I shall now consider the political climate under which the Sung-shih and loyalist writings were written and circulated. The ubiquitous presence of the Yuan official view in the coverage of the Sung loyalists indicates that as late as the 1340s when the Sung-shih was compiled, the Yuan was still sensitive on the issue of Sung resistance. There are at present two divergent views about freedom of expression in the Yuan. Traditional and some modern Chinese historians stress that because of the repressive political situation under the Mongols, the loyalists used a veiled language and ambiguous phraseology to convey their thoughts. In the West, Franke and Mote feel that because eccentric loyalists such as Cheng Ssu-hsiao did not constitute a political threat, the Mongol authorities simply paid no attention to what they wrote.^0
To be sure, the situation under the Yuan compares well with the Ming and Ch'ing literary inquisitions, in which authors of condemned works frequently suffered the death penalty or posthumous disgrace.^1 The closest equivalent in the Yuan was the burning of Taoist books and woodblocks on two occasions (1258 and 1281),^ but
persecution), in which an individual was arrested and executed for reviling the Mongol rulers and officials. The three years of Sung there are no known cases of wen-tzu yu (literary
whereas the Southern Ming movement did not get a mention in the Ming-shih annals. Furthermore, the Mongols have often been considered generous in their treatment of the Sung imperial family, compared to the savage attitudes of the Jurchen Chin. Loyalty was a virtue admired in Mongol tradition since the time of Cinggis Qan, and when the Sung was conquered, the Mongols sought to employ especially diehard loyalists like Wen T'ien-hsiang and Hsieh Fang-te. The likely motive for this was to bring the newly conquered empire more readily into submission by persuasive example. Thus, in essence, it was not Yuan intention nor in its interest to be hostile to those who felt a lingering loyalty to the former Sung dynasty.
However, loyalist writings suggest that the climate was not perceived to be completely conducive to free expression. A literatus in 1369 noted that "at the time when the Yuan was first established, those expressing opinions often used concealed and obscure phraseology".^3 t w o works discussed earlier in this connection are the Sung-shih and Ch’en Chung-wei's Erh-wang pen-mo. In regard to Wen T ’ien-hsiang's work, Cheng Ssu-hsiao writes that he saw both the original and later editions, in which derogatory references to the Mongols had been revised:
The references to the [Mongol] bandits as "Great Yuan" and "Chief minister", and to himself as "T'ien-hsiang" in Wen's prefaces [to his Chih-nan lu] were not the original words of the venerable [Wen]. The earlier editions railed blatantly at the caitiffs and did not record their chieftains' names. Readers should detect these concealed and falsified words. It must have happened that those misguided by the [barbarian] bandits anticipated catastrophe and thus changed [the offensive language] to innocuous words. The fierce berating of the bandits in the poems [of the Chih-^nan lu] have also not been transmitted [to the new edition]
Some loyalists used historical analogies to express their thoughts about barbarian conquest. Hu San-hsing (1230-1302)
was a loyalist in C h ’ing-yuan who revealed his outrage by means of his annotations on the Tzu-chih t 'u n g - c h i e n . W h e n his work was published in the late Yuan, it appears to have been subjected to some editing. However, the revisions were only randomly done, as many pejorative phrases have survived. Hsieh Fang-te also annotated Confucian Classics and T'ang poems to convey his distress about barbarian r u l e .i ^ e San-hsing's work, it would appear that if tampering had in fact occurred, it was not thorough.
There are other indications that loyalists used obscure and allusive language in their writings because they did not feel the political atmosphere to be entirely free of restraint and danger. An incident often described by Sung loyalists in such a manner is the rescue of the Sung imperial remains in Kuei-chi.^^ in order to pay last respects to the Sung dynasty while at the same time protecting themselves, poets gathered at this place and wrote highly allusive poetry. In 1284, Hsieh Ao (1249-1295), a follower of Wen T 'ien-hsiang, wrote an essay later hailed as a masterpiece of loyalist l iterature.^ in this essay, Hsieh identifies neither the persons nor events mentioned, presumably in order to protect himself. Several years later, Hsieh served as a judge in a poetry competition held in Wu-chou, in which the theme assigned was allusive rather than straightforward; the entries were couched in obscure language and submitted under pen names.
Of some relevance to a discussion of Mongol censorship is the Hsin-shih of Cheng Ssu-hsiao. Its preface states that the work was completed by 1283; it was enclosed in an iron case and suspended in a dry well, at the monastery in P'ing-chiang that Cheng had lived in.
