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

• Author: 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...