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烏衣鬼軍記

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Text ID
KR3l0147
Date
280–400
Dynasty
西晉-東晉

Wūyī guǐjūn jì 烏衣鬼軍記

Record of the Black-Clad Ghost Army by 闕名

About the work

A single-tale zhìguài 志怪 narrative, transmitted as an independently-titled “text” in modern Kanripo cataloguing but originally a discrete tale of the Zhào Gōngmíng 趙公明 ghost-army cycle. Sǎnqí shìláng 散騎侍郎 Wáng Yòu 王祐, gravely ill and bidding farewell to his elderly mother, is visited by an apparition who declares himself a biéjià 別駕 of the same prefecture and a staff-officer (cānzuǒ 參佐) of “Lord Zhào Gōngmíng’s headquarters”, one of three generals dispatched this year on imperial-spirit orders to draft mortals. Wáng Yòu, recognising the visitor as a guǐshén 鬼神, pleads filial responsibility for his aged mother; the spirit, moved by his evident integrity, agrees to spare him. Visible behind the spirit are several hundred small followers, two chǐ (≈ 50 cm) tall, dressed in black (wūyī 烏衣) with red-oil insignia; when Wáng Yòu’s household beats sacrificial drums, the small ghosts spontaneously dance in time, sleeves whirling audibly. The spirit declares illness to be “fire in the body” cured by water, and pours a cup of water into Wáng Yòu’s bed-coverings: at midnight Wáng Yòu wakes to find 3 shēng 7 gě of water lying like dew on lotus between the upper and lower quilts, not soaking through. His illness is two-thirds gone in one day, fully cured in several. The spirit also leaves ten-odd “red brushes” (chìbǐ 赤筆) under the mat as amuletic bìè 辟惡 charms to be worn in the hair, and names the future dead. Subsequently a “yāoshū” 妖書 (heterodox book) is found circulating that confirms: “The Supreme Emperor has dispatched three generals — Zhào Gōngmíng and Zhōng Shìjì — each commanding many ghosts to draft mortals.”

Tiyao

Lost; no original 提要; fragments only.

Abstract

The tale is the principal early-medieval narrative source for the Zhào Gōngmíng 趙公明 plague-marshal tradition that ultimately becomes the central figure of late-imperial wealth-god cult and of the Fēngshén yǎnyì 封神演義 demonological hierarchy. The story is preserved in (a) Gān Bǎo’s 干寶 Sōushén jì (KR3l0099) juàn 5; (b) parallel recensions in the Lièyì zhuàn 列異傳 cluster and possibly in the Sōushén hòujì 搜神後記 (KR3l0100) reception. The pairing of Zhào Gōngmíng with Zhōng Shìjì 鍾士季 (the Three-Kingdoms general Zhōng Huì 鍾會, zì Shìjì) — both as plague-commanders dispatched from the Supreme Emperor’s court — is one of the earliest documented appearances of Zhào Gōngmíng’s name in a fictional-religious register, anticipating the late-Táng / Sòng Sōushén guǎngjì 搜神廣記 hierarchies that finally fix him as Zhèngyī xuántán Zhào Yuánshuài 正一玄壇趙元帥.

The present title “Wūyī guǐjūn jì” is an editor’s title for the excerpted tale and not the surviving fragment of a discrete pre-Táng collection: no entry of this title appears in the Suí or LiǎngTáng catalogs. The author is anonymous and is recorded as 闕名; the historical Wáng Yòu (a late-3rd / early-4th-c. sǎnqí shìláng) and Zhōng Huì (225–264) are characters in the story, not its authors.

The dating bracket adopted here (280–400) reflects the assumed compilation horizon. The story-internal Wáng Yòu — Zhōng Shìjì combination requires a date after 264; the Sōushén jì transmission fixes the upper bound at c. 320, with a margin allowed for WèiJìn — early Eastern-Jìn pre-history. The tale is one of the textbook cases for the guǐjūn 鬼軍 (ghost army) topos that pervades early-medieval Chinese epidemic-religion, and for the chìbǐ 赤筆 amulet practice — wearing a red-painted writing-brush in the hair as a bìyì 辟疫 charm — that is well-attested in Eastern-Hàn and WèiJìn tomb objects.

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 j.5 recension is translated here.
  • Campany, Robert Ford. Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (SUNY 1996), pp. 377ff.; idem, Making Transcendents (Hawai’i 2009).
  • Lin, Wei-Cheng (林偉正). On the iconography of Zhào Gōng-míng — articles 2010s.
  • Wáng Guóliáng 王國良. Sōushén jì yán-jiū (1984); Liù-cháo zhì-guài xiǎoshuō kǎo-lùn (1988).
  • Lǐ Jiànguó 李劍國. Táng-qián zhì-guài xiǎoshuō shǐ (rev. 2005), §6.
  • von Glahn, Richard. The Sinister Way: The Divine and the Demonic in Chinese Religious Culture (California 2004), Chs. 3–4 — extensive treatment of the Zhào Gōng-míng evolution from Wèi-Jìn plague-spirit to Míng wealth-god.

Other points of interest

The 3 shēng 7 gě of water “lying like dew on a lotus” between Wáng Yòu’s two quilts is a remarkable proto-physical-anomaly detail — the kind of measured, quantified marvel that distinguishes early zhìguài from later more rhetorical chuánqí. The tale also documents, with anthropological precision, the early-medieval North-Chinese jīgǔ 擊鼓 (drum-beating) household exorcism rite to which spirits respond by yìngjié qǐwǔ 應節起舞 (dancing in time).

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