung in the other remark, constituted a good way to present the life of a venerable sage and transcendent artist as well as dealing editorially with the fifth-century contradiction. What we see here is mental cut-and-paste editing at its most powerful. While commendable at least for using the earliest documents attesting Chung's age, Chang Huai-kuan nonetheless projects Chung Yu into the bigger-than-life world of transcendent calligraphers. But this approach also affected later compilers and scholars right at the heart of their work - the matter of philological accuracy. Assuming that our editions of T'ai-p'ing kuang-chi, which emended Chang's "he had indeed reached eighty," are later in time than our editions of Chang's Shu-tuan, then we see that compilers hundreds of years later were still not happy with the biographical mess.

The earliest - third-century - sources seem to have had a sense of the Chang family in terms of political and personal struggles. The compilers aimed at a type of social history as they compiled facts and anecdotes about courts, regimes, and individuals. But after Chang Huai-kuan, the Chungs, particularly Chung Yu, ceased to be the subject of the nascent world of "San-kuo yen-i" literature - shih-hua, commentary, plays, and poems. Chung Yu appeared only several times in Lo Kuan-chung's commanding version of the yen-i, which we know in its sixteenth-century printing.(49) There Chung is but one of dozens of prose-writing generals at the beck and call of the Ts'aos, not the critical member of a family with political gripes and great strivings. The sixteenth-century reader would merely say to himself, "Oh, here is Chung Yu, the Taoist calligrapher who fathered the rebel Chung Hui at age eighty!"

Appendix 1: Biographical Sources for Five

Generations of Chung Yu's Sublineage

Notes

* References to standard histories use the Peking, Chung-hua editions. * "Earliest possible birth year" suggests a demographic rule of thumb: males of the administrative elite were capped at about 15-16, sought further education and recommendations about 16-20, were given cadet posts about 19-21, and substantive posts beginning at about 30. They would not have married and fathered until at the very least 20-21, but most often later. For the rule, I add 20-23 years to each generation, beginning with C. Hao.

generation one: Chung Hao (d. age 68; at home). (Biog. in HHS 62.2064-65) Calculated dates: A.D. 87-155

Source for 68 yrs. of age at death: HHS 62.2065 ("Biog. of Chung Hao").

Source for Ch'en Shih "not as old as Hao": HHS 62.2064.

Source for Ch'en Shih dates as 104-87 (d. at home): HHS 62.2067 ("Biog. of Ch'en Shih").

Source for Ch'en as 17 yrs. younger than Chung: "Hsien-hsien hsing-chuang": (cit. in SKC chu 13.392).

According to de Crespigny, Records of the Three Kingdoms, 59, "Hsien-hsien hsing-chuang" is of unknown authorship; furthermore, similar titles (for "Hai-nei hsien-hsien chuan" see below) were cited in P'ei's commentary, Sui-shu ("Treat. on Lit."), Shih-shuo hsin-yu, and Chiu T'ang-shu. One example is the earlier, "Hsien-hsien piao" by Yang Piao (142-225), apparently a biographical, or hagiographical, compilation incorporated into the Eastern Han history Tung-kuan Han chi . The 3rd-c. historian Ssu-ma Piao wrote a Ling-ling hsien-hsien chuan" probably around 270-300, apparently a regionally oriented work. (See B. J. Mansvelt Beck, The Treatises of Later Han [Leiden: Brill, 1991], 11, 23-24.). Because there were a variety of subgenres of "Hsien-hsien" writings, it is possible that Fan Yeh used several. See his use of "Hai-nei" to establish a mythic topos in a biog.; HHS 43.1461. It is also possible that the two "hsien-hsien" texts discussed below, under Generation Two, items 1 and 2, were parallel. I estimate compilation of them as between ca. 265 (after Chung Hui's death) and 300, by someone working on the family's history.

generation two: Chung Ti Deduced date: born c. 125; father approx. 38. [Earliest possible birth year = 107-10]

1) P'ei Sung0chih (SKC 13.392, cit. "Hsien-hsien hsing-chuan") says that neither Ti nor Fu this brother) served in state offices because of the tang-ku struggles (which began as early as 164, and became official in various edicts from 167-84). A man's thirties were approximately when he received his first substantial appointments in the central "civilian" wing of the government. If Ti was about 30-35 when the tang-ku began, he would thus have been born about 135-40.

2) Fan Yeh (HHS 62.2065, cit. "Hai-nei hsien-hsien chuan"), gives Ti the office title of commandery master of records (chu-pu . This makes good sense. Furthermore, Fan's cited evidence does not necessarily contradict P'ei's, but is simply an expansion of it.

3) HHS 62.2064, says that Ti's first cousin Chung Chin was the same age as Li Ying; this makes Chin's birth year A.D. 110.

