Three Kingdoms

by Luo Guanzhong (Moss Roberts trans. )

  The other title Liu Bei took at this time, grand marshal (dasima), seems to be an allusion to certain earlier periods in Han history when the prime minister's office had become weak and the dasima took over as military guarantor of the Emperor. Dasima was not a regular title during the reign of Emperor Xian.

  8. See SGZ, p. 886, for the original text, which this translation occasionally follows for clarity.

  9. "Nine kingdoms" refers to the royal fiefs. See the "Gao Yao mo" in the Shu jing. See Bern-hard Karlgren, "Glosses on the Book of Documents," Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 20 (1948): 107; and cf. James Legge, trans., The Chinese Classics, 2d ed., vol. 3, The Shoo King (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1893-95), p. 69, and the "Xia benji" of the SJ. According to the "Xia benji," Gao Yao was selected by Great Yu, queller of the floods, as his chief minister and potential successor. But Gao Yao died before the transfer of power, and Yu's son became his father's heir and eventual successor. Thus began the era of devolution to the son. The allusion to this text in Liu Bei's memorial serves to emphasize the necessary subordination of the minister (Gao Yao; i. e., Cao Cao) to the family member (Liu Bei).

  10. The memorial is dated in the TS to Jian An 24, 7th month (a. d. 219).

  11. Cao's letter as cited in the TS (p. 703) is one of the strongest denunciations of Xuande on record. Perhaps this is why the Mao version has dropped it. In essence, Cao Cao tells Sun Quan that for a man of his status and integrity to be subject to a vassal (i. e., Xuande) in another province is a scandal and a shame; that the marriage of Lady Sun to Xuande is a second scandal; and that the surrender of Jingzhou to Xuande is a third. "For Liu Bei," Cao's letter goes on, "is an uncouth villain, who imposes upon and degrades others. His lightly given promises are rarely reliable, and he typically harbors cruel designs. He began by betraying his lord [the Emperor] and then revolted against Lü Bu. He abandoned his obligations to Yuan Shao and conveniently forgot the great debt he owed Liu Biao. He devoured the Riverlands and seized Hanzhong. He has spurned your favor and mine so spitefully that the common wood-gatherers and shepherds feel indignation. With this letter that Man Chong conveys to you, let all our old grudges be consigned to the past. Quickly raise a host of heroes to recover Jingzhou, both to save the dynasty from evil and to redeem your honor. After the victory, the Southland, the Riverlands, and the regions of Jingzhou connecting them will belong to you. Hanzhong and Xiangyang will be mine. This will seal our permanent amity and our mutual oath of nonencroachment.... Autumn, the eighth month, Jian An 24 [a. d. 219]."

  12. This tactic proposed by Zhuge Jin will lead to the ruin of Kongming's project. It might be said that act 5 of the drama begins with this scene.

  13. Huang Zhong was an Imperial Corps commander under Liu Biao when Liu was protector of Jingzhou. After Cao Cao occupied Jingzhou, he made Zhong a subordinate commander under the authority of the governor of Changsha, Han Xuan. When Liu Bei took over the southern districts of Jingzhou, Lord Guan led the campaign against Changsha and induced Huang Zhong to serve Xuande; later, Zhong followed Xuande to the Riverlands and distinguished himself in the field.

  14. In the TS (p. 706) Lord Guan says, "I have wanted to attack Fan for a long time but have had no command from Lord Liu." This sentence may explain Lord Guan's impatience with the western leaders for giving priority to the consolidation of the Riverlands-Hanzhong region. It is likely, too, that Lord Guan was still smarting from the surrender of the three districts to Sun Quan four years earlier—an act of appeasement he had opposed. He must have been anxious to develop his own position in the center and then lead the attack against Cao Cao, beginning with Cao's southern anchor, Fan. According to his biography (SGZ, p. 941), Lord Guan had a considerable network of "branch organizations" (zhi dang), including "bandits," with the result that "his might was felt throughout the northern heartland" and "Cao Cao was discussing moving the capital [Xuchang] to avoid his thrust."

  15. See chapter 27.

  16. There is some problem in identifying Jingzhou's reported nine districts (jun). Xiangyang, created by Cao Cao, is basically Nanyang, which was Kongming's home district and the northernmost district of the province. The HHS lists six more districts (roughly clockwise): Nanjun, Jiangxia, Changsha, Guiyang, Lingling, and Wuling. Nine may be used here as a general number meaning "all."

