The rising of Lady Trieu, 248

This episode jumps straight to the year two hundred and forty-eight. The next one will step back, to the time of Si Nhiep, a few decades earlier.

Lady Trieu is a familiar name. But open the history written closest to the year two hundred and forty-eight, and you find something strange. There is a rising. There is a regional inspector sent to put it down. There is a count of the people who surrendered. There is no woman’s name at all.¹

Every detail we know about her comes from other books. This episode lays them out by the year they were written, to see on which page each detail enters the story.¹

That history is the Tam quoc chi of Chen Shou. In its Book of Wu there is a short biography appended to the biography of Luc Khai: the biography of his younger brother, Luc Dan. The passage on the year two hundred and forty-eight is here.

In the eleventh year of Chiwu, the barbarian rebels of Giao Chi and Cuu Chan attacked and seized the walled towns, and the whole province of Giao was in turmoil.¹

Chiwu is a reign name of the Wu; its eleventh year is two hundred and forty-eight. The Wu took Luc Dan, then serving as commandant supervising the army at Hengyang, and sent him south as regional inspector of Giao Chau, with the added title of Colonel Who Pacifies the South.

The biography describes no battle. It describes a campaign to win surrender. Dan entered the southern lands and appealed to them with kindness and good faith, his aim being to draw them in. The band of Hoang Ngo, a chieftain of Cao Luong, surrendered: more than three thousand households. He led his troops south, again showed his sincerity, and gave them wealth as gifts. Then more than a hundred rebel leaders, and more than fifty thousand households from deep and hidden places that had never accepted any bond, all without exception bowed their heads. The lands of Giao were at peace, and he was raised to General Who Pacifies the South.¹

The only person on the rebel side named in this passage is Hoang Ngo. And he was in Cao Luong, the area of today’s Guangdong, not in Cuu Chan. Not one of those hundred and more rebel leaders is named.¹

The affairs of the south are not in the part recording the Wu ruler himself, either. The account of the Wu ruler records the eleventh year of Chiwu quite fully: Zhu Ran builds the walls of Jiangling, there is an earthquake, the Taichu palace is finished, there is a hailstorm, one place reports a yellow dragon, another reports a white tiger. About Giao Chi and Cuu Chan, not a word. The name Luc Dan does not appear anywhere in that whole book.²

The name appears in a very different kind of book: a book about one region.

Liu Xinqi wrote a Giao Chau ky, a record of Giao Chau. That book is lost. But it existed before the year five hundred and twenty-seven, because the Thuy kinh chu, the work of a man who died that year, cites it by name.³ The passage about the woman survives because the Song-dynasty encyclopedia Thai Binh ngu lam, compiled in nine hundred and eighty-three, quoted it. It reads as follows.

Trieu Au was a girl of Quan An district, in Cuu Chan commandery. Her breasts were several feet long. She took no husband, went into the hills and gathered a band of bandits, and then attacked the commandery. She always wore clogs with gold on them. When the fighting was done and she withdrew, she hung up curtains and tents and carried on illicit affairs with young men; several dozen attended at her side. The regional inspector, Luc Dan, a man of Wu commandery, put her down.⁴

This is the voice of someone on the side of the state describing a rebel, and that voice makes no attempt to hide itself. An abnormal body. No husband. A band of bandits in the hills. A life painted as debauched. Every detail is a charge against her.

The passage gives no year either. The only thing that ties this woman to the year two hundred and forty-eight is the name of the man who put her down: Luc Dan.⁴

The clogs have a story of their own. The character that describes them is a rare one, and three different places in the same encyclopedia quote it in three different spellings. A Qing-dynasty scholar who gathered up the fragments of Liu Xinqi’s book had to note: it is not known which is right. Only two things are certain: there is a word for gold, and there is a word for clogs.⁴ Keep those clogs in mind. Later on, they will turn into a garment.

The familiar picture, the woman riding into battle on an elephant, is not in Liu Xinqi’s passage. It comes from the Nam Viet chi, another lost book. One passage survives because the Tang-dynasty encyclopedia So hoc ky, compiled in seven hundred and twenty-seven, quoted it under the heading of Ai Chau.

A girl of Quan An district, Trieu Au, once lived in the hills gathering a band and raiding the commanderies and districts. She wore toothed clogs capped with gold, and always fought seated on an elephant’s head.⁵

This fragment has the elephant and the clogs. It says nothing of long breasts, nothing of young men, nothing of Luc Dan.⁵

Around the year nine hundred and eighty, the geography Thai Binh hoan vu ky set the story down under the same heading of Ai Chau. This time the fragments have been joined into one.

In the old days in Cuu Chan there was a girl, Trieu Au, whose breasts were five feet long. She took no husband, always lived in the hills gathering bandits and forming a band, raided the commanderies and districts, wore toothed shoes capped with gold, fought seated on an elephant’s head, and took more than ten young men as her attendants; afterwards the regional inspector Luc Duan put her down.⁶

Breasts of several feet have become breasts of five feet. The inspector’s name has changed by one character: Dan has become Duan. The character Dan clashes with the taboo personal name of the Song founder, Emperor Taizu, so this may be a case of avoiding a taboo name; the book does not say so, and it is only a guess.⁶

Under that same Song dynasty, the official history went its own way. In ten eighty-four, Sima Guang entered the year two hundred and forty-eight in the Zizhi tongjian. He sums up the sentence from the Tam quoc chi: the barbarian rebels of Giao Chi and Cuu Chan attacked and seized the walled towns; the Wu ruler sent Luc Dan; Dan entered the region and appealed to them with kindness and good faith, more than fifty thousand households surrendered, and the province was at peace again.⁷

Still no woman. By the eleventh century the reference books and the geographies had Trieu Au, but the year-by-year history did not yet.