Problem arising from items 1 and 2: To be shut out of all offices, even cadet or hsiao-lien statuses, because of events beginning in the late 160s and 170s, Ti might have been born ca. 145 or later, and Chung Hao would have been old (at least 60) when he sired him. This is possible; but if Ti had been shut out of only the later, substantive, posts in his career (supported by item 2, above), it is likely that he was born ca. 125-30. Further circumstantial evidence to support Ti's birth ca. 125 is provided by item 3, above, where at least one first-cousin is known to have been born in 110.

generation three: Chung [X.sub.2] [unknown offspring of Ti] Deduced dates: born betw. 145-50 (father approx. 20-25). [Earliest possible birth year = 127-30]

This constitutes a missing generation in the Chung-family genealogy. Either a textual mistake existed in "Hsien-hsien" (see generation 4, "Sources of Yu as grandson of Ti," below), or the family's records were confusing to biographers of the late-3rd and 4th c. because the family had become broken up. I believe that the latter is the case.

1) HHS 62.2065 ("Biog. Chung Hao") (followed by the early modern scholar Ch'ien Ta-chao and others: see below) says that Chung Yu was "Chung Hao's grandson," and the commentary to HHS (ibid.) quotes "Hai-nei hsien-hsien chuan" in support: "Chung Yu was the son of master of records Chung Ti." This would put Chung Yu here in the third-generation slot.

I am convinced, however, that the HHS claim here is wrong. It is outweighed by claims in other early biographical writings that Yu was Ti's grandson (see below, under generation, 4). Consequently, I view generation-3 Chungs as unknown in the records.

generation four: Chung Yu (Biog. in SKC 13.391-99) Deduced birth year: c 165 (father approx. 20). Precise death year: 230. [Earliest possible birth year = 147-50]

Sources of Yu's age or death year:

1) Death year: SKC 3.97 ("Ming-ti chi"); copied in 11th c. in TCTC (see TCTC/f, 1. p. 316).

2) P'ei sung-chih said (SKC 28.784): "[Yu] was `old' [viz., 70, our 69] at the time [when he expelled Lady Sun in 226]." However, at SKC 10.325, P'ei states that Chung Yu "had reached 80 [viz., 79] when he died" without having completed the editing of Hsun Yu's military works.

Problem arising rom items 1 and 2: Was Yu 69, or simply somewhere thereabouts, as per allusion to Li-chi's phrase "old"; or was 79, as per P'ei's other remark? I deduce that P'ei must have failed to coordinate, or even lightly and ironically confounded, his sources, since he was so meticulous in other types of demographic thinking. We can rely on neither remark as an exact fact of C. Yu's age.

Sources of Yu as grandson of Ti: 1) P'ei (SKC 13.392, cit. "Hsien-hsien-chuang"). After a phrase at the conclusion of Hao's biog. that describes Ti and his brother as non-office holders, the "Hsien-hsien" author is quoted by P'ei: The "Hsien-hsien" writer seems to have realized the existence of a missing generation in the tree, and the proceeded to make a deductive solution. The picture was accurate neither for him nor P'ei, who, I believe, included the "Hsien-hsien" remark because of its deductive, and thus seemingly judicious, quality.

2) TCTC 60.1941: "Yu was Hao's great-grandson." We know of no specific source that was available to Ssu-ma Kuan yet not to us. At least this represents a first-rate authority.

Source re Yu's consort: Yu's posthumously so-called "legacy" wife (ming-fu see SKC 28.789) Lady Chang (t. ) lived from 199 to 2d mo. of 257 (see SKC 28.786, cit. Chung Hui's "Mu-chuan" ["Mother's Biog."]). She had been orphaned young and came into the Chung house to "bring the family to full" (SKC 28.784, cit. "Mu-chuan"). She bore Hui in 225.

Later scholiasts: Chao I-ch'ing, San-kuo chih chu-pu , implies that HHS is right in saying Yu was Ti's son. Ch'ien ta-chao, San-kuo chih pien-i , similarly does not agree with P'ei that Yu was Ti's grandson, P'an Mei, says that "the word `grandson' ought to be `son.'" Lu Pi quotes Chang Huai-kuan's Shu-tuan indirectly to the effect that Yu was Ti's son and that ti had not served in office because of the tang-ku. (For all these, see Lu Pi, San-kuo chih chi-chieh. )

generation five: Chung Hui (Biog. in SKC 28.784-95) 225 (father about 60)-264. [Earliest possible birth year = 167-70]

Sources of Hui's age or birth-death year: 1) SKC 28.792-93: d. in 264 (Ching-yuan 5/1st lun. mo./18th day); "at the time he was 40 [viz., 39]."

2) SKC 28.784, cit. "Mu-chuan": "[Lady Chang] bore Hui in the sixth year of Huang-ch'u [225-26] and the favor and gratitude that she received [from Chung Yu, the Accomplished Lord] increased. The Accomplished Lord expelled Lady Sun and in addition took in the Lady Chia as clan-head wife."

Summary of Chung Yu's family-tree and birth-year problem Two fairly reliable sources (those quoted by P'ei Sung-chih and Fan Yeh) conflict: C. yu is either the son or grandson of C. Ti. I assume he was grandson, since the earliest source to claim that fact seems to have been grappling with the problem. Upon choosing the "grandson of Ti" scenario, then if C. Yu had lived to 79, our demographic rule of thumb would be strained - both ascendants in generations 2 and 3 would have had to father their sons in the chung Yu sublineage at age 20 or so. In this regard, C. Yu's having been considerably younger than 79 is preferable.

