(A) The three kingdoms (220-265)
1 Social, intellectual, and economic problems during the first
division
The end of the Han period was followed by the three and a half
centuries of the first division of China into several kingdoms, each
with its own dynasty. In fact, once before during the period of the
Contending States, China had been divided into a number of states, but
at least in theory they had been subject to the Chou dynasty, and none
of the contending states had made the claim to be the legitimate ruler
of all China. In this period of the “first division” several states
claimed to be legitimate rulers, and later Chinese historians tried to
decide which of these had “more right” to this claim. At the outset
(220-280) there were three kingdoms (Wei, Wu, Shu Han); then came an
unstable reunion during twenty-seven years (280-307) under the rule of
the Western Chin. This was followed by a still sharper division between
north and south: while a wave of non-Chinese nomad dynasties poured
over the north, in the south one Chinese clique after another seized
power, so that dynasty followed dynasty until finally, in 580, a united
China came again into existence, adopting the culture of the north and
the traditions of the gentry.
In some ways, the period from 220 to 580 can be compared with the
period of the coincidentally synchronous breakdown of the Roman Empire:
in both cases there was no great increase in population, although in
China perhaps no over-all decrease in population as in the Roman
Empire; decrease occurred, however, in the population of the great
Chinese cities, especially of the capital; furthermore we witness, in
both empires, a disorganization of the monetary system, i.e. in China
the reversal to a predominance of natural economy after some 400 years
of money economy. Yet, this period cannot be simply dismissed as a
transition period, as was usually done by the older European works on
China. The social order of the gentry, whose birth and development
inside China we followed, had for the first time to defend itself
against views and systems entirely opposed to it; for the Turkish and
Mongol peoples who ruled northern China brought with them their
traditions of a feudal nobility with privileges of birth and all that
they implied. Thus this period, socially regarded, is especially that
of the struggle between the Chinese gentry and the northern nobility,
the gentry being excluded at first as a direct political factor in the
northern and more important part of China. In the south the gentry
continued in the old style with a constant struggle between cliques,
the only difference being that the class assumed a sort of “colonial"
character through the formation of gigantic estates and through
association with the merchant class.
To throw light on the scale of events, we need to have figures of
population. There are no figures for the years around A.D. 220, and we
must make do with those of 140; but in order to show the relative
strength of the three states it is the ratio between the figures that
matters. In 140 the regions which later belonged to Wei had roughly
29,000,000 inhabitants; those later belonging to Wu had 11,700,000;
those which belonged later to Shu Han had a bare 7,500,000. (The
figures take no account of the primitive native population, which was
not yet included in the taxation lists.) The Hsiung-nu formed only a
small part of the population, as there were only the nineteen tribes
which had abandoned one of the parts, already reduced, of the Hsiung-nu
empire. The whole Hsiung-nu empire may never have counted more than
some 3,000,000. At the time when the population of what became the Wei
territory totalled 29,000,000 the capital with its immediate
environment had over a million inhabitants. The figure is exclusive of
most of the officials and soldiers, as these were taxable in their
homes and so were counted there. It is clear that this was a
disproportionate concentration round the capital.
It was at this time that both South and North China felt the
influence of Buddhism, which until A.D. 220 had no more real effect on
China than had, for instance, the penetration of European civilization
between 1580 and 1842. Buddhism offered new notions, new ideals,
foreign science, and many other elements of culture, with which the old
Chinese philosophy and science had to contend. At the same time there
came with Buddhism the first direct knowledge of the great civilized
countries west of China. Until then China had regarded herself as the
only existing civilized country, and all other countries had been
regarded as barbaric, for a civilized country was then taken to mean a
country with urban industrial crafts and agriculture. In our present
period, however, China's relations with the Middle East and with
southern Asia were so close that the existence of civilized countries
outside China had to be admitted. Consequently, when alien dynasties
ruled in northern China and a new high civilization came into existence
there, it was impossible to speak of its rulers as barbarians any
longer. Even the theory that the Chinese emperor was the Son of Heaven
and enthroned at the centre of the world was no longer tenable. Thus a
vast widening of China's intellectual horizon took place.
Economically, our present period witnessed an adjustment in South
China between the Chinese way of life, which had penetrated from the
north, and that of the natives of the south. Large groups of Chinese
had to turn over from wheat culture in dry fields to rice culture in
wet fields, and from field culture to market gardening. In North China
the conflict went on between Chinese agriculture and the cattle
breeding of Central Asia. Was the will of the ruler to prevail and
North China to become a country of pasturage, or was the country to
keep to the agrarian tradition of the people under this rule? The
Turkish and Mongol conquerors had recently given up their old
supplementary agriculture and had turned into pure nomads, obtaining
the agricultural produce they needed by raiding or trade. The
conquerors of North China were now faced with a different question: if
they were to remain nomads, they must either drive the peasants into
the south, or make them into slave herdsmen, or exterminate them. There
was one more possibility: they might install themselves as a ruling
upper class, as nobles over the subjugated native peasants. The same
question was faced much later by the Mongols, and at first they
answered it differently from the peoples of our present period. Only by
attention to this problem shall we be in a position to explain why the
rule of the Turkish peoples did not last, why these peoples were
gradually absorbed and disappeared.
2 Status of the two southern Kingdoms
When the last emperor of the Han period had to abdicate in favour of
Ts'ao P'ei and the Wei dynasty began, China was in no way a unified
realm. Almost immediately, in 221, two other army commanders, who had
long been independent, declared themselves emperors. In the south-west
of China, in the present province of Szechwan, the Shu Han dynasty was
founded in this way, and in the south-east, in the region of the
present Nanking, the Wu dynasty.
The situation of the southern kingdom of Shu Han (221-263)
corresponded more or less to that of the Chungking regime in the Second
World War. West of it the high Tibetan mountains towered up; there was
very little reason to fear any major attack from that direction. In the
north and east the realm was also protected by difficult mountain
country. The south lay relatively open, but at that time there were few
Chinese living there, but only natives with a relatively low
civilization. The kingdom could only be seriously attacked from two
corners—through the north-west, where there was a negotiable plateau,
between the Ch'in-ling mountains in the north and the Tibetan mountains
in the west, a plateau inhabited by fairly highly developed Tibetan
tribes; and secondly through the south-east corner, where it would be
possible to penetrate up the Yangtze. There was in fact incessant
fighting at both these dangerous corners.
Economically, Shu Han was not in a bad position. The country had
long been part of the Chinese wheat lands, and had a fairly large
Chinese peasant population in the well irrigated plain of Ch'engtu.
There was also a wealthy merchant class, supplying grain to the
surrounding mountain peoples and buying medicaments and other
profitable Tibetan products. And there were trade routes from here
through the present province of Yuennan to India.
Shu Han's difficulty was that its population was not large enough to
be able to stand against the northern State of Wei; moreover, it was
difficult to carry out an offensive from Shu Han, though the country
could defend itself well. The first attempt to find a remedy was a
campaign against the native tribes of the present Yuennan. The purpose
of this was to secure manpower for the army and also slaves for sale;
for the south-west had for centuries been a main source for traffic in
slaves. Finally it was hoped to gain control over the trade to India.
All these things were intended to strengthen Shu Han internally, but in
spite of certain military successes they produced no practical result,
as the Chinese were unable in the long run to endure the climate or to
hold out against the guerrilla tactics of the natives. Shu Han tried to
buy the assistance of the Tibetans and with their aid to carry out a
decisive attack on Wei, whose dynastic legitimacy was not recognized by
Shu Han. The ruler of Shu Han claimed to be a member of the imperial
family of the deposed Han dynasty, and therefore to be the rightful,
legitimate ruler over China. His descent, however, was a little
doubtful, and in any case it depended on a link far back in the past.
Against this the Wei of the north declared that the last ruler of the
Han dynasty had handed over to them with all due form the seals of the
state and therewith the imperial prerogative. The controversy was of no
great practical importance, but it played a big part in the Chinese
Confucianist school until the twelfth century, and contributed largely
to a revision of the old conceptions of legitimacy.
The political plans of Shu Han were well considered and far-seeing.
They were evolved by the premier, a man from Shantung named Chu-ko
Liang; for the ruler died in 226 and his successor was still a child.
But Chu-ko Liang lived only for a further eight years, and after his
death in 234 the decline of Shu Han began. Its political leaders no
longer had a sense of what was possible. Thus Wei inflicted several
defeats on Shu Han, and finally subjugated it in 263.
The situation of the state of Wu was much less favourable than that
of Shu Han, though this second southern kingdom lasted from 221 to 280.
Its country consisted of marshy, water-logged plains, or mountains with
narrow valleys. Here Tai peoples had long cultivated their rice, while
in the mountains Yao tribes lived by hunting and by simple agriculture.
Peasants immigrating from the north found that their wheat and pulse
did not thrive here, and slowly they had to gain familiarity with rice
cultivation. They were also compelled to give up their sheep and cattle
and in their place to breed pigs and water buffaloes, as was done by
the former inhabitants of the country. The lower class of the
population was mainly non-Chinese; above it was an upper class of
Chinese, at first relatively small, consisting of officials, soldiers,
and merchants in a few towns and administrative centres. The country
was poor, and its only important economic asset was the trade in
metals, timber, and other southern products; soon there came also a
growing overseas trade with India and the Middle East, bringing
revenues to the state in so far as the goods were re-exported from Wu
to the north.
Wu never attempted to conquer the whole of China, but endeavoured to
consolidate its own difficult territory with a view to building up a
state on a firm foundation. In general, Wu played mainly a passive part
in the incessant struggles between the three kingdoms, though it was
active in diplomacy. The Wu kingdom entered into relations with a man
who in 232 had gained control of the present South Manchuria and
shortly afterwards assumed the title of king. This new ruler of “Yen",
as he called his kingdom, had determined to attack the Wei dynasty, and
hoped, by putting pressure on it in association with Wu, to overrun Wei
from north and south. Wei answered this plan very effectively by
recourse to diplomacy and it began by making Wu believe that Wu had
reason to fear an attack from its western neighbour Shu Han. A mission
was also dispatched from Wei to negotiate with Japan. Japan was then
emerging from its stone age and introducing metals; there were
countless small principalities and states, of which the state of
Yamato, then ruled by a queen, was the most powerful. Yamato had
certain interests in Korea, where it already ruled a small coastal
strip in the east. Wei offered Yamato the prospect of gaining the whole
of Korea if it would turn against the state of Yen in South Manchuria.
Wu, too, had turned to Japan, but the negotiations came to nothing,
since Wu, as an ally of Yen, had nothing to offer. The queen of Yamato
accordingly sent a mission to Wei; she had already decided in favour of
that state. Thus Wei was able to embark on war against Yen, which it
annihilated in 237. This wrecked Wu's diplomatic projects, and no more
was heard of any ambitious plans of the kingdom of Wu.
The two southern states had a common characteristic: both were
condottiere states, not built up from their own population but
conquered by generals from the north and ruled for a time by those
generals and their northern troops. Natives gradually entered these
northern armies and reduced their percentage of northerners, but a gulf
remained between the native population, including its gentry, and the
alien military rulers. This reduced the striking power of the southern
states.
On the other hand, this period had its positive element. For the
first time there was an emperor in south China, with all the
organization that implied. A capital full of officials, eunuchs, and
all the satellites of an imperial court provided incentives to economic
advance, because it represented a huge market. The peasants around it
were able to increase their sales and grew prosperous. The increased
demand resulted in an increase of tillage and a thriving trade. Soon
the transport problem had to be faced, as had happened long ago in the
north, and new means of transport, especially ships, were provided, and
new trade routes opened which were to last far longer than the three
kingdoms; on the other hand, the costs of transport involved fresh
taxation burdens for the population. The skilled staff needed for the
business of administration came into the new capital from the
surrounding districts, for the conquerors and new rulers of the
territory of the two southern dynasties had brought with them from the
north only uneducated soldiers and almost equally uneducated officers.
The influx of scholars and administrators into the chief cities
produced cultural and economic centres in the south, a circumstance of
great importance to China's later development.
3 The northern State of Wei
The situation in the north, in the state of Wei (220-265) was
anything but rosy. Wei ruled what at that time were the most important
and richest regions of China, the plain of Shensi in the west and the
great plain east of Loyang, the two most thickly populated areas of
China. But the events at the end of the Han period had inflicted great
economic injury on the country. The southern and south-western parts of
the Han empire had been lost, and though parts of Central Asia still
gave allegiance to Wei, these, as in the past, were economically more
of a burden than an asset, because they called for incessant
expenditure. At least the trade caravans were able to travel
undisturbed from and to China through Turkestan. Moreover, the Wei
kingdom, although much smaller than the empire of the Han, maintained a
completely staffed court at great expense, because the rulers, claiming
to rule the whole of China, felt bound to display more magnificence
than the rulers of the southern dynasties. They had also to reward the
nineteen tribes of the Hsiung-nu in the north for their military aid,
not only with cessions of land but with payments of money. Finally,
they would not disarm but maintained great armies for the continual
fighting against the southern states. The Wei dynasty did not succeed,
however, in closely subordinating the various army commanders to the
central government. Thus the commanders, in collusion with groups of
the gentry, were able to enrich themselves and to secure regional
power. The inadequate strength of the central government of Wei was
further undermined by the rivalries among the dominant gentry. The
imperial family (Ts'ao Pei, who reigned from 220 to 226, had taken as
emperor the name of Wen Ti) was descended from one of the groups of
great landowners that had formed in the later Han period. The nucleus
of that group was a family named Ts'ui, of which there is mention from
the Han period onward and which maintained its power down to the tenth
century; but it remained in the background and at first held entirely
aloof from direct intervention in high policy. Another family belonging
to this group was the Hsia-hou family which was closely united to the
family of Wen Ti by adoption; and very soon there was also the
Ss[)u]-ma family. Quite naturally Wen Ti, as soon as he came into
power, made provision for the members of these powerful families, for
only thanks to their support had he been able to ascend the throne and
to maintain his hold on the throne. Thus we find many members of the
Hsia-hou and Ss[)u]-ma families in government positions. The Ss[)u]-ma
family especially showed great activity, and at the end of Wen Ti's
reign their power had so grown that a certain Ss[)u]-ma I was in
control of the government, while the new emperor Ming Ti (227-233) was
completely powerless. This virtually sealed the fate of the Wei
dynasty, so far as the dynastic family was concerned. The next emperor
was installed and deposed by the Ss[)u]-ma family; dissensions arose
within the ruling family, leading to members of the family
assassinating one another. In 264 a member of the Ss[)u]-ma family
declared himself king; when he died and was succeeded by his son
Ss[)u]-ma Yen, the latter, in 265, staged a formal act of renunciation
of the throne of the Wei dynasty and made himself the first ruler of
the new Chin dynasty. There is nothing to gain by detailing all the
intrigues that led up to this event: they all took place in the
immediate environment of the court and in no way affected the people,
except that every item of expenditure, including all the bribery, had
to come out of the taxes paid by the people.
