Notes on Watching a Documentary on Cáo Cāo's Tomb
Some Interesting Things Learned
Recently I was directed to an online documentary on the Tomb of Cáo Cāo, and was pleasantly surprised to learn quite a lot from it. There is of course some “casualization” in there to appeal to general audiences, but the core material, particularly material from interviews with experts, is very strong. I was pleasantly surprised to see discussions on deeper topics that are generally lesser known even for students of the period, such as Cáo Cāo’s fondness for cursive script,1 or how his specifications for his tomb’s construction mentioned Xīmén Bào’s temple as a reference point,2 or how Cáo Cāo was recorded as being unusually short even in his own time.
The documentary is linked below, and below that I will discuss a few things I learned or else really stuck out to me. Don’t worry, I won’t waste anyone’s time complaining about “casualized” parts of the documentary and some of the stranger inaccuracies that appear in those parts.3
The Spread of the Myth of the 72 Tombs was helped by a Famous Southern Sòng Dynasty Poet
The subtitles are actually wrong on this part. Whoever made the subtitles did not translate what the historian Zhao Xuefeng said, or else did not understand him correctly. The subtitles say “During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, between 420 - 586 AD,” when he actually said: “Because during the Southern [Sòng] Dynasty [1127 - 1279 AD], there was a famous poet, called Fàn Chéngdà [1126 - 1193 AD].”4
I was disappointed when I realized this error, because on the first where I was more focused on the subtitles and paying less attention to what was actually being said, I was struck by an idea if the myth of the 72 decoy tombs might have come from a misunderstanding. The name “Wèi” was used by many more dynasties than just the one founded by the Cáo family, and during the Southern-Northern Dynasties period in particular, the name Wèi was used by one of the Northern Dynasties founded by the Tuòbá family. I wondered then if perhaps this supposed poem and its line about 72 tombs with only 1 having an actual royal body was an anti-Northern Dynasty poem made by a Southern Dynasty poet to call the Northern regimes illegitimate, but sadly, that was not the case.
That said, misattribution to the wrong “Wèi” may still be a contributing source for the 72 decoys myth. It has long been proposed that the myth could have arisen from common people not recognizing the difference between Tuòbá’s Wèi and Cáo’s Wèi and thus being confused as to how (Tuòbá) Wèi could have so many royal tombs if (Cáo) Wèi was so short and so had few royals, and then proposing the idea of the tombs being false decoys as an explanation.
That Cáo Cāo was short is easily forgotten even for experts
In retrospect, I should not have been too surprised, since the record of Cáo Cāo being an unusually short man is not preserved in the standard histories, but in an annotation to the Shìshuō Xīnyǔ citing the Wèi shì Chūnqiū,5 so it is a detail very easy to miss or forget even for many students of the period.
Nevertheless, I was still surprised when one of the interviewed experts mentioned being a bit surprised (though the documentary seems also to have exaggerated it for effect) when the forensics of the body found in the tomb found that the body was that of a very short man, because I became very excited as soon as I heard that.
The Tomb and Body were desecrated relatively early, probably within 50 years of the burial
As reported in the documentary, the discovered tomb was very likely intentionally desecrated. The experts believe that the coffin was smashed into very small fragments in order to gain access to the body inside, and the body then dragged out and had its face deliberately smashed in. The damage appears very meticulous and intentional, and according to the documentary, likely occurred within 50 years of the burial.
This immediately stuck out to me. Do you know what else happened within 50 years of the burial? The Wèi-Jìn transition.
Cáo Cāo died and was buried in 220 AD. At the end of 265 AD, Cáo Huàn formally abdicated to Sīmǎ Yán. The pacification of Wú was only at last achieved in 280.
Now, one easy explanation (and the one I suspect most people will default to) of this situation is that, with the Wèi-Jìn transition, the usual protections and defenses that Wèi would have in place for its sacred monuments and tombs would naturally be withdrawn and moved to Jìn’s own sacred monuments and tombs, and perhaps some vengeful figures decided to take advantage of this transition to take posthumous revenge on a controversial figure.