C. Yu's birth year of about 265 is supported by other circumstantial evidence: 1) his grandfather Ti's cousin was born in 110 and Ti probably had had cadet posts by the 170s, making his birth year somewhat near to 110; 2) a negative hypothesis: it is possible that record about an important family (records perhaps compiled late in the 220s) could have had no information about the generation born after C. Ti, during a period of political duress; 3) C. Yu's consort Lady Chang was 26 when Yu's son Hui was born, making her mate's age seem more likely to have been 60 than 75 (although the latter is certainly possible).

Appendix 2: Chung Yu's Genealogical Place

and Age in Various Traditions

I. Oldest Statements (ca. 250-300) Placing Yu in the Family Tree (if not specifically stated, sources are cited in appendix 1)

1) "Hsien-hsien hsin-chuan" (ca. 265-300), which clearly states a deduction about Yu's being a grandson of Ti. No attempt to pin down a birth year. Quoted by P'ei Sung-chih in SKC chu.

a) The above is followed by Ssu-ma Kuang in TCTC. 2) "Hai-nei hsien-hsien chuan" conflicts with the above by calling Yu a son of Ti. No dates or express deductions.

II. Oldest Statement (ca. 250-300) Giving Age of Yu's Consort

1) Chung Hui's "Mu chuan."

III. Oldest Statement (ca. early 400s) of Yu's Exact Age

1) P'ei's comment to SKC, "Biog. of Chung Yu," that in 226 Yu was "old" (alluding to Li-chi's "70"); this would make birth year 157.

2) P'ei's comment to SKC, "Biog. of Hsun Yu" dud Yu was just about to reach 80 (Western age 79) at his death in 230; this calculates birth to 151.

IV. Chung Yu in the Early Traditions of Calligraphy and Biography

1) Wei Heng (3rd c.), "Ssu-t'i shu-shih" states that C. Yu studied calligraphy with Liu Te-sheng of Ying-ch'uan. See CS 36.1065; described in Nakata Yujiro , annot., Chugoku shoron taikei (Tokyo: Nigensha, 1977), 1:97

2) Chang Huai-kuan (mid-T'ang), Shu-tuan (Pai-ch'uan hsueh-hai edn. [photorpt. of early Ming edn.; Taipei, 1970]), 1.6b-7a [pp. 2598-99]; this follows exactly, including column format and commentative remarks, the version in 1646 edn. of Shuo-fu, ts'e 89. Shu-tuan states, "[Yu] died in the 4th yr. of T'ai-ho [230]. He had indeed reached 80 [viz., 79]."

This statement elides P'ei's two remarks. The number 80 is based on P'ei, item 2, but the "indeed" copies the syntax of P'ei's item 1. Later, Tai-p'ing kuang-chi altered the phrase; see below, item 5.

3) Wang Hsi-chih (303-361), Pi-shih lun-lueh (1646 Shuo-fu edn.), does not cover historical personalities in the history of calligraphy, just the techniques.

4) Wei Hsu (T'ang)

a) "Chiu-p'in shu" [Nine Categories of Calligraphy"] (1646 Shuo-fu edn.), t'se 88, p. 2a: "[under , the highest rank]: Chung Yu of the Wei, cheng-shu san-li" ("various clerk-scripts in square calligraphy [i.e., the forerunner of k'ai-shu]").

b) "Hsu shu-pin" ["(Nine) Categories of Calligraphy Sequel"] (1646 Shuo-fu edn.) ts'e 88, p. 1a: "[under ], Chung Yu. [following comment written in small characters:] True square, pa-fen clerk script."

Neither work by Wei gives biographical information.

5) T'ai-p'ing kuang-chi (early Ming edn.; rpt. Pei-p'ing: Wen-yu T'ang, n.d.), 206, sect. "Shu," repeats verbatim Chang Huai-kuan's entire Shu-tuan, but in the passage concerning Chung Yu's life a compiler (whether the original or later one) changes . Very early edns. of TPKC are not available for this textual comparison with Shu-tuan. Feng Meng-lung's (1574-1646) T'ai-p'ing kuang-chi ch'ao, ch. 48, in condensing sections of the original TPKC, includes the part on Chung Yu but does not give the information about his age.

6) T'ao Tsung-i (1320-1399), Shu-shih hui-yao

ed. Lo Chen-yu (facs. rpt. of early-Ming edn.),2.9b, discusses Chung, but does not mention dates.

IV. Chung Yu in Compilations, Encyclopedias, and Art Histories

Compilers opting for "151"

1) Chung-wen ta tz'u-tien "151-230".

2) Chiang Liang-fu , Li-tai ming-jen nien-li pei-chuan tsung-piao (Shanghai: Shang-wu yin-shu kuan, n.d.), 24. "151-230."

3) Wang Ching-hsien gen. ed., Chung-kuo mei-shu ch'uan-chi (Peking: Jen-min mei-shu ch'u-pan she, 1986), intro., 13, "151-230."