With such a situation at court, with the bad economic situation in
the country, and with the continual fighting against the two southern
states, there could be no question of any far-reaching foreign policy.
Parts of eastern Turkestan still showed some measure of allegiance to
Wei, but only because at the time it had no stronger opponent. The
Hsiung-nu beyond the frontier were suffering from a period of
depression which was at the same time a period of reconstruction. They
were beginning slowly to form together with Mongol elements a new unit,
the Juan-juan, but at this time were still politically inactive. The
nineteen tribes within north China held more and more closely together
as militarily organized nomads, but did not yet represent a military
power and remained loyal to the Wei. The only important element of
trouble seems to have been furnished by the Hsien-pi tribes, who had
joined with Wu-huan tribes and apparently also with vestiges of the
Hsiung-nu in eastern Mongolia, and who made numerous raids over the
frontier into the Wei empire. The state of Yen, in southern Manchuria,
had already been destroyed by Wei in 238 thanks to Wei's good relations
with Japan. Loose diplomatic relations were maintained with Japan in
the period that followed; in that period many elements of Chinese
civilization found their way into Japan and there, together with
settlers from many parts of China, helped to transform the culture of
ancient Japan.
(B) The Western Chin dynasty (A.D. 265-317)
1 Internal situation in the Chin empire
The change of dynasty in the state of Wei did not bring any turn in
China's internal history. Ss[)u]-ma Yen, who as emperor was called Wu
Ti (265-289), had come to the throne with the aid of his clique and his
extraordinarily large and widely ramified family. To these he had to
give offices as reward. There began at court once more the same
spectacle as in the past, except that princes of the new imperial
family now played a greater part than under the Wei dynasty, whose
ruling house had consisted of a small family. It was now customary, in
spite of the abolition of the feudal system, for the imperial princes
to receive large regions to administer, the fiscal revenues of which
represented their income. The princes were not, however, to exercise
full authority in the style of the former feudal lords: their courts
were full of imperial control officials. In the event of war it was
their duty to come forward, like other governors, with an army in
support of the central government. The various Chin princes succeeded,
however, in making other governors, beyond the frontiers of their
regions, dependent on them. Also, they collected armies of their own
independently of the central government and used those armies to pursue
personal policies. The members of the families allied with the ruling
house, for their part, did all they could to extend their own power.
Thus the first ruler of the dynasty was tossed to and fro between the
conflicting interests and was himself powerless. But though intrigue
was piled on intrigue, the ruler who, of course, himself had come to
the head of the state by means of intrigues, was more watchful than the
rulers of the Wei dynasty had been, and by shrewd counter-measures he
repeatedly succeeded in playing off one party against another, so that
the dynasty remained in power. Numerous widespread and furious risings
nevertheless took place, usually led by princes. Thus during this
period the history of the dynasty was of an extraordinarily dismal
character.
In spite of this, the Chin troops succeeded in overthrowing the
second southern state, that of Wu (A.D. 280), and in so restoring the
unity of the empire, the Shu Han realm having been already conquered by
the Wei. After the destruction of Wu there remained no external enemy
that represented a potential danger, so that a general disarmament was
decreed (280) in order to restore a healthy economic and financial
situation. This disarmament applied, of course, to the troops directly
under the orders of the dynasty, namely the troops of the court and the
capital and the imperial troops in the provinces. Disarmament could
not, however, be carried out in the princes' regions, as the princes
declared that they needed personal guards. The dismissal of the troops
was accompanied by a decree ordering the surrender of arms. It may be
assumed that the government proposed to mint money with the metal of
the weapons surrendered, for coin (the old coin of the Wei dynasty) had
become very scarce; as we indicated previously, money had largely been
replaced by goods so that, for instance, grain and silks were used for
the payment of salaries. China, from c. 200 A.D. on until the
eighth century, remained in a period of such partial “natural economy”.
Naturally the decree for the surrender of weapons remained a
dead-letter. The discharged soldiers kept their weapons at first and
then preferred to sell them. A large part of them was acquired by the
Hsiung-nu and the Hsien-pi in the north of China; apparently they
usually gave up land in return. In this way many Chinese soldiers,
though not all by any means, went as peasants to the regions in the
north of China and beyond the frontier. They were glad to do so, for
the Hsiung-nu and the Hsien-pi had not the efficient administration and
rigid tax collection of the Chinese; and above all, they had no great
landowners who could have organized the collection of taxes. For their
part, the Hsiung-nu and the Hsien-pi had no reason to regret this
immigration of peasants, who could provide them with the farm produce
they needed. And at the same time they were receiving from them large
quantities of the most modern weapons.
This ineffective disarmament was undoubtedly the most pregnant event
of the period of the western Chin dynasty. The measure was intended to
save the cost of maintaining the soldiers and to bring them back to the
land as peasants (and taxpayers); but the discharged men were not given
land by the government. The disarmament achieved nothing, not even the
desired increase in the money in circulation; what did happen was that
the central government lost all practical power, while the military
strength both of the dangerous princes within the country and also of
the frontier people was increased. The results of these mistaken
measures became evident at once and compelled the government to arm
anew.
2 Effect on the frontier peoples
Four groups of frontier peoples drew more or less advantage from the
demobilization law—the people of the Toba, the Tibetans, and the
Hsien-pi in the north, and the nineteen tribes of the Hsiung-nu within
the frontiers of the empire. In the course of time all sorts of
complicated relations developed among those ascending peoples as well
as between them and the Chinese.
The Toba (T'o-pa) formed a small group in the north of the present
province of Shansi, north of the city of Tat'ungfu, and they were about
to develop their small state. They were primarily of Turkish origin,
but had absorbed many tribes of the older Hsiung-nu and the Hsien-pi.
In considering the ethnical relationships of all these northern peoples
we must rid ourselves of our present-day notions of national unity.
Among the Toba there were many Turkish tribes, but also Mongols, and
probably a Tungus tribe, as well as perhaps others whom we cannot yet
analyse. These tribes may even have spoken different languages, much as
later not only Mongol but also Turkish was spoken in the Mongol empire.
The political units they formed were tribal unions, not national
states.
Such a union or federation can be conceived of, structurally, as a
cone. At the top point of the cone there was the person of the ruler of
the federation. He was a member of the leading family or clan of the
leading tribe (the two top layers of the cone). If we speak of the Toba
as of Turkish stock, we mean that according to our present knowledge,
this leading tribe (a) spoke a language belonging to the Turkish
language family and (b) exhibited a pattern of culture which
belonged to the type called above in Chapter One as “North-western
Culture”. The next layer of the cone represented the “inner circle of
tribes", i.e. such tribes as had joined with the leading tribe at an
early moment. The leading family of the leading tribe often took their
wives from the leading families of the “inner tribes", and these
leaders served as advisors and councillors to the leader of the
federation. The next lower layer consisted of the “outer tribes", i.e.
tribes which had joined the federation only later, often under strong
pressure; their number was always much larger than the number of the
“inner tribes", but their political influence was much weaker. Every
layer below that of the “outer tribes” was regarded as inferior and
more or less “unfree”. There was many a tribe which, as a tribe, had to
serve a free tribe; and there were others who, as tribes, had to serve
the whole federation. In addition, there were individuals who had quit
or had been forced to quit their tribe or their home and had joined the
federation leader as his personal “bondsmen”; further, there were
individual slaves and, finally, there were the large masses of
agriculturists who had been conquered by the federation. When such a
federation was dissolved, by defeat or inner dissent, individual tribes
or groups of tribes could join a new federation or could resume
independent life.
Typically, such federations exhibited two tendencies. In the case of
the Hsiung-nu we indicated already previously that the leader of the
federation repeatedly attempted to build up a kind of bureaucratic
system, using his bondsmen as a nucleus. A second tendency was to
replace the original tribal leaders by members of the family of the
federation leader. If this initial step, usually first taken when
“outer tribes” were incorporated, was successful, a reorganization was
attempted: instead of using tribal units in war, military units on the
basis of “Groups of Hundred", “Groups of Thousand", etc., were created
and the original tribes were dissolved into military regiments. In the
course of time, and especially at the time of the dissolution of a
federation, these military units had gained social coherence and
appeared to be tribes again; we are probably correct in assuming that
all “tribes” which we find from this time on were already “secondary"
tribes of this type. A secondary tribe often took its name from its
leader, but it could also revive an earlier “primary tribe” name.
The Toba represented a good example for this “cone” structure of
pastoral society. Also the Hsiung-nu of this time seem to have had a
similar structure. Incidentally, we will from now on call the Hsiung-nu
“Huns” because Chinese sources begin to call them “Hu", a term which
also had a more general meaning (all non-Chinese in the north and west
of China) as well as a more special meaning (non-Chinese in Central
Asia and India).
The Tibetans fell apart into two sub-groups, the Ch'iang and the Ti.
Both names appeared repeatedly as political conceptions, but the
Tibetans, like all other state-forming groups of peoples, sheltered in
their realms countless alien elements. In the course of the third and
second centuries B.C. the group of the Ti, mainly living in the
territory of the present Szechwan, had mixed extensively with remains
of the Yueeh-chih; the others, the Ch'iang, were northern Tibetans or
so-called Tanguts; that is to say, they contained Turkish and Mongol
elements. In A.D. 296 there began a great rising of the Ti, whose
leader Ch'i Wan-nien took on the title emperor. The Ch'iang rose with
them, but it was not until later, from 312, that they pursued an
independent policy. The Ti State, however, though it had a second
emperor, very soon lost importance, so that we shall be occupied solely
with the Ch'iang.
As the tribal structure of Tibetan groups was always weak and as
leadership developed among them only in times of war, their states
always show a military rather than a tribal structure, and the
continuation of these states depended strongly upon the personal
qualities of their leaders. Incidentally, Tibetans fundamentally were
sheep-breeders and not horse-breeders and, therefore, they always
showed inclination to incorporate infantry into their armies. Thus,
Tibetan states differed strongly from the aristocratically organized
“Turkish” states as well as from the tribal, non-aristocratic “Mongol"
states of that period.
The Hsien-pi, according to our present knowledge, were under
“Mongol” leadership, i.e. we believe that the language of the leading
group belonged to the family of Mongolian languages and that their
culture belonged to the type described above as “Northern culture”.
They had, in addition, a strong admixture of Hunnic tribes. Throughout
the period during which they played a part in history, they never
succeeded in forming any great political unit, in strong contrast to
the Huns, who excelled in state formation. The separate groups of the
Hsien-pi pursued a policy of their own; very frequently Hsien-pi fought
each other, and they never submitted to a common leadership. Thus their
history is entirely that of small groups. As early as the Wei period
there had been small-scale conflicts with the Hsien-pi tribes, and at
times the tribes had some success. The campaigns of the Hsien-pi
against North China now increased, and in the course of them the
various tribes formed firmer groupings, among which the Mu-jung tribes
played a leading part. In 281, the year after the demobilization law,
this group marched south into China, and occupied the region round
Peking. After fierce fighting, in which the Mu-jung section suffered
heavy losses, a treaty was signed in 289, under which the Mu-jung tribe
of the Hsien-pi recognized Chinese overlordship. The Mu-jung were
driven to this step mainly because they had been continually attacked
from southern Manchuria by another Hsien-pi tribe, the Yue-wen, the
tribe most closely related to them. The Mu-jung made use of the period
of their so-called subjection to organize their community in North
China.
South of the Toba were the nineteen tribes of the Hsiung-nu or Huns,
as we are now calling them. Their leader in A.D. 287, Liu Yuean, was
one of the principal personages of this period. His name is purely
Chinese, but he was descended from the Hun shan-yue, from the
family and line of Mao Tun. His membership of that long-famous noble
line and old ruling family of Huns gave him a prestige which he
increased by his great organizing ability.
3 Struggles for the throne
We shall return to Liu Yuean later; we must now cast another glance
at the official court of the Chin. In that court a family named Yang
had become very powerful, a daughter of this family having become
empress. When, however, the emperor died, the wife of the new emperor
Hui Ti (290-306) secured the assassination of the old empress Yang and
of her whole family. Thus began the rule at court of the Chia family.