  CHAPTER 74

  1. Mao: "Yu Jin's jealousy is retribution for Pang De's betrayal of Ma Chao."

  2. The word for fish, yu, is a homophone for the yu of Yu Jin.

  3. Mao: "I suspect that Pang De refused to surrender in order to protect his wife and children in the capital. Pang De had killed his sister-in-law and severed relations with his brother. But his wife and children, it seems, he could not abandon." According to his biography, Pang De's last words to Lord Guan were: "You miserable wretch! Why should I surrender? The whole empire respects the awful might of the king of Wei and his million-fold hosts. That Liu Bei of yours, with his mediocre ability, is no match for the king. I would be a ghost of this dynasty before I'd be a general of rebels and traitors" (SGZ, p. 546).

  4. Mao: "If not for Man Chong's good counsel, Lord Guan would surely have taken Fan and controlled all the land below the Yellow River. And from such a superior position, Lord Guan would have been able to cope with the southern attack. But Man Chong advised, and Cao Ren heeded; is that not Heaven's will at work?"

  5. Mao (introductory note): "That Fan does not fall means that Heaven will not restore the Han. When Shan Fu captured Fan [chap. 36] for Liu Bei, he lacked the military strength to hold the city and ended up abandoning it. But when Lord Guan laid siege to Fan, he had more than enough resources to take it, and the season, too, favored him. Reading how an arrow stopped him in midcourse makes one sigh again and again."

  CHAPTER 75

  1. Mao's introductory note suggests that Hua Tuo and Ji Ping (the physician killed in chapter 21 for an attempt on Cao Cao's life) are "one person" in their devotion to righteousness.

  2. Mao (introductory note): "Cao Ren wanted to abandon Fan: Man Chong stopped him. Cao Cao wanted to leave the capital at Xuchang: Sima Yi stopped him. Had Cao Ren abandoned Fan, the region south of the Yellow River would have been thrown into turmoil. Had Cao Cao moved the capital, the region north of the Yellow River would have been thrown into turmoil.... Word of Lord Guan's victory over Xiangyang was sufficient to snatch the initiative from Cao Cao.... Guan failed to complete the conquest only because the right moment to act eluded him."

  3. Mao (introductory note): "When Sun Quan took Lü Meng's advice, he became as much a traitor to the Han as Cao Cao, king of Wei. If Sun Quan had taken advantage of Lord Guan's siege of Fan to conquer Xuzhou, thus dividing the north, the house of Han could have been restored and Cao Cao's treason crushed. But he forgot his oath, went back on his original covenant, and made a secret deal with Cao Cao to attack Lord Guan. And the cause? Nothing more than his struggle to gain Jingzhou!"

  4. Mao (introductory note): "While Zhou Yu lived, Liu and Sun were antagonists. When Zhou Yu died, Liu and Sun had cooperative relations. While Lu Su was in office, Liu and Sun cooperated. When Lu Su died [and Lü Meng succeeded him], their relations became antagonistic again."

  5. The TS (p. 726) renders the scene with dialogue: grateful to have been spared, the station guards cooperate and suggest a means of deception for entering the city. Presumably, Mao Zonggang wants to make the willingness of Lord Guan's men to betray him less obvious; by shifting from dialogue to prose narrative, he also reduces the vividness of the scene. The attack took place in the autumn of a. d. 219.

  6. Apparently Jiangling, not Gong'an, was the functional provincial capital of this time; Xiangyang had been in Cao Cao's hands until Lord Guan recaptured it to prepare his attack on Fan.

  7. See chapter 73.

  8. Mao (introductory note): " This chapter begins with a description of Lord Guan suffering from his wound but acting as if uninjured. Then we go directly to a description of Lü Meng feigning an illness. First, we
have Hua Tuo treating a real injury; then we have Lu Xun curing Lü Meng's feigned illness. Hua Tuo recognized the poison on the arrow and got rid of it—a case of using medicine against medicine. Lu Xun knew that Lü Meng was feigning illness and consequently told him to resign alleging illness—a case of using illness to cure illness. And there are even more remarkable things to come! Lord Guan had an ailing arm, and an ailing attitude as well—namely, his overestimation of himself and his arrogance toward all others. If Lu Xun had a method for eliminating Lü Meng's illness, he also had a method for aggravating Lord Guan's ailment—namely, rich gifts and honeyed words. Lü Meng resigned his office, and Lord Guan assumed he was free of a problem, a greater relief than the cure of his arm. And so he pulled out his southern defenses [for the siege at Fan], But by so doing, Lord Guan was more severely poisoned than by the arrow!

