Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch
RASHKB and author
34
Vol. 1 (1961)
ISSN 1991-7295
errant may be said to have had an ideology, it had more affinity with Taoism than with any other school of thought. True, in their altruism and devotion to duty they showed some resemblance to the Mohists, but they did not share the austerity of the latter. Indeed, the Mohists despised the knights errant and did not think them worth mentioning. It was to Taoism that some knights errant turned for guidance, as recorded in the biographies of several of them. This is hardly surprising: both Taoism and knight errantry came into being before Confucianism became the established official ideology, and both emphasized individualism and freedom from social bonds. To risk a generalization: if the obverse side of the Chinese character is represented by Confucianism—moderate, realistic, and conservative, then its reverse side is represented by Taoist philosophy, knight errantry, and various unorthodox artists and writers: romantic, individualist, and rebellious. It seems to me that it is the obverse side that is familiar to the West while the reverse side is perhaps not so well known and deserves more attention.
To come back to the history of knight errantry; the early Han emperors, though they paid lip service to Confucianism, actually ruled largely by Legalist methods. It is therefore not surprising that they took strong measures to suppress the knights errant. I have already mentioned that Kuo Chieh's father was executed by order of Emperor Wen. In the next reign, Emperor Ching ordered the execution of many others. And Emperor Wu, as we have seen, ordered the execution of Kuo Chieh and his family. Yet in spite of such suppression, many knights survived, although not all of them lived up to the high ideals of true knight errantry. In later periods, knights errant continued to exist. For instance, the poet Li Po (A.D. 701-762) was a knight errant in his younger days and killed several people by his own hand. In still later periods of history, we also read of people described as being knights errant or behaving in a knightly manner. Sometimes this means no more than that someone behaved in a chivalrous, altruistic way, without necessarily using force or breaking the law. On the other hand, the more swashbuckling knights either degenerated into mere outlaws or became professional bodyguards. As we are concerned here with literature rather than history, I shall give no more examples of historical knights but turn to descriptions of knight errantry in literature.
7 According to the "Biographies of knights errant".
See Lao Kan, "Yu-hsia, a type of knights errant in the Han dynasty", Bulletin of the College of Arts, National Taiwan University, No. 1.
Li T'ai-po shih-chi (SPPY), chüan 31, 5a. See Arthur Waley, The poetry and career of Li Po (London, 1950), p. 6.