The Language of Values in the Ming Novel Three Kingdoms1

Moss ROBERTS

New York University

Abstract:Confucian and anti-Confucian values dominate the entire narrative of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi 三国演义).The territorial integrity of the empire versus the formation of independent kingdoms within the empire is the dominant historical problem underlying the narrative of the Three Kingdoms.The opening lines of the Qing edition capture the dynamic,“The empire long united must divide,long divided must unite.” In the course of the conflict between these competing movements,centripetal and centrifugal,many larger than life characters come to the fore,together with a prolonged stress test of the fundamental values of Chinese civilization—loyalty,filial devotion,honor,benevolence,and wisdom.

Keywords:Confucianism; dynasty; separatism; brotherhood; Buddhism

1.

Three Kingdoms(Sanguo yanyi三国演义) can be read as a study of values in conflict,such as righteousness(yi义) against loyalty (zhong忠),and filial piety (xiao孝) against brotherhood (xiongdi兄弟).In a time of peace and stability,these ideals should coexist and enhance one another; in a time of crisis,they may become incompatible.The wordyi,a key term in the novel,can be rendered widely in English by any of the following:responsibility,obligation,duty,the Code,commitment,service,cause,self-sacrifice,and honor.At the “conventional” endyirefers to the duties required of a particular role.In the “Liyun (礼运)”chapter of theLiji礼记,the phrase “duties of men” (zhongcheng忠诚) covers a wide range of social and political obligations including “the father’s kindness,the son’s filiality […] the ruler’s benevolence,the vassal’s loyalty,” and so on.At the “extreme” end,however,yiinvolves sacrifice,as in the common phrasesjiuyi(to die for the mission 就义) ordayi mieqin(for the sake of the greater cause to destroy family bonds大义灭亲).The phraseyanyi演义 in the novel’s title,really a genre title,probably signifies “elaborating on the moral significances of”.Thus,yiin its semantic richness and versatility,forms a contrast with the more restricted termzhong.In early and mid-Warring States texts,zhongtypically meant “single-minded sincerity”; by the end of the period,in theXunzi,for example,it means a vassal’s loyalty to the state or the emperor,as in the “Liyun” phrase cited above,zhongcheng.Thereafter,the wordzhongstabilized in that sense,andchengroughly meant “sincerity”.The common compoundzhongchengprobably is a synonym compound,“true-hearted sincerity”.

Ideally,zhongandyi,loyalty and honor,should reinforce each other.In Chapter 1 ofThree Kingdoms,when the three brothers take an oath ofjieyi(binding their honor 结义) to die for one another and to aid the Han 汉朝 royal house,zhongandyiare aligned.The brothers’ mutual commitment (yi) supports their loyal service to the Han throne.At a later point in the narrative,however,the two values become opposed.When Cao Cao 曹操 captures Lord Guan (Guan Yu 关羽),Lord Guan chooses not to die honorably for his lord,Liu Bei (Xuande 刘备字玄德),who has disappeared in the chaos of battle; instead Lord Guan surrenders to Cao Cao,stipulating that his surrender is to the Han throne and not to Cao Cao,who is virtually the shogun of the Han Dynasty.In this way Lord Guan turns his submission to Cao Cao into an act of loyalty to the Han emperor,a virtual puppet of Cao Cao.Soon after,upon discovering that Liu Bei still lives,Lord Guan chooses to honor his commitment to his elder brother Liu Bei:he leaves Cao Cao’s service to rejoin Liu Bei.At this point,yiagain takes precedence overzhong.The ambiguity of values here is reflected in Zhang Fei’s 张飞 behavior.The third brother has become suspicious of Lord Guan’s sojourn with Cao Cao,and attacks Lord Guan for betraying Liu Bei (Chapter 28).It falls to Liu Bei’s wives to defend Lord Guan’s conduct and avert a showdown between the two brothers.

Two decades later,in the final crisis brought on by Shu’s 蜀 ill-fated invasion of Wu 吴,it is Liu Bei’s turn to repay Lord Guan’s devotion.The Southland leader Sun Quan 孙权 has captured Lord Guan and put him to death; Liu Bei decides to avenge his brother (to satisfy the demands ofyi) by leading the Riverland (Shu-Han 蜀汉) attack on the Southland (Wu).By launching this invasion,Liu Bei forsakes his quest to overthrow the usurping Wei 魏 Dynasty and restore the Han (zhong).Kongming (Zhuge Liang 诸葛亮字孔明),who stands forzhongand forxiao,but not foryi,had opposed this campaign,just as he has had his doubts about the brotherhood all along.The novelist,however,means to show thatyiprevails overzhong.It is perhaps for this very reason namely,the brothers’ commitment to one another rather than to Liu Bei’s imperial career—that readers have taken the three into their hearts.