  "Kongming cured Zhou Yu with a borrowed wind, and Pang Tong 'cured' the northern soldiers' [seasickness] by getting Cao Cao to link up his boats. Lu Xun worked both types [the cure and the 'cure']."

  CHAPTER 76

  1. In the TS (p. 728), Lord Guan threatens severe beatings for a delay of one or two days, death for a delay of three.

  2. In the TS (p. 731), Cao Ren wants to pursue Lord Guan, but is dissuaded by an adviser, who argues, "Originally Sun Quan allied himself to Lord Guan.... Now Lord Guan is defeated and his much-reduced army on the run. Let him survive for a while; it'll be a threat to Sun Quan! If you chase him and fail to capture him, Sun Quan may shift his hopes to him and start to look on us as his enemy again."

  3. A Western Han general sent by Emperor Jing (r. 156-140 b. c. ) to suppress the southern rebellion organized by Liu Bi, king of Wu.

  4. Ma Liang and Yi Ji have been sent to Chengdu for help. The PH (pp. 123-24) says that Liu Feng blocked the messengers as his revenge on Lord Guan for backing Shan instead of himself as heir to Xuande.

  5. Mao (introductory note): "Zhang Liang used the songs of Chu to cause the troops [of Xiang Yu] to flee.... Lü Meng uses the men of Jingzhou to call away the men of Jingzhou." In this famous tragic scene Han Gao Zu incited desertion in the ranks of his main opponent, Xiang Yu, king of Chu, by having men of Chu in his own army sing songs in the Chu dialect. After this victory the way was clear to the establishment of the Han dynasty. The verse in the TS makes the same historical allusion.

  6. In the TS (p. 735) this speech is fuller. Lord Guan is reported as saying, "Succession through the legitimate son is a time-honored principle. Why ask me such a question? Liu Feng is adopted. Send him off to a remote town and spare yourself great trouble in the family."

  7. There is trouble underneath the question of Liu Bei's succession. In the PH, Kongming refuses to tell Liu Bei whether he prefers Liu Shan or Liu Feng and suggests that Liu Bei take the question to Lord Guan. Lord Guan favors Liu Shan, and so Liu Feng (who expected to succeed Liu Bei as ruler of Shu) believes Lord Guan has wronged him and vows to settle the score. He does so by blocking aid to Jingzhou when Lord Guan is defeated. In the SGZ, Liu Feng's adoption precedes the birth of Liu Shan. Three Kingdoms reverses this sequence, thus giving Liu Shan seniority of position (though not of age), in order to spare Liu Bei criticism for choosing the cadet brother as his heir. See Afterword, pp. 976—77.

  Earlier, when Jingzhou was being threatened by Wei and Wu jointly, Guan Ping had urged his father to get help from Liu Bei. But Lord Guan said no, embarrassed at having won no honors in the western campaigns. Ignoring his father's wishes, Guan Ping wrote to Liu Bei, but his letters of appeal were all intercepted by Liu Feng. This is the PH version of the events leading to Lord Guan's fall. At an earlier point, when Lord Guan was fighting Cao Cao (at Qingni), Liu Bei at Jiameng received Sun Quan's appeal for help against Cao Cao. Unfortunately for Lord Guan, Liu Bei refused Sun Quan's appeal, choosing first to conquer Chengdu and hence the Riverlands.

  8. The name of a hexagram in the Book of Changes. The top three lines, kun, stand for earth; the bottom three, kan, for water.

  CHAPTER 77

  1. The text here reads hai, the last earthly branch, which corresponds to the hours 9: 00 to 11: 00 p. m., and to the direction northwest.

  2. Mai, downriver from Linju on the River Ju, was roughly between Dangyang and Jiangling.

  3. This was the place where Pujing had once saved Lord Guan. See chapter 27.

  4. The TS (p. 741) has Pujing saying, "In terms of your own particular conduct, long ago at Baima defile you stabbed to death an altogether unprepared and unsuspecting Yan Liang. How can he not bear rancor toward you down in the netherworld? What right have you to quibble about the treachery by which Lü Meng did you in? Why should this puzzle you?" The TS is referring to its own version of how Lord Guan killed Cao Cao's general Yan Liang: Yan Liang comes forth to parley and is suddenly cut down. See chapter 25 n. 14.

  5. This plays on various connotations of the word chi (red, ruddy). Red was the symbolic color of Han.

  6. The play here is on various meanings of qing, the color of nature: the clear lamp, the color of bamboo (the source of paper, i. e., history), the light of day, the east, and the yang strength of Lord Guan's sword, Green Dragon.

