Tich Quang, Nham Dien, To Dinh

The last episode counted households and heads, and named every commandery and district the Han set up on the old land of Nam Viet. But every machine needs someone at the top. So what does the Han record say those men actually did?

The main source for this episode is the Book of the Later Han, compiled by Fan Ye in the fifth century. In it are three governors worth reading slowly. Two of them are placed in the chapter set aside for officials who governed well. The third is remembered for a quite different reason, and the book says so little about him that there is almost nothing to tell.¹

One thing is worth keeping in mind through the whole of this episode: every sentence below is the voice of the rulers, writing about the ruled.²

Before we come to the officials, look at how the book describes the people they were sent to govern. Book eighty-six of the Book of the Later Han, the part on the peoples of the south, has a short passage on the land of Giao Chi:

Throughout the lands under Giao Chi, though commanderies and districts were set up, the language differs from place to place, and only through interpreting again and again can it be understood. The people are like beasts, with no distinction between old and young. They knot their hair at the nape, go barefoot, and wear a length of cloth with a hole cut in it to put the head through.²

Then the book says where the change came from: afterwards a good many Chinese convicts were moved there and settled among them, and only then did they gradually come to know language, and little by little see the civilising power of rites.²

The passage needs little comment, but there are two places worth stopping.

The first. The opening sentence has just said that the people here do have language, so many languages that they must be interpreted several times over. The closing sentence says they had to wait for the Chinese to arrive before they came to know language. Which language counts as language, the writer does not feel any need to explain.

The second. The people who brought rites, by this very sentence, were convicts sent into exile. The writer does not find that strange either.

These are the words of a Chinese historian of the fifth century. They tell us how the chronicler saw this land far more than how the people here lived.²

Also in book eighty-six is a sentence that is often quoted when people speak of two Han officials who were good to the people:

When Guangwu restored the dynasty, Tich Quang was governor of Giao Chi and Nham Dien held Cuu Chan; they taught the people to plough and plant, made caps and shoes for them, first set up matchmaking, and for the first time they knew marriage, built schools, and led them by rites and righteousness.²

The whole sentence is only forty Chinese characters. That is all the space the two men share in this book. No dates, nothing on how long they stayed, not one name of anyone native to the land. Only a string of deeds, and every one opens with "taught", "made", "first set up", "first knew", as if before that there had been nothing.

But Tich Quang and Nham Dien also appear in another book of the same history. There the story has more detail, enough to set beside this summary and compare.¹

Book seventy-six of the Book of the Later Han is the chapter on good officials, the lives of men who governed well. Nham Dien has a life of his own there.

His courtesy name was Changsun, and he came from Wan, in Nanyang commandery. Early in Guangwu's Jianwu reign, that is, from the year 25 onward, he was summoned to be governor of Cuu Chan. The emperor received him, gave him horses and silk, and had his wife and children stay behind in Luoyang.¹

Then the book describes the land he went to:

The custom of Cuu Chan is to live by hunting; they do not know how to plough with oxen, and the people must always buy grain from Giao Chi, and are constantly in want.¹

Nham Dien had them cast farm tools, and taught them to clear new land. The fields spread wider every year, and the people had enough to eat.¹

Read closely, this says far less than the forty-character sentence. The book does not say the people of Cuu Chan did not know how to farm. It says they did not know how to plough with oxen, and that they bought grain from Giao Chi, which means that right next door there were already people growing grain to sell. What the book says Nham Dien brought was cast farm tools, and the clearing of more land.

By the time of the summary in book eighty-six, that has become taught the people to plough and plant, and it is attributed to both officials.²

The second deed in Nham Dien's life is stranger still. The book writes:

The Lac Viet people have no rites or rules of marriage. Each follows lewd habit and takes up with whomever they please; they have no proper pairing, and know nothing of the bond between father and son, or the way of husband and wife.¹

The governor's answer was a piece of official paper. He sent letters down to the districts ordering that men from twenty to fifty years old and women from fifteen to forty should all be matched to one another by age. Those too poor to pay the betrothal gifts were helped by officials from the senior clerks downward, who cut their own salaries to aid them.¹

The result is recorded as a single figure: more than two thousand people married at one time.¹

The book adds a few more lines. That year the wind and rain came in season, and the crops grew well. Those who had children came to know their lineage for the first time. They all said: that I have this child is thanks to Lord Nham. And many named their children Nham.¹

Notice how the passage is built. The Lac Viet appear twice. The first time, they are a crowd that knows nothing of father and child, husband and wife. The second time, they are people thanking the governor for their own children. In between is an order pairing people off by age. The words of the people of Cuu Chan that the book does record are words of thanks.

