THE SELECTION OF YANG KUEI-FEI

Abstract

The decision of Emperor Hsuan-tsung of the Chinese T'ang dynasty to make Yang Yu-huan his precious consort (kuei-/ei) must have shocked his contemporaries in court and throughout the empire. Highly irregular circumstances surrounded the selection of Yang Kuei-fei, but T'ang chroniclers were apprehensive about exposing them in detail. They either ignored the incidents or mentioned them briefly, without comment. It remained for historians of the Sung dynasty and their successors to discuss openly the fact that Hsuan-tsung had taken his son's wife for his own. Because T'ang historians had discreetly placed a veil of secrecy over the selection of Yang Kuei-fei, later investigators were hampered by an inadequacy of primary source materials. They were forced to hypothesize about the sequence of events in the career of Yang Kuei-fei and especially about the period of time which elapsed between her first and second marriages. During the Ch'ing dynasty, a controversy arose as to whether the lady Yang had actually been married to the emperor's son or merely betrothed to him. Certain critics alleged that Hsuan-tsung took this woman from his son so soon after their betrothal that a consummation of the marriage could never have taken place. Proponents of this theory went one step further and insisted that Yang Yu-huan was still a virgin when she married the emperor. There were also conflicting interpretations of her first betrothal, consecration as a Taoist nun, and elevation to the rank of imperial consort. The purpose of this paper is to present the traditional and modern Chinese views about the selection of Yang Kuei-fei and to furnish additional evidence. I wish to acknowledge my debt to the original contributions