If for the brothersyitakes precedence overzhong,it also takes precedence over family ties and values.The rubric phrase comes from theZuozhuan(左传 Yin 4):dayi mieqin.This means “for the sake of the higher cause to sacrifice the bonds of kinship”.The principle ofdayi mieqinis enacted in the opening of Chapter 42 ofThree Kingdoms,when Liu Bei hurls (or pretends to hurl) his newborn son,A Dou 阿斗,to the ground.Zhao Zilong 赵子龙 finds A Dou stranded on a battlefield.He carries him safely back to the camp,and then presents the baby to Liu Bei.(The novelist gives the task of saving A Dou to Zhao Zilong because Zilong belongs to Kongming’s camp and is not part of the fraternity.) But instead of gratefully rewarding Zhao Zilong,Liu Bei throws A Dou aside,crying out,“For the sake of an infant I risked losing a commander!” Perhaps Liu Bei intends an homage to the first Han emperor,Liu Bang (刘邦),who is occasionally invoked in the novel.Fleeing Xiang Yu’s 项羽 cavalry,Liu Bang offers to throw his son from his carriage to lighten it,as recounted in theShiji’s 史记 “Annals for Xiang Yu 项羽本纪”.Both leaders,Liu Bang and Liu Bei,have good reasons for publicly rejecting their sons.

Why do Liu Bei and Liu Bang reject their offspring? Why does Agamemnon sacrifice Iphigenia?Why does Abraham offer up Isaac? Each case exemplifies the rejection ofqin(kin 亲) for the sake ofyi,as a means both to sustain morale among the followers and to protect a leadership position by a transcendent self-denial.This shows the power of the termyi,to bind commitment outside as well as inside conventional relationships.Zhongandxiaoapply only within established relationships,butyiis an outer virtue.The sacrifice of personal interest and affection to the larger mission (dayi大义) enhances a leader’s virtue and stature.In the specific circumstances ofThree Kingdoms,Liu Bei is putting the principle of brotherhood above narrow family interest.An underdog contender,Liu Bei does not want his brothers and comrades to see him give in to a fatherly concern,lest it threaten the solidarity on which the whole military enterprise depends.And yet,the father-son relationship is the bedrock of dynastic government in that it effectively addresses the all-important succession problem.Every king must name an heir or risk losing control of the succession.This is the very reason Kongming values the filial tie above all others.Is it possible,then,to reconcile fraternal comradeship and filial dynasty building? I think that this is the principal problematic ofThree Kingdoms.

2.

In theAnalects,xiao(filial piety),is a primary value and generally in harmony with state service and loyalty.“It is rare for someone who is filial and fraternal to defy his superiors” (Analects1.2).TheAnalectsadvocates the integration of family and state roles in such phrasesas jun jun chen chen,fu fu zi zi君君臣臣、父父子子,which means “Let the ruler rule as he should and then the ministers will serve as they should; let the father guide as he should and then the sons will serve as they should” (Analects12.11).Notwithstanding the placement of loyalty first in this formula,we still find anAnalectspassage where political and familial loyalty conflict,and Confucius requires the subordination ofzhongtoxiao,state to family.InAnalects13.18 Confucius expresses disapproval of a son who reports his father to the authorities for stealing a sheep.

Filial piety is the core value,the cornerstone of the Confucian ethical system.The “Zengzi 曾子”chapters of theDa Dai Liji大戴礼记 are organized around this principle.The bond of father and son supports and integrates all other relationships.For theAnalectsand most other Confucian texts,thejunzi(noble man,man of honor 君子) is the central figure.Thejunziis an idealized royal son,fit either to rule or to support a ruler.But thejunziis also more than that; he is a humanitarian.Perhaps this is why in theAnalects,we find connected toxiao,some recognition of the complementary and faintly egalitarian principle of brotherhood (ti悌).The best-known instance is the above-citedAnalects1.2.Youzi 有子，名有若,perhaps Confucius’s leading disciple,combinesxiaowithti,to make of each equally,the foundation ofren,the broad humanitarian principle that is the paramount sociopolitical value of the Confucians.Thus,Youzi used the brother-tie to widen the scope of filial discipline.Despite holding a major place in theAnalects(Youzi is the text’s second speaker,appearing only after Confucius in book 1),Youzi seems less important than other disciples; andxiaoandtiare combined only one other time in theAnalects,whose editors may not have done Youzi justice.We read in theMencius(孟子 MIIIA.4) that after Confucius’death,three noted disciples (Zizhang,Zixia,and Ziyou 子张、子夏、子游) had tried to put Youzi in the Master’s place,only to be thwarted by Zengzi.Note that Zixia speaks the famous phrase “Within the four seas all are brothers; need a man of honor fear having no brothers?” (Analects12.5).Zixia speaks these words to comfort Sima Niu for lacking kinsmen.Perhaps,Zixia and Youzi are part of afraternitéfaction close to the Mohists,for whom the principle ofjian ai兼爱,comprehensive love,is a family-transcending ideal.

