Returning to the above Zhou shu passage, we see not only that Mulan was the style of a military man but also that it was coupled with the primary personal name Xiong, meaning primarily “male” but more frequently “grand,” “mighty,” “powerful,” as Hán Xiong's biography elaborates. It is simply impossible that the Chinese word mulan in the sense of a noble, fragrant, delicate, and mostly feminine notion was used here to contrast with Xiong's masculinity and prowess. The possibility that Hán Xiong's zi was an opprobrious childhood name, a cultural import likely related to Buddhism, for avoiding the gods' jealousy is also out of the question, as mulan in Chinese was anything but an unworthy object.
Conversely, two other sources, namely Bei Qi shu (History of the Northern Qi) and portions of Bei shi (History of the Northern Dynasties) that were not based on Zhou shu and hence not subjected to many political and cultural taboos that affected the latter, give us a clear picture that Mulan was simply the true or “native” name of Hán Xiong, who was born and raised in what later became part of the Northern Qi realm, but who revolted against the state and went to join the rival Northern Zhou regime. These two sources never even bothered with Hán's formal name Xiong, but always called him “Hán Mulan the prefecture resident,” or even “Hán Mulan the traitor.” Yet according to Zhou shu, Mulan was Hán's style, hence always a more respectful form than his formal Sinitic name Xiong.
Let me note a few more points:
1. Hán was one of the “Barbarian” surnames at the time. This was documented in detail in Yao Weiyuan's study of these names.7 For instance, Bei Qi shu (24.294) has included a person named Hán Xiongnu, “Hán the Hun.”
2. Even among the “Chinese” Hán clans, the most important home origin was the prefecture of Changli, a frontier area in northeast China, which naturally led to the emergence of many “Barbarianized” Hán clan persons. For example, Hán Feng of the Northern Qi was such a figure from Changli, who loved to call other ethnic Hàn Chinese persons “Hàn dogs” (Bei shi 92.3053). The most famous native son of this frontier region during the Tang, by the way, was none other than An Lushan, a “Barbarian of mixed (Turco-Sogdian) origin,” who almost toppled the Tang dynasty.8 Although the celebrated Tang poet, essayist, philosopher, and statesman Hán Yü was from Dezhou in Henan, his ancestors hailed from Changli, and he advertised this fact by choosing Changli as his cognomen.
3. Hán Xiong came from a hereditary military family (Sui shu 52.1347), whose even more famous son Hán Qinhu, “Hán the tiger-catcher,” later was one of the two generals (the other was Heruo Bi of undisputed Xianbei descent) to conquer the Southern dynasty of Chen in 589, unifying China for the Sui for the first time since the collapse of the Western Jin in 316. Hán Qinhu's achievements were the stuff of legend, as related in Dunhuang manuscript S2144, which was written more than three centuries later.
4. The ultimate proof that Mulan was simply Hán Xiong's original name is nothing other than the remnant of his own tomb inscription dated, in lunar calendar, the eighteenth day of the eleventh month of the third year of Tianhe (December 22, 568), a rubbing of which is preserved in the municipal library of Beijing.9 This rubbing states that this general-in-chief of the (Northern) Zhou was simply named Mulan, period, without mentioning at all the Sinitic name Xiong in the officially sanctioned biography. As I noted in Chapter 1, this fits well the pattern that the Northern Zhou was in reality a more “Xianbei-ized” power among the two competing successor states of the Tuoba Wei, yet its official records have been subjected to much heavier sinification doctoring.
5. There was a deep-rooted custom of this epoch among the former “Barbarians” and “Barbarianized” Chinese, including the Sui and Tang royal houses, of keeping one's “Barbarian” name as a “style” or “childhood name,” as examined in the previous chapter. A good example of correspondence between a “Barbarian” style and a formal Sinitic name is the case of Hulü Jin. He was an able general of Turkic-Uighur origin of the Northern Qi and has left us with “The Song of Chile (Tölös?),”10 admired by many today as one of the best poems ever written in Chinese literary history. The late Peter Boodberg was the first to recognize his style Aliudun as the Turco-Mongolian word altun for jin, “gold.”11
The evidence cited earlier clearly shows that the name of Hán Xiong, a.k.a. Mulan, was yet another case of a “Sinitic-name with ‘Barbarian’-style.” Therefore, the name Mulan under the Tuoba regime and its successors was in fact a “Barbarian” name, not a feminine appellation as one would expect based on its standard meaning in Chinese. That was why the name of Mulan, the heroine, which was most likely a surname rather than a given name, a conclusion based on further evidence revealed later, never betrayed her true gender to her comrades in the army. In addition, given the case of Hán Xiong, the Chinese namestyle correspondence rule would provide a good clue to what the “Barbarian” name Mulan actually meant, as will be elaborated later.
Variants of the “Barbarian” Name Mulan
Before setting forth to study the true meaning of the name Mulan, first I cite and examine other forms or transcriptions of that name. These forms further strengthen the inference that Mulan was indeed a “Barbarian” appellation. They may also help decode the original meaning of the name.
The most apparent variant is the Tuoba clan name Pulan12 for the following reasons.
1. It is certainly the rule rather than the exception that a “Barbarian” name had several different transcriptions in Chinese characters. The previously cited superb study of “Barbarian” names by Yao Weiyuan contains numerous examples. In addition to the natural scenario that other versions might have been rendered in different Chinese dialects, or simply with individual taste, it may also reflect the variations among the “Barbarian” tongues.
2. The Middle Chinese pronunciation of Mulan is muk-lân, while Pulan was pronounced either b'uk-lân or b'uok-lân.13 The closeness of the two names is also vouched for by the fact that in modern southern Fujian dialect, which is also the prevailing local dialect in Taiwan, Mulan is still pronounced something like b'ok-lān.14
3. Cases of Middle Chinese transcribing a foreign b- sound by m- are too numerous to list. Two examples are the well-known medieval Chinese transcription moheduofor baγadur, “hero,” and the less known transcription mole for bäliq, the Turkic word for “fish.”15 Phonetically, it is easy to understand how b-/m- interchanges would have occurred, since both are nonplosive labials.
4. The m- ~ b- equivalence is also attested by the ancient Turkic transcription ban and bou of the Chinese words wan (Middle Chinese miwan) and wu (mau) respectively.16 This further became the main rule of