In the fourteenth century, Le Tac wrote the An Nam chi luoc. Trieu Au is there, in a section headed Rebels, in the same section as Trung Trac and Ly Bi.⁸

Trieu Au, a girl of Quan Ninh district in Cuu Chan, was young and unmarried. Her breasts were three feet long, and she slung them over her back. She wore toothed shoes capped with gold, rode on an elephant’s head to fight the enemy, and lived in the hills gathering a band and turning bandit. The regional inspector of Giao Chau killed her.⁸

Among the books examined here, this is the earliest place with the figure of three feet and the detail of slinging them over her back, exactly as the later Vietnamese histories would use them. The young men have vanished. And the ending is harsher: the older version says the inspector put her down; this one says he killed her.⁸

In the same period, the Viet su luoc does not tell the story of Trieu Au at all. In its list of those who governed the land in successive ages, it gives only one line: Luc Duan, a man of Wu. Not a word about what he did.⁹

The Dai Viet su ky toan thu does not give Trieu Au an annal of her own. Her name sits in the annal of the period under the Wu, and the table of contents lists it as "with Trieu Au appended".¹⁰

The passage opens with the year Mau Thin. The cyclical year is right for two hundred and forty-eight, but both reign names given with it are wrong. The Shu reign name Yanxi is written with the characters of an Eastern Han reign name from the second century. And the first year of Yong’an of the Wu is two hundred and fifty-eight, ten years off.¹⁰

Then the main text records: Cuu Chan again attacked and seized the walled towns, and the province and commanderies were in turmoil. The man sent there has his name written as Lang Dan, with a note adding "some books write Lang Thuong". The characters for Luc and for Lang look much alike, so this may be a confusion of similar strokes. The Vietnamese translation now in use quietly corrects it back to Luc Dan.¹⁰

The number who surrendered is different too: the Complete Annals give more than thirty thousand households, where the Tam quoc chi and the Tongjian give more than fifty thousand.¹⁰

Only then does the woman come in. After that, a girl of Cuu Chan commandery, Trieu Au, gathered a crowd and raided the commanderies and districts; Dan put her down. The words "after that" place her in a second round, after Luc Dan had already brought peace once. A small note set into the middle of the sentence adds: her breasts were three feet long and slung over her back, and she always rode on an elephant’s head to fight the enemy.¹⁰

The note beneath it cites a book called the Giao Chi chi, and brings in a detail found in none of the older books told above: when she died she became a deity.¹¹

That note also has a character meaning a garment of coarse cloth, and so the modern translation reads it as a short yellow jacket. But every older version, at exactly that point, has shoes or clogs capped with gold. Perhaps a stroke was miscopied; no book says so.¹¹

As for the young men, present since the oldest version, the Complete Annals do not keep them.¹⁰

In fifteen fourteen, Le Tung wrote the general essay printed at the head of the Complete Annals. Of everything examined here, it is the earliest comment in the Vietnamese histories that praises this woman.

Trieu Au was a daughter of Cuu Chan. She gathered a band in the hills and struck at the walled towns, and the tribes followed her as a shadow follows a form, as easily as turning over a hand. Though she did not take Linh Bieu as Queen Trung did, she too was a woman of heroic talent.¹²

Nearly three centuries later, Ngo Thi Si thought otherwise. In his Viet su tieu an, in the comment closing the part on Queen Trung, he held that Lady Trieu was not worth counting.¹³

In eighteen eighty-four, the Nguyen court’s Kham dinh Viet su thong giam cuong muc did two opposite things. On one hand, it set things right: the year Mau Thin is given with all three reign names, of the Wu, the Shu and the Wei, and the inspector’s name goes back to Luc Dan. On the other, it still keeps the Complete Annals’ figure of thirty thousand households.¹⁴

And this time the woman’s name is raised into the headline entry: Trieu Au of Cuu Chan gathered a crowd and raided the commanderies and districts; the regional inspector Luc Dan attacked and put her down. In the Complete Annals, she is an appended line. In the Cuong muc, she is the headline of the year.¹⁴

The Cuong muc’s notes give the Thai Binh hoan vu ky as their source, but the quotation does not match the version of that book given above: the breasts are three feet, not five, and there is the matter of her becoming a deity after death. It matches almost word for word the Giao Chi chi passage in the Complete Annals’ note. Either the Cuong muc attached the wrong source, or it used a different copy of the Hoan vu ky; there is not enough to choose between them.¹⁴

The same notes add a sentence that the earlier books, among those examined, do not have: her temple is now in Phu Dien commune, My Hoa district, Thanh Hoa.¹⁴

Then Emperor Tu Duc added his comment. Among the daughters of our southern land there have been many of heroic and uncommon mettle. Trieu Au, too, is one who comes after the two Trung sisters. But he did not swallow the whole story: only the tale of breasts three feet long is truly absurd and laughable.¹⁵