Revenge of the Seven Daughters

The motif is attested in sites across the provinces of Shandong, Henan, Anhui, and even Inner Mongolia. Notable sites with the motif include the Wu Family Shrines (where two instances exist), the Xiaotang Mountain Han Shrine, and the Cao Cao Mausoleum. The discovered examples of the motif all date from mid-to-late Eastern Han dynasty.^[4] The motif consistently consists of a bridge, a carriage procession, and the women assailants. Most scenes of the story depict the women armed with various weapons, though the mural in the Horinger tomb in Inner Mongolia has the women intercept the central carriage on horseback unarmed. The target of their attack, the official's carriage, is typically horse-drawn, but the carriage is ox-drawn in an illustration in a tomb in Chulan town (褚兰) of Suzhou, Anhui.^[4][5]

The most significant variation, however, is whether the scene depicts the official falling into the river under the bridge or not. Some depict the official being attacked in his carriage, some show him falling into the river where he is killed by women on boats, while some even have him simultaneously on his carriage and under the bridge.^[4] The variation may indicate the individual artisans' preferences for what they consider the most impactful moment of the narrative, with the simultaneous appearances of the official in some depictions indicating the Han artisans employing continuous narrative as a pictorial device.^[6][7]

Although no Han or later literary text records the full story, scholars have reconstructed it from the images and inscriptions as follows:

A local official (variously identified in inscriptions as the Magistrate of Chang'an 長安令 or Xianyang 咸陽令) wrongfully sentences a man to death. The man's seven daughters resolve to avenge him by ambushing his entourage on a bridge over the Wei River. When the official's carriage reaches the centre, the sisters separate his carriage from the rest of the convoy and attack the official simultaneously. The official is forced from his carriage and falls into the river. He is then killed by some of the daughters either in pursuit or already hiding in boats under the bridge, completing the revenge.^[8]

The motif exemplifies Eastern Han ideals of filial piety, in which revenge for a slain parent was regarded as a moral imperative that could override legal prohibitions against private vengeance. The Confucian canon Book of Rites stipulates that "One should not live under the same heaven with one's father's murderer."^[9] Women fulfilling this filial duty were viewed positively in the Eastern Han dynasty, if not expected just as men were.^[10] Chinese texts such as the Biographies of Exemplary Women are replete with narratives of women taking upon themselves the task of vengeance, though no record of the seven daughters' revenge story survive in textual form.^[11] In the case of Zhao E in 179 CE, for example, officials refused to prosecute a woman who decapitated her father's killer to the point of being willing to relinquish their own positions, and Zhao E was eventually pardoned by amnesty.^[12] The story of the seven daughters, therefore, fits neatly into the culture of revenge in the Eastern Han, with the numerous depictions of the event a visual reflection of the high esteem people at the time placed on vengeance in the name of filial piety.^[13]

The rampant culture of revenge was seen as problematic to the centralization of power since as early as the time of Huan Tan (23 BCE – 56 CE),^[14] though it would not be until the last years of the Han dynasty when Cao Cao (155–220) banned private revenge.^[15] His son Cao Pi, who overthrew the Han and became emperor of Cao Wei in 220 CE, enforced the ban by punishing offenders with extermination of whole clans.^[14] Under the new political environment, the story of the Revenge of the Seven Daughters fell out of vogue and became forgotten in later dynasties.^[11]

Although the full story of the seven daughters is not known in the historical record, there are possible references to the story. The 6th-century Water Classic notes the existence of a "Mound of the Seven Daughters" (七女塚) north of Chenggu County in Shaanxi that had been flooded in 429 CE. An inscribed tile was supposedly recovered from the flood, which relates the rumour that the mound was erected by seven sisters to bury their father Xiang Bo (項伯), who did not have sons. This Xiang Bo could not be the noble Xiang Bo who famously helped the first Han emperor Liu Bang escape the Feast at Swan Goose Gate, since the noble was given a fief in Sheyang County in Jiangsu, and was succeeded by a son. It remains unclear whether the revenge story and the mound are related.^[16]