In 299 the Chia family got rid of the heir to the throne, to whom they
objected, assassinating this prince and another one. This event became
the signal for large-scale activity on the part of the princes, each of
whom was supported by particular groups of families. The princes had
not complied with the disarmament law of 280 and so had become
militarily supreme. The generals newly appointed in the course of the
imperial rearmament at once entered into alliance with the princes, and
thus were quite unreliable as officers of the government. Both the
generals and the princes entered into agreements with the frontier
peoples to assure their aid in the struggle for power. The most popular
of these auxiliaries were the Hsien-pi, who were fighting for one of
the princes whose territory lay in the east. Since the Toba were the
natural enemies of the Hsien-pi, who were continually contesting their
hold on their territory, the Toba were always on the opposite side to
that supported by the Hsien-pi, so that they now supported generals who
were ostensibly loyal to the government. The Huns, too, negotiated with
several generals and princes and received tempting offers. Above all,
all the frontier peoples were now militarily well equipped, continually
receiving new war material from the Chinese who from time to time were
co-operating with them.
In A.D. 300 Prince Lun assassinated the empress Chia and removed her
group. In 301 he made himself emperor, but in the same year he was
killed by the prince of Ch'i. This prince was killed in 302 by the
prince of Ch'ang-sha, who in turned was killed in 303 by the prince of
Tung-hai. The prince of Ho-chien rose in 302 and was killed in 306; the
prince of Ch'engtu rose in 303, conquered the capital in 305, and then,
in 306, was himself removed. I mention all these names and dates only
to show the disunion within the ruling groups.
4 Migration of Chinese
All these struggles raged round the capital, for each of the princes
wanted to secure full power and to become emperor. Thus the border
regions remained relatively undisturbed. Their population suffered much
less from the warfare than the unfortunate people in the neighbourhood
of the central government. For this reason there took place a mass
migration of Chinese from the centre of the empire to its periphery.
This process, together with the shifting of the frontier peoples, is
one of the most important events of that epoch. A great number of
Chinese migrated especially into the present province of Kansu, where a
governor who had originally been sent there to fight the Hsien-pi had
created a sort of paradise by his good administration and maintenance
of peace. The territory ruled by this Chinese, first as governor and
then in increasing independence, was surrounded by Hsien-pi, Tibetans,
and other peoples, but thanks to the great immigration of Chinese and
to its situation on the main caravan route to Turkestan, it was able to
hold its own, to expand, and to become prosperous.
Other groups of Chinese peasants migrated southward into the
territories of the former state of Wu. A Chinese prince of the house of
the Chin was ruling there, in the present Nanking. His purpose was to
organize that territory, and then to intervene in the struggles of the
other princes. We shall meet him again at the beginning of the Hun rule
over North China in 317, as founder and emperor of the first south
Chinese dynasty, which was at once involved in the usual internal and
external struggles. For the moment, however, the southern region was
relatively at peace, and was accordingly attracting settlers.
Finally, many Chinese migrated northward, into the territories of
the frontier peoples, not only of the Hsien-pi but especially of the
Huns. These alien peoples, although in the official Chinese view they
were still barbarians, at least maintained peace in the territories
they ruled, and they left in peace the peasants and craftsmen who came
to them, even while their own armies were involved in fighting inside
China. Not only peasants and craftsmen came to the north but more and
more educated persons. Members of families of the gentry that had
suffered from the fighting, people who had lost their influence in
China, were welcomed by the Huns and appointed teachers and political
advisers of the Hun nobility.
5 Victory of the Huns. The Hun Han dynasty (later renamed the
Earlier Chao dynasty)
With its self-confidence thus increased, the Hun council of nobles
declared that in future the Huns should no longer fight now for one and
now for another Chinese general or prince. They had promised loyalty to
the Chinese emperor, but not to any prince. No one doubted that the
Chinese emperor was a complete nonentity and no longer played any part
in the struggle for power. It was evident that the murders would
continue until one of the generals or princes overcame the rest and
made himself emperor. Why should not the Huns have the same right? Why
should not they join in this struggle for the Chinese imperial throne?
There were two arguments against this course, one of which was
already out of date. The Chinese had for many centuries set down the
Huns as uncultured barbarians; but the inferiority complex thus
engendered in the Huns had virtually been overcome, because in the
course of time their upper class had deliberately acquired a Chinese
education and so ranked culturally with the Chinese. Thus the ruler Liu
Yuean, for example, had enjoyed a good Chinese education and was able
to read all the classical texts. The second argument was provided by
the rigid conceptions of legitimacy to which the Turkish-Hunnic
aristocratic society adhered. The Huns asked themselves: “Have we, as
aliens, any right to become emperors and rulers in China, when we are
not descended from an old Chinese family?” On this point Liu Yuean and
his advisers found a good answer. They called Liu Yuean's dynasty the
“Han dynasty", and so linked it with the most famous of all the Chinese
dynasties, pointing to the pact which their ancestor Mao Tun had
concluded five hundred years earlier with the first emperor of the Han
dynasty and which had described the two states as “brethren”. They
further recalled the fact that the rulers of the Huns were closely
related to the Chinese ruling family, because Mao Tun and his
successors had married Chinese princesses. Finally, Liu Yuean's Chinese
family name, Liu, had also been the family name of the rulers of the
Han dynasty. Accordingly the Hun Lius came forward not as aliens but as
the rightful successors in continuation of the Han dynasty, as
legitimate heirs to the Chinese imperial throne on the strength of
relationship and of treaties.
Thus the Hun Liu Yuean had no intention of restoring the old empire
of Mao Tun, the empire of the nomads; he intended to become emperor of
China, emperor of a country of farmers. In this lay the fundamental
difference between the earlier Hun empire and this new one. The
question whether the Huns should join in the struggle for the Chinese
imperial throne was therefore decided among the Huns themselves in 304
in the affirmative, by the founding of the “Hun Han dynasty”. All that
remained was the practical question of how to hold out with their small
army of 50,000 men if serious opposition should be offered to the
“barbarians”.
Meanwhile Liu Yuean provided himself with court ceremonial on the
Chinese model, in a capital which, after several changes, was
established at P'ing-ch'eng in southern Shansi. He attracted more and
more of the Chinese gentry, who were glad to come to this still rather
barbaric but well-organized court. In 309 the first attack was made on
the Chinese capital, Loyang. Liu Yuean died in the following year, and
in 311, under his successor Liu Ts'ung (310-318), the attack was
renewed and Loyang fell. The Chin emperor, Huai Ti, was captured and
kept a prisoner in P'ing-ch'eng until in 313 a conspiracy in his favour
was brought to light in the Hun empire, and he and all his supporters
were killed. Meanwhile the Chinese clique of the Chin dynasty had
hastened to make a prince emperor in the second capital, Ch'ang-an (Min
Ti, 313-316) while the princes' struggles for the throne continued.
Nobody troubled about the fate of the unfortunate emperor in his
capital. He received no reinforcements, so that he was helpless in face
of the next attack of the Huns, and in 316 he was compelled to
surrender like his predecessor. Now the Hun Han dynasty held both
capitals, which meant virtually the whole of the western part of North
China, and the so-called “Western Chin dynasty” thus came to its end.
Its princes and generals and many of its gentry became landless and
homeless and had to flee into the south.
(C) The alien empires in North China, down to the Toba (A.D.
317-385)
1 The Later Chao dynasty in eastern North China (Hun;
329-352)
At this time the eastern part of North China was entirely in the
hands of Shih Lo, a former follower of Liu Yuean. Shih Lo had escaped
from slavery in China and had risen to be a military leader among
detribalized Huns. In 310 he had not only undertaken a great campaign
right across China to the south, but had slaughtered more than 100,000
Chinese, including forty-eight princes of the Chin dynasty, who had
formed a vast burial procession for a prince. This achievement added
considerably to Shih Lo's power, and his relations with Liu Ts'ung,
already tense, became still more so. Liu Yuean had tried to organize
the Hun state on the Chinese model, intending in this way to gain
efficient control of China; Shih Lo rejected Chinese methods, and held
to the old warrior-nomad tradition, making raids with the aid of nomad
fighters. He did not contemplate holding the territories of central and
southern China which he had conquered; he withdrew, and in the two
years 314-315 he contented himself with bringing considerable expanses
in north-eastern China, especially territories of the Hsien-pi, under
his direct rule, as a base for further raids. Many Huns in Liu Ts'ung's
dominion found Shih Lo's method of rule more to their taste than living
in a state ruled by officials, and they went over to Shih Lo and joined
him in breaking entirely with Liu Ts'ung. There was a further motive
for this: in states founded by nomads, with a federation of tribes as
their basis, the personal qualities of the ruler played an important
part. The chiefs of the various tribes would not give unqualified
allegiance to the son of a dead ruler unless the son was a strong
personality or gave promise of becoming one. Failing that, there would
be independence movements. Liu Ts'ung did not possess the indisputable
charisma of his predecessor Liu Yuean; and the Huns looked with
contempt on his court splendour, which could only have been justified
if he had conquered all China. Liu Ts'ung had no such ambition; nor had
his successor Liu Yao (319-329), who gave the Hun Han dynasty
retroactively, from its start with Liu Yuean, the new name of “Earlier
Chao dynasty” (304-329). Many tribes then went over to Shih Lo, and the
remainder of Liu Yao's empire was reduced to a precarious existence. In
329 the whole of it was annexed by Shih Lo.
Although Shih Lo had long been much more powerful than the emperors
of the “Earlier Chao dynasty", until their removal he had not ventured
to assume the title of emperor. The reason for this seems to have lain
in the conceptions of nobility held by the Turkish peoples in general
and the Huns in particular, according to which only those could become
shan-yue (or, later, emperor) who could show descent from the Tu-ku
tribe the rightful shan-yue stock. In accordance with this
conception, all later Hun dynasties deliberately disowned Shih Lo. For
Shih Lo, after his destruction of Liu Yao, no longer hesitated:
ex-slave as he was, and descended from one of the non-noble stocks of
the Huns, he made himself emperor of the “Later Chao dynasty"
(329-352).
Shih Lo was a forceful army commander, but he was a man without
statesmanship, and without the culture of his day. He had no Chinese
education; he hated the Chinese and would have been glad to make north
China a grazing ground for his nomad tribes of Huns. Accordingly he had
no desire to rule all China. The part already subjugated, embracing the
whole of north China with the exception of the present province of
Kansu, sufficed for his purpose.
The governor of that province was a loyal subject of the Chinese
Chin dynasty, a man famous for his good administration, and himself a
Chinese. After the execution of the Chin emperor Huai Ti by the Huns in
313, he regarded himself as no longer bound to the central government;
he made himself independent and founded the “Earlier Liang dynasty",
which was to last until 376. This mainly Chinese realm was not very
large, although it had admitted a broad stream of Chinese emigrants
from the dissolving Chin empire; but economically the Liang realm was
very prosperous, so that it was able to extend its influence as far as
Turkestan. During the earlier struggles Turkestan had been virtually in
isolation, but now new contacts began to be established. Many traders
from Turkestan set up branches in Liang. In the capital there were
whole quarters inhabited only by aliens from western and eastern
Turkestan and from India. With the traders came Buddhist monks; trade
and Buddhism seemed to be closely associated everywhere. In the trading
centres monasteries were installed in the form of blocks of houses
within strong walls that successfully resisted many an attack.
Consequently the Buddhists were able to serve as bankers for the
merchants, who deposited their money in the monasteries, which made a
charge for its custody; the merchants also warehoused their goods in
the monasteries. Sometimes the process was reversed, a trade centre
being formed around an existing monastery. In this case the monastery
also served as a hostel for the merchants. Economically this Chinese
state in Kansu was much more like a Turkestan city state that lived by
commerce than the agrarian states of the Far East, although agriculture
was also pursued under the Earlier Liang.
From this trip to the remote west we will return first to the Hun
capital. From 329 onward Shih Lo possessed a wide empire, but an
unstable one. He himself felt at all times insecure, because the Huns
regarded him, on account of his humble origin, as a “revolutionary”. He
exterminated every member of the Liu family, that is to say the old
shan-yue family, of whom he could get hold, in order to remove any
possible pretender to the throne; but he could not count on the loyalty
of the Hun and other Turkish tribes under his rule. During this period
not a few Huns went over to the small realm of the Toba; other Hun
tribes withdrew entirely from the political scene and lived with their
herds as nomad tribes in Shansi and in the Ordos region. The general
insecurity undermined the strength of Shih Lo's empire. He died in 333,
and there came to the throne, after a short interregnum, another
personality of a certain greatness, Shih Hu (334-349). He transferred
the capital to the city of Yeh, in northern Honan, where the rulers of
the Wei dynasty had reigned. There are many accounts of the
magnificence of the court of Yeh. Foreigners, especially Buddhist
monks, played a greater part there than Chinese. On the one hand, it
was not easy for Shih Hu to gain the active support of the educated
Chinese gentry after the murders of Shih Lo and, on the other hand,
Shih Hu seems to have understood that foreigners without family and
without other relations to the native population, but with special
skills, are the most reliable and loyal servants of a ruler. Indeed,
his administration seems to have been good, but the regime remained
completely parasitic, with no support of the masses or the gentry.
After Shih Hu's death there were fearful combats between his sons;
ultimately a member of an entirely different family of Hun origin
seized power, but was destroyed in 352 by the Hsien-pi, bringing to an
end the Later Chao dynasty.
2 Earlier Yen dynasty in the north-east (proto-Mongol; 352-370),
and the Earlier Ch'in dynasty in all north China (Tibetan; 351-394)
In the north, proto-Mongol Hsien-pi tribes had again made themselves
independent; in the past they had been subjects of Liu Yuean and then
of Shih Lo. A man belonging to one of these tribes, the tribe of the
Mu-jung, became the leader of a league of tribes, and in 337 founded
the state of Yen. This proto-Mongol state of the Mu-jung, which the
historians call the “Earlier Yen” state, conquered parts of southern
Manchuria and also the state of Kao-li in Korea, and there began then
an immigration of Hsien-pi into Korea, which became noticeable at a
later date. The conquest of Korea, which was still, as in the past, a
Japanese market and was very wealthy, enormously strengthened the state
of Yen. Not until a little later, when Japan's trade relations were
diverted to central China, did Korea's importance begin to diminish.
