Person
Thi Sach
Husband of Trung Trac and son of the Lac general of Chu Dien. His name has two readings — Thi Sach, as in the Book of the Later Han, or Thi, by one way of breaking a sentence in the Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky — and his fate has two versions too: the oldest text has him rise in arms with his wife, while among the histories compared, from the Le dynasty's national history on he is killed by To Dinh before the rising.
At a glance
- Also known as
- Thi Sach — the Book of the Later Han writes his name with two characters, read that way; or Thi — if the sentence in the Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky is broken just before the character Sach (which also means to seek, to ask for), and two later places in that book write only the one character Thi. The Siku quanshu copy is unpunctuated, so the break is a later editor's choice; both readings have a basis in the texts123
- Origin
- Chu Dien — the Book of the Later Han calls him a man of Chu Dien; the Viet su luoc gives his home as Me Dien14
- Family
- Husband of Trung Trac; son of the Lac general of Chu Dien — a note in the Complete Annals says Thi Sach was also a Lac general's son, the children of two generals' houses married to each other25
- End
- Two accounts that do not fit together. The Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky: he rose in arms with his wife, and when Ma Yuan attacked he fled into the Kim Khe cave and was caught only three years later. The Complete Annals record that To Dinh had killed Trung Trac's husband before the rising; the Cuong muc and the Viet Nam su luoc of 1920 also have To Dinh kill him; the 1999 English translation of the Viet dien u linh tap, made from an early twentieth-century manuscript, says only that To Dinh used his power to bring him down, without saying plainly that he killed him; the Book of the Later Han and the Viet su luoc record no killing of him2678914
- Worshipped at
- His parents are honoured together with the Trung sisters' parents at the Ha Loi temple, Me Linh, according to the heritage file — a secondary source10
Life
The old chronicles say
The husband's name is the first place where the texts disagree, and the disagreement turns on a single character. The Book of the Later Han writes his name with two characters, read Thi Sach. But in the Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky, taking Sach as the end of the name leaves the sentence with no verb. That character also means to seek, to ask for; break the sentence just before it, and it is whole: the son of the Lac general of Chu Dien, named Thi, asked for the daughter of the Lac general of Me Linh, named Trung Trac, as his wife. Twice more in the same passage the book writes only the one character Thi. The Siku quanshu copy has no punctuation, so where the break falls is a later editor's choice.123
In the Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky, the husband does not die before the rising breaks out: Trac, a woman of nerve and courage, led Thi in rising up, and when Ma Yuan led his troops against her, Thi fled into the Kim Khe cave and was caught only three years later. The Book of the Later Han does not say To Dinh killed anyone; the Viet su luoc mentions him only once, in the clause about her marriage. The 1999 English translation of the Viet dien u linh tap, made from an early twentieth-century manuscript, says To Dinh used his power to bring him down, without saying plainly that he killed him. Among the books compared, not until the fifteenth-century Complete Annals is the killing plainly recorded; the Cuong muc and the Viet Nam su luoc of 1920 do the same.2149678
How later ages remembered
In 1979 Stephen O'Harrow of the University of Hawaii saw this very discrepancy: the Vietnamese histories add To Dinh killing her husband, while in the Giao Chau ngoai vuc ky the husband is alive and rises in arms with her. O'Harrow's explanation is that later Vietnamese historians, steeped in patriarchal Confucianism, could not accept a woman leading a revolt while her husband was still alive, and so they rewrote it. That is his inference, not something the sources record.11
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