The Trung sisters rise up, AD 40

The last episode closed on a ten-character sentence about To Dinh, the governor of Giao Chi. In the year forty, under his rule, the daughter of a Lac general, named Trung Trac, rose up together with her younger sister, Trung Nhi.¹

Why did she rise? The familiar answer is this: To Dinh killed her husband, and she took up arms to avenge him.

That line really is in the histories.² But it is not in the Han history that records these events, and it is not in the earliest surviving Vietnamese history either. Both give a different reason: the law.¹³ Put the books in the order they were written, and you can watch that reason change shape, little by little, over more than a thousand years.

First, who she was. Fan Ye's Book of the Later Han, written in the fifth century, says in its chapter on the southern peoples that Trung Trac was the daughter of the Lac general of Me Linh district, and was married to Thi Sach, a man of Chu Dien.¹

The father has no name, only a title. More than a thousand years later, the Dai Viet su ky toan thu still records her only as the daughter of the Lac general of Me Linh district.² The names of the sisters' parents so often told today are in none of the histories used here. They come from shrine legends.

So what was a Lac general? The two passages describing the office that this episode relies on both belong to lost books. They survive only because later writers quoted them.

The first is in the Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky, a book about the land of Giao Chau written around the fourth century and copied into the Thuy kinh chu. That land had Lac fields, whose water rose and fell with the tide, and the people who cleared those fields and lived on them were called the Lac people. Most districts had Lac generals, and the Lac generals wore bronze seals on green ribbons.⁴

The second is a Tang-dynasty note in the Su ky, quoting another book that is also lost. It describes almost exactly the same thing, then makes a comparison: the Lac general is the magistrate of today — that is, the official in charge of a district in the writer's own time.⁵

So when the Han history speaks of the father of the woman who rose in the year forty, it still calls him by that local title.¹

The husband came from the same kind of family. The Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky calls him the son of the Lac general of Chu Dien.⁴ A note in the Complete Annals says the same thing: Thi Sach was also a Lac general's son, the children of two generals' houses married to each other.⁶ This marriage joined two lineages that held power in two districts.

The husband's name is the first place where the texts disagree, and the disagreement turns on a single character.

The Book of the Later Han writes his name with two characters, read Thi Sach.¹ The Tang-dynasty notes of Li Xian, and after them the Viet su luoc, the Complete Annals and the Cuong muc, all read it the same way.⁷³²⁸

But the Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky has a sentence that, if the character Sach is taken as the end of the name, reads like this: the son of the Lac general of Chu Dien, named Thi Sach, the daughter of the Lac general of Me Linh, named Trung Trac, as wife. The sentence has no verb.

That character has another meaning: to seek, to ask for. Break the sentence just before it, and the sentence is whole: the son of the Lac general of Chu Dien, named Thi, asked for the daughter of the Lac general of Me Linh, named Trung Trac, as his wife.⁴

In the same passage, telling how the rising began, the book writes: Trac was a woman of nerve and courage, and she led Thi in rising up as rebels. Telling of the defeat, it writes: Thi fled into the Kim Khe cave. Both times there is only the one character, Thi. If his name were Thi Sach, those two places ought to have both characters.⁴

And the copy of the Thuy kinh chu in the Siku quanshu collection has no punctuation at all. So where the break falls, before or after the character Sach, is a choice made by a later editor. It is not written in the book.⁹

So there are two readings, and both have a basis in the texts: on one side the main text of the official history, on the other an older book, now lost. This episode will not choose for you. Nor has it been possible to trace who first proposed the reading Thi.

But hold on to one thing. In the Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky, the husband does not die before the rising breaks out. He rises in arms with his wife, and he is still alive at the defeat.⁴ Nor does this book give any reason for the revolt. It only describes a person: one of nerve and courage.

The first reason ever put into words is in the Book of the Later Han. Right after her background, the chapter on the southern peoples says:

Very bold and valiant. The governor of Giao Chi, To Dinh, bound her with the law; Trac was angry, and so she rebelled.¹

The middle of that sentence is the very ten characters about To Dinh that the last episode dealt with. The word for "bound" literally means stretching a carpenter's ink line to measure — that is, using the law to force someone into line. The pronoun in the sentence points to Trung Trac herself: the one bound by the law was her, not her husband. The book does not say To Dinh was greedy. It does not say he killed anyone.¹

The book puts very bold and valiant right before To Dinh and the law, and does not say which side was in the wrong. It can be read as praise, or as an explanation of why she clashed with the Han officials. Either reading holds.

In the biography of Ma Yuan, in the same book, the main text gives no cause at all. It records only that the two sisters rebelled. There the reason appears only in a Tang-dynasty note by Li Xian, with "angry" changed to resentful and angry.¹⁰⁷ But in the chapter on the southern peoples, the sentence is Fan Ye's own main text, not something added by a later age.

Nearly a thousand years later, the Viet su luoc, the earliest surviving Vietnamese history, compiled around the fourteenth century, copied that sentence and added exactly four characters.

By nature very bold and valiant; her actions did not follow the law. The governor To Dinh bound her with the law, and Trac was angry.³

Those four characters, her actions did not follow the law, put the fault on her side first, and only then come to the governor using the law. On this point, the earliest surviving Vietnamese history is harder on her than the Han history itself.