conquest of the Ming dynasty by the Manchus. The work is in essence a collection of poetry and prose laced with strong abusive language hurled against the Mongols and barbarian rule, and an appeal to support the Sung restoration. Because of its inaccuracies in describing Mongol customs and the Sung resistance, the relatively well-preserved state of the work, and the timing of its discovery, the Hsin-shih has been dismissed as a Ming forgery intended to arouse nationalist and ethnic emotions and instigate uprisings against the Manchus. This was certainly the view of some Ch'ing scholars and the Ssu-k'u ch'uan-shu v29 compilers.^9 On the other hand, Ming loyalists such as Ku Yen-wu - / L (1613-1682) and Wang Fu-chih
'K. Zs (1619-1692), and modern Chinese nationalists contended that
the Hsin-shih had truly been authored by Cheng Ssu-hsiao.^O in more recent times, the work is accepted as authentic by scholars such
as Mote and Kuwabara,^! but to date the last word has yet to be said. The Ch'ing historian Ch'lian Tsu-wang (1705-1755) wavered: he first regarded the work as a forgery, but later treated it as authentic.^2 yao Ts'ung-wu puts forth the alternative view that the work was written by a group of patriots who were contemporaries of Cheng Ssu-hsiao.53 After considering the arguments on both sides and reading the Hsin-shih, I feel that neither its authenticity nor its spuriousness can be proved beyond doubt. I should, however, like to add my reasons for including the Hsin-shih in my discussion of Sung loyalisra. To use the inaccuracies of Cheng Ssu-hsiao as an argument against its authenticity seems to be weak in itself. Cheng's contemporary Chou Mi, in depicting Mongol and barbarian customs, also quoted fantastic tales that he had heard at second or third hand; and yet the authenticity of his pi-chi
miscellanies has never been questioned. The language and repetitive style used in the Hsin-shih can be found in Cheng's other extant writings. In addition, the personality that emerges from the
Hsin-shih is consistent with the eccentric personality of Cheng as conveyed by his paintings and by contemporary accounts.-^
Cheng explains in the Hsin-shih that his main objective for writing it was "to respect legitimate and orthodox succession, repel the barbarians, praise the loyal subjects, execute the treacherous bandits, and to encourage the world and posterity to become loyal subjects". 55 instructions were to destroy the work should it be retrieved before the Sung was revived. Cheng may have been anxious about the Mongols discovering his writings and alerting themselves to a Sung restoration movement, and thus concealed the Hsin-shih.
Although Cheng Ssu-hsiao and traditional historians may have exaggerated the repressive political climate under which the loyalists lived, there is evidence that the Mongol emperor distrusted Sung loyalty in spite of his admiration for it. In this connection, one should mention a written statute forbidding the Chinese to congregate in groups.56 Furthermore, they were not allowed to carry arms, and the penalties for such an offence far outweighed banditry and thievery.57 The yuan authorities certainly suspected subversive activities, and in 1283 Qubilai responded to rumours that the last pretender to the Sung throne, Ti-Ping, was still alive.58 He thus executed Wen T'ien-hsiang after a plot to rescue the latter leaked out. 59 j-n 1290 there were petitions to transfer Sung imperial relatives to the capital, presumably in fear of their participation in rebellions, or of their being used as figureheads in such movements.50 x would suggest that in view of this political climate,
even though there were no censorship laws nor cases of literary inquisitions, there existed fear of the consequences of defamatory language used against the Mongols. The loyalists, friends, colleagues, sons, and disciples may have exercised a certain amount of caution and self-censorship. Perhaps the editors and publishers also saw the need to tone down certain passages and revise a few offensive words. Then there was Lu Hsiu-fu's diary which Teng Kuang-chien never released to his fellow loyalists, and Teng’s T ’ien-hai lu which Teng's family did not surrender to the Sung-shih compilers. One could speculate that these writings contained unflattering material about the Mongols which Teng dared not reveal and thereby court disaster. For, even if the Mongols did not seem to care what was written or talked about by eccentrics like Cheng Ssu-hsiao, some Chinese officials in Yuan service might attempt to inform on both seditious literature and their authors in order to curry favour with their superiors.
A question to be asked is how extensive this voluntary editing was. Absent in most wen-chi collections of the loyalists is a fierce condemnation of the Mongols, who are merely referred to as Ta-ping
X
(Great Army), Ta-Yiian and T ?ien-ping (Heavenly Army). The Mongol conquest is simply talked about as ping-huo 'X (flames ofdynasties). The epithets used against the Mongols are hu
(barbarian chieftains). It is sometimes difficult to determine war), kuei-fu, kuei-fu (submission) and
(barbarians), pei-jen
^
(northern people), pei-k'o(northern visitors), lii (barbarian caitiffs), and yu
j&j
whether the loyalists later reconciled themselves to alien rule and began using the Yuan reign titles, or their editors changed their
wording. One thing is certain though, such mild language was not used at the beginning of the Mongol conquest in Sung official writings. In imperial rescripts for the period 1273-75, drafted by Wang Ying-lin and preserved in his collected writings, we can easily find the Mongols referred to as ugly beings, swine, and snakes preying on other people's blood.61 As these rescripts survived through the Yuan, we can say that although there is evidence of editing, it was not thorough.
While we might safely assume that the editing of loyalist writings in the Yuan was mostly on a voluntary and cautious basis, the censorship of later periods was not so. The Ch'ien-lung rescript of 1776 emphatically proclaimed that books by Ming authors which opposed the Ch'ing dynasty must be burned; in the case of books dating from the Southern Sung which criticized the Chin, or from the early Ming which criticized the Yuan, the offensive passages must be erased or
revised, though not necessarily destroyed.62 gung loyalist writings would surely have fallen into the second category. As the Ch'ing rulers were descended from the Jurchen Chin, material detrimental to the Chin would have to be revised. And indeed we do find examples of such revisions: in Chou Mi's pi-chi miscellanies we find references to the Chin emperors by their temple names, and to the Chin dynasty as Ta-Chin ^ 7 (Great Chin).63 Given Chou Mi's antipathy to the Chin, typical of the Southern Sung officials as well as northern Chinese in Yuan service, he would not have used that expression for the Chin, and Yuan editions would not have made the change. In addition to criticism of the Chin, the Manchus were sensitive to derogatory language used against the Khitan Liao and the Mongol Yuan.