The Monkey and the Tiger

POSTSCRIPT

Judge Dee was a historical person. He was born in the fourth year of the Chen-kuan period of the Tang dynasty, i.e. a.d. 630. He died in a.d. 700.

His biography in the Annals of the Tang dynasty states that, during the first half of his long and distinguished official career, when he was serving as district magistrate in the provinces, he solved a great number of difficult criminal cases. Hence he became famous in China as one of the great detectives of former times. He is also celebrated as one of China's great statesmen, for in the second half of his career, after he had been appointed to high office in the capital, he played an important role in the internal and external politics of the Tang Empire. All this is historical fact. The two stories told here, however, are entirely fictitious, and the towns men­tioned — Han-yuan, Pei-chow, etc. — have no real existence.

It may be added that astronomy is a very ancient science in China, and that there also it is believed that stellar signs influence the life and destiny of man. The endpapers show a Chinese zodiac, with an explanation of the Chinese sexa­genary cycles. There the twelve signs of the zodiac are arranged around the Two Primordial Forces yin (negative, female, darkness) and yang (positive, male, light) and the Eight Triagrams, pa-kua. The halved circle in the centre portrays the eternal interaction of the dual forces yin and yang (cf. the explanation on p. 59 of my novel The Haunted Monastery, published by William Heinemann Ltd, London, 1961). The eight triagrams represent the eight possible com­binations of one broken yin and one unbroken yang line; these triagrams form the basis of the ancient Book of Divina­tion (cf. The I Ching or Book of Changes translated by Richard Wilhelm, with an introduction by C. G. Jung, Lon­don, 1950). The dustcover of the present volume is decorated with the same symbolic diagram, with the Chinese charac­ters for 'monkey' and 'tiger' in their archaic forms superim­posed and in their correct zodiac positions: west-south-west and east-north-east.

In Chinese astrology a person's character and career are analysed on the basis of the cyclical signs under which he is born, and formerly no betrothal was concluded until a com­parative study of the cyclical signs of the year, date and hour of birth of either partner had proved the couple to be well matched.

Judge Dee was born in a.d. 630, i.e. the year VII-3, a year of the Tiger, belonging to the element metal, and influenced by the planet Venus. The date and hour of his birth have not been recorded.

As to the seven-stringed lute (in form resembling a psaltery) that is mentioned in the second story, it should be noted that the Chinese consider its music the highest ex­pression of classical, purely Chinese musical art; it produces a quiet, refined music, entirely different from, for instance, later Chinese theatre music, which was greatly influenced by the music from Central Asia. In China good antique lutes, ku-ch'in, are prized as highly as a Stradivarius violin with us, and there also the secret of the superior tone rests on the quality of the varnish covering the sound-box. Connoisseurs judge the age of an antique lute by the shape of the tiny bursts that in course of time appear on the lacquered surface. Readers interested in this fascinating subject may be referred to my book The Lore of the Chinese Lute, Monumenta Nipponica Monographs, Sophia University, Tokyo, 1940.

ROBERT VAN GULIK

Robert van Gulik entered The Netherlands Foreign Service in 1935. He has served in various posts in China, Japan, East Africa, Egypt, India, Lebanon and the United States. Since 1963 he has been Director of Research, Netherlands Foreign Ministry, The Hague.

A world renowned orientalist, he has made a hobby of writing Chinese detective stories set in the time of the Tang Empire.