Yuan Hong: a case of premature death by historians?

• Author: Chen, Sanping

INTRODUCTION

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (1)

'Tis night: and on the Western Stream here swims the Cattle Isle. No cloud to fleck the spotless sky that stretches mile on mile. Within my skiff I float away the Autumn Moon to view In idle dreams of General Xie who raised to fame a poet new. A lofty strain I too can lift. But what will that avail? There is no patron now to hear my heart-string's sobbing wail. Our matting sails we raise again to meet to-morrow's sun, As from the tree the maple leaves are dropping one by one. (2) This is one of the best-known poems by one of China's greatest poets, namely Li Bai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (701-762?) of the mid-Tang dynasty. As Fletcher's liberal translation elaborates, this poem builds upon the near-legendary discovery by General Xie Shang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (308-357) of the young literary talent Yuan Hong [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], then reduced by poverty to a lowly boatman. During a nighttime outing, General Xie overheard Yuan reciting poems in a boat and was deeply impressed by the young poet's gift. This chance meeting led to Yuan Hong's entry into and acceptance by Eastern Jin [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (317-420) high society and officialdom, (3) a fortune the similarly talented and "undiscovered" Li Bai dreams of repeating when he passes by the same river isle where General Xie encountered Yuan several centuries earlier.

Li Bai's poem is just one of many examples signifying Yuan Hong's prominence, both during Yuan's own period and in the view of posterity, despite the fact that Yuan's bureaucratic career never exceeded the level of governor (taishou [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). (4) Yuan was known not only as an extraordinarily gifted man of letters but more importantly as a historiographer specializing in the Eastern Han [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] dynasty (25-220), otherwise known as the Later Han [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. His Hou Han ji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] remains the only full chronicle extant for that period. Though it is surpassed in many aspects by Fan Ye's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (398-446) (5) general history Hou Han shu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] composed some half a century later, Yuan's work was and still is of critical import to the study of the Eastern Han, and contains much exclusive information, including on the coming of Buddhism to China, that is not found elsewhere. The eleventh-century Zizhi tongjian [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (hereafter ZZTJ), for instance, repeatedly utilized Yuan's chronicle either explicitly (6) or implicitly. (7)

Yuan has a biography in Jin shu (92.2391-99), and figures prominently in the famous collection of anecdotes Shishuo xinyu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] by Liu Yiqing [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (403-444), (8) appearing at least fourteen times in the latter work. His stature in the eyes of posterity is vouched for by the fact that the two most popular (though not the most comprehensive or most scholarly) modern encyclopedic Chinese dictionaries Cihai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (9) and Ciyuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (10) both grant him a formal entry.

What this short essay will dispute are the standard dates of Yuan's life found in all Chinese reference works and typified by the two dictionaries mentioned above, both of which list Yuan's lifespan as 328-376. Zhou Tianyou's annotated edition of Yuan's Hou Han ji contains the most extensive and complete collection of biographic material on Yuan, and represents the pinnacle of modern research on the life and work of this gifted historian and man of letters. Yet Professor Zhou also adheres to these dates. (11) As I shall demonstrate, these dates are derived from an erroneous interpretation of Yuan's biography in Jin shu. I shall calculate Yuan's correct lifespan based on his childhood name and some other considerations, which will lead to some further observations regarding the Chinese "zodiac" or animal cycle.

THE DATES OF YUAN HONG

Yuan Hong's dates given by the standard references quoted above are evidently derived from the Jin shu (92.2398) statement that Yuan died in the commandery of Dongyang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "at the beginning of the Taiyuan era (376-96)," literally [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], at the age of 49 sui [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. All modern reference works assume automatically that "the beginning of the Taiyuan era" means the very first year of this reign period, namely the year 376, and thus Yuan's age of 49 sui at death means he was born 48 years earlier, or in the year 328.

I find such reasoning subjective and arbitrary. In fact, the character chu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "beginning" is widely used by Chinese historiographers, together with zhong [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "mid-" and mo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "end," as an indefinite indicator of time, when the exact date is uncertain or unnecessary. Used after a reign title, these three indicators can be roughly translated as "at some point of time during the beginning/mid-/ending years" of such-and-such an era. Of course, "the beginning years" of a reign era include the first year, as the reference works have presumed regarding Yuan Hong's death. But counter-examples abound too. The following are just two of many cases from the same dynastic history for which the exact date of the event can be established from other passages or sources.

In his Jin shu biography (36.1057), Wei Guan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (220-291) is said to have received a promotion to become the (Grand) Minister of Works (sikong [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) "at...