Zengzi,the famed exponent of filial duty,blocks this proposal to anoint Youzi as Confucius’s heir; the“Zengzi” chapters never mentionti.(And Confucius,as Sima Qian 司马迁 tells us—perhaps ironically—in his “Kongzi shijia 孔子世家”,died without naming an heir,mo neng zong yu莫能宗予.) Not only does Zengzi emphasizexiao,but also he is the disciple credited with emphasizing the bond between family and state.Zengzi reinforces the doctrine ofxiaoas state ethic.Zengzi also linksxiaowithzhongin the Zengzi chapters,but he still useszhongin its older sense of “single-minded dedication”.The compoundzhongxiao忠孝 occurs as early as the Later Han,but does not become a keynote value until the neo-Confucian era.From the Song period on down,in Japanese (chû-kô) as well as in Chinese,we find the binom is pervasive,and always in the sequencezhong-xiao(neverxiao-zhong孝忠),crystallizing the primacy of state over family.

As a touchstone of the ideology of Chinese civilization,zhong-xiaoprevails.Youzi’s idea of balancing(if not equalizing) filial and fraternal devotion,of wideningxiaoto includeti,does not develop in the main Confucian tradition.Tied to and shaped byxiao,tiis limited to mean obedience to the elder brother.An interesting instance ofxiao-ti孝悌 is in the Guodian textLiu de河间献王刘德,where it seems to mean “family values”.In this text,family takes precedence over state:“[S]ever relations with the ruler before severing relations with the father.” In theAnalects,however,only traces ofxiao-tisurvive,as we have seen.

Mencius saves something of Youzi’sxiao-tiformula,though in weakened form,by linking filial piety torenand fraternal love toyi.Ren-yi仁义 exists in theMenciusmainly as a bound term,and sometimes seems equivalent to “civilized values”.Seldom taking upyias an independent value—indeed,opposed to construingyias an “outer ethic”—Mencius often speaks ofrenas a gate andyias a road,renimplying an orientation or direction or even a frame of mind,in contrast toyi,the actual course of conduct.Thus,for the most part,yiis subordinate toren.Much asren-yiseems to function as a term that transcends its components,with a meaning like “civilized values”,soxiao-tiprobably means little more than family values—filial service and fraternal harmony.The two terms lose their individual force and the first dominates.Perhaps allowingtito have equal status withxiaowould have made inheritance patterns too chaotic.Perhaps there is enough to do to control the sons of multiple wives without the complications that including the claims of brothers (and the nephews) will create.Isn’t this one of the lessons of the roundrobin interkingdom wars of the entire Warring States era wars driven by succession crises?

Thus,xiaobecomes the dominant value.The main Confucian interest is supporting aristocratic lineage.The impulse to limit,refine,or reformxiaonever prevails,because generational continuity,meaning stability of inheritance of position and property,is all-important to the Confucians,who speak for the landholder lords and the state bureaucracy that serve them.And those interests prevail over the idealist strains in the tradition.Zhuge Liang’s political orthodoxy on this point is underscored by hiszi字:Kongming,“wise as Confucius”.

3.

In Chinese culture,brotherhood,as an independent relationship outside the established roles,acquires a quasi-subversive significance.Despite not being calledti,Baixiongdi,or fraternal devotion,is a crucial element of major Chinese works of fiction.Its separation and sometime conflict with traditional filiality and family are driving force forThree Kingdoms andShuihu Zhuan,also known asOutlaws of the Marsh,among others.In the latter work,the central figure is Song Jiang 宋江.He aids,joins,and eventually leads the outlaw brotherhood,but his filial devotion conflicts with his commitment to his brothers.This contradiction not only defines his character,but also drives the narrative’s dialectical swings between rebellion and capitulation.

Perhapsfraternitécould be the translation forjieyi(strangers taking an oath of brotherhood),distinguishing it from the more limited fraternal devotion (ti),which is restricted to blood brothers.Notice particularly the independent use ofyiand the absence of the more familialrenin this brotherhood discourse.The brother-oath has a touch of the “barbarian” as well as the underworld about it.