4) Chou Ti , gen. ed., Chung-kuo li-tai shu-fa chien-shang ta T'zu-tien

(Peking: Pei-ching Yen-shan, 1990). Born "151".

5) Yu Chien-hua comp., Chung-kuo mei-shu chia jen-ming tz'u-tien (Shanghai. Shanghai jen-min i-shu ch'u-pan, 1981)."151-23-": cites SKC and (see above).

6) Fu Pao-shih comp., Chung-kuo mei-shu nien-piao (Hong Kong: Tai-p'ing shu-chu, 1963). Born "151".

7) Lin Ssu-shui , Chung-kuo shih-wu ta sha-chia (Taipei: T'ai-wan Chung-hua shu-chu, 1972), 82, says: "In re. the stele called I Ying pei, in the 7th yr. of Chia-yu of the Sung era [1062], Chang Chih-kuei relied on 'T'u-t'i chi' to decide that it was written [i.e., calligraphed] by Chung Yu. But this stele is dated to 154, so Chung could not have done it.... Chung was born in 151".

"I Ying pei" is not listed in the standard surveys of stele inscriptions, including Shih-ko t'i-pa so-yin , but was mentioned by Kuei Fu (1736-1805), whose Cha p'u (Peking: Shang-wu yin-shu kuan, 1958) ch. 8, sect. "Chin-shih wen-tzu" p. 171, merely comments on several words. In addition, in the 1910s Liang Ch'i-ch'ao made a comparison of its extant passages based on early- and late-Ming rubbings; Yin-ping-shih ho-chi (Shanghai: Chung-hua, 1936), vol. 15, "Wen-chi" 44A, subsect. "Pei t'eich pa" pp. 39-40. Neither scholar discusses date or authorship. There is no clear solution until further research is done: I cannot locate Lin's "Tu-t'i chi"; and rubbing fragments of "I Ying pei" may no longer be available.

8) Tz'u-yuan , rev. edn. (1981; Hong Kong: Shang-wu yin-shu kuan, 1984), 4:3204, "151-230": cites Shu-tuan as general reference.

9) Nakata, Shoron taikei (see above), 1:359. "151-230": but see Nakata, below, under "Lapses, surprises."

10) Iijima Shunkei, Shodo Jiten (To kyo, 1975). "151-230": but see him under "Lapses, surprises."

Compilers wisely opting only for Yu's death date

1) Herbert Giles, A Chinese Biographical Dictionary (1898; rpt. Taipei, 1964), 207, gives a glowing account of life; cites famous appellation that Yu was one of "three giants of the age." Died "230."

2) Richard Mather, Shih-shuo Hsin-yu: A New Account of Tales of the World (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1976), biog. appendix, s.v. "Chung Yu." Died "230"

Lapses, surprises, differences in interpretation

1) Tan Chia-ting , comp., Chung-kuo wen-hsueh-chia ta tz'u-tien (rpt. Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1967). No entry for Chung Yu at all.

2)Nakata, Shoron taikei, vol. 1, sect. "Shojin den" 358, says Ts'ao P'i's dates are unknown - an egregious lapse re San-kuo sources (Ts'ao lived 187-226).

3) Iijima, Shodo jiten (above), says that Chung Hui's dates are unknown - an egregious lapse.

4) Yano Chikara, Gi Shin hyakkan seikei hyo (see citation in Genealogy). No dates: Chung Yu placed as son of Chung Ti.

5) Shina shoga jimme jiten (Tokyo: Dai-ichi shobo, 1975). Entry, but no date.

Judicious opinions

1) Chu Hung-lam and F. W. Mote, Calligraphy and the East Asian Book, ed. H. L. Goodman (Boston. Shambhala, 1988), 57. Born "ca. 170.:"

2) Tsang Li-ho , Chung-kuo jen-ming ta tz'u-tien

(1921; rev. edn., Shanghai. 1984), 1690. No dates, but states that he was Chung Hao's great-grandson (i.e., Chung Ti's grandson).

