Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages. Sanping Chen

The view that the name Mulan in “The Ballad of Mulan” represented a clan name appeared very early and cannot be dismissed as a later fabrication. The long historic era from the two Jin dynasties (265–420) until the end of the Tang was known for its obsession with clan history and genealogical studies. Yet Mulan as a family name hardly ever was mentioned in all these references, much less leaving an attested instance.¹⁸ Meanwhile the surname Pulan (and its sinicized form Pu) has left numerous cases and records.

      6. There are several different theories regarding Mulan the heroine's birthplace, with one thing in common: they all point to the region known as Henan (“South of the Yellow River”) in contemporary China, which was much greater in size than the modern province of Henan. It is intriguing to note that Henan was also where most Tuoba clans were ordered to settle as their new “native” place after Emperor Xiaowen moved the Tuoba capital from Pingcheng in the north to the ancient Chinese capital of Luoyang in 493–94. Further strengthening my case is the fact that not only Hán Xiong, a.k.a. Mulan, was from Henan, but so were the Pulan clans since Tuoba times.¹⁹

      7. To the possible argument that Pulan was only a surname, whereas Mulan, at least in the case of Hán Xiong the general, was used as a given name, let me first note that the notion of a surname or clan name was a Chinese one that the Tuoba did not possess even after settling in China. For instance, a Tuoba courtier of Sinitic origin who wanted to dodge his southern compatriots' question regarding his identity made an interesting statement (Song shu 59.1600): “I am a [Tuoba] Xianbei, thus do not have a family name.” Second, Pulan was in fact also attested as a given name, assumed by none other than a Tuoba nobleman. According to Song shu (72.1857 and 74.1924) and ZZTJ (126.3979), there was a Tuoba nobleman named Tuoba Pulan. Careful comparison with Wei shu (4.104–5, 24.654, and 97.2140) reveals the nobleman's sinified name to be Zhangsun Lan.

      All these points combined leave little doubt that Mulan and Pulan were the same item in the contemporary “Barbarian” onomasticon, used as both clan names and given names in northern China during the period.

      Another possible transcription of the same root is the popular given name Fulian (b'iuk-liän). This name was widely attested, from Tuoba generals to even a qaghan of the Tuyuhun,²⁰ a nomadic people who had migrated from northeast China to the grassland bordering modern Tibet. In transcription data, the character fu is frequently interchangeable with bu (b'uo), fo (b'iust, primarily for transcribing “Buddha”), and so on, a subject I visit again. According to Louis Bazin,²¹ for transcribing “Barbarian” names the character lian (liän) represents an original län. This is attested by the case of the “Barbarian” name Youlian, which was said to mean “cloud,” or Mongol ä'ülän.22

      This probable form provides us with another interesting name-style correspondence. According to Bei Qi shu (20.283), an important “Barbarian” figure of the Northern Qi, namely Kudi (or Shedi) Fulian, had a style Zhongshan, “amid the mountains.” The relevance of this name will be demonstrated shortly.

       Preliminary Notes on the Meaning of Mulan

      More than half a century ago, Louis Bazin had already tried to identify the original Altaic word for the name Pulan (b'uk-lân or b'uok-lân), which as I have shown was just a variant of Mulan. His solutions ranged from boq, “excrement,” and buq, “bad temper,” to boγ, “bag for clothes”—hardly satisfactory, as Bazin himself acknowledged. Even with much expanded historical data at our disposal, such identification remains a difficult task.

      One has to first narrow the scope of the search. Given the two name-style correspondences cited earlier, and the strong cultural tradition among the Altaic people, many of whom roamed the Steppes with the herds, or hunted animals in the forests, I submit that the name Mulan/Pulan is most likely to have come from the animal kingdom, in sharp contrast to its meaning in Chinese.

      Let us look at the second character lan. Bazin took it as representing the Turkic plural suffix -lar, which, while phonetically not impossible, was unfortunately not substantiated by any Chinese transcription data regarding the Tuoba. In my opinion, a generic animal suffix -lān, to be further examined later, is the most likely interpretation in this case. A less likely possibility is an -n suffix in the Tuoba language with unknown grammatical function suggested by several other cases.²³

      This last possibility leads to a root b ‘uk-lâ of the name Mulan/Pulan in Middle Chinese, suggesting an Old Turkic word buγra, “camel stallion.” But this solution, except for the fact that it meets the “male, mighty” name-style correspondence, has several difficulties, both major and secondary, and is therefore hard to sustain.

      First, if we take the name Fulian as another form of the same root, then Kudi Fulian's style Zhongshan, “amid the mountains,” is difficult to reconcile with fulian, since that is a camel and not a forest animal.

      Second, there are both spatial and temporal problems with the “camel” solution. The early camel name attestations in the Altaic milieu, most prominently that of the Karakhanid Bughra Khan,²⁴ and several persons from the Western Türk Empire,²⁵ were not only of later periods but also from a region much to the west in Central Asia, where the camel was of great importance, whereas the Tuoba originated in forest regions in northeast China.

      However, the principal difficulty with the “camel” solution is cultural. As has been previously stated, after the collapse of the Western Jin, various nomad and former nomad groups dominated the political arena in northern China for many centuries, well into the first half of the Tang. During this long period, the Steppe cultures made enormous inroads into the Central Kingdom. Despite the stubborn sinocentric tradition of Chinese historiography and the heavily biased records, the fact that the descendants of the Tuoba and their northern brethren had dominated the Chinese world until at least the end of the Song, according to the Yuan dynasty historian Hu Sanxing, is bound to betray many of these northern traits, some of which were elaborated in the previous chapter. Chinese onomastics provides another good example, as it contains not only the “Barbarian” elements but also the strong influence of the Iranians and other Western Regions peoples, who had been an almost perpetual ally of the Steppe powers vis-à-vis China, a little studied subject for the Tuoba era. The sudden appearance and popularity of various theophoric personal names as examined in a later chapter is a particular case.

      This is where the primordial problem with a “camel” interpretation of Pulan/Mulan lies. Animal origin proper names, a cultural tradition enormously popular with the Altaic people, were widely attested in Chinese nomenclature during that time, reflecting the political dominance of the nomadic groups in northern China. Even animals abhorred or despised in Hàn Chinese culture but respected by the northern people, such as wolf and dog, were attested in the contemporary Chinese onomasticon, not just in surnames, but more importantly among given names (see cases cited in Chapter 3). To this author's knowledge, the camel, with a neutral or even positive cultural image in China and mentioned in “The Ballad of Mulan” (“She only begs for a camel that can march a thousand leagues a day”), was never attested in personal names in northern China during the entire period. The only suspicious case was the old Chinese surname Luo. The character meant a white horse with black mane but later became part of the word luotuo, “camel.” In Wei shu (113.3308) a “Barbarian” clan name Taluoba (t'â-lâk-b'uât) was sinified to Luo. In addition to the fact that a single character luo was never attested as referring to “camel” during that period, the original name cannot be linked to any Altaic word for “camel” unless one assumes that the middle character (luo) was an erroneous insertion and should be dropped. There is no evidence whatsoever for such a contention. The name conversion here follows the standard sound-based pattern of shortening a multicharacter “Barbarian” name to one of its original characters.

      As for the “camel” names borne by Turkic personalities of later periods, I am of the opinion that they were the result of Iranic influence. Moreover, I submit that camel personal names originated with the ancient