RAS-1961 — Page 37

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch

RASHKB and author

Vol. 1 (1961)

ISSN 1991-7295

33

murdered man sent a messenger to report the murder to the throne, the messenger too was killed by Kuo's followers. The Emperor ordered Kuo's arrest, whereupon Kuo left his family and ran away by himself. After a long time he was caught, but exhaustive investigations showed that all his crimes had been committed before a recent amnesty and he could not be punished. However, something new happened. A Confucian scholar from Kuo's native district remarked, "Kuo Chieh makes it his business to break the law; how can he be called a worthy man!" When one of Kuo's followers heard this, he killed the scholar and cut off his tongue. The officials questioned Kuo about this, but he really did not know who had done it. The killer was never found, and the officials reported to the Emperor that Kuo was innocent. How- ever, the Imperial Censor Kung-sun Hung said, “Kuo Chich is a commoner who indulges in knightly deeds and wields great power. He would kill a man for a trivial offence. Though he does not know about this murder, his crimes are greater than the murderer's, and he deserves the penalty for high treason." Therefore, Kuo and his whole family were executed.

Apart from the knights described in the "Biographies of knights errant", we find others mentioned in various individual biographies in the Shih chi From these accounts we get a fairly clear picture of the typical behaviour of the ancient Chinese knight errant. What were the ideals underlying such behaviour? Briefly, the ideals of knight errantry were justice, altruism, honour, and individual freedom. In many ways, the knight errant formed a strong contrast to the Confucian scholar. While the Confucian scholar aimed at order and moderation, and stressed the need for the individual to conform to a rigid pattern of behaviour and to subjugate himself to the family, the knight errant stressed justice and freedom and placed personal loyalty above family loyalty and above law and order. Both were condemned by the Legalist thinker Han-fei-tzu, who said, "The Confucians disturb the law with their writings, while the knights errant break the law by force." It is easy to see why he condemned them both, for both placed a moral code above the law, though the moral code of each was different. The Confucian regarded obedience to one's sovereign and parents as a sacred duty more important than observance of the law, but would not resort to force in the discharge of such duties; the knight errant, on the other hand, regarded loyalty to a friend as more important than one's duties to one's king and parents, and would not refrain from violence in performing what they considered their moral obligations or what they thought their honour required. In so far as the knight

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e.g. the biographies of political assassins (chüan 86); the biographies of Chi An and Cheng Tang-shih (chüan 120).

* Han-fei-tzu, "Wu tu" chapter, quoted by Ssu-ma Ch'ien at the beginning of the "Biographies of knights errant”.