(1) This is San-kuo chih chi-chieh (n.d.; rpt. 1957; rpt. Taipei: Hsin-wen feng, 1975), a commentary to San-kuo chih that brought together the previous centuries of scholarship on the sources of early medieval history. It provides references (usually quotations in extenso) to parallel and additional texts, philological arguments, and literary allusions. No other work since has been able to improve on Lu's scope, erudition, and judiciousness, (2) This place in Lu's Chi-chieh is cited below, appendix 1, generation four, "Later scholiasts." (3) Shu-tuan is discussed and cited below, and in appendix 2. (4) See appendix 2, under "Judicious Opinions," for an exception or two, esp. Chu and Mote, Calligraphy and the East Asian Book, ed. H. Goodman, which states "b. ca. 170," reflecting my earlier solution to the problem. (5) Charles Lachman, "Art Criticism and Social Status in Northern Song China: Liu Daochun's `Genre Theory' of Art," in From Benares to Beijing: Essays on Buddhism and Chinese Religion, ed. Koichi Shinohara and Gregory Schopen (Oakville, Ont.: Mo saic Press, 1991,) 70-74, that generally, before the T'ang, artists who used arts in service of the government were not considered as "artists" whose works could be evaluated independently. The question of the biographical myth-making that was performed by Taoist editors and collators has been touched upon by Michel Strickmann, Le Taoisme du Mao Chan: Chronique d'une revelation (Paris: College de France, 1981), and treated more directly by Alex des Forges, "Gathering the Feng and Fei Plants: Individuals and Sacred Texts in Early Religious Daoism" (senior thesis, Harvard Univ., Dept. of East Asian Langs. and Civs., 1992). The Taoist origin of early calligraphy was the subject of several articles by Ch'en Yin-k'o several decades ago; these are cited and discuss carefully in Yu Ying-shih "Han Chin chih chi shih chih hsin tzu-chueh yu hsin ssu-ch'ao" (rpt. in idem, Chung-kuo chih-shih chieh-tseng shih-lun [Taipei: Lien-ching ch'u-pan, 1980] 270-75), and Lothar Ledderose, who draws connections between Celestial Master Taoist teachings and the great calligraphers of the fourth century (Ledderose, "Some Taoist Elements in the Calligraphy of the Six Dynasties," T'oung Pao 70 [1984]: 248-55 [see his n. 8, for Ch'en Yin-k'o's earliest study in this regard]). Ledderose treats the critical and theoretical writing on calligraphy that preceded that of Shu-tuan, and in particular (pp. 251-53), the Taoist background of Yang Hsin (370-442). I have determine, in addition, that Yang Hsin spoke about Chung Yu in his famous "Ku-lai neng-shu jenming", there he claimed that Chung maintained three styles: 1) (as cited in Chung-kuo mei-shu ch'uan-chi [see appendix 2], 5,2, introd., p. 6, whose editors explain that no. I is equivalent to , 2 to , and 3 to . The literary type of hagiography also tended toward aesthetic tropes. Yian Ang of the Liang dynasty (502-56) wrote "Ku-chin shu-p'ing" , which refers (p. 13) to Chung Yu's calligraphy in such terms as "unknown beauty of spirit and impulse" and dancing cranes wandering the heavens" . In the fifth century a descendant of Wang Hsi-chih wrote that Wang gave a prized Chung Yu calligraphy example to his cousin. The latter was buried with the revered calligraphy. See Hui-liang J. Chu, "The Chung Yu (A.D. 151-230) Tradition: A Pivotal Development in Sung Calligraphy" (Ph.D diss., Princeton Univ., 1990),63-64; Chu's thesis does not cover Chung Yu's or his family's history. (6) On the Hsuns and their times, see Ch'en Chi-yun, Hsun Yueh: The Life and Reflections of an Early Medieval Confucian (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1975); on the connections between the three families in Ying-ch'uan and their use in Ts'ao Ts'ao's strategies, see Wang Chung-lo , Wei Chin Nan-pei-ch'ao shih (Shanghai. Jen-min ch'u-pan, 1979), 146-47; and Kano Naosada "1Shin Gun den' shiron" Toyoshi kenkyu 25.4 (1967): 101-6. The relations of the families are discussed in Howard L. Goodman, "Exegetes and Exegeses of the Book of Changes in the Third Century A.D: Historical and Scholastic Contexts for Wang Pi" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Univ., 1985), 35-36, esp. pp. 40 9n. 27) and 46 (n. 41), in the context of the history of scholarship. On the Chungs' family style of education, see Richard Mather, "The Controversy over Conformity and Naturalism during the Six Dynasties," History of Religions 9.2-3 (1969-70): 167. (7) Hsun Hsu died in an anti-eunuch plot along with his compatriot Li Ying (see genealogy, below)., Hou-han shu (Chung-hua edn. [hereafter HHS]) 62.1050. Li's aunt was the wife of Chung Hao's brother. (8) For Li Ying, see HHS 67.2191. All of these just mentioned are listed in the genealogy and/or appendix 1. (9) The historiography of Hou Han-shu is studied by Hans Bielenstein, The Restoration of the Han Dynasty (Stockholm: BMFEA, 1954), vol. 1: that of San-kuo chih and P'ei's commentary by Carl Leban, "Ts'ao Ts'ao and the Rise of Wei: The Early Years" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia Univ., 1971), chap. 1, and Rafe de Crespigny, The Records of the Three Kingdoms, Occasional Papers 9 (Canberra: Australian National Univ., Centre of Oriental Studies, 1970). See, also, Robert Joe Cutter, "The Death of Empress Zhen: Fiction and Historiography in Early Medieval China," JAOS 112 (1992): 577-83, and Eric Henry, "Chu-ko Liang in the Eyes of His Contemporaries," HJAS 52 (1992): 589-612. (10) See Wang, Wei Chin, chap. 12; Yu, "Han Chin chih chi,"; and Mao Han-kuang , Chung-kuo chung-ku she-hui shih-lun (Taipei: Lien-ching, 1988). (11) We have too little data to argue coherently about birth rates, sex ratios, echo effects, or the like, in early China. I use the term somewhat in the way it is understood in "historical demography," that is, a puzzle of small pieces about social patterns and population sizes based on anecdotes and surveys (registers, censuses) and their careful philological interpretation in conjunction with other texts. (12) San-kuo chih (Chung-hui edn. [hereafter SKC]) 22.633. (13) Quoted at SkC 23.662. (14) See the late 3rd c. "Fu-tzu", quoted at SKC 11.363; and Huang-fu Mi's "Lieh-nu chuan," concerning the stages of a woman's life (SKC 9.293). (15) See Hsu Han-shu concerning K'ung Jung's lack of acceptance because of his age (SKC 12.371); and "Wei-lueh" on the etiquette based on age that was displayed between Liu Pei and Chu-ko Liang (SKC 35.913; also Henry, "Chu-ko Liang"). Another example of this is provided below. (16) For the concept of irony, I base myself generally on the findings of Andrew Plaks, The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel: Ssu ta ch'i-shu (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987), and Andrew Lo, "`San-kuo chih yen-i' and "Shui-hu chuan' in the Context of Historiography: An Interpretive Study" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton, Univ., 1981). They do not suggest, however, an earlier origin of this ironic tone as might be found in the historiographic techniques and genres of Ch'en, P'ei, Fan, and their sources. (17) This was determined using Academia Sinica's Twenty-five Histories Database at Harvard. (I thank the staff of Harvard's Yenching Library for access.) The personal name index to SKC published by Chung-hua shu-chu does not list mentions of P'ei's name. (18) P'ei once explained foreknowledge as probabilistic knowledge. The occasion concerned Chao Ta (fl. ca. 250), who not only was able to divine the locations of hidden goods by computing, but could divine complex numbers written down and placed out of his sight (SKC 63.1424). P'ei quoted Sun Sheng's (302-373) negative opinion about Chao's type of divination, and this was placed by P'ei into the record (SKC 63.1426):