In the first chapter ofThree Kingdoms,three unrelated warrior-heroes-to-be—Liu Bei,Lord Guan,and Zhang Fei—pledge a fraternal oath in the Peach Garden (the peach symbolizes fidelity in marriage according toShijing诗经 ode 6,“Tao yao 桃夭”).The three loyally place themselves at the service of the Han emperor Ling,and win signal honors in suppressing the Yellow Scarves revolt.In effect,the oath ties loyalty to brotherhood,butxiaois left out.The brothers’ oath supersedes all other family ties,with the exception of the useful claim that Liu Bei is a distant relation of the emperor.This family connection counteracts the barbarian or underworld taint on a brotherhood formed by strangers.It also endows Liu Bei with a degree of lineage prestige or virtue,for he is a Liu and thus can claim royal blood and a remote right of succession.At the same time,the brotherhood’s moral standing is enhanced by contrast with established families in power,both at the imperial court and in the regional capitals.These families are breaking apart due to succession conflicts among sons and brothers—manifest failures of bothxiaoandti.In these ancillary conflicts,the junior usually displaces the senior brother—a sign of moral disorder and a harbinger of political disintegration.Dong Zhuo 董卓 commits the same offense against descent protocol when he deposes Shaodi (汉少帝 age 14) and enthrones his younger brother Xiandi (汉献帝 age 9),who reigns until the end of the Han.With conventional family bonds breaking down at the dynastic and regional governing levels,the Peach Garden brotherhood initially offers a possible new way to organize political rule,a reaching toward something likefraternité,evenegalité(Shui hufurther develops this theme in a revolutionary direction).

But can dynastic government be organized this way? Can the realm be governed on such a principle?The author of the novel raises this question but does not resolve it.He simply shows the conflict betweenfraternitéand dynasty (with its dependence onxiao) as forms of organization,portraying Liu Bei as the liminal figure who must choose between the two.Note,for example,how Liu Bei’s adoption of Kou Feng annoys his two brothers,who protest their elder brother’s acquisition of a son with the remark,“What do you want with another’s young?” Later,the other two brothers acquire families,too.These acts,and other instances of filial relations and responsibilities,weaken their fraternal bond.

Another example of the conflict between family and comrade solidarity concerns Liu Bei’s loss of Shan Fu 单福 (徐庶),his first military adviser.Cao Cao manages to lure Shan Fu to his camp by appeals to his filial piety.In order to win Shan Fu over,Cao Cao takes Shan Fu’s mother prisoner,and uses her handwriting to forge letters to her son calling him home.Taken in by Cao Cao’s ruse,Shan Fu tells Liu Bei he must leave his service to go to his mother.An adviser urges Liu Bei to kill Shan Fu because he knows so much about the brothers’ military operations,but Liu Bei magnanimously lets Shan Fu go over to the enemy side.When Shan Fu reaches his mother,however,she condemns him for joining Cao Cao and then hangs herself,both to shame her son and to prevent him from serving Cao Cao.The incident puts filial piety in a negative light on the mother’s authority.

The parting of Liu Bei and Shan Fu is a crucial episode forming the bridge to the imminent meeting between Liu Bei and Kongming.Each man tests the other.Liu Bei needs to confirm that Shan Fu will not serve Cao Cao; Shan Fu needs to verify Liu Bei’s acclaimed high-mindedness.In their parting scene,Shan Fu reassures Liu Bei that he will never use his knowledge to aid Cao Cao.But he remains unconvinced that Liu Bei will actually let him go.It is a defining moment.Only after he has ridden safely beyond reach can Shan Fu confirm to his own satisfaction Liu Bei’s legendary virtue.Having done so,he then rides back to Liu Bei and recommends Kongming.Mindful of Liu Bei’s need for a substitute adviser,Shan Fu describes Kongming’s talents and urges Liu Bei to seek him out.Then he parts with Liu Bei for the second time.In one of the novel’s humorous touches,Shan Fu rides by Kongming’s dwelling to inform him that Liu Bei may visit.When Shan Fu knocks on the gate,Kongming receives his visitor personally and promptly.(Later Kongming will compel Liu Bei to make three arduous trips before gaining an audience.) In this way,the novel prepares the reader for the entry of Zhuge Liang (Kongming) in chapters 36-37.

