170 carolyn ford

CHAPTER SIX

THE AFTERLIFE OF A LOST BOOK—DU JI (THE RECORD OF JEALOUS WOMEN) FIFTH CENTURY1

Carolyn Ford

The Record of Jealous Women says: When Huan Wen2 pacified [Sich-- uan], he took Shi’s daughter3 as a concubine. His wife, the Nank-- ang Princess,4 was violently jealous [by nature], but she was unaware [of the situation]. When she later found out, she picked up a sword and went to Li’s place with the intent of beheading her. She saw Li combing her hair by the window, her posture and appearance were serene and beautiful. She slowly tied up her hair, folded her hands and faced the princess. Her facial expression was calm and unruffled, yet her words expressed deep sorrow. The princess then tossed away the sword and stepped forward to embrace her, ‘Dear child, now that I

1 I would like to thank Dr. Daria Berg, Dr. Robert Chard, Jill Butler, Dr. Red Chan and the anonymous reviewer for reading various drafts of this paper and making a number of helpful suggestions. 2 (312-373), zi Yuanzi, son of (276-328), zi Maolun, pre-- fect of Xuancheng, which corresponds to present day Xuanzhou, . Huan Wen was the general who recovered Shu () for the Eastern in 347. He became the most powerful figure in the Eastern Jin court and harboured imperial ambitions of his own, which only his death prevented. See his biography in Jin shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 98.2568. 3 (d. 361) was the sixth and last sovereign of the tiny kingdom (304-347), the capital of which was located in present-day , Sichuan. He started his reign in 338. In 347 he received the title “Marquis Returned to Allegiance.” His biography is in Jin shu 121.3046. After Li’s death there were occasional reports of men pretending to be Li’s heir. Jin shu 13.373 states that after his conquest of Shu, Huan Wen sent Li Shi to the capital. There is no mention in the standard histories of Huan Wen taking a female relative of Li Shi as his concubine. 4 The Nankang princess (d. ca. 369) does not have an official biography. Nan-- kang is located in present-day province. The Jin shu occasionally notes the fact that Huan Wen and the Nankang Princess were husband and wife. In Jin shu 24.734 (a section dealing with the bureaucracy) Huan Wen is mentioned as a high official accorded special privileges because he was married to a princess, giving him the status of an imperial son-in-law. Only in Huan Wen’s official biography is it explicitly stated that Huan Wen was given the hand of the elder princess of Nankang in marriage, Jin shu 98.2568. du ji 171

see you, even I take pity on you, no wonder the old scoundrel [feels the way he does].’ Thereafter she treated her well.5 A number of Chinese literary and historical works preserve stories about female jealousy.6 Ancient works such as the Shanhai jing (Book of Mountains and Seas)7 list certain plants and animals as efficacious cures for jealousy. The Shi jing (Book of Songs)8 and the Lienü zhuan (Biographies of Eminent Women)9 include poems and biographies in praise of the virtue of women who did not feel jealous. Throughout recorded Chinese history, a childless wife who, out of jealousy, did not allow her husband to take a concubine was considered a threat to the continuation of the family line. Jealousy held such serious consequences for family and social stability that the female author of the Tang work, Nü xiao jing (The Book of Filial Piety for Women), pointed out that it was the foremost among the seven grounds for divorce and warned women to behave.10

5 Commentary to the Shishuo xinyu, citing the Du ji. See Yu Jiaxi, Shishuo xinyu jianshu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 19.693. 6 For an overview of female jealousy in Chinese history, see Chia-lin Pao Tao, “Women and jealousy in traditional ,” Zhongguo jinshi shehui wenhuashi lunwenji 1, (Taibei: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 1992): 531-561. For an overview of female jealousy more narrowly focused on the fourth to sixth centuries, see Yamamoto Noriko, “HokuchÙkei fujin no toki ni tsuite: Hokugi o chåshin toshite,” Ritsumeikan bungaku 270, Dec. 1967: 78-104. 7 The Shanhai jing contains material from multiple periods, much of it pre-impe-- rial. Liu Xin (50 BC-23 AD) was one of the first compilers to arrange the Shanhai jing in its current form, followed by Guo Pu (276-324). It is a mythical geography of China based on the five sacred mountains. 8 The poems in the Shi jing also date to the pre-imperial period. Although modern scholars do not see Confucius’ (551-479 BC) editorial hand at work here, the selec-- tion and editing of the three hundred poems from a group of three thousand are traditionally attributed to him. See Arthur Waley, trans., The Book of Songs (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1960), p. 18. 9 Liu Xiang (ca. 77 BC-ca. 6 BC) selected biographies of 125 women known for their virtue from ancient times to the Former . 10 See Nü xiao jing 5b-6a, in Mao Jin, Jindai mishu vol. 61 (Shanghai: Bogu zhai, 1922 rept.) For a translation and comparison of this work with the Xiao jing (Book of Filial Piety), see Patricia Buckley Ebrey, “The Book of Filial Piety for Women Attributed to a Woman Née Zheng (ca. 730),” in Under Confucian Eyes: Writ-- ings on Gender in Chinese History, Susan Mann and Yu-yin Cheng, eds., (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 47-60. For jealousy as one of the seven grounds for divorce during the , see Changsun Wuji et al., Tanglü shuyi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 14.267. For a translation, see The T’ang Code Vol. II, Specific Articles, Wallace Johnson, trans., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 167.