On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c5.24

v1.c5.24

The splendour of T'ai Tsung's great achievements, the conspicuous merits of his administration, and the charm of his sociable affable manner made the people of his time forget his faults. Even long after his death, when the story of his life came to be told, the spell was in the dull dry records, and passed over him who wrought those into history. So it came that the historian, dazed by the spell and not seeing clearly, left untold some of the Emperor's misdeeds and told others without adding their due meed of blame. For this great ruler smutched his fair record by such crimes as murder and adultery. The shooting of his brothers was excusable and even justifiable, but his other murders admit of little palliation and cannot plead necessity. Though he yielded to his good impulses, again, in releasing thousands of women who had been forced into and kept in the harem of Sui Yang Ti, yet he also yielded to his bad impulses when he took his brother's widow and afterwards that maid of fourteen, Wu Chao, into his own harem. His love of wine and women in early life, his passion for war and his love of glory and empire, which possessed him to the end, were failings of which the eyes of contemporaries dazzled by the "fierce light" could not take notice.