Wu shih records [Chao] Ta's knowing that in the southeast there would be the ch'i of a king, and thus, he treated frivolously [the state of Wei's] summons [to serve] and went across the river (to the service of the Wu court). But Wei did [eventually] succeed to the Han and receive the mandate of the imperial lands. [Therefore, in fact,] Ta was unable to predict the first visible signs [of political events] and scurried off like a rat to the Wu-Yueh [region]. In ancient times the sage-kings observed the patterns in heaven and earth [a broad reference to the Book of Changes, sect. "Great Treatise"], in order to draw the figures of the eight trigrams. That is why "with great inclusiveness" [see "Great Treatise" B.9; Chou-i Wang Han chu (SPPY edn.), 8.8b; cf Richard Wilhelm and Cary Baynes, tr., The I Ching, or Book of Changes, 3rd rev. ed. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1967), 353][those tools] were given completion in [the systems of] milfoil and counting-slip [divination], and [cosmic] transformations became formed into the six lines. For this reason, although the three I [books] are different, the hexagram [texts] are [really of] one system. How can there [truly] be anyone who by a round of computing is able "to grab hold of the abstruse and plumb the hidden" [rearranging phrases from I-ching; see Chou-i Wang Han chu, 7.9b; cf Wilhelm, I Ching, 3.19: "penetrating the depths" and "exploring what is hidden"].

In other words, Sun objected to technical, arithmetical reckoning as a replacement of the classical system. P'ei Sung-chih countered, in part:

From the disasters that afflicted the central plain [that is, from about A.D. 180] down into the Chien-an era (196-220], there were about twenty or thirty years when there were hardly any living souls left. We can make a ratio with the "small peace" [an allusion from Li-chi] [of the south], whose dead in all might have been only something over a hundred. So although the south may have been in military preparedness, it cannot have matched the extreme of the central plain's [suffering]. How does one know that [Chao] Ta did not compute [numerical ratios of] peace to war or know the total numbers of disasters? The advantage lay in the south-east and thereby he saved himself.

