The Three Chaste Ones of Ba: local perspectives on the Yellow Turban rebellion on the Chengdu Plain.

• Author: Farmer, J. Michael

It is something of a truism in discussions of early imperial Chinese history that the so-called Yellow Turban rebellion of the late second century C.E. played an important role in the demise of the Han dynasty. (1) With the court weakened by factions of bureaucrat-officials, eunuchs, and in-laws fighting over control of a series of young and ineffective emperors, an uprising centered in eastern China and led by Zhang Jue [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and his brothers Bao [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Liang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in C.E. 184 served as not only a theologically based outlet for pent-up peasant outrage against the state, but also provided a window for another type of opportunist to take control of the dying state. The various military men who were ordered by the court to put down the Yellow Turban rebellion, after completing their assigned tasks in relatively short order, (2) then established themselves as regional warlords, later seizing control of the Han emperor, and eventually establishing three independent states, thus ushering in a four-hundred year period of political disunion in China. This much of the story is well known, though to much of the world it is recognizable primarily from the fictional account of these events in the fifteenth-century novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] the San guo yanyi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [Extended Meanings of the Records of the Three States]. While the standard dynastic histories covering the period, Fan Ye's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (398-445) Hou Han shu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [Later Han History] and Chen Shou's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (233-297) San guo zhi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [Records of the Three States], mention the uprising, (3) they tend to outline the rebellion and its impact mainly on the Han court and the lives of its major players, especially military officials. In both cases, the standard historical accounts focus on the rebellion at the imperial level and virtually ignore how the event played out in smaller locales across the "subcelestial realm." This focus is due largely to the particular set of concerns typically addressed by orthodox historiography, and not because of the absence of local evidence. Similarly, the limited scholarship on the uprising in Western languages appears focused on a few key issues, particularly the religious affiliation of the rebels and potential links between the Yellow Turbans in eastern China and the contemporaneous Way of the Celestial Masters (Tianshi dao [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) in southwestern China. (4) Chinese scholarship, on the other hand, has long fixated on the rebellion as a manifestation of class-struggle in "feudal" China. Here I shall present the case of the Yellow Turban rebellion on the Chengdu Plain in southwest China as gleaned from the standard histories and local histories of the third and fourth centuries C.E., and attempt to tease out the impact of this event on the local population and on later historiography and popular memory.

Although the Hou Han shu and San guo zhi mention the Yellow Turban rebellion over one-hundred-fifty times, (5) these standard histories rarely offer more than lists of names, places, and dates of civil unrest linked to the rebels. Fan Ye's Hou Han shu notes the Yellow Turbans twenty-one times in the annals of Emperors Ling [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (r. C.E. 168-89) and Xian [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (r. C.E. 189-220), the Han rulers during whose reigns the uprising occurred. Yet, few details are offered. For example, a typical mention of the rebellion in the Hou Han shu reads something like, "In the third year of the Chuping era (192), the Yellow Turban-bandits of Qing province [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] entered Yan province [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and killed the acting city administrator Zheng Sui [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], then turned and entered Dongping [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [commandery]." (6) The San guo zhi accounts are similar. For example, "[In] Ji'nan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Le'an [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the Yellow Turbans Xu He [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Sima Ju [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and others attacked the city, killing the chief clerk. The troops of Taishan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Qi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and Pingyuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] commanderies launched a major attack on them, killing [Xu] He and pacifying the districts. [The troops] collected [the Yellow Turbans'] grain and gave it to the soldiers." (7) Though sparse, these entries provide the names of local rebels and the spheres of their activities, and while they are admittedly minor figures, we may also conclude that these local Yellow Turbans possessed some degree of power and influence, enough to attract the attention of later historians.

Significantly, neither history contains an independent biographical account of Zhang Jue or his brothers--the major figures in the Yellow Turban uprising; rather, these histories focus on the activities of the generals who engaged the Yellow Turbans. (8) Fan Ye's Hou Han shu mentions the Yellow Turban ten times in the biographies of two Han generals charged with suppressing the rebellion: Huangfu Song and Yuan Shao [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (9) Similarly, the San guo zhi mentions the rebellion twelve times in the biographies of the general-officials Cao Cao [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Tao Qian [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and Liu Yan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (10) Again, these references focus primarily on the military encounters between the Han officials and the rebels, and offer little in the way of specific details on the uprising and its impact on local scenes.

Among the one hundred sixty-three mentions of the Yellow Turban rebellion in the two standard histories, only two anecdotes touching on local impact of the rebellion can be found. Fan Ye notes Liu Chong's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] skill at archery, adding that defecting troops and local residents, all fearing Liu Chong's prowess with the bow, refrained from joining the Yellow Turbans. (11) Fan Ye also relates that the noted classicist Kong Rong [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (153-208) established a school to teach the children of the area who had been "misguided" by the Yellow Turbans. (12) This level of detail, sparse yet tantalizing, is anomalous in the Hou Han shu and San guo zhi accounts, however.

In the case of the Chengdu Plain, both the Hou Han shu and San guo zhi offer brief accounts of a local Yellow Turban leader and his uprising against the Han. Since Fan Ye's later account is a paraphrase of Chen Shou's earlier narrative, I will simply quote the San guo zhi at this point:

At that time the rebellious bandits of Yi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] province (13) Ma Xiang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Zhao Zhi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and others proclaimed themselves "Yellow Turbans" at Mianzhu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], (14) and gathered a band of peasants exhausted from their labors, in a day or two obtaining several thousand men. First, they killed the prefect of Mianzhu, Li Sheng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. Then they collected the clerks and commoners, numbering over ten thousand men and went forth, defeating Luo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] district, attacking Yi province, killing [Xi] Jian [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], finally reaching Shu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Qianwei [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] commanderies. (15) Within two weeks, they had defeated three commanderies [i.e., Guanghan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Shu and Qianwei], [Ma] Xiang proclaimed himself Son of Heaven, and his band numbered ten thousand. (16) Fan Ye adds few significant details to Chen Shou's base account. (17) Chang Qu's Huayang guo zhi claims that Ma Xiang was a native of Liang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] province, north and west of the center of his activities on the Chengdu Plain. (18) Significantly, neither Yi nor Liang provinces were among the reported centers of Yellow Turban activity. (19) As such, there is no evidence to link Ma Xiang in the west with the Zhangs in the east.

From these three historical narratives we can piece together a general overview of so-called Yellow Turban activity on the Chengdu Plain. A band of "Yellow Turbans," under the leadership of an outsider, Ma Xiang, gathered supporters from among the local population and launched attacks against the Han officers in the region. The supporters of Ma Xiang and his Yellow Turbans are described as "peasants exhausted from their labors," and the objects of their attacks were largely the representatives of the imperial government, elsewhere described as "corrupt" and "greedy." (20) In this light, we may view Ma Xiang's rebellion as a reaction against corrupt governmental officials, and not as driven by religious ideology as were his Yellow Turban counterparts in eastern China. (21) More importantly, lacking any concrete ties to either the Yellow Turbans of Zhang Jue in the east or with the Celestial Masters movement of the southwest, (22) Ma Xiang appears more like a local bandit who seized upon the Yellow Turban banner as an opportunity to rebel on his own.

Moreover, the various historical records' accounts of the suppression of Ma Xiang's uprising reveal considerable information about the political situation in the province--conditions that may have prompted Ma Xiang's rebellion and certainly aided his recruitment efforts. At roughly the same time as Ma Xiang's uprising, the Han court had dispatched Liu Yan to serve as shepherd (mu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) of Yi province with a specific charge to arrest corrupt local officials. Specifically, Liu was ordered to prosecute the former...