Thi Sach appears only once, in the clause about her marriage, with his home given as Me Dien rather than Chu Dien, and then he vanishes. The only cause recorded is the law. There is no To Dinh killing her husband. Nor does the passage sit in an annal of the sisters' own. It is in the section on the governors of successive ages, under the name of Ma Yuan.³

One more text deserves a mention, with caution. The Viet dien u linh tap, a book of the deeds of spirits, records the titles conferred on the sisters as spirits down to the year thirteen thirteen. This episode could read it only through an English translation published in nineteen ninety-nine, and the translation's introduction says it was made from an early twentieth-century manuscript based on the original book, compiled in the fourteenth century. So not every word in it can be taken as a word of the fourteenth century. In that translation, To Dinh used his power to bring Thi Sach down, but the wording does not say plainly that he killed him.¹¹

That detail comes out clearly in the Complete Annals, the Le dynasty's national history, which Ngo Si Lien compiled in the fifteenth century. The copy used here is the woodblock printing of sixteen ninety-seven. Its annal of Queen Trung reads:

Spring, the second month. The queen suffered under the governor To Dinh, who bound her with the law, and she also held Dinh as her enemy for having killed her husband; so with her younger sister Nhi she raised troops, attacked and took the seat of the province.²

The first half is still the Book of the Later Han's reason, the law. The second half is new: a private enmity. Among the books this episode compares, this is the first time To Dinh killing her husband is plainly recorded. The husband who rose in arms beside his wife in the Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky is, by now, dead before the rising begins.

In the same book, Ngo Si Lien's comment opens differently: the Trung, incensed at the cruelty of the Han official who held the land, raised an arm and gave a single cry.¹² The main text speaks of a private enmity. The opening of the comment speaks of the cruelty of the man who ruled.

The Viet su tieu an of Ngo Thi Si, written in seventeen seventy-five, builds on the dead husband a scene the Complete Annals does not have, for that book says only that she suffered under the law, held the man who killed her husband as her enemy, and rose in arms. Here, when she marches out, she is not yet out of mourning for her husband, and yet she wears fine clothes. Her generals ask why, and she answers that in war one must bend to circumstance: to go about haggard, as the rites require, would sap the spirit of her own army, while fine clothes would make her troops the bolder and dishearten the other side.¹³

By the nineteenth century, the Nguyen court's Kham dinh Viet su thong giam cuong muc records: at that time the governor To Dinh governed with greed and cruelty, and killed her husband.⁸

In nineteen twenty, Tran Trong Kim's Viet Nam su luoc says that To Dinh was brutal and killed Thi Sach, and places this in the year forty.¹⁴

Set the books out by the year they were written, and the path of the reason is plain enough. The oldest version has no reason, only a woman of nerve rising in arms with her husband. In the fifth century, she is bound by the law. In the fourteenth, she herself is the one acting outside the law. In the fifteenth, she gains a husband killed and an enmity to go with it. In the eighteenth, she goes to war before her mourning is over. In the nineteenth century and in nineteen twenty, the governor has become a greedy, cruel man and a killer. The official whom the Book of the Later Han records only as using the law grows crueler on the page the later the book.

On the scale of it, the Book of the Later Han goes on: then the Man and Ly peoples of Cuu Chan, Nhat Nam and Hop Pho all rose in answer, sixty-five walled towns in all were taken, and she set herself up as queen. The regional inspector of Giao Chi and the governors could barely hold their own ground.¹ Man and Ly were the names the Han histories used for the people of those commanderies.

But the same author, in the biography of Ma Yuan, writes instead: they plundered more than sixty walled towns beyond the Ranges.¹⁰ One book, one writer, two numbers. There is no way to make them one, so both are left standing.

The Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky describes the same events from inside Lac society. She attacked and broke the province and the commanderies, brought the Lac generals to submission, and they all went over to Trung Trac and made her queen, with her seat of government at Me Linh district.⁴ In this sentence, the revolt is a Lac general's daughter bringing the other Lac generals under her.

The Vietnamese histories keep the figure of sixty-five, but each gives a different list of the places that answered her call. The Viet su luoc names only Cuu Chan and Nhat Nam.³ The Complete Annals adds Nam Hai to the Book of the Later Han's list, and calls them the sixty-five walled towns of Linh Nam.²

Where did she make her capital? The main text of the Book of the Later Han says only she set herself up as queen, not where.¹ Me Linh comes from two other, lesser sources: the Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky, and a book called the Yuezhi, which Li Xian quotes in his notes: Trung Trac raised troops and made her capital at Me Linh district.⁷ The Vietnamese histories all follow Me Linh.³² Only the translation of the Viet dien u linh tap puts the sisters' base at Chu Dien.¹¹

As for when, the Book of the Later Han gives only the year: the sixteenth year of the Jianwu reign, that is, the year forty.¹ The Complete Annals adds the season and the month: spring, the second month.²

On one point, at least, the Han histories and the Vietnamese histories agree, each in its own voice: in the year forty, a woman in Giao Chi set herself up as queen.