Lady Trieu

The old chronicles say

The history written closest to 248 is the Tam quoc chi of Chen Shou; the passage on that year sits in the short biography of Luc Dan, appended to that of his elder brother Luc Khai. There is a rising in Giao Chi and Cuu Chan, a regional inspector sent to put it down, a count of those who surrendered — but no woman’s name at all. The only person on the rebel side who is named is Hoang Ngo, a chieftain of Cao Luong, not of Cuu Chan.³

The name appears in a very different kind of book: a book about one region. Liu Xinqi wrote a Giao Chau ky, now lost but existing before 527; the passage about the woman survives because the encyclopedia Thai Binh ngu lam, compiled in 983, quoted it: Trieu Au was a girl of Quan An district, in Cuu Chan commandery, with breasts several feet long; she took no husband, went into the hills, gathered a band of bandits and attacked the commandery, always wore clogs with gold on them, and carried on affairs with young men; the regional inspector Luc Dan put her down. This is the voice of someone on the side of the state describing a rebel. The passage gives no year; the only thing tying her to 248 is the name of the man who put her down.⁸¹

The picture of 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 of which survives because the Tang-dynasty encyclopedia So hoc ky, compiled in 727, quoted it: Trieu Au wore toothed clogs capped with gold, and always fought seated on an elephant’s head. This fragment says nothing of long breasts, young men or Luc Dan. Around 980, the Thai Binh hoan vu ky joined the fragments into one; the breasts became five feet long, and the inspector’s name changed by one character, to Luc Duan — perhaps to avoid a taboo name, but the book does not say so, and it is only a guess.⁵¹⁰

In the fourteenth century, Le Tac’s An Nam chi luoc placed Trieu Au in a section headed Rebels, alongside Trung Trac and Ly Bi, gave her home as Quan Ninh district, her breasts as three feet long and slung over her back, and said the regional inspector of Giao Chau killed her rather than merely putting her down. The Complete Annals set her name in the annal of the period under the Wu as an appended line, after Luc Dan had already brought peace once. The note citing the Giao Chi chi adds that when she died she became a deity; that note also has a character meaning a garment of coarse cloth, so the modern translation reads it as a short yellow jacket, while every older version, at exactly that point, has shoes or clogs capped with gold.⁶⁴⁷

How later ages remembered

The last layer is Tran Trong Kim’s Viet Nam su luoc. In the reprint examined, the author himself notes that the earlier editions gave Trieu Au, and that on consideration it should now be Trieu thi Chinh. He opens his account with the words "Our histories record that", but what follows — her home village, her family circumstances, a saying of hers, her age and her death — is not in any of the old histories examined, from the Complete Annals to the Cuong muc, and he names no book. The name commonly used today, Trieu Thi Trinh, is also in none of the texts examined, not even this one.²