Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch
RASHKB and author
Vol. 1 (1961)
ISSN 1991-7295
41
fact professional bodyguards, who protected officials and rich merchants or valuable goods in transport. Such men were known as piao-k'o (鏢客), and their profession was called pao-piao (保鏢).
To sum up: the Chinese knights errant were at first simply men of strong will and independent character, who tried to see justice done by the use of force. They embodied the spirit of individualism and protested against any attempt at rigid regimentation. Later, popular imagination pictured them as great champions of the common people against the oppression of corrupt officials, and often attributed supernatural powers to them. This partly reflected the wishful thinking of the oppressed people for some miraculous saviour. Still later, by a stroke of irony, the knights errant became guardians of the law and protectors of the rich. However, the basic ideals of knight errantry remained unchanged. No knight errant worthy of the name would have helped a corrupt official or robbed the poor. Compared with Mediaeval European knights, the Chinese ones are more independent and less bound by a code of behaviour. Instead of being courteous to men, gallant to ladies, and devout in religion, they tend to be free and easy. That is perhaps why in Chinese literature knight errantry has not been endowed with such allegorical significance as we find in Western chivalric literature, such as in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso or Spenser's Faerie Queene. The nearest equivalent in the West to the Chinese yu-hsia is probably Robin Hood.
The above is only a bare outline of the development of chivalric literature in Chinese. I hope to deal with the subject in much greater detail in the future.
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