Although this “Earlier Yen dynasty” of the Mu-jung officially entered
on the heritage of the Huns, and its regime was therefore dated only
from 352 (until 370), it failed either to subjugate the whole realm of
the “Later Chao” or effectively to strengthen the state it had
acquired. This old Hun territory had suffered economically from the
anti-agrarian nomad tendency of the last of the Hun emperors; and
unremunerative wars against the Chinese in the south had done nothing
to improve its position. In addition to this, the realm of the Toba was
dangerously gaining strength on the flank of the new empire. But the
most dangerous enemy was in the west, on former Hun soil, in the
province of Shensi—Tibetans, who finally came forward once more with
claims to dominance. These were Tibetans of the P'u family, which later
changed its name to Fu. The head of the family had worked his way up as
a leader of Tibetan auxiliaries under the “Later Chao", gaining more
and more power and following. When under that dynasty the death of Shih
Hu marked the beginning of general dissolution, he gathered his
Tibetans around him in the west, declared himself independent of the
Huns, and made himself emperor of the “Earlier Ch'in dynasty"
(351-394). He died in 355, and was followed after a short interregnum
by Fu Chien (357-385), who was unquestionably one of the most important
figures of the fourth century. This Tibetan empire ultimately defeated
the “Earlier Yen dynasty” and annexed the realm of the Mu-jung. Thus
the Mu-jung Hsien-pi came under the dominion of the Tibetans; they were
distributed among a number of places as garrisons of mounted troops.
The empire of the Tibetans was organized quite differently from the
empires of the Huns and the Hsien-pi tribes. The Tibetan organization
was purely military and had nothing to do with tribal structure. This
had its advantages, for the leader of such a formation had no need to
take account of tribal chieftains; he was answerable to no one and
possessed considerable personal power. Nor was there any need for him
to be of noble rank or descended from an old family. The Tibetan ruler
Fu Chien organized all his troops, including the non-Tibetans, on this
system, without regard to tribal membership.
Fu Chien's state showed another innovation: the armies of the Huns
and the Hsien-pi had consisted entirely of cavalry, for the nomads of
the north were, of course, horsemen; to fight on foot was in their eyes
not only contrary to custom but contemptible. So long as a state
consisted only of a league of tribes, it was simply out of the question
to transform part of the army into infantry. Fu Chien, however, with
his military organization that paid no attention to the tribal element,
created an infantry in addition to the great cavalry units, recruiting
for it large numbers of Chinese. The infantry proved extremely
valuable, especially in the fighting in the plains of north China and
in laying siege to fortified towns. Fu Chien thus very quickly achieved
military predominance over the neighbouring states. As we have seen
already, he annexed the “Earlier Yen” realm of the proto-Mongols (370),
but he also annihilated the Chinese “Earlier Liang” realm (376) and in
the same year the small Turkish Toba realm. This made him supreme over
all north China and stronger than any alien ruler before him. He had in
his possession both the ancient capitals, Ch'ang-an and Loyang; the
whole of the rich agricultural regions of north China belonged to him;
he also controlled the routes to Turkestan. He himself had a Chinese
education, and he attracted Chinese to his court; he protected the
Buddhists; and he tried in every way to make the whole country
culturally Chinese. As soon as Fu Chien had all north China in his
power, as Liu Yuean and his Huns had done before him, he resolved, like
Liu Yuean, to make every effort to gain the mastery over all China, to
become emperor of China. Liu Yuean's successors had not had the
capacity for which such a venture called; Fu Chien was to fail in it
for other reasons. Yet, from a military point of view, his chances were
not bad. He had far more soldiers under his command than the Chinese
“Eastern Chin dynasty” which ruled the south, and his troops were
undoubtedly better. In the time of the founder of the Tibetan dynasty
the southern empire had been utterly defeated by his troops (354), and
the south Chinese were no stronger now.
Against them the north had these assets: the possession of the best
northern tillage, the control of the trade routes, and “Chinese"
culture and administration. At the time, however, these represented
only potentialities and not tangible realities. It would have taken ten
to twenty years to restore the capacities of the north after its
devastation in many wars, to reorganize commerce, and to set up a
really reliable administration, and thus to interlock the various
elements and consolidate the various tribes. But as early as 383 Fu
Chien started his great campaign against the south, with an army of
something like a million men. At first the advance went well. The
horsemen from the north, however, were men of the mountain country, and
in the soggy plains of the Yangtze region, cut up by hundreds of
water-courses and canals, they suffered from climatic and natural
conditions to which they were unaccustomed. Their main strength was
still in cavalry; and they came to grief. The supplies and
reinforcements for the vast army failed to arrive in time; units did
not reach the appointed places at the appointed dates. The southern
troops under the supreme command of Hsieh Hsuean, far inferior in
numbers and militarily of no great efficiency, made surprise attacks on
isolated units before these were in regular formation. Some they
defeated, others they bribed; they spread false reports. Fu Chien's
army was seized with widespread panic, so that he was compelled to
retreat in haste. As he did so it became evident that his empire had no
inner stability: in a very short time it fell into fragments. The south
Chinese had played no direct part in this, for in spite of their
victory they were not strong enough to advance far to the north.
3 The fragmentation of north China
The first to fall away from the Tibetan ruler was a noble of the
Mu-jung, a member of the ruling family of the “Earlier Yen dynasty",
who withdrew during the actual fighting to pursue a policy of his own.
With the vestiges of the Hsien-pi who followed him, mostly cavalry, he
fought his way northward into the old homeland of the Hsien-pi and
there, in central Hopei, founded the “Later Yen dynasty” (384-409),
himself reigning for twelve years. In the remaining thirteen years of
the existence of that dynasty there were no fewer than five rulers, the
last of them a member of another family. The history of this Hsien-pi
dynasty, as of its predecessor, is an unedifying succession of
intrigues; no serious effort was made to build up a true state.
In the same year 384 there was founded, under several other Mu-jung
princes of the ruling family of the “Earlier Yen dynasty", the “Western
Yen dynasty” (384-394). Its nucleus was nothing more than a detachment
of troops of the Hsien-pi which had been thrown by Fu Chien into the
west of his empire, in Shensi, in the neighbourhood of the old capital
Ch'ang-an. There its commanders, on learning the news of Fu Chien's
collapse, declared their independence. In western China, however, far
removed from all liaison with the main body of the Hsien-pi, they were
unable to establish themselves, and when they tried to fight their way
to the north-east they were dispersed, so that they failed entirely to
form an actual state.
There was a third attempt in 384 to form a state in north China. A
Tibetan who had joined Fu Chien with his followers declared himself
independent when Fu Chien came back, a beaten man, to Shensi. He caused
Fu Chien and almost the whole of his family to be assassinated,
occupied the capital, Ch'ang-an, and actually entered into the heritage
of Fu Chien. This Tibetan dynasty is known as the “Later Ch'in dynasty"
(384-417). It was certainly the strongest of those founded in 384, but
it still failed to dominate any considerable part of China and remained
of local importance, mainly confined to the present province of Shensi.
Fu Chien's empire nominally had three further rulers, but they did not
exert the slightest influence on events.
With the collapse of the state founded by Fu Chien, the tribes of
Hsien-pi who had left their homeland in the third century and migrated
to the Ordos region proceeded to form their own state: a man of the
Hsien-pi tribe of the Ch'i-fu founded the so-called “Western Ch'in
dynasty” (385-431). Like the other Hsien-pi states, this one was of
weak construction, resting on the military strength of a few tribes and
failing to attain a really secure basis. Its territory lay in the east
of the present province of Kansu, and so controlled the eastern end of
the western Asian caravan route, which might have been a source of
wealth if the Ch'i-fu had succeeded in attracting commerce by discreet
treatment and in imposing taxation on it. Instead of this, the bulk of
the long-distance traffic passed through the Ordos region, a little
farther north, avoiding the Ch'i-fu state, which seemed to the
merchants to be too insecure. The Ch'i-fu depended mainly on
cattle-breeding in the remote mountain country in the south of their
territory, a region that gave them relative security from attack; on
the other hand, this made them unable to exercise any influence on the
course of political events in western China.
Mention must be made of one more state that rose from the ruins of
Fu Chien's empire. It lay in the far west of China, in the western part
of the present province of Kansu, and was really a continuation of the
Chinese “Earlier Liang” realm, which had been annexed ten years earlier
(376) by Fu Chien. A year before his great march to the south, Fu Chien
had sent the Tibetan Lue Kuang into the “Earlier Liang” region in order
to gain influence over Turkestan. As mentioned previously, after the
great Hun rulers Fu Chien was the first to make a deliberate attempt to
secure cultural and political overlordship over the whole of China.
Although himself a Tibetan, he never succumbed to the temptation of
pursuing a “Tibetan” policy; like an entirely legitimate ruler of
China, he was concerned to prevent the northern peoples along the
frontier from uniting with the Tibetan peoples of the west for
political ends. The possession of Turkestan would avert that danger,
which had shown signs of becoming imminent of late: some tribes of the
Hsien-pi had migrated as far as the high mountains of Tibet and had
imposed themselves as a ruling class on the still very primitive
Tibetans living there. From this symbiosis there began to be formed a
new people, the so-called T'u-yue-hun, a hybridization of Mongol and
Tibetan stock with a slight Turkish admixture. Lue Kuang had
considerable success in Turkestan; he had brought considerable portions
of eastern Turkestan under Fu Chien's sovereignty and administered
those regions almost independently. When the news came of Fu Chien's
end, he declared himself an independent ruler, of the “Later Liang"
dynasty (386-403). Strictly speaking, this was simply a trading State,
like the city-states of Turkestan: its basis was the transit traffic
that brought it prosperity. For commerce brought good profit to the
small states that lay right across the caravan route, whereas it was of
doubtful benefit, as we know, to agrarian China as a whole, because the
luxury goods which it supplied to the court were paid for out of the
production of the general population.
This “Later Liang” realm was inhabited not only by a few Tibetans
and many Chinese, but also by Hsien-pi and Huns. These heterogeneous
elements with their divergent cultures failed in the long run to hold
together in this long but extremely narrow strip of territory, which
was almost incapable of military defence. As early as 397 a group of
Huns in the central section of the country made themselves independent,
assuming the name of the “Northern Liang” (397-439). These Huns quickly
conquered other parts of the “Later Liang” realm, which then fell
entirely to pieces. Chinese again founded a state, “West Liang"
(400-421) in western Kansu, and the Hsien-pi founded “South Liang"
(379-414) in eastern Kansu. Thus the “Later Liang” fell into three
parts, more or less differing ethnically, though they could not be
described as ethnically unadulterated states.
4 Sociological analysis of the two great alien empires
The two great empires of north China at the time of its division had
been founded by non-Chinese—the first by the Hun Liu Yuean, the second
by the Tibetan Fu Chien. Both rulers went to work on the same principle
of trying to build up truly “Chinese” empires, but the traditions of
Huns and Tibetans differed, and the two experiments turned out
differently. Both failed, but not for the same reasons and not with the
same results. The Hun Liu Yuean was the ruler of a league of feudal
tribes, which was expected to take its place as an upper class above
the unchanged Chinese agricultural population with its system of
officials and gentry. But Liu Yuean's successors were national
reactionaries who stood for the maintenance of the nomad life against
that new plan of transition to a feudal class of urban nobles ruling an
agrarian population. Liu Yuean's more far-seeing policy was abandoned,
with the result that the Huns were no longer in a position to rule an
immense agrarian territory, and the empire soon disintegrated. For the
various Hun tribes this failure meant falling back into political
insignificance, but they were able to maintain their national character
and existence.
Fu Chien, as a Tibetan, was a militarist and soldier, in accordance
with the past of the Tibetans. Under him were grouped Tibetans without
tribal chieftains; the great mass of Chinese; and dispersed remnants of
tribes of Huns, Hsien-pi, and others. His organization was militaristic
and, outside the military sphere, a militaristic bureaucracy. The
Chinese gentry, so far as they still existed, preferred to work with
him rather than with the feudalist Huns. These gentry probably
supported Fu Chien's southern campaign, for, in consequence of the wide
ramifications of their families, it was to their interest that China
should form a single economic unit. They were, of course, equally ready
to work with another group, one of southern Chinese, to attain the same
end by other means, if those means should prove more advantageous: thus
the gentry were not a reliable asset, but were always ready to break
faith. Among other things, Fu Chien's southern campaign was wrecked by
that faithlessness. When an essentially military state suffers military
defeat, it can only go to pieces. This explains the disintegration of
that great empire within a single year into so many diminutive states,
as already described.
5 Sociological analysis of the petty States
The states that took the place of Fu Chien's empire, those many
diminutive states (the Chinese speak of the period of the Sixteen
Kingdoms), may be divided from the economic point of view into two
groups—trading states and warrior states; sociologically they also
fall into two groups, tribal states and military states.
The small states in the west, in Kansu (the Later Liang and the
Western, Northern, and Southern Liang), were trading states: they lived
on the earnings of transit trade with Turkestan. The eastern states
were warrior states, in which an army commander ruled by means of an
armed group of non-Chinese and exploited an agricultural population. It
is only logical that such states should be short-lived, as in fact they
all were.