The passage does not say what those two thousand and more people thought as they were paired off by age.¹

The life goes on: the barbarians beyond the border, such as Yelang, admired righteousness and guarded the frontier, so Nham Dien stood down his scouts and garrison troops.¹

Then comes the figure easiest to pass over: Dien held office for four years. He was summoned back to Luoyang, lingered on account of illness, and was demoted to magistrate of Suiyang district. And the officials and people of Cuu Chan built a shrine to him while he still lived. After that he was appointed governor of Wuwei.¹

Four years. Everything that made his name in Cuu Chan fits inside that span. The book does not say which four years they were, only that he was appointed early in the Jianwu reign. Anyone who gives a precise run of years is calculating, not quoting.¹

And Tich Quang? He has no life of his own. The few lines on him are tucked inside the life of Nham Dien, and they open with the word "earlier":

Earlier, in the time of Emperor Ping, Tich Quang, a man of Hanzhong, was governor of Giao Chi; he taught the people and the barbarian Di, little by little, through rites and righteousness, and his name for civilising them equalled Dien's.¹

The words to notice are in the time of Emperor Ping, that is, the first few years AD, some twenty years before Guangwu took the throne. Tich Quang was not sent by Guangwu. He had been sitting in Giao Chi since the reign before, and the book goes on to record what he did when everything in the north fell apart:

At the end of Wang Mang's time he closed the borders and held out. Early in the Jianwu reign he sent envoys with tribute, and was made marquis of Yanshui.¹

Anyone who heard the episode on Trieu Da will find this scene familiar: the court in the north in chaos, and the official holding the southern land shutting the door. But Tich Quang did not proclaim himself king. When the empire had a new master, he sent envoys up with tribute, and was made a marquis.

Reading only the forty-character sentence in book eighty-six, it is easy to take it that the two officials were sent out together when Guangwu restored the dynasty. Book seventy-six shows otherwise: one had been there since the reign before, and the other came later.²

The passage on Tich Quang closes with the plainest piece of self-praise in the whole story:

The civilising of Linh Nam by Chinese ways began with these two governors.¹

From the time the Han destroyed Nam Viet and set up commanderies to the reign of Emperor Ping was already more than a hundred years.³ If this sentence is to be believed, then a whole century of commanderies and districts before that had changed no customs at all. Book eighty-six itself opens its description of the people of Giao Chi with exactly that idea: though commanderies and districts were set up, the language still differed from place to place.²

Fan Ye names these two once more, in his closing assessment of the whole chapter on good officials. He lists the men most worthy of praise. There is Du Shi, who governed Nanyang commandery and whom the people called Mother Du. And there are Nham Dien and Tich Quang, who transformed the customs of the frontier; these were the men whose usefulness was most plainly seen.⁴

The yardstick is stated right there in the sentence. The life of Nham Dien does record fields spreading and the people having enough to eat. But in the final summing up, what is called the two men's greatest achievement is that they changed the customs of the people on the frontier.⁴

And then there is To Dinh.

If Tich Quang has only a few lines tucked inside another man's life, To Dinh has far less. In the books of the Book of the Later Han that deal with this land, the account of the peoples of the south, the life of Ma Yuan and the chapter on good officials, his name appears in the main text exactly once, in book eighty-six. It is a sentence of ten Chinese characters: his office, his name, and one thing he did.²

That office is governor of Giao Chi, the very seat Tich Quang once held. The book does not record when Tich Quang left it, nor when To Dinh arrived.

Beyond that sentence there is nothing. No courtesy name, no home town, no post before or after, not one line on what became of him.² Even in the life of Ma Yuan, the man sent to put the rising down, the main text never mentions To Dinh by name. His name surfaces there only because the Tang-dynasty notes of Li Xian copy out that same sentence from book eighty-six.⁵

Put the three men side by side and it is plain. Nham Dien has a courtesy name, a home town, four years of work, a shrine built to him while he lived, and a new post. Tich Quang has a home town and a marquisate. To Dinh has ten characters. This history writes carefully about the officials it wants to praise.

That ten-character sentence sits in the middle of the book's record of the sixteenth year of Jianwu, that is, the year 40, the year the whole region rose. To Dinh was the man holding the governorship when the rising broke out.² Later Vietnamese histories would write more about him than the Han history itself does, but those added words sit in the passage on why the rising broke out, and they belong to the next story.⁶⁷

Next episode: The Trung sisters rise up, AD 40.