Si Nhiep

The old chronicles say

Si Nhiep, courtesy name Uy Ngan, was a man of Quang Tin, in Thuong Ngo commandery. His ancestors came from Wenyang, in the state of Lu, and when the disorders of Wang Mang came they fled south to Giao Chau; six generations later came his father, Si Tu, who under Emperor Huan of the Han was governor of Nhat Nam. As a young man he went to the capital to study under the teacher Liu Ziqi, reading the Zuo commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals; he was recommended as filial and incorrupt, became a gentleman of the imperial secretariat, and lost that post over an official matter; when his mourning for his father was over, he was recommended as a man of flourishing talent, became magistrate of Vu, and was then moved to be governor of Giao Chi. The Tam quoc chi gives no year for that post; the date 187 comes from the Complete Annals.¹²

When the regional inspector Chu Phu was killed by rebels, he memorialised for his younger brothers Si Nhat, Si Vi and Si Vu to be made governors of Hop Pho, Cuu Chan and Nam Hai: one family holding four commanderies. Chen Shou describes the brothers coming and going to bells and chimes, carriages and horses filling the road; even Uy Da, he says, could not surpass them. A letter from Yuan Hui to Xun Yu praises him for keeping a whole commandery intact amid great disorder, its borders free of trouble for more than twenty years. In 210, when Sun Quan sent Bo Chat as regional inspector, he led his brothers in accepting Bo Chat’s direction; there was no battle. He offered pearls, tortoiseshell and rare things from the rhinoceros and the elephant, and not a year went by without them arriving. He held the commandery more than forty years, and died in 226 at the age of ninety.¹

Legend has it

About two hundred years after his death, Pei Songzhi set down at the foot of the biography a story taken from Ge Hong’s Shenxian zhuan: Si Nhiep once fell ill and had been dead for three days, and an immortal, Dong Phung, gave him a pill and he came back to life. The Complete Annals lift the story into the main text, place it in 226, and change the source book to the Liexian zhuan and Dong Phung’s courtesy name from Quan Di to Xuong Di. Ngo Si Lien also records a story he himself notes is handed down by tradition: at the end of the Jin, more than a hundred and sixty years after the burial, men of Lam Ap dug up his grave, found his body and face as if he were still alive, and in terror filled it in again; the people of the place built a temple to him, called Si Vuong Tien, at the old citadel of Long Bien. The Cuong muc copies this, but the figure becomes more than six hundred years.⁴⁵³⁶

The old chronicles say

The Complete Annals give him an annal of his own, the Annal of Si Vuong, and explain the word king themselves: he was generous and tolerant, humble toward scholars, the people of the country loved him, and all called him king; when he dies, the book uses the word hoang. Le Van Huu praises him as wise, for knowing how to humble himself to serve the great country so as to keep his territory whole; Ngo Si Lien writes that our country’s becoming a land of culture and letters began with Si Vuong. The Nguyen court’s Cuong muc removes that annal: Si Nhiep was only a Han governor and never styled himself king; Emperor Tu Duc comments that the old history’s claim that even Uy Da could not surpass him is going much too far. Yet the Cuong muc keeps the line about culture and letters, changing only Si Vuong into Si Nhiep.^2789106

How later ages remembered

The comment in the translation of Ngo Thi Si’s book works out the cost of the tribute — forty years of supplying on that scale, how could one province bear it — yet still ends with the line about culture and letters; the translation does not say whose comment it is. Among the books read, the one who argues against that line is Tran Trong Kim: the Viet Nam su luoc says the idea that learning in our country began with Si Nhiep is "probably not right", since by his time more than three hundred years had passed and men of Giao Chi had already been chosen as filial and incorrupt or as men of flourishing talent. The phrase Nam Giao hoc to, often told as attached to his name, has not been traced in any of the histories: the Complete Annals, the Viet su luoc and the Cuong muc all lack it.^11122136