容乃公易經Tony Wang's Yijing

When Dr. Robert Hans van Gulik died in The Hague in September 1967, the world press identified him as (1) a Dutch career diplomat whose last post was as his country's Ambassador to Japan, and (2) the author of a long series of detective stories featuring the Chinese statesman of the T'ang Dynasty, Dee Jen-djieh, who was such a master in solving strange and complicated murder cases.

Dr. van Gulik was indeed a diplomat of out-standing abitities and accomplishments, having served in a number of important and sensitive posts--Japan, China, the United States, India, Lebanon, Syria, Malaysla and Kqrea, besides several terms of duty in the Foreign Ministry in The Hague. Over a period of some fifteen years, he also wrote a number of detective stories, all with Judge Dee as the principal character against the background of T'ang Dynasty China.

But he was much more than a diplomat and a mystery story writer. From his early youth, he devoted himself to the study of Chinese and Japanese language and literature. He was a serious student of Oriental history and culture.In the course of a lifetime, he produced a number of books and monographs which are universally regarded as penetrating and authoritative, often in areas seldom frequented by other Sinologues.

Languages came naturally to him. He learned them eagerly, but more as tools in academic work than as means of social contacts. His emphasis was on the ability to read a foreign language rather than to speak it well. He spoke all the foreign languages with a strong Dutch accent, but because of his familiarity with them, he was easily understood. His method of language training was translation, usually from various foreign languages into Dutch or English.

Born in Zutphen, The Netherlands, in 1910, the fifth son of Lieutenant-General Willera van Gulik of the Dutch Army, he went to the Dutch East Indies when he was four years old. He stayed there for nine years, attending schools in Batavia and Surahaya, where he learned the Indonesian language. In 1923 he returned to The Netherlands and was enrolled in the Grammar School at Nijmegen. Upon graduation, he went on to the State University at Leiden, where he studied law and polity as well as Chinese language and literature. In the University, he also acquired a command of the languages commonly required in European university courses--Latin and Greek, English, French and German. Upon receiving his Bachelor's degree, he transferred to the State University at Utrecbt where he pursued advanced studies under the famous linguist Professor C. C. Uhlenbeck, learning Sanskrit and Tibetan, while continuing his study of Chinese and Japanese. He even helped Professor Uhlenbeck in compiling an English Blackfoot dictionary, Blackfoot being the language of a tribe of American lndians. His versatility in languages, ancient and modern, is evidenced' by his doctoral dissertation at the University at Utrecht, the subject of which is:

Hayagriva, the Mantrayanic Aspect of the Horse-cult in China and Japan, with an Introduction on the horse-cult in India and Tibet.

With this highly technical monograph, he was awarded the D.Litt (cure laude) in 1935.

