Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch
RASHKB and author
40
Vol. 1 (1961)
ISSN 1991-7295
heroes have remained favourites." On the stage, a knight errant is easily distinguishable from a general: the former usually wears a short jacket and trousers and wields a sword or club, while the latter wears full armour with banners behind his back and uses a spear or halberd,
We now come to the last stages in the evolution of chivalric literature. In the Ming and Ch'ing periods, two notable trends developed in chivalric fiction. On the one hand, in some stories of chivalry, the supernatural element was increasingly emphasized, so that a type of knight with “flying swords" and magic power became popular. On the other hand, some tales of knightly deeds became mixed with stories about “legal cases”, so that a new type of fiction, which may be called chivalric-romance-cum-detective-story, developed. An early example of the first type is a novel called The flying sword (Fei-chien chi), published in the Ming dynasty, about the Taoist immortal Lü Tung-pin and his acquisition of magic powers. Later examples are too numerous to mention. In fact, such stories are still being written now in Hong Kong. Sometimes they are presented in the form of comic strip cartoons, known as "serial pictures" (lien-huan t'u-hua), obtainable from small book stalls and pavement lending libraries. The second type, which combines tales of chivalry with detective stories, has also remained popular to the present day and is still being written. There is an interesting difference between this type of fiction and earlier tales of chivalry. In stories belonging to this type, the knights errant are usually on the right side of the law, instead of rebelling against it. For instance, in popular stories about Judge Pao, the Chinese Solomon, various knights errant help him in detecting crimes and arresting bandits and local bullies. Originally these stories about Judge Pao only dealt with crime and detection. They were first joined together and published as a novel entitled The cases of Judge Pao (Pao-kung an) about 1600. Later, the knights who helped Judge Pao assumed greater importance in these stories, which formed the basis of another novel, Three knights and five righteous men (San-hsia wu-yi), published in 1879. This was revised by Yu Yüeh and given the title Seven knights and five righteous men a few years later, and achieved great success. It was followed by a sequel, the Junior five righteous men (Hsiao wu-yi), and further supplements. Imitations also followed. Among these may be mentioned The cases of Judge Shih, first published in 1838, and The cases of Judge P'eng, first published about 1895. These were based vaguely on recent historical figures, and the knights errant in these novels were probably in
24 Plays about the Shui-hu heroes have been collected by Fu Hsi-hua and Tu Ying-t'ao in Shui-hu hsi-ch'ü (Shanghai, vol. I, 1957; vol. II, 1958).
25 Sun K'ai-ti, op. cit., p. 170.