See SKC 53.1250: "I calculate Sun Ch'uan as having been five years older than Wen-ti [Ts'ao P'i]. There was only a small aspect of elder to younger in their [statements about each other]." No matter how small the factor of cohort relations may have been (both were sons of the founders of regimes), P'ei's mention of it casts San-kuo politics in an ironic tone. (20) SKC 20.586. Chu's biography is SKC 29.808-9. (21) SKC 39.987. Ssu-ma Kuang has another person retort, instead of Tung; see Achilles Fang, trans., The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms (220-265): Chapters 69-78 from the Tzu Chih T'ung Chien of Ssu-ma Kuang (1019-1086), 2 vols., Harvard-Yenching Inst. Studies 6 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1952 [hereafter TCTC/F]), 1:437., (22) HHS 62.2064. (23) Chung Yu attempted to protect the Hsuns after Hsun Yu's death; SKC 10.325; 29.809. Also Chung was consistently paired with Hsun Yu in his role as provider of strategy, evaluation, and policy, esp. from A.D. 200-212, see SKC 3.311, 313. (24) SKC 1.40. (25) Yu was given a hortatory inscription (see his biography and SKC 13.395, cit. "Wei lueh" for additional text). Chung announced Ts'ao's P'i's temple name at the Southern Altar when Ts'ao died; see, Chin-shu, (Chung-hua edn. [hereafter CS] 19.586 ("Treat. on Rites," sect. 1). (26) The following remarks concerning the stele are derived from a chapter of my longer, unpublished, study of the political culture of Ts'ao P'i's new dynasty. (27) Chia Hsu died in 223. Wang Lang, Hua Hsin , and Chung were considered by various writers as the Three Excellencies of the "early" Wei court of Wen-ti (see Chung's biography, also SKC 13.410, cit. "Wang Lang chi"). (28) SKC 28.784, cit. Chung Hui's "Mu-chuan". There is good reason to interpret as "to fill out [a household]"; later in the same quoted source, Chung Hui takes pains to note that court debaters in 257 said that a nobleman has four kinds of wife, and that Lady Chang should not be called posthumously by the term "consort", it but by "legacy wife" (28.786). Mather, "Controversy," 167, translates several passages from "Mu-chuan." (29) SKC 28.784, immediately after the quotation from Hui's "Mu-chuan." (30) The word "old" is used in Li-chi ("Ch'u-li A") (Shih-san ching chu-shu edn.) 1.6b, to refer to a man's reaching 70 (69 by Western calculation). When "getting old" at 60, he gives instructions, when he has become "old" at 70 he delegates authority; see Legge, Li Ki, 66. Other passages in Li-chi refer to the decade-stages of a career similarly; see sects. "Chu'-li (Legge, Li Ki, 88); and "Wang-chih" (Legge, 240). (31) Li-chin ("Tseng-tzu wen"), 18.4a/b; tr Legge, 316. The T'ang commentator to Li-chi, K'ung Ying-ta , explains that although a man over 60 would not usually marry because his "yang-force has stopped," still he takes a presiding wife a so that all the funerary business of the clan can have a women's director as well as a men's. One should note that the text of Li-chi uses for what Legge translated as "wife to take her part in presiding"; but P'ei's may be an allusion to the third line of I-ching, Hexagram 9: "The spokes burst out of the wagon wheels. Man and wife roll their eyes," to which the Ten Wings "Small Image Commentary" adds: "It is a sign that they cannot keep their house in order" ; tr. Wilhelm, I Ching, 433. Here the traditional commentators take verbally, with the connotation that the wife is unruly. Wang Pi (Chou-i Wang Han chu (SPPY edn] 1.15b) says, in part: "Finding domestication in a [situation of] growing yin [Wang's reference to line 4] does not enable one to 'return [unobstructed]' [a reference to the image of the first line]." (32) There is a subfield of scholarship on San-kuo and Chin social ritual (leaving aside for a moment court ritual]. See, e.g., T'ang Ch'ang-ju, "Wei Chin Nan-pei-ch'ao te chun-fu hsien-hou lun", in his Wei Chin Nan-pei-ch'ao Shih-tun shih-i (Peking: Chung-hua, 1983), 233-48;, Yu, "Han Chin chih chi"; Mather, "Controversy"; Holzman, "Filial Piety in Ancient and Early Medieval China. Its Perennity and its, Importance in the Cult of the Emperor," paper for conference on The Nature of State and Society in Medieval China, Stanford, 1980; and John Makeham, "Ming-chiao in Easter Han: Filial Piety, Reputation, and Office," Han-hsueh yen-chiu 8.2 (1990). (33) For example, in SKC the classic Li-chi is mentioned fifteen times. Of these it occurs in Ch'en Shou's main text five times: e.g., a ruler's reference to the classic (SKC in memorials (SKC 21.617, for Liu Shao's memorial), or stating the titles of commentaries someone had written (SKC 13.419). Seven times Li-chi is mentioned in the early sources that P'ei quotes, usually to mention someone's preferred reading or any commentaries that he may have written. Further surveys of the use of Li-chi in SKC would have to include mentions of "Li" (by itself), "san-li," I-li, and Chou-li. P'ei's use of the classic to explain exegetical, scholarly concerns can be seen at SKC 47.1116. There he quotes Cheng Hsuan's a commentary, Chou-li, and Confucius in order to elucidate a phrase in Ch'en Shou's main text concerning a court discussion. Other examples are covered more thoroughly in my forthcoming work on Ts'ao P'i's founding of the Wei. (34) He wrote a long memorial favoring corporal punishment as "a commutation of capital punishment." Wang Lang disagreed, favoring complete commutation of the death penalty; SKC 13.397-98, TCTC/F, 1:241:45; CS 30.922-23 ("Treatise on Law"). Also, see his long speech on inculpation of families (SKC 12.376), and a