His writing career began early. When he was sixteen, still a pupil in the Grammar School, he began contributing poems and articles to his school publication Rostra, starting with a series called Tales from the Beautiful Island, nostalgic sketches of his boyhood experiences in Indonesia which were, as he recalled them, "typically adolescent, pseudo-love and Pseudo-philosophical,,. He began writing on China when he was eighteen, notes and comments on classical Chinese literature and the arts. He was so well regarded that he was soon asked to contribute entries on China to the Winkler Prins Encyclopedic, the big Dutch encyclopedia. Under the expert guidance of Pro-fessor Uhlenbeck, he translated from Sanskrit into Dutch the Urvaci, a play in poetry by the great Sanskrit poet Kalidasa of the fifth century. In a note Dr. van Gulik made later, he said that "the translation is correct, being made under the guidance of Professor Uhlenbeck, but the Dutch style stilted, greatly influenced by my translations from Latin and Greek". He also noted that he decorated the book with vignett~ S which he drew after old Indian paintings. This point is of particular interest, for all his books and articles, including his detective stories, were profusely illustrated, often by drawings he made after old models. It may seem rather odd that~ despite his obvious interest in academic studies, he never for a moment entertained the idea of entering the teaching profession. He explained this to me years later by saying that, very early in his life, he became convinced of the wisdom of the traditional Chinese practice of combining intellectual pursuits with an 0fficial career. In China, he said, a scholar taught students only when he failed to gain entrance into the government service, which was true from Confucius and Mencius down to the present time. It was for this reason that, as soon as he had completed his formal education, he entered the Dutch Foreign Service and before long was appointed Secretary of the Dutch Embassy in Japan. He arrived in Tokyo in 1935, a young man of twenty-five, who already had acquired a command of the Japanese language and a famil iarity with Japanese history and culture. His first assignment to Japan extended over seven years. He travelled all over Japan, and made several extensive trips to nearby China, building up a library and cultivating the friendship of Chinese and Japanese scholars. He must have cut a strange figure in China and Japan, this tall and heavy-set young man from Europe who took as his ideal life that of a traditional Chinese man of letters, a public official who indulged himself not only in the pursuit of poetry and the classics but also enriched his life by music, chess-playing, calli-graphy and painting. His Chinese and Japanese friends in those days spoke and wrote fondly of him, collating literary endeavurs with him frequently and giving him their own calligraphic works and paintings, all of which he cherished with loving care throughout his life. Instead of undertaking analytical studies of the classics as most Sinologues do, his first serious project was to pursue an obscure subject, that of the Chinese lute (ch'in), a zither-type stringed instrument which the Chinese have been playing since remote antiquity. He studied the lute from all angles, seeking references to it in the classics and literature, learning its scores, playing the instrument under the guidance of a Chinese teacher, and ending up by writing a large volume on it. The Lore of the Chinese Lute: An Essay in Ch'in Ideology is an authoritative work which has no parallel even in Oriental literature. It was published in 1941 by the Sophia University in Tokyo as a monograph of the series Monumenta Nipponica, of which he was an editor from the beginning. Besides the erudition of the work, one is particularly amazed by a short and concise preface he wrote, which is in a Chinese literary style so classical that few Chinese writers would attempt it in this age. As far as written Chinese is concerned, he was a rank conservative. He refused to write in vernacular Chinese (pai hurt) which has become the vogue in modern China, and he even refra~ed from punctuating his writings in the modern manner. It was only natural that he opposed vigorously the "simplification" of the Chinese lan-guage undertaken by the Chinese Communists. His interest in the lute led him to explore how the instrument and its music found their way into Japan. It appeared that a Chinese Buddhist monk by the name of Tung-kao, who came to -Japan in 1677, could have been responsible for the development of "the lore of the lute" in Japan. For many years, Dr. van Gulik painstakingly traced the footsteps of this rather obscure Chinese monk

all over Japan, collecting a 'vast amount of materials from temples and old bookshops. In his notes, he recorded the ecstasy he experienced when he accidentally came across in Kyoto a large scroll by Tung-kao. It was his intention to write a biography and to edit and publish the complete works of the monk. Unfortunately, the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941 forced him to leave Japan in a hurry. and some of the materials he so assiduously collected, including the priceless scroll, were lost. After Pearl HarbOr, Dr. van Gulik was trans-ferred to Chungking, where he served as First Secretary of the Dutch Embassy in China. Those were difficult days for him, as his country was overrun by the Nazis and China was engaged in a desperate struggle with a substantial portion under enemy occupation. But Dr. van Gulik was his old self, going about town cultivating the friendship of Chinese men of letters and artists. lie even gave several public recitals of the lute to raise money for the common war effort

During these years, he also met Miss Shui Shih-fang (Frances Shui), a university graduate from a good Chinese family. He quickly fell in love with Miss Shui and they became engaged. He took his future bride around to meet his Chinese friends who set up parties during which he recited his most recent poetic compositions and played. the lute. Dr. van Gulik and Miss Shui were married on December 18, 1943, in Chungking, first in a Christian ceremony and later in a Chinese ceremony, both of which were attended b y a large number of Chinese writers and artists 4~ who showered the couple with their works as wedding presents. The union was a very happy one, to which three sons (Willem Robert, Pieter Anton and Thomas Mathijs) one daughter (Pauline Francis) were born. With the assistance of his friends, The Selected Works of Tung-kao, a slender volume containing what was salvaged of the materials pertaining to the Chinese monk, was published in Chungking. The bulk of the volume consists of poems Tung kao composed to express his longings for the Ming Dynasty, which had, by the time Tung-kao migrated to Japan, fallen under the Manchus. The most rewarding reading, however, is Tung-kao's biography written by Dr. van Gulik, again in classical Chinese. He was, however, unable to prove conclusiveiY that it was indeed Tung-kao who first brought the Chinese lute into Japan. There were Japanese writers who maintained that the ancient instrument had found its way into Japan long before Tung-kao set loot there. At the end of the second world war, by which time Dr. van Gulik had stayed in China for almost four years, he was recalled to The Hague- A year later, he was sent to Washington to serve on the Far Eastern Commission, the eleven-nation body in charge of formulating policies for the occupation of Japan. In 1948, when the basic policies had been laid down. he was again assigned to Tokyo to supervise their implementation. In war-devastated Tokyo, he re-established the facilities to pursue his academic studies with his accustomed vigour.

THE AUTHOR: Dr. Chen Chih-Mai, who was Ambassador of the Republic of China in Australia, and Ambassador to Japan.

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