Sociologically regarded, during this period only the Southern and
Northern Liang were still tribal states. In addition to these came the
young Toba realm, which began in 385 but of which mention has not yet
been made. The basis of that state was the tribe, not the family or the
individual; after its political disintegration the separate tribes
remained in existence. The other states of the east, however, were
military states, made up of individuals with no tribal allegiance but
subject to a military commandant. But where there is no tribal
association, after the political downfall of a state founded by
ethnical groups, those groups sooner or later disappear as such. We see
this in the years immediately following Fu Chien's collapse: the
Tibetan ethnical group to which he himself belonged disappeared
entirely from the historical scene. The two Tibetan groups that
outlasted him, also forming military states and not tribal states,
similarly came to an end shortly afterwards for all time. The Hsien-pi
groups in the various fragments of the empire, with the exception of
the petty states in Kansu, also continued, only as tribal fragments led
by a few old ruling families. They, too, after brief and
undistinguished military rule, came to an end; they disappeared so
completely that thereafter we no longer find the term Hsien-pi in
history. Not that they had been exterminated. When the social structure
and its corresponding economic form fall to pieces, there remain only
two alternatives for its individuals. Either they must go over to a new
form, which in China could only mean that they became Chinese; many
Hsien-pi in this way became Chinese in the decades following 384. Or,
they could retain their old way of living in association with another
stock of similar formation; this, too, happened in many cases. Both
these courses, however, meant the end of the Hsien-pi as an independent
ethnical unit. We must keep this process and its reasons in view if we
are to understand how a great people can disappear once and for all.
The Huns, too, so powerful in the past, were suddenly scarcely to be
found any longer. Among the many petty states there were many Hsien-pi
kingdoms, but only a single, quite small Hun state, that of the
Northern Liang. The disappearance of the Huns was, however, only
apparent; at this time they remained in the Ordos region and in Shansi
as separate nomad tribes with no integrating political organization;
their time had still to come.
6 Spread of Buddhism
According to the prevalent Chinese view, nothing of importance was
achieved during this period in north China in the intellectual sphere;
there was no culture in the north, only in the south. This is natural:
for a Confucian this period, the fourth century, was one of degeneracy
in north China, for no one came into prominence as a celebrated
Confucian. Nothing else could be expected, for in the north the gentry,
which had been the class that maintained Confucianism since the Han
period, had largely been destroyed; from political leadership
especially it had been shut out during the periods of alien rule. Nor
could we expect to find Taoists in the true sense, that is to say
followers of the teaching of Lao Tz[)u], for these, too, had been
dependent since the Han period on the gentry. Until the fourth century,
these two had remained the dominant philosophies.
What could take their place? The alien rulers had left little behind
them. Most of them had been unable to write Chinese, and in so far as
they were warriors they had no interest in literature or in political
philosophy, for they were men of action. Few songs and poems of theirs
remain extant in translations from their language into Chinese, but
these preserve a strong alien flavour in their mental attitude and in
their diction. They are the songs of fighting men, songs that were sung
on horseback, songs of war and its sufferings. These songs have nothing
of the excessive formalism and aestheticism of the Chinese, but give
expression to simple emotions in unpolished language with a direct
appeal. The epic of the Turkish peoples had clearly been developed
already, and in north China it produced a rudimentary ballad
literature, to which four hundred years later no less attention was
paid than to the emotional world of contemporary songs. The actual
literature, however, and the philosophy of this period are Buddhist.
How can we explain that Buddhism had gained such influence?
It will be remembered that Buddhism came to China overland and by
sea in the Han epoch. The missionary monks who came from abroad with
the foreign merchants found little approval among the Chinese gentry.
They were regarded as second-rate persons belonging, according to
Chinese notions, to an inferior social class. Thus the monks had to
turn to the middle and lower classes in China. Among these they found
widespread acceptance, not of their profound philosophic ideas, but of
their doctrine of the after life. This doctrine was in a certain sense
revolutionary: it declared that all the high officials and superiors
who treated the people so unjustly and who so exploited them, would in
their next reincarnation be born in poor circumstances or into inferior
rank and would have to suffer punishment for all their ill deeds. The
poor who had to suffer undeserved evils would be born in their next
life into high rank and would have a good time. This doctrine brought a
ray of light, a promise, to the country people who had suffered so much
since the later Han period of the second century A.D. Their situation
remained unaltered down to the fourth century; and under their alien
rulers the Chinese country population became Buddhist.
The merchants made use of the Buddhist monasteries as banks and
warehouses. Thus they, too, were well inclined towards Buddhism and
gave money and land for its temples. The temples were able to settle
peasants on this land as their tenants. In those times a temple was a
more reliable landlord than an individual alien, and the poorer
peasants readily became temple tenants; this increased their
inclination towards Buddhism.
The Indian, Sogdian, and Turkestani monks were readily allowed to
settle by the alien rulers of China, who had no national prejudice
against other aliens. The monks were educated men and brought some
useful knowledge from abroad. Educated Chinese were scarcely to be
found, for the gentry retired to their estates, which they protected as
well as they could from their alien ruler. So long as the gentry had no
prospect of regaining control of the threads of political life that
extended throughout China, they were not prepared to provide a class of
officials and scholars for the anti-Confucian foreigners, who showed
interest only in fighting and trading. Thus educated persons were
needed at the courts of the alien rulers, and Buddhists were therefore
engaged. These foreign Buddhists had all the important Buddhist
writings translated into Chinese, and so made use of their influence at
court for religious propaganda. This does not mean that every text was
translated from Indian languages; especially in the later period many
works appeared which came not from India but from Sogdia or Turkestan,
or had even been written in China by Sogdians or other natives of
Turkestan, and were then translated into Chinese. In Turkestan, Khotan
in particular became a centre of Buddhist culture. Buddhism was
influenced by vestiges of indigenous cults, so that Khotan developed a
special religious atmosphere of its own; deities were honoured there
(for instance, the king of Heaven of the northerners) to whom little
regard was paid elsewhere. This “Khotan Buddhism” had special influence
on the Buddhist Turkish peoples.
Big translation bureaux were set up for the preparation of these
translations into Chinese, in which many copyists simultaneously took
down from dictation a translation made by a “master” with the aid of a
few native helpers. The translations were not literal, but were
paraphrases, most of them greatly reduced in length, glosses were
introduced when the translator thought fit for political or doctrinal
reasons, or when he thought that in this way he could better adapt the
texts to Chinese feeling.
Buddhism, quite apart from the special case of “Khotan Buddhism",
underwent extensive modification on its way across Central Asia. Its
main Indian form (Hinayana) was a purely individualistic religion of
salvation without a God—related in this respect to genuine Taoism—and
based on a concept of two classes of people: the monks who could
achieve salvation and, secondly, the masses who fed the monks but could
not achieve salvation. This religion did not gain a footing in China;
only traces of it can be found in some Buddhistic sects in China.
Mahayana Buddhism, on the other hand, developed into a true popular
religion of salvation. It did not interfere with the indigenous deities
and did not discountenance life in human society; it did not recommend
Nirvana at once, but placed before it a here-after with all the joys
worth striving for. In this form Buddhism was certain of success in
Asia. On its way from India to China it divided into countless separate
streams, each characterized by a particular book. Every nuance, from
profound philosophical treatises to the most superficial little tracts
written for the simplest of souls, and even a good deal of Turkestan
shamanism and Tibetan belief in magic, found their way into Buddhist
writings, so that some Buddhist monks practiced Central Asian
Shamanism.
In spite of Buddhism, the old religion of the peasants retained its
vitality. Local diviners, Chinese shamans (wu), sorcerers,
continued their practices, although from now on they sometimes used
Buddhist phraseology. Often, this popular religion is called “Taoism “,
because a systematization of the popular pantheon was attempted, and
Lao Tz[)u] and other Taoists played a role in this pantheon.
Philosophic Taoism continued in this time, aside from the church-Taoism
of Chang Ling and, naturally, all kinds of contacts between these three
currents occurred. The Chinese state cult, the cult of Heaven saturated
with Confucianism, was another living form of religion. The alien
rulers, in turn, had brought their own mixture of worship of Heaven and
shamanism. Their worship of Heaven was their official “representative"
religion; their shamanism the private religion of the individual in his
daily life. The alien rulers, accordingly, showed interest in the
Chinese shamans as well as in the shamanistic aspects of Mahayana
Buddhism. Not infrequently competitions were arranged by the rulers
between priests of the different religious systems, and the rulers
often competed for the possession of monks who were particularly
skilled in magic or soothsaying.
But what was the position of the “official” religion? Were the
aliens to hold to their own worship of heaven, or were they to take
over the official Chinese cult, or what else? This problem posed itself
already in the fourth century, but it was left unsolved.
(D) The Toba empire in North China (A.D. 385-550)
1 The rise of the Toba State
On the collapse of Fu Chien's empire one more state made its
appearance; it has not yet been dealt with, although it was the most
important one. This was the empire of the Toba, in the north of the
present province of Shansi. Fu Chien had brought down the small old
Toba state in 376, but had not entirely destroyed it. Its territory was
partitioned, and part was placed under the administration of a Hun: in
view of the old rivalry between Toba and Huns, this seemed to Fu Chien
to be the best way of preventing any revival of the Toba. However, a
descendant of the old ruling family of the Toba succeeded, with the aid
of related families, in regaining power and forming a small new
kingdom. Very soon many tribes which still lived in north China and
which had not been broken up into military units, joined him. Of these
there were ultimately 119, including many Hun tribes from Shansi and
also many Hsien-pi tribes. Thus the question who the Toba were is not
easy to answer. The leading tribe itself had migrated southward in the
third century from the frontier territory between northern Mongolia and
northern Manchuria. After this migration the first Toba state, the
so-called Tai state, was formed (338-376); not much is known about it.
The tribes that, from 385 after the break-up of the Tibetan empire,
grouped themselves round this ruling tribe, were both Turkish and
Mongol; but from the culture and language of the Toba we think it must
be inferred that the ruling tribe itself as well as the majority of the
other tribes were Turkish; in any case, the Turkish element seems to
have been stronger than the Mongolian.
Thus the new Toba kingdom was a tribal state, not a military state.
But the tribes were no longer the same as in the time of Liu Yuean a
hundred years earlier. Their total population must have been quite
small; we must assume that they were but the remains of 119 tribes
rather than 119 full-sized tribes. Only part of them were still living
the old nomad life; others had become used to living alongside Chinese
peasants and had assumed leadership among the peasants. These Toba now
faced a difficult situation. The country was arid and mountainous and
did not yield much agricultural produce. For the many people who had
come into the Toba state from all parts of the former empire of Fu
Chien, to say nothing of the needs of a capital and a court which since
the time of Liu Yuean had been regarded as the indispensable entourage
of a ruler who claimed imperial rank, the local production of the
Chinese peasants was not enough. All the government officials, who were
Chinese, and all the slaves and eunuchs needed grain to eat. Attempts
were made to settle more Chinese peasants round the new capital, but
without success; something had to be done. It appeared necessary to
embark on a campaign to conquer the fertile plain of eastern China. In
the course of a number of battles the Hsien-pi of the “Later Yen” were
annihilated and eastern China conquered (409).
Now a new question arose: what should be done with all those people?
Nomads used to enslave their prisoners and use them for watching their
flocks. Some tribal chieftains had adopted the practice of establishing
captives on their tribal territory as peasants. There was an
opportunity now to subject the millions of Chinese captives to
servitude to the various tribal chieftains in the usual way. But those
captives who were peasants could not be taken away from their fields
without robbing the country of its food; therefore it would have been
necessary to spread the tribes over the whole of eastern China, and
this would have added immensely to the strength of the various tribes
and would have greatly weakened the central power. Furthermore almost
all Chinese officials at the court had come originally from the
territories just conquered. They had come from there about a hundred
years earlier and still had all their relatives in the east. If the
eastern territories had been placed under the rule of separate tribes,
and the tribes had been distributed in this way, the gentry in those
territories would have been destroyed and reduced to the position of
enslaved peasants. The Chinese officials accordingly persuaded the Toba
emperor not to place the new territories under the tribes, but to leave
them to be administered by officials of the central administration.
These officials must have a firm footing in their territory, for only
they could extract from the peasants the grain required for the support
of the capital. Consequently the Toba government did not enslave the
Chinese in the eastern territory, but made the local gentry into
government officials, instructing them to collect as much grain as
possible for the capital. This Chinese local gentry worked in close
collaboration with the Chinese officials at court, a fact which
determined the whole fate of the Toba empire.
The Hsien-pi of the newly conquered east no longer belonged to any
tribe, but only to military units. They were transferred as soldiers to
the Toba court and placed directly under the government, which was thus
notably strengthened, especially as the millions of peasants under
their Chinese officials were also directly responsible to the central
administration. The government now proceeded to convert also its own
Toba tribes into military formations. The tribal men of noble rank were
brought to the court as military officers, and so were separated from
the common tribesmen and the slaves who had to remain with the herds.
This change, which robbed the tribes of all means of independent
action, was not carried out without bloodshed. There were revolts of
tribal chieftains which were ruthlessly suppressed. The central
government had triumphed, but it realized that more reliance could be
placed on Chinese than on its own people, who were used to
independence. Thus the Toba were glad to employ more and more Chinese,
and the Chinese pressed more and more into the administration. In this
process the differing social organizations of Toba and Chinese played
an important part. The Chinese have patriarchal families with often
hundreds of members. When a member of a family obtains a good position,
he is obliged to make provision for the other members of his family and
to secure good positions for them too; and not only the members of his
own family but those of allied families and of families related to it
by marriage. In contrast the Toba had a patriarchal nuclear family
system; as nomad warriors with no fixed abode, they were unable to form
extended family groups. Among them the individual was much more
independent; each one tried to do his best for himself. No Toba thought
of collecting a large clique around himself; everybody should be the
artificer of his own fortune. Thus, when a Chinese obtained an official
post, he was followed by countless others; but when a Toba had a
position he remained alone, and so the sinification of the Toba empire
went on incessantly.