However, as the experts in the documentary noted, the desecration may have been influenced by beliefs in fēngshuǐ, that is, geomancy, the idea that physical objects and their relative positions and arrangement could have real influence and power, both on the physical world and on the spiritual world. The Tomb may have been intentionally desecrated, its coffin shattered into fragments in order to reach the body to smash its face in, in order to curse the spirit that had originally inhabited that body, and to break the power that the body was projecting upon the world.
Suppose that a belief in geomancy was indeed a motivation. Was perhaps the desecration an intentional act supported by or at least tolerated by the incoming Jìn regime, in order to more thoroughly destroy the metaphysical power of Wèi and ensure the lasting power of the succeeding Jìn? It does bring to mind the story of the posthumous punishments (grave desecration) applied to Wáng Líng and Línghú Yú, two influential Wèi statesmen who had dared oppose and plot against Sīmǎ Yì.6
(UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me that the “50 years” thing is another subtitle error, so yet another case of my imagination going too far, just like with the “Southern Dynasties” subtitle error. Seriously, they need to translate these more carefully. Getting me all excited over nothing.)
《三國志注·魏書一·武帝紀》張華博物志曰:漢世,安平崔瑗、瑗子寔、弘農張芝、芝弟昶並善草書,而太祖亞之。
Rafe de Crespigny’s biography of Cáo Cāo, Imperial Warlord, contains a slight error on this subject, describing Cáo Cāo as hating rather than favoring cursive script. The error is likely due to an accidental misreading of 亞 for 惡.
《三國志·魏書一·武帝紀》六月,令曰:「古之葬者,必居瘠薄之地。其規西門豹祠西原上為壽陵,因高為基,不封不樹。周禮冢人掌公墓之地,凡諸侯居左右以前,卿大夫居後,漢制亦謂之陪陵。其公卿大臣列將有功者,宜陪壽陵,其廣為兆域,使足相容。」
That said, I will waste some time in this footnote on this completely off-topic thing I’ve noticed: everyone says Hàn wrong when saying it in English. It weirds me out because of just how common it is. Every single time I hear someone try to say “Hàn” in English, they speak it with an incorrect long-A sound, as if they are saying pīnyīn “Hāng.” The host is a Chinese speaker who speaks Chinese multiple times throughout the documentary, and even when speaking in English, usually uses the correct Chinese pronunciations whenever inserting Chinese words… except when saying Hàn, where she instead uses the “Hāng” English reading. It’s weird.
Fàn Chéngdà has a biographical entry in Sòngshǐ 386《宋史·卷386》
《世說新語·容止》魏武將見匈奴使,自以形陋,不足雄遠國,〈《魏氏春秋》曰:「武王姿貌短小,而神明英發。」〉
《三國志·魏書二十八·王淩傳》乃發淩、愚冢,剖棺,暴尸於所近市三日,燒其印綬、朝服,親土埋之。
On a side note, if that was the idea behind destroying Cáo Cāo’s body, it probably did not work very well considering what happened to Western Jìn later. And as has been previously noted elsewhere, desecrating Wáng Líng’s body didn’t work all that well either, considering that story of Wáng Líng’s ghost haunting Sīmǎ Yì to death.
So (hypothetically) they desecrated Mengde's body to destroy Wei's metaphysical power, hoping to strengthen Jin, but in so doing they destroyed the spiritual force holding together Cao Cao's greatest legacy: bringing order and stability to the northern heartland.
The two greatest risks to Cao's Cao's regime that he was able to resolve: a succession crisis and a military invasion by a powerful northern adversary. Cao Cao's body is desecrated, and the succeeding dynasty is quickly ruined by a succession crisis and a military invasion by a powerful northern adversary. Truly, Cao Cao's ghost was crafty and full of guile.
And thank you for not missing the opportunity to take a thinly veiled shot at Sima Yi, always appreciated.