Kongming represents the traditional values of filiality bonded to loyalty; he proves to be an ideal dutiful son to Liu Bei,a veritableAnalects junzi.His fidelity to his roles contrasts with Cao Cao,who overreaches as prime minister and becomes a usurper for his clan.Later in the story,Kongming (together with Zhao Zilong) supports Liu Bei’s natural son Liu Shan (A Dou 刘禅) as the rightful successor to the throne of Shu-Han.Liu Bei views Kongming (twenty years his junior) as the ideal prime minister and political counselor.But the brothers see him as a threat to themselves and the brotherhood,and they show their hostility to the young consigliere.For his part,Kongming is determined not to serve under Liu Bei until he has established his authority over Lord Guan and Zhang Fei.Thereafter,he makes a point of humbling them at every opportunity,while seeking to educate Zhang Fei.The ideal vassal,he wants the brothers to show loyalty to Liu Bei,to serve him as subordinates and vassals,not as brothers; he is hostile to the quasi-egalitarian brother-bond even if he recognizes its military usefulness.But Kongming will not win his battle against the brotherhood.

The contradiction between the filial and the fraternal reaches a climax when Liu Bei has to choose between his role as elder brother and his role as father-emperor.After Cao Cao and the Southern leaders capture and execute Lord Guan,the Peach Garden oath is inevitably invoked.Liu Bei yields to Zhang Fei’s pleas and decides to avenge his fallen brother.Significantly,Lord Guan has brought defeat on himself by putting his parental interest above Liu Bei’s political cause.Lord Guan’s refusal to let his daughter marry Sun Quan’s son violates Kongming’s primary strategic principle:protect the alliance with the South in order to maintain a united front against the Cao-Wei northern kingdom.Kongming tries his best to assure Liu Bei that after Wei is defeated,the South will fall,but Liu Bei remains determined to attack the South at once,sacrificing his imperial hopes to honor the brother-oath.Thusyiprevails overzhong,brotherbond overjun-chen君臣,and military solidarity over dynastic politics.Lord Guan’s death has forced on Liu Bei a fateful choice:to attack the South at once rather than follow Kongming’s long-range war plan.Kongming’s bitterness over Liu Bei’s choice is immortalized in the last line of Du Fu’s poem “Bazhentu”(The Maze of Eight Ramparts 八阵图):“A legacy of rue / that his king had choked on Wu” (end of Chapter 84).

The failure of the attack on the Southland does not mean that the novelist finally rejects the brotherhood principle.The novel does not validate either the succession of Liu Shan or the brotherhood;both lead to failure.Dynastic politics are criticized,but no cure is proposed.Three Kingdomsis a problem novel.To Ming 明朝 readers some twelve centuries later,the failure of Kongming’s plan to save the Han Dynasty sounds the tragic doom of Chinese civilization as a unified imperium.The grandeur and the glory of Han were rapidly fading.And Kongming,not the brotherhood,represents an idealized Han Dynasty that might have been restored.The historical reunification under the Jin Dynasty (晋朝 with which the novel ends) was a weak stay against the northern foes.Thus,the fall of the Han meant that invading powers were to play a large role in a China that remained divided for almost four hundred years,until the Sui-Tang reunification at the beginning of the seventh century.

The interim was marked by short dynasties,with no magnificent lineage like that of the Han,and no vast integrated territory governed by a unified bureaucracy; with Buddhism became more ideologically powerful than Confucianism.The Han became the archetype of dynastic achievement,perhaps never again to be equaled,but always alive in the collective imagination.If the author ofThree Kingdomshad any contemporary agenda,perhaps it was to warn whichever Ming emperor (s) reigned during his lifetime about the fragility of political power.For the Ming began with an emperor who imagined himself as following the model of the first Han emperor,Liu Bang,thus creating a standard of self-evaluation for his successors.The novel,however,dwells not on the first Han reign but on the last.Did the novelist perversely portray the fall of the Han to a dynasty that took the Han as its model?

Kongming,possibly China’s only Shakespearean style tragic hero,is immortalized in Du Fu’s “Lines written in memory of Zhuge Liang,Prime Minister of Shu-Han,” a poem included in Chapter 105 of the novel.In the poem Du Fu freezes Kongming in time.Like the figures on Keats’s Grecian urn,fixed in their poses of eternal expectation,Kongming is imagined dying with his men at the front,ever-awaiting word of victory over the Wei,a victory that history never delivered.

“His Excellency’s shrine,where would it be found?”

“Past Damask Town,where cypresses grow dense.” (Luo,1999,p.815)

Its sunlit court,gem-bright greens—a spring unto themselves.

Leaf-veiled,the orioles—sweet notes to empty air.

Thrice to him Liu Bei sued,keen to rule the realm:

Two reigns Kongming served—steady old heart—

To die,his host afield,the victory herald yet to come—

Weep,O heroes! Drench your fronts,now and evermore.