  7. Hu Sanxing, principal editor of the ZZTJ, representing an early Yuan, pro-Cao view, argues (p. 2166) that Lord Guan would have been defeated by Cao Cao without the participation of the southern forces and that therefore Cao Cao was simply setting the two bandits (Lord Guan and Lü Meng) against each other.

  8. Mao: "The very words that Cao spoke to Lord Guan at the Huarong pass [when Lord Guan spared him; see chapter 50]."

  9. Huai Ying, daughter of Duke Mu of Qin, married Zi Yu, duke of jin. After Zi Yu's death she was given to his uncle Chong Er, who became Duke Wen of Jin, the famed hegemon of the late seventh century b. c.

  10. Mao (introductory note): "That phrase, 'Lord Guan, what has become of you? ' is the equivalent of the profound teaching of the whole Diamond Sutra. For that matter, what has become of the Southland, the Riverlands, the kingdom of Wei, the division of the realm, and the greats who lived in those times? All who have existed cease to exist. And only those who do not 'exist' have permanent existence. To know what has become of Lord Guan means that his existence is eternal."

  CHAPTER 78

  1. The TS chapter title differs somewhat: "Cao Cao Kills the Superb Physician Hua Tuo; The Wei Crown Prince Cao Pi Seizes Power."

  2. Mao: "Kongming shows resentment because Lord Guan ignored his advice to maintain amity with the Southland."

  3. Mao: "Forgetting Wei, he mentions the south alone."

  4. Mao: "Kongming speaks of Wei and Wu [north and south] together."

  5. The heaven-touching sacred tree is a symbol of a dynasty's contact with and acceptance by Heaven.

  6. See chapters 20 and 21.

  7. Han rules by the symbolic element of fire; "on the fire" implies usurping the Han.

  8. The TS (p. 751) adds the phrase "since the reign of Emperor An [a. d. 107-26]."

  9. The original petition is in the Wei lüe; see SGZ, pp. 52-53.

  10. Mao: "The implication is that the usurpation will be left to his son Pi." Zhou Wenwang refrained from overthrowing the reigning Shang dynasty even though he held two-thirds of the realm. His son, Wuwang, carried out the conquest and established the reign of Zhou.

  11. Cao Cao had killed Ma Teng, and Teng's son Chao had vowed revenge. See chapter 57. Mao: "The dream must have occurred before Ma Teng's death.... Even before Cao Pi's usurpation, there is an omen of the Sima clan."

  12. Lu means good luck, salary, food (an ancient form of pay for officials). In fact, the omen refers to the Sima clan, which overthrew the Wei dynasty of the Cao clan and founded the Jin dynasty; i.e., the Ma (ma, "horse" ), who are employed by the Cao, will feed upon the Cao (cao, "trough" ). The three horses also refer to the three leaders of the Sima clan.

  13. The Sima clan will establish the Jin dynasty after usurping the Wei dynasty in a. d. 263, then go on to absorb the Riverlands in a. d. 265 and the Southla
nd in a. d. 280.

  14. Mao: "To speak only of his house and not the imperial line shows the old traitor's cunning."

  15. This luxurious touch is not found in the "Wudi ji" of the SGZ (p. 53), which emphasizes Cao's austerity in life and death: "They dressed his body in the clothes appropriate to the season; no valuables were buried with him." See also the Wei shu passage in the commentary on p. 54.

  Mao (introductory note): "Some claim that in dividing the perfume among the women and then ordering them to sell shoes, Cao Cao was departing from his lifelong love of deception. They fail to realize this too was one of his deceptions.... At the brink of death what question could be more important than the imperial succession [i. e., of the Han Emperor Xian]. But Cao Cao, who provided to the smallest detail for each of his women, had not one word to say about the Han throne. This can only be because he wanted the world and later generations to believe that he had no thought of usurping the dynasty; rather, he let his progeny bear the blame that he avoided. That is what he meant by comparing himself to King Wen of the Zhou."

  The presentation of perfume and the order to weave shoes are not in the TS. This is one of a small category of striking events that Mao Zonggang has added.

  16. Mao (introductory note): "Cao Cao died in a gengzi year of the cycle [the five zi years in any sixty-year cycle have the sign of the rat]. And the month is xuyin [yin carries the sign of the tiger]. So the year of Cao's death was forecast by Zuo Ci when he spoke of an 'earth rat and a metal tiger' ten chapters back." He died March 15, a gengzi day.