Li Xian

The old chronicles say

He placed his note right after the words sent their heads to Luoyang in Ma Yuan's biography, quoting a book called the Viet chi: Trung Trac raised troops and set up her capital in Me Linh district; when Ma Yuan came to put her down, she fled into the Kim Khe cave, and was caught only after two years. So on one and the same page, the main text says beheaded in the first month, less than a year after Lang Bac, and the note says hid in a cave, caught only after two years. Li Xian set down both, and did not rule between them. Twelve centuries later the Cuong muc did the same: the death in the main text, the cave in the note.¹³

The main text of Ma Yuan's biography gives no cause for the rising, recording only that the two sisters rebelled; there the reason appears only in Li Xian's note, with angry changed to resentful and angry. In the chapter on the southern peoples, the sentence is Fan Ye's own main text. As for Trung Trac's husband, Li Xian's notes read the name as Thi Sach, just as the main text of the Book of the Later Han writes it.⁴⁵

In places he had to add a note because the main text did not agree with an earlier book. When Ma Yuan says the Han of old sent Lo Bac Duc to open up and set up seven commanderies, he notes: here it now says seven commanderies, which does not agree with the earlier book — the earlier book being the Han thu. And when he needs to point to a place, he points to the names of his own day: Vo Cong and Cu Phong were the names of two districts of Cuu Chan commandery, and Cu Phong is now Ai Chau — the now there being the Tang dynasty's now.⁶⁷