fascinating anecdote in which he is seen processing evidence (SKC 23.660). (35) See SKC 13.395-96, also cit. "Wei-lueh" and P'ei's notes; also SKC 11.362, CS 26.1065, for the Chung family's fame in calligraphy, and their derivation of that art from Liu Te-sheng (see Goodman, "Exegetes," 52, n.64). He was skilled at recognizing others, calligraphy, in the sense of legal evidence, see SKC 13.421, cit. "Wei lueh." For a brief history of Chung's role in the history of calligraphy, see Sugimura Kuni hiko , "Sho no seisei to hyoron" , Toyoshi kenkyu 25.2 (1966): 169-7; also Chu, "The Chung Yu Tradition," chap. 2, for a history of transmission of Chung's calligraphy into the N. Sung. (36) CS 39.1152, 1154, for his in-law grandson Hsun Hsu's calligraphic skills; all those of his great-granddaughther Chung Yen , in CS 96.2510. Chung Yu wrote something called I-chi ("Records concerning the I-ching") which was referred to in Chuna Hui's "Mu chuan" (SKC 28.784-85, cit. "P'ei's notes). For further bibliographic evidence of it, see Goodman, "Exegetes," 441, the "Index of 57 Works," and n. 1 on p. 446. (37) See my forthcoming study; the author most likely was Wang Lang. (38) After Hui's plot failed and he was killed, four of his nephews were imprisoned and awaited execution. The nephew Yung , probably die son of yet another elder brother, had perished alongside Hui in Shu. Ssu-ma Chao brought up the matter of Hui's family at court. The young Ts'ao emperor, Ts'ao Mao, praised their grandfather Chung Yu and expressed concern over cutting off the family's posterity. Only the sons of Chung Yu were spared, partly because of the fact that Yu had warned the Ssu-mas of Hui's intentions. The nephews I and Yung were convicted (the latter seemingly posthumously). This whole affair was a way for die Ssu-mas to switch the dominant line of the Chungs over to the Chung Yu-Chung Yu branch, eliminating Hui's and others, males. For these events in 264-65, see Goodman, "Exegetes and Exegeses," 50-52; based on SKC 28.793 ("Biog. of Chung Hui"). (39) They assisted Chung Yu, coming down from Ho-tung, in his attack on Chang Lu (SKC 1.34);, Chung Yu and Hsun Yu were consistently a pair in making strategy, evaluation, and policy for Ts'ao Ts'ao (SKC 3.311, 313). (40) Of the total of seven "Nine" Ministers, nearly all had decidedly military careers: five led troops or were top-level campaign strategists, especially for Ts'ao Ts'ao. One was a curator of seals, and was used in that capacity on diplomatic missions to the southern state of Wu. Several of the ministers were appointed by Ts'ao Ts'ao 213 as a group to fulfill the function of a literary college. But in general, the Ministers had not recently campaigned. (41) For both of the above texts, see SKC 10.325. (42) The two stories (nos. 11 and 12) in the "Yen-yu" sect. of Shih-shuo hsin-yu (see R. Mather, tr., A New Account of Tales of the World (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1976 (hereafter SSHY/M)], 34-35) seem to fit the early part of the Chung myth. The stories are centered on Hui and his older brother Yu, and make a specific point about their both being young children in the scenarios related. In actuality, clues to Yu's birth year are only circumstantial, but the most telling is that he was considered a peer of Hsia-hou Hsuan, who rejected Yu's "younger brother" Hui, and his having been born of the first consort Lady Sun. I believe that Yu and Hui could not possibly have been young boys at the same time. The fifth-century Shih-shuo has compressed time in order to present the lads as precocious offspring of the charismatic Chung Yu. (43) See Goodman, "Exegetes and Exegeses," 54-55. (44) See n. 38 above. The whole scenario, in which Chung Hui is viewed by Ssu-ma Chao as a problematic general and began, thanks to Chung Yu's advice, to plan ahead for the arrest and extermination of Hui's family is given clearly in TCTC/F, 2:454-55. (45) That is, calligraphic imitation was a real, often practical, art, even though it is also mentioned in legends about early artists. See, e.g., the anecdote about Hui's imitating his in-law nephew's calligraphy in order to gain a valuable possession of his; SSHY/M (21/4), 365. (46) Goodman, "Exegetes and Exegeses," 104-6. (47) We know next to nothing about Chang. He was from Hai-ling and served as a Han-lin assistant during the K'ai-yuan reign (713-42) and his Shu-tuan was in three chuan (as it still is in the Ming collectanea that I have used). (For both these facts on his life and his book, see Hsin T'ang-shu [Chung-hua edn.,], 57.1450.) There is no biography of him in Hsin Tang-shu or in Chiu Tang-shu . His name is not mentioned in any titles of rang prose, as revealed in modern indexes. Ch'uan T'ang-wen ch. 432, contains twelve works by him-forwards and additions to Shu-tuan, as well as other works on calligraphy. These are reviewed and summarized by Hsiung Ping-ming, Zhang Xu et la calligraphic cursive folle (Paris: College de France, Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, 1984), 30-32. (48) See appendix 2 for edn. used. The last phrase is a citation from Yuan Ang's work, cited above, n. 5. The edn. of Shu-tuan that I follow gives the Yuan Ang source at the very end of the piece on Chung Yu: but TPKC (see appendix 2) as cribes the exact phrase in question to Yuan. Lachman, "Art Criticis," 69-70 claims that the famous scheme of the three categories can be traced to Chang Huai-kuan. (49) See hui 56, 80, 91, 94 (tr. Brewitt-Taylor, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 2 vols. [Rutland. Vt. Tuttle, 1959], 1:581; 2:326, 359).