2 The Hun kingdom of the Hsia (407-431)
At the rebuilding of the Toba empire, however, a good many Hun
tribes withdrew westward into the Ordos region beyond the reach of the
Toba, and there they formed the Hun “Hsia” kingdom. Its ruler, Ho-lien
P'o-p'o, belonged to the family of Mao Tun and originally, like Liu
Yuean, bore the sinified family name Liu; but he altered this to a Hun
name, taking the family name of Ho-lien. This one fact alone
demonstrates that the Hsia rejected Chinese culture and were
nationalistic Hun. Thus there were now two realms in North China, one
undergoing progressive sinification, the other falling back to the old
traditions of the Huns.
3 Rise of the Toba to a great Power
The present province of Szechwan, in the west, had belonged to Fu
Chien's empire. At the break-up of the Tibetan state that province
passed to the southern Chinese empire and gave the southern Chinese
access, though it was very difficult access, to the caravan route
leading to Turkestan. The small states in Kansu, which dominated the
route, now passed on the traffic along two routes, one northward to the
Toba and the other alien states in north China, the other through
north-west Szechwan to south China. In this way the Kansu states were
strengthened both economically and politically, for they were able to
direct the commerce either to the northern states or to south China as
suited them. When the South Chinese saw the break-up of Fu Chien's
empire into numberless fragments, Liu Yue, who was then all-powerful at
the South Chinese court, made an attempt to conquer the whole of
western China. A great army was sent from South China into the province
of Shensi, where the Tibetan empire of the “Later Ch'in” was situated.
The Ch'in appealed to the Toba for help, but the Toba were themselves
too hotly engaged to be able to spare troops. They also considered that
South China would be unable to maintain these conquests, and that they
themselves would find them later an easy prey. Thus in 417 the state of
“Later Ch'in” received a mortal blow from the South Chinese army. Large
numbers of the upper class fled to the Toba. As had been foreseen, the
South Chinese were unable to maintain their hold over the conquered
territory, and it was annexed with ease by the Hun Ho-lien P'o-p'o. But
why not by the Toba?
Towards the end of the fourth century, vestiges of Hun, Hsien-pi,
and other tribes had united in Mongolia to form the new people of the
Juan-juan (also called Ju-juan or Jou-jan). Scholars disagree as to
whether the Juan-juan were Turks or Mongols; European investigators
believe them to have been identical with the Avars who appeared in the
Near East in 558 and later in Europe, and are inclined, on the strength
of a few vestiges of their language, to regard them as Mongols.
Investigations concerning the various tribes, however, show that among
the Juan-juan there were both Mongol and Turkish tribes, and that the
question cannot be decided in favour of either group. Some of the
tribes belonging to the Juan-juan had formerly lived in China. Others
had lived farther north or west and came into the history of the Far
East now for the first time.
This Juan-juan people threatened the Toba in the rear, from the
north. It made raids into the Toba empire for the same reasons for
which the Huns in the past had raided agrarian China; for agriculture
had made considerable progress in the Toba empire. Consequently, before
the Toba could attempt to expand southward, the Juan-juan peril must be
removed. This was done in the end, after a long series of hard and not
always successful struggles. That was why the Toba had played no part
in the fighting against South China, and had been unable to take
immediate advantage of that fighting.
After 429 the Juan-juan peril no longer existed, and in the years
that followed the whole of the small states of the west were destroyed,
one after another, by the Toba—the “Hsia kingdom” in 431, bringing
down with it the “Western Ch'in", and the “Northern Liang” in 439. The
non-Chinese elements of the population of those countries were moved
northward and served the Toba as soldiers; the Chinese also, especially
the remains of the Kansu “Western Liang” state (conquered in 420), were
enslaved, and some of them transferred to the north. Here again,
however, the influence of the Chinese gentry made itself felt after a
short time. As we know, the Chinese of “Western Liang” in Kansu had
originally migrated there from eastern China. Their eastern relatives
who had come under Toba rule through the conquest of eastern China and
who through their family connections with Chinese officials of the Toba
empire had found safety, brought their influence to bear on behalf of
the Chinese of Kansu, so that several families regained office and
social standing.
[Illustration: Map 4: The Toba empire (about A.D. 500)]
Their expansion into Kansu gave the Toba control of the commerce
with Turkestan, and there are many mentions of tribute missions to the
Toba court in the years that followed, some even from India. The Toba
also spread in the east. And finally there was fighting with South
China (430-431), which brought to the Toba empire a large part of the
province of Honan with the old capital, Loyang. Thus about 440 the Toba
must be described as the most powerful state in the Far East, ruling
the whole of North China.
4 Economic and social conditions
The internal changes of which there had only been indications in the
first period of the Toba empire now proceeded at an accelerated pace.
There were many different factors at work. The whole of the civil
administration had gradually passed into Chinese hands, the Toba
retaining only the military administration. But the wars in the south
called for the services of specialists in fortification and in infantry
warfare, who were only to be found among the Chinese. The growing
influence of the Chinese was further promoted by the fact that many
Toba families were exterminated in the revolts of the tribal
chieftains, and others were wiped out in the many battles. Thus the
Toba lost ground also in the military administration.
The wars down to A.D. 440 had been large-scale wars of conquest,
lightning campaigns that had brought in a great deal of booty. With
their loot the Toba developed great magnificence and luxury. The
campaigns that followed were hard and long-drawn-out struggles,
especially against South China, where there was no booty, because the
enemy retired so slowly that they could take everything with them. The
Toba therefore began to be impoverished, because plunder was the main
source of their wealth. In addition to this, their herds gradually
deteriorated, for less and less use was made of them; for instance,
horses were little required for the campaign against South China, and
there was next to no fighting in the north. In contrast with the
impoverishment of the Toba, the Chinese gentry grew not only more
powerful but more wealthy.
The Toba seem to have tried to prevent this development by
introducing the famous “land equalization system” (chuen-t'ien),
one of their most important innovations. The direct purposes of this
measure were to resettle uprooted farm population; to prevent further
migrations of farmers; and to raise production and taxes. The founder
of this system was Li An-shih, member of a Toba family and later
husband of an imperial princess. The plan was basically accepted in
477, put into action in 485, and remained the land law until c.
750. Every man and every woman had a right to receive a certain amount
of land for lifetime. After their death, the land was redistributed. In
addition to this “personal land” there was so-called “mulberry land” on
which farmers could plant mulberries for silk production; but they also
could plant other crops under the trees. This land could be inherited
from father to son and was not redistributed. Incidentally we know many
similar regulations for trees in the Near East and Central Asia. As the
tax was levied upon the personal land in form of grain, and on the tree
land in form of silk, this regulation stimulated the cultivation of
diversified crops on the tree land which then was not taxable. The
basic idea behind this law was, that all land belonged to the state, a
concept for which the Toba could point to the ancient Chou but which
also fitted well for a dynasty of conquest. The new “chuen-t'ien
“ system required a complete land and population survey which was done
in the next years. We know from much later census fragments that the
government tried to enforce this equalization law, but did not always
succeed; we read statements such as “X has so and so much land; he has
a claim on so and so much land and, therefore, has to get so and so
much”; but there are no records that X ever received the land due to
him.
One consequence of the new land law was a legal fixation of the
social classes. Already during Han time (and perhaps even earlier) a
distinction had been made between “free burghers” (liang-min)
and “commoners” (ch'ien-min). This distinction had continued as
informal tradition until, now, it became a legal concept. Only
“burghers", i.e. gentry and free farmers, were real citizens with all
rights of a free man. The “commoners” were completely or partly unfree
and fell under several heads. Ranking as the lowest class were the real
slaves (nu), divided into state and private slaves. By law,
slaves were regarded as pieces of property, not as members of human
society. They were, however, forced to marry and thus, as a class, were
probably reproducing at a rate similar to that of the normal
population, while slaves in Europe reproduced at a lower rate than the
population. The next higher class were serfs (fan-hu),
hereditary state servants, usually descendants of state slaves. They
were obliged to work three months during the year for the state and
were paid for this service. They were not registered in their place of
residence but under the control of the Ministry of Agriculture which
distributed them to other offices, but did not use them for farm work.
Similar in status to them were the private bondsmen (pu-ch'ue),
hereditarily attached to gentry families. These serfs received only 50
per cent of the land which a free burgher received under the land law.
Higher than these were the service families (tsa-hu), who were
registered in their place of residence, but had to perform certain
services; here we find “tomb families” who cared for the imperial
tombs, “shepherd families", postal families, kiln families, soothsayer
families, medical families, and musician families. Each of these
categories of commoners had its own laws; each had to marry within the
category. No intermarriage or adoption was allowed. It is interesting
to observe that a similar fixation of the social status of citizens
occurred in the Roman Empire from c. A.D. 300 on.
Thus in the years between 440 and 490 there were great changes not
only in the economic but in the social sphere. The Toba declined in
number and influence. Many of them married into rich families of the
Chinese gentry and regarded themselves as no longer belonging to the
Toba. In the course of time the court was completely sinified.
The Chinese at the court now formed the leading element, and they
tried to persuade the emperor to claim dominion over all China, at
least in theory, by installing his capital in Loyang, the old centre of
China. This transfer had the advantage for them personally that the
territories in which their properties were situated were close to that
capital, so that the grain they produced found a ready market. And it
was indeed no longer possible to rule the great Toba empire, now
covering the whole of North China from North Shansi. The administrative
staff was so great that the transport system was no longer able to
bring in sufficient food. For the present capital did not lie on a
navigable river, and all the grain had to be carted, an expensive and
unsafe mode of transport. Ultimately, in 493-4, the Chinese gentry
officials secured the transfer of the capital to Loyang. In the years
490 to 499 the Toba emperor Wen Ti (471-499) took further decisive
steps required by the stage reached in internal development. All aliens
were prohibited from using their own language in public life. Chinese
became the official language. Chinese clothing and customs also became
general. The system of administration which had largely followed a
pattern developed by the Wei dynasty in the early third century, was
changed and took a form which became the model for the T'ang dynasty in
the seventh century. It is important to note that in this period, for
the first time, an office for religious affairs was created which dealt
mainly with Buddhistic monasteries. While after the Toba period such an
office for religious affairs disappeared again, this idea was taken up
later by Japan when Japan accepted a Chinese-type of administration.
[Illustration: 6 Sun Ch'uean, ruler of Wu. From a painting by Yen
Li-pen (c. 640-680).]
[Illustration: 7 General view of the Buddhist cave-temples of
Yuen-kang. In the foreground, the present village; in the background,
the rampart. Photo H. Hammer-Morrisson.]
Owing to his bringing up, the emperor no longer regarded himself as
Toba but as Chinese; he adopted the Chinese culture, acting as he was
bound to do if he meant to be no longer an alien ruler in North China.
Already he regarded himself as emperor of all China, so that the South
Chinese empire was looked upon as a rebel state that had to be
conquered. While, however, he succeeded in everything else, the
campaign against the south failed except for some local successes.
The transfer of the capital to Loyang was a blow to the Toba nobles.
Their herds became valueless, for animal products could not be carried
over the long distance to the new capital. In Loyang the Toba nobles
found themselves parted from their tribes, living in an unaccustomed
climate and with nothing to do, for all important posts were occupied
by Chinese. The government refused to allow them to return to the
north. Those who did not become Chinese by finding their way into
Chinese families grew visibly poorer and poorer.
5 Victory and retreat of Buddhism
What we said in regard to the religious position of the other alien
peoples applied also to the Toba. As soon, however, as their empire
grew, they, too, needed an “official” religion of their own. For a few
years they had continued their old sacrifices to Heaven; then another
course opened to them. The Toba, together with many Chinese living in
the Toba empire, were all captured by Buddhism, and especially by its
shamanist element. One element in their preference of Buddhism was
certainly the fact that Buddhism accepted all foreigners alike—both
the Toba and the Chinese were “foreign” converts to an essentially
Indian religion; whereas the Confucianist Chinese always made the
non-Chinese feel that in spite of all their attempts they were still
“barbarians” and that only real Chinese could be real Confucianists.
Secondly, it can be assumed that the Toba rulers by fostering
Buddhism intended to break the power of the Chinese gentry. A few
centuries later, Buddhism was accepted by the Tibetan kings to break
the power of the native nobility, by the Japanese to break the power of
a federation of noble clans, and still later by the Burmese kings for
the same reason. The acceptance of Buddhism by rulers in the Far East
always meant also an attempt to create a more autocratic, absolutistic
regime. Mahayana Buddhism, as an ideal, desired a society without
clear-cut classes under one enlightened ruler; in such a society all
believers could strive to attain the ultimate goal of salvation.
Throughout the early period of Buddhism in the Far East, the
question had been discussed what should be the relations between the
Buddhist monks and the emperor, whether they were subject to him or
not. This was connected, of course, with the fact that to the early
fourth century the Buddhist monks were foreigners who, in the view
prevalent in the Far East, owed only a limited allegiance to the ruler
of the land. The Buddhist monks at the Toba court now submitted to the
emperor, regarding him as a reincarnation of Buddha. Thus the emperor
became protector of Buddhism and a sort of god. This combination was a
good substitute for the old Chinese theory that the emperor was the Son
of Heaven; it increased the prestige and the splendour of the dynasty.
At the same time the old shamanism was legitimized under a Buddhist
reinterpretation. Thus Buddhism became a sort of official religion. The
emperor appointed a Buddhist monk as head of the Buddhist state church,
and through this “Pope” he conveyed endowments on a large scale to the
church. T'an-yao, head of the state church since 460, induced the state
to attach state slaves, i.e. enslaved family members of criminals, and
their families to state temples. They were supposed to work on temple
land and to produce for the upkeep of the temples and monasteries.
Thus, the institution of “temple slaves” was created, an institution
which existed in South Asia and Burma for a long time, and which
greatly strengthened the economic position of Buddhism.
Like all Turkish peoples, the Toba possessed a myth according to
which their ancestors came into the world from a sacred grotto. The
Buddhists took advantage of this conception to construct, with money
from the emperor, the vast and famous cave-temple of Yuen-kang, in
northern Shansi. If we come from the bare plains into the green river
valley, we may see to this day hundreds of caves cut out of the steep
cliffs of the river bank. Here monks lived in their cells, worshipping
the deities of whom they had thousands of busts and reliefs sculptured
in stone, some of more than life-size, some diminutive. The majestic
impression made today by the figures does not correspond to their
original effect, for they were covered with a layer of coloured stucco.
We know only few names of the artists and craftsmen who made these
objects. Probably some at least were foreigners from Turkestan, for in
spite of the predominantly Chinese character of these sculptures, some
of them are reminiscent of works in Turkestan and even in the Near
East. In the past the influences of the Near East on the Far
East—influences traced back in the last resort to Greece—were greatly
exaggerated; it was believed that Greek art, carried through
Alexander's campaign as far as the present Afghanistan, degenerated
there in the hands of Indian imitators (the so-called Gandhara art) and
ultimately passed on in more and more distorted forms through Turkestan
to China. Actually, however, some eight hundred years lay between
Alexander's campaign and the Toba period sculptures at Yuen-kang and,
owing to the different cultural development, the contents of the Greek
and the Toba-period art were entirely different. We may say, therefore,
that suggestions came from the centre of the Greco-Bactrian culture (in
the present Afghanistan) and were worked out by the Toba artists; old
forms were filled with a new content, and the elements in the reliefs
of Yuen-kang that seem to us to be non-Chinese were the result of this
synthesis of Western inspiration and Turkish initiative. It is
interesting to observe that all steppe rulers showed special interest
in sculpture and, as a rule, in architecture; after the Toba period,
sculpture flourished in China in the T'ang period, the period of strong
cultural influence from Turkish peoples, and there was a further
advance of sculpture and of the cave-dwellers' worship in the period of
the “Five Dynasties” (906-960; three of these dynasties were Turkish)
and in the Mongol period.
But not all Buddhists joined the “Church", just as not all Taoists
had joined the Church of Chang Ling's Taoism. Some Buddhists remained
in the small towns and villages and suffered oppression from the
central Church. These village Buddhist monks soon became instigators of
a considerable series of attempts at revolution. Their Buddhism was of
the so-called “Maitreya school", which promised the appearance on earth
of a new Buddha who would do away with all suffering and introduce a
Golden Age. The Chinese peasantry, exploited by the gentry, came to the
support of these monks whose Messianism gave the poor a hope in this
world. The nomad tribes also, abandoned by their nobles in the capital
and wandering in poverty with their now worthless herds, joined these
monks. We know of many revolts of Hun and Toba tribes in this period,
revolts that had a religious appearance but in reality were simply the
result of the extreme impoverishment of these remaining tribes.
In addition to these conflicts between state and popular Buddhism,
clashes between Buddhists and representatives of organized Taoism
occurred. Such fights, however, reflected more the power struggle
between cliques than between religious groups. The most famous incident
was the action against the Buddhists in 446 which brought destruction
to many temples and monasteries and death to many monks. Here, a mighty
Chinese gentry faction under the leadership of the Ts'ui family had
united with the Taoist leader K'ou Ch'ien-chih against another faction
under the leadership of the crown prince.
With the growing influence of the Chinese gentry, however,
Confucianism gained ground again, until with the transfer of the
capital to Loyang it gained a complete victory, taking the place of
Buddhism and becoming once more as in the past the official religion of
the state. This process shows us once more how closely the social order
of the gentry was associated with Confucianism.
(E) Succession States of the Toba (A.D. 550-580): Northern Ch'i
dynasty, Northern Chou dynasty
1 Reasons for the splitting of the Toba empire
Events now pursued their logical course. The contrast between the
central power, now become entirely Chinese, and the remains of the
tribes who were with their herds mainly in Shansi and the Ordos region
and were hopelessly impoverished, grew more and more acute. From 530
onward the risings became more and more formidable. A few Toba who
still remained with their old tribes placed themselves at the head of
the rebels and conquered not only the whole of Shansi but also the
capital, where there was a great massacre of Chinese and pro-Chinese
Toba. The rebels were driven back; in this a man of the Kao family
distinguished himself, and all the Chinese and pro-Chinese gathered
round him. The Kao family, which may have been originally a Hsien-pi
family, had its estates in eastern China and so was closely associated
with the eastern Chinese gentry, who were the actual rulers of the Toba
State. In 534 this group took the impotent emperor of their own
creation to the city of Yeh in the east, where he reigned de jure
for a further sixteen years. Then he was deposed, and Kao Yang made
himself the first emperor of the Northern Ch'i dynasty (550-577).
The national Toba group, on the other hand, found another man of the
imperial family and established him in the west. After a short time
this puppet was removed from the throne and a man of the Yue-wen family
made himself emperor, founding the “Northern Chou dynasty” (557-580).
The Hsien-pi family of Yue-wen was a branch of the Hsien-pi, but was
closely connected with the Huns and probably of Turkish origin. All the
still existing remains of Toba tribes who had eluded sinification moved
into this western empire.
The splitting of the Toba empire into these two separate realms was
the result of the policy embarked on at the foundation of the empire.
Once the tribal chieftains and nobles had been separated from their
tribes and organized militarily, it was inevitable that the two
elements should have different social destinies. The nobles could not
hold their own against the Chinese; if they were not actually
eliminated in one way or another, they disappeared into Chinese
families. The rest, the people of the tribe, became destitute and were
driven to revolt. The northern peoples had been unable to perpetuate
either their tribal or their military organization, and the Toba had
been equally unsuccessful in their attempt to perpetuate the two forms
of organization alongside each other.
These social processes are of particular importance because the
ethnical disappearance of the northern peoples in China had nothing to
do with any racial inferiority or with any particular power of
assimilation; it was a natural process resulting from the different
economic, social, and cultural organizations of the northern peoples
and the Chinese.
2 Appearance of the (Goek) Turks
The Toba had liberated themselves early in the fifth century from
the Juan-juan peril. None of the fighting that followed was of any
great importance. The Toba resorted to the old means of defence against
nomads—they built great walls. Apart from that, after their move
southward to Loyang, their new capital, they were no longer greatly
interested in their northern territories. When the Toba empire split
into the Ch'i and the Northern Chou, the remaining Juan-juan entered
into treaties first with one realm and then with the other: each realm
wanted to secure the help of the Juan-juan against the other.
Meanwhile there came unexpectedly to the fore in the north a people
grouped round a nucleus tribe of Huns, the tribal union of the
“T'u-chueeh", that is to say the Goek Turks, who began to pursue a
policy of their own under their khan. In 546 they sent a mission to the
western empire, then in the making, of the Northern Chou, and created
the first bonds with it, following which the Northern Chou became
allies of the Turks. The eastern empire, Ch'i, accordingly made terms
with the Juan-juan, but in 552 the latter suffered a crushing defeat at
the hands of the Turks, their former vassals. The remains of the
Juan-juan either fled to the Ch'i state or went reluctantly into the
land of the Chou. Soon there was friction between the Juan-juan and the
Ch'i, and in 555 the Juan-juan in that state were annihilated. In
response to pressure from the Turks, the Juan-juan in the western
empire of the Northern Chou were delivered up to them and killed in the
same year. The Juan-juan then disappeared from the history of the Far
East. They broke up into their several tribes, some of which were
admitted into the Turks' tribal league. A few years later the Turks
also annihilated the Ephtalites, who had been allied with the
Juan-juan; this made the Turks the dominant power in Central Asia. The
Ephtalites (Yeh-ta, Haytal) were a mixed group which contained elements
of the old Yueeh-chih and spoke an Indo-European language. Some
scholars regard them as a branch of the Tocharians of Central Asia. One
menace to the northern states of China had disappeared—that of the
Juan-juan. Their place was taken by a much more dangerous power, the
Turks.
3 The Northern Ch'i dynasty; the Northern Chou dynasty
In consequence of this development the main task of the Northern
Chou state consisted in the attempt to come to some settlement with its
powerful Turkish neighbours, and meanwhile to gain what it could from
shrewd negotiations with its other neighbours. By means of intrigues
and diplomacy it intervened with some success in the struggles in South
China. One of the pretenders to the throne was given protection; he was
installed in the present Hankow as a quasi-feudal lord depending on
Chou, and there he founded the “Later Liang dynasty” (555-587). In this
way Chou had brought the bulk of South China under its control without
itself making any real contribution to that result.
Unlike the Chinese state of Ch'i, Chou followed the old Toba
tradition. Old customs were revived, such as the old sacrifice to
Heaven and the lifting of the emperor on to a carpet at his accession
to the throne; family names that had been sinified were turned into
Toba names again, and even Chinese were given Toba names; but in spite
of this the inner cohesion had been destroyed. After two centuries it
was no longer possible to go back to the old nomad, tribal life. There
were also too many Chinese in the country, with whom close bonds had
been forged which, in spite of all attempts, could not be broken.
Consequently there was no choice but to organize a state essentially
similar to that of the great Toba empire.
There is just as little of importance that can be said of the
internal politics of the Ch'i dynasty. The rulers of that dynasty were
thoroughly repulsive figures, with no positive achievements of any sort
to their credit. Confucianism had been restored in accordance with the
Chinese character of the state. It was a bad time for Buddhists, and
especially for the followers of the popularized Taoism. In spite of
this, about A.D. 555 great new Buddhist cave-temples were created in
Lung-men, near Loyang, in imitation of the famous temples of Yuen-kang.
The fighting with the western empire, the Northern Chou state, still
continued, and Ch'i was seldom successful. In 563 Chou made
preparations for a decisive blow against Ch'i, but suffered defeat
because the Turks, who had promised aid, gave none and shortly
afterwards began campaigns of their own against Ch'i. In 571 Ch'i had
some success in the west against Chou, but then it lost parts of its
territory to the South Chinese empire, and finally in 576-7 it was
defeated by Chou in a great counter-offensive. Thus for some three
years all North China was once more under a single rule, though of
nothing approaching the strength of the Toba at the height of their
power. For in all these campaigns the Turks had played an important
part, and at the end they annexed further territory in the north of
Ch'i, so that their power extended far into the east.
Meanwhile intrigue followed intrigue at the court of Chou; the
mutual assassinations within the ruling group were as incessant as in
the last years of the great Toba empire, until the real power passed
from the emperor and his Toba entourage to a Chinese family, the Yang.
Yang Chien's daughter was the wife of a Chou emperor; his son was
married to a girl of the Hun family Tu-ku; her sister was the wife of
the father of the Chou emperor. Amid this tangled relationship in the
imperial house it is not surprising that Yang Chien should attain great
power. The Tu-ku were a very old family of the Hun nobility; originally
the name belonged to the Hun house from which the shan-yue had
to be descended. This family still observed the traditions of the Hun
rulers, and relationship with it was regarded as an honour even by the
Chinese. Through their centuries of association with aristocratically
organized foreign peoples, some of the notions of nobility had taken
root among the Chinese gentry; to be related with old ruling houses was
a welcome means of evidencing or securing a position of special
distinction among the gentry. Yang Chien gained useful prestige from
his family connections. After the leading Chinese cliques had regained
predominance in the Chou empire, much as had happened before in the
Toba empire, Yang Chien's position was strong enough to enable him to
massacre the members of the imperial family and then, in 581, to
declare himself emperor. Thus began the Sui dynasty, the first dynasty
that was once more to rule all China.
But what had happened to the Toba? With the ending of the Chou
empire they disappeared for all time, just as the Juan-juan had done a
little earlier. So far as the tribes did not entirely disintegrate, the
people of the tribes seem during the last years of Toba and Chou to
have joined Turkish and other tribes. In any case, nothing more is
heard of them as a people, and they themselves lived on under the name
of the tribe that led the new tribal league.
Most of the Toba nobility, on the other hand, became Chinese. This
process can be closely followed in the Chinese annals. The tribes that
had disintegrated in the time of the Toba empire broke up into families
of which some adopted the name of the tribe as their family name, while
others chose Chinese family names. During the centuries that followed,
in some cases indeed down to modern times, these families continue to
appear, often playing an important part in Chinese history.
(F) The Southern Empires
1 Economic and social situation in the south
During the 260 years of alien rule in North China, the picture of
South China also was full of change. When in 317 the Huns had destroyed
the Chinese Chin dynasty in the north, a Chin prince who normally would
not have become heir to the throne declared himself, under the name
Yuean Ti, the first emperor of the “Eastern Chin dynasty” (317-419).
The capital of this new southern empire adjoined the present Nanking.
Countless members of the Chinese gentry had fled from the Huns at that
time and had come into the southern empire. They had not done so out of
loyalty to the Chinese dynasty or out of national feeling, but because
they saw little prospect of attaining rank and influence at the courts
of the alien rulers, and because it was to be feared that the aliens
would turn the fields into pasturage, and also that they would make an
end of the economic and monetary system which the gentry had evolved
for their own benefit.
But the south was, of course, not uninhabited. There were already
two groups living there—the old autochthonous population, consisting
of Yao, Tai and Yueeh, and the earlier Chinese immigrants from the
north, who had mainly arrived in the time of the Three Kingdoms, at the
beginning of the third century A.D. The countless new immigrants now
came into sharp conflict with the old-established earlier immigrants.
Each group looked down on the other and abused it. The two immigrant
groups in particular not only spoke different dialects but had
developed differently in respect to manners and customs. A look for
example at Formosa in the years after 1948 will certainly help in an
understanding of this situation: analogous tensions developed between
the new refugees, the old Chinese immigrants, and the native Formosan
population. But let us return to the southern empires.
The two immigrant groups also differed economically and socially:
the old immigrants were firmly established on the large properties they
had acquired, and dominated their tenants, who were largely
autochthones; or they had engaged in large-scale commerce. In any case,
they possessed capital, and more capital than was usually possessed by
the gentry of the north. Some of the new immigrants, on the other hand,
were military people. They came with empty hands, and they had no land.
They hoped that the government would give them positions in the
military administration and so provide them with means; they tried to
gain possession of the government and to exclude the old settlers as
far as possible. The tension was increased by the effect of the influx
of Chinese in bringing more land into cultivation, thus producing a
boom period such as is produced by the opening up of colonial land.
Everyone was in a hurry to grab as much land as possible. There was yet
a further difference between the two groups of Chinese: the old
settlers had long lost touch with the remainder of their families in
the north. They had become South Chinese, and all their interests lay
in the south. The new immigrants had left part of their families in the
north under alien rule. Their interests still lay to some extent in the
north. They were working for the reconquest of the north by military
means; at times individuals or groups returned to the north, while
others persuaded the rest of their relatives to come south. It would be
wrong to suppose that there was no inter-communication between the two
parts into which China had fallen. As soon as the Chinese gentry were
able to regain any footing in the territories under alien rule, the
official relations, often those of belligerency, proceeded alongside
unofficial intercourse between individual families and family
groupings, and these latter were, as a rule, in no way belligerent.
The lower stratum in the south consisted mainly of the remains of
the original non-Chinese population, particularly in border and
southern territories which had been newly annexed from time to time. In
the centre of the southern state the way of life of the non-Chinese was
very quickly assimilated to that of the Chinese, so that the aborigines
were soon indistinguishable from Chinese. The remaining part of the
lower class consisted of impoverished Chinese peasants. This whole
lower section of the population rarely took any active and visible part
in politics, except at times in the form of great popular risings.
Until the third century, the south had been of no great economic
importance, in spite of the good climate and the extraordinary
fertility of the Yangtze valley. The country had been too thinly
settled, and the indigenous population had not become adapted to
organized trade. After the move southward of the Chin dynasty the many
immigrants had made the country of the lower Yangtze more thickly
populated, but not over-populated. The top-heavy court with more than
the necessary number of officials (because there was still hope for a
reconquest of the north which would mean many new jobs for
administrators) was a great consumer; prices went up and stimulated
local rice production. The estates of the southern gentry yielded more
than before, and naturally much more than the small properties of the
gentry in the north where, moreover, the climate is far less
favourable. Thus the southern landowners were able to acquire great
wealth, which ultimately made itself felt in the capital.
One very important development was characteristic in this period in
the south, although it also occurred in the north. Already in pre-Han
times, some rulers had gardens with fruit trees. The Han emperors had
large hunting parks which were systematically stocked with rare
animals; they also had gardens and hot-houses for the production of
vegetables for the court. These “gardens” (yuean) were often
called “manors” (pieh-yeh) and consisted of fruit plantations
with luxurious buildings. We hear soon of water-cooled houses for the
gentry, of artificial ponds for pleasure and fish breeding, artificial
water-courses, artificial mountains, bamboo groves, and parks with
parrots, ducks, and large animals. Here, the wealthy gentry of both
north and south, relaxed from government work, surrounded by their
friends and by women. These manors grew up in the hills, on the
“village commons” where formerly the villagers had collected their
firewood and had grazed their animals. Thus, the village commons begin
to disappear. The original farm land was taxed, because it produced one
of the two products subject to taxation, namely grain or mulberry
leaves for silk production. But the village common had been and
remained tax-free because it did not produce taxable things. While
land-holdings on the farmland were legally restricted in their size,
the “gardens” were unrestricted. Around A.D. 500 the ruler allowed high
officials to have manors of three hundred mou size, while in the north
a family consisting of husband and wife and children below fifteen
years of age were allowed a farm of sixty mou only; but we hear of
manors which were many times larger than the allowed size of three
hundred. These manors began to play an important economic role, too:
they were cultivated by tenants and produced fishes, vegetables, fruit
and bamboo for the market, thus they gave more income than ordinary
rice or wheat land.
With the creation of manors the total amount of land under
cultivation increased, though not the amount of grain-producing land.
We gain the impression that from c. the third century A.D. on to
the eleventh century the intensity of cultivation was generally lower
than in the period before.
The period from c. A.D. 300 on also seems to be the time of
the second change in Chinese dietary habits. The first change occurred
probably between 400 and 100 B.C. when the meat-eating Chinese reduced
their meat intake greatly, gave up eating beef and mutton and changed
over to some pork and dog meat. This first change was the result of
increase of population and decrease of available land for pasturage.
Cattle breeding in China was then reduced to the minimum of one cow or
water-buffalo per farm for ploughing. Wheat was the main staple for the
masses of the people. Between A.D. 300 and 600 rice became the main
staple in the southern states although, theoretically, wheat could have
been grown and some wheat probably was grown in the south. The vitamin
and protein deficiencies which this change from wheat to rice brought
forth, were made up by higher consumption of vegetables, especially
beans, and partially also by eating of fish and sea food. In the north,
rice became the staple food of the upper class, while wheat remained
the main food of the lower classes. However, new forms of preparation
of wheat, such as dumplings of different types, were introduced. The
foreign rulers consumed more meat and milk products. Chinese had given
up the use of milk products at the time of the first change, and took
to them to some extent only in periods of foreign rule.
2 Struggles between cliques under the Eastern Chin dynasty
(A.D. 317-419)
The officials immigrating from the north regarded the south as
colonial country, and so as more or less uncivilized. They went into
its provinces in order to get rich as quickly as possible, and they had
no desire to live there for long: they had the same dislike of a
provincial existence as had the families of the big landowners. Thus as
a rule the bulk of the families remained in the capital, close to the
court. Thither the products accumulated in the provinces were sent, and
they found a ready sale, as the capital was also a great and
long-established trading centre with a rich merchant class. Thus in the
capital there was every conceivable luxury and every refinement of
civilization. The people of the gentry class, who were maintained in
the capital by relatives serving in the provinces as governors or
senior officers, themselves held offices at court, though these gave
them little to do. They had time at their disposal, and made use of
it—in much worse intrigues than ever before, but also in music and
poetry and in the social life of the harems. There is no question at
all that the highest refinement of the civilization of the Far East
between the fourth and the sixth century was to be found in South
China, but the accompaniments of this over-refinement were terrible.
We cannot enter into all the intrigues recorded at this time. The
details are, indeed, historically unimportant. They were concerned only
with the affairs of the court and its entourage. Not a single ruler of
the Eastern Chin dynasty possessed personal or political qualities of
any importance. The rulers' power was extremely limited because, with
the exception of the founder of the state, Yuean Ti, who had come
rather earlier, they belonged to the group of the new immigrants, and
so had no firm footing and were therefore caught at once in the net of
the newly re-grouping gentry class.
The emperor Yuean Ti lived to see the first great rising. This
rising (under Wang Tun) started in the region of the present Hankow, a
region that today is one of the most important in China; it was already
a centre of special activity. To it lead all the trade routes from the
western provinces of Szechwan and Kweichow and from the central
provinces of Hupei, Hunan, and Kiangsi. Normally the traffic from those
provinces comes down the Yangtze, and thus in practice this region is
united with that of the lower Yangtze, the environment of Nanking, so
that Hankow might just as well have been the capital as Nanking. For
this reason, in the period with which we are now concerned the region
of the present Hankow was several times the place of origin of great
risings whose aim was to gain control of the whole of the southern
empire.
Wang Tun had grown rich and powerful in this region; he also had
near relatives at the imperial court; so he was able to march against
the capital. The emperor in his weakness was ready to abdicate but died
before that stage was reached. His son, however, defeated Wang Tun with
the aid of General Yue Liang (A.D. 323). Yue Liang was the empress's
brother; he, too, came from a northern family. Yuean Ti's successor
also died early, and the young son of Yue Liang's sister came to the
throne as Emperor Ch'eng (326-342); his mother ruled as regent, but Yue
Liang carried on the actual business of government. Against this clique
rose Su Chuen, another member of the northern gentry, who had made
himself leader of a bandit gang in A.D. 300 but had then been given a
military command by the dynasty. In 328 he captured the capital and
kidnapped the emperor, but then fell before the counterthrust of the
Yue Liang party. The domination of Yue Liang's clique continued after
the death of the twenty-one-years-old emperor. His twenty-year-old
brother was set in his place; he, too, died two years later, and his
two-year-old son became emperor (Mu Ti, 345-361).
Meanwhile this clique was reinforced by the very important Huan
family. This family came from the same city as the imperial house and
was a very old gentry family of that city. One of the family attained a
high post through personal friendship with Yue Liang: on his death his
son Huan Wen came into special prominence as military commander.
Huan Wen, like Wang Tun and others before him, tried to secure a
firm foundation for his power, once more in the west. In 347 he
reconquered Szechwan and deposed the local dynasty. Following this,
Huan Wen and the Yue family undertook several joint campaigns against
northern states—the first reaction of the south against the north,
which in the past had always been the aggressor. The first fighting
took place directly to the north, where the collapse of the “Later
Chao” seemed to make intervention easy. The main objective was the
regaining of the regions of eastern Honan, northern Anhui and Kiangsu,
in which were the family seats of Huan's and the emperor's families, as
well as that of the Hsieh family which also formed an important group
in the court clique. The purpose of the northern campaigns was not, of
course, merely to defend private interests of court cliques: the
northern frontier was the weak spot of the southern empire, for its
plains could easily be overrun. It was then observed that the new
“Earlier Ch'in” state was trying to spread from the north-west
eastwards into this plain, and Ch'in was attacked in an attempt to gain
a more favourable frontier territory. These expeditions brought no
important practical benefit to the south; and they were not embarked on
with full force, because there was only the one court clique at the
back of them, and that not whole-heartedly, since it was too much taken
up with the politics of the court.
Huan Wen's power steadily grew in the period that followed. He sent
his brothers and relatives to administer the regions along the upper
Yangtze; those fertile regions were the basis of his power. In 371 he
deposed the reigning emperor and appointed in his place a frail old
prince who died a year later, as required, and was replaced by a child.
The time had now come when Huan Wen might have ascended the throne
himself, but he died. None of his family could assemble as much power
as Huan Wen had done. The equality of strength of the Huan and the
Hsieh saved the dynasty for a time.
In 383 came the great assault of the Tibetan Fu Chien against the
south. As we know, the defence was carried out more by the methods of
diplomacy and intrigue than by military means, and it led to the
disaster in the north already described. The successes of the southern
state especially strengthened the Hsieh family, whose generals had come
to the fore. The emperor (Hsiao Wu Ti, 373-396), who had come to the
throne as a child, played no part in events at any time during his
reign. He occupied himself occasionally with Buddhism, and otherwise
only with women and wine. He was followed by his five-year-old son. At
this time there were some changes in the court clique. In the Huan
family Huan Hsuean, a son of Huan Wen, came especially into prominence.
He parted from the Hsieh family, which had been closest to the emperor,
and united with the Wang (the empress's) and Yin families. The Wang, an
old Shansi family, had already provided two empresses, and was
therefore strongly represented at court. The Yin had worked at first
with the Hsieh, especially as the two families came from the same
region, but afterwards the Yin went over to Huan Hsuean. At first this
new clique had success, but later one of its generals, Liu Lao-chih,
went over to the Hsieh clique, and its power declined. Wang Kung was
killed, and Yin Chung-k'an fell away from Huan Hsuean and was killed by
him in 399. Huan Hsuean himself, however, held his own in the regions
loyal to him. Liu Lao-chih had originally belonged to the Hsieh clique,
and his family came from a region not far from that of the Hsieh. He
was very ambitious, however, and always took the side which seemed most
to his own interest. For a time he joined Huan Hsuean; then he went
over to the Hsieh, and finally returned to Huan Hsuean in 402 when the
latter reached the height of his power. At that moment Liu Lao-chih was
responsible for the defence of the capital from Huan Hsuean, but
instead he passed over to him. Thus Huan Hsuean conquered the capital,
deposed the emperor, and began a dynasty of his own. Then came the
reaction, led by an earlier subordinate of Liu Lao-chih, Liu Yue. It
may be assumed that these two army commanders were in some way related,
though the two branches of their family must have been long separated.
Liu Yue had distinguished himself especially in the suppression of a
great popular rising which, around the year 400, had brought wide
stretches of Chinese territory under the rebels' power, beginning with
the southern coast. This rising was the first in the south. It was led
by members of a secret society which was a direct continuation of the
“Yellow Turbans” of the latter part of the second century A.D. and of
organized church-Taoism. The whole course of this rising of the
exploited and ill-treated lower classes was very similar to that of the
popular rising of the “Yellow Turbans”. The movement spread as far as
the neighbourhood of Canton, but in the end it was suppressed, mainly
by Liu Yue.
Through these achievements Liu Yue's military power and political
influence steadily increased; he became the exponent of all the cliques
working against the Huan clique. He arranged for his supporters to
dispose of Huan Hsuean's chief collaborators; and then, in 404, he
himself marched on the capital. Huan Hsuean had to flee, and in his
flight he was killed in the upper Yangtze region. The emperor was
restored to his throne, but he had as little to say as ever, for the
real power was Liu Yue's.
Before making himself emperor, Liu Yue began his great northern
campaign, aimed at the conquest of the whole of western China. The Toba
had promised to remain