We know about Bak Gu mainly thanks to a poem by Zhang Qiao 張喬. Zhang was a super-mandarin in the Xiandong era, 860~874. From Chizhou, now Guichi in Anhui, he retired to Jiuhuashan (Nine Flowers Mountain) at the time of the Huang Chao rebellion. He was such a serious student, especially of poetry, that he was said never to have peeped into the garden for 10 years. But he loved go and has left several go poems.
The Chinese knew something about go in the ancient Korean kingdoms then. One ancient book said the people of Goguryeo liked baduk and pitchpot (still true today), and another said that it was the most popular pastime of Baekje. Another poet, Xu Hun, said many monks of Silla played go in China. By the time of Zhang Qiao, the kingdom of Silla was dominant and this effectively became the name for all Korea.
A Chinese go expert was included in the delegation sent by the Tang court on a condolences mission to Silla on the death of King Seongdeok in 738. This was Yang Jiying 楊季鷹, selected by the go-mad Emperor Xuan Zong. Yang was said to have played many games with his hosts in Silla but won every game. The History of the Old Tang, in the section on Baekje, says this inclusion of a go player was because they had heard there were many go players in Korea. (There is also a slight discrepancy as this record says the mission was sent in Kaiyuan 25 (737) - perhaps it set out when the king was gravely ill but not yet dead).
Regrettably we do not know much about Bak Gu beyond the poem below, but we can infer that go was still popular in Korea over 100 years after the Tang mission.
Somehow or other, Bak Gu became a chamberlain to Emperor Huizong and also served as the emperor's go tutor. He became great friends with Zhang Qiao, who wrote this poem when Bak decided to return to Korea.
送棋待詔朴球歸新羅
海東誰敵手 歸去道應孤
闕下傳新勢 船中復舊圖
窮荒回日月 積水載寰區
故國多年别 桑田復在無
This poem, which is from Vol. 638 of the Complete Tang Poems, is extraodinarily well crafted and so can be read in various ways. That makes a translation even more than usually inadequate, but there are some interesting clues here to the history of go, which means we can embellish a rudimentary translation with some notes.
East of the ocean who will be your rival?
When you return, you will be alone.
In the Palace your have learnt new ways to play,
But on the boat you will turn to the old manuals.
Over the barren desert where sun and moon ceaselessly revolve,
And back to the domain surrounded by vast accumulations of water
In the old country you will be be separated for many years -
But those seas may turn to mulberry fields again!
Korea was east of China, and the usual route between the two countries was over the Yellow Sea (the Eastern Ocean). The northern land route was - even until quite recently - considered far too dangerous because of wild animals. The description of Korea as a domain surrounded by water (it is a peninsula) was clearly invoked so that an old fable from Tales of Divine Immortals by Ge Hong of the Jin Dynasty could be quoted. Ge refers to having "already seen the Eastern Ocean turn into mulberry fields thrice" just as one can go from a bustling palace to a desert. In other words, immense changes can happen and, despite the apparent impossibility, Zhang and Bak may meet again one day. This to-and-froness is reinforced if we read the poem in another way: that Zhang will be left without an opponent when Bak has crossed the ocean, that Zhang will be the lonely, virtuous scholar - this is an oblique reference to a section in the Liren book of the Analects of Confucius.
But fascinating as these beautifully crafted intertwining allusions are, to a go player the reference to new forms and old manuals be even more intriguing. The old manuals may refer to Wang Jixin's Nine Games from Golden Valley Garden 金谷園九局圖 or Games from Phoenix Lake 鳳池圖, but at least it is confirmation that old manuals already existed. Of course we can date the text of the Dunhuang Go Classic to the earlier Five Kingdoms period, but apart from that we have had to rely on stray references to, for example, the Games of Wu.
"New ways of play" is even more tantalising. This could simply mean that Bak learnt new openings during his time in the Palace, which is probably true, anyway - but perhaps so obviously true as to be trite? At least one Korean scholar thinks it may mean that Bak had to learn new rules of go when he went to China, and the old manuals may refer to his books on the Korean style of sunjang baduk.
That is certainly a provocative stretch of the imagination, but there are maybe several thousand old poems that mention go, and they are full of clues like this. There are still boundless opportunities for future research by examining them in the round, and new chance discoveries like the Genbi papers are stimulating, too. Not to mention unusual uses for databases...
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