聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

蘇娥訴冤記

5 min read

Text ID
KR3l0142
Date
220–400
Dynasty
魏-晉

Sū É sùyuān jì 蘇娥訴冤記

Record of Sū É’s Plea for Redress by 闕名

About the work

A single-tale zhìguài 志怪 narrative, transmitted as an independently-titled “text” in modern Kanripo cataloguing but in fact an excerpted version of one of the most widely-circulated early-medieval ghost-grievance tales. The story is set in the Eastern Hàn: Hé Chǎng 何敞 (a historical figure, late-1st c. jīngxué official, native of Jiǔjiāng 九江) is serving as cìshǐ 刺史 of Jiāozhōu 交州 and lodges for the night at Húbēntíng 鵠奔亭 in Gāoān 高安 county (in some recensions corrected to Gāoyào 高要) of Cāngwú 蒼梧 commandery. Before midnight the ghost of a young woman appears from beneath the upper storey and tells her story: she is Sū É 蘇娥 (zì Shǐzhū 始珠) of Guǎngxìn 廣信, widowed and travelling with her maid Zhìfù 致富 and 120 pī of silk; the post-station head 龔壽 Gōng Shòu accosted her, killed her and her maid when she resisted, robbed them, slaughtered the ox and burnt the cart, hid the cart-ring and ox-bones in a dry well to the east of the station, and buried the two women under the upper storey. She prays Hé Chǎng for justice. The corpses are exhumed exactly as described, Gōng Shòu confesses under torture, and Hé Chǎng memorialises that although ordinary law would not extend the death-penalty to the family, the heinousness and the fact that ghost-evidence alone has secured the conviction warrant collective execution. The throne approves.

Tiyao

Lost; no original 提要; fragments only.

Abstract

The Sū É tale is a stock item of the early-medieval zhìguài corpus, transmitted in essentially this form in (a) Gān Bǎo’s 干寶 Sōushén jì (KR3l0099) juàn 16, under the title Húbēntíng nǚshī 鵠奔亭女屍, and (b) the Lièyì zhuàn 列異傳 (ascribed variously to Cáo Pī 曹丕 or to 張華 Zhāng Huá), where the cìshǐ’s name is variously corrupted to Zhōu Chǎng 周敞 (an error for Hé Chǎng) and the place-name to Gāoān (error for Gāoyào). The story is also preserved with minor variants in (c) the Yuānhún zhì 冤魂志 of Yán Zhītuī 顏之推 (6th c.) cited in Tàipíng yùlǎn juàn 884, and (d) Tàipíng guǎngjì 太平廣記 juàn 119 under the Húbēntíng heading.

The present “Sū É sùyuān jì” is therefore an editor’s title for an extracted ghost-grievance tale and not a surviving fragment of a discrete pre-Táng collection of that name: no entry “Sū É sùyuān jì” appears in the Suí shū Jīngjí zhì or in the LiǎngTáng Yìwén / Jīngjí bibliographic monographs. The dating bracket adopted here (220–400) reflects the assumed compilation horizon of the parent corpus: lower bound mid-3rd c. (the Lièyì zhuàn form, if Wèi); upper bound late-4th c. (the Sōushén jì, c. 320). The author is unknown and accordingly recorded here as 闕名 Anonymous; the historical Hé Chǎng is the narrative’s protagonist, not its author.

The narrative is canonical for the yuānhún sùyuān 冤魂訴冤 (the wronged ghost’s plea for redress) topos that dominates medieval Chinese officials’-tale literature and feeds directly into Táng chuánqí (e.g., the Lǐ Wá zhuàn’s parallel motif), Sòng gōngàn (court-case) fiction, and ultimately the YuánMíng dramatic tradition culminating in Guān Hànqīng’s Dòu É yuān 竇娥冤. The realistic forensic detail — the silk count, the specific location of the cart-ring and ox-bones, the white inner garment and unrotten “qīngsī” 青絲 (black-thread) shoes that serve as material proof — already exhibits the proto-detective register that becomes a hallmark of the later gōngàn genre.

Hé Chǎng himself is attested in Hòu Hàn shū 43 as a HànZhāng to HànHé period (late 1st c. CE) censor and cìshǐ of mixed reputation; the historical fit of his Jiāozhōu tour with the story’s diegesis is plausible but cannot be independently corroborated.

Translations and research

  • DeWoskin, Kenneth J. and J. I. Crump, Jr., trans. In Search of the Supernatural: The Written Record (Stanford 1996) — the Sōushén jì recension is translated here.
  • Cohen, Alvin P. Tales of Vengeful Souls: A Sixth Century Collection of Chinese Avenging Ghost Stories (Variétés Sinologiques NS 68, 1982) — translation of Yán Zhī-tuī’s Yuān-hún zhì, with the parallel transmission of the Sū É tale.
  • Campany, Robert Ford. Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (SUNY 1996), pp. 377ff., on the wronged-ghost topos.
  • Wáng Guóliáng 王國良. Sōushén jì yán-jiū 搜神記研究 (Wén-shǐ-zhé chū-bǎn-shè, 1984); Liù-cháo zhì-guài xiǎoshuō kǎo-lùn 六朝志怪小說考論 (1988).
  • Lǐ Jiànguó 李劍國. Táng-qián zhì-guài xiǎoshuō shǐ 唐前志怪小說史 (Tiānjīn jiào-yù, rev. 2005), §6.
  • Yáo Dà-yǒng 姚大勇. “Lùn Hú-bēn-tíng gùshì de liú-biàn” 論鵠奔亭故事的流變. Wén-xué yí-chǎn 文學遺產 2009.

Other points of interest

The tale is one of the earliest narratives in which a ghost’s plea for justice produces a death-penalty memorial actually approved by the throne, and one of the very few in which the executing official explicitly justifies the use of supernatural evidence in biǎo 表 form (“once in a thousand years that a ghost has been able to bring a charge, I therefore request that all be beheaded, to manifest the spirits and to assist the yīn punishment”). This formula is closely echoed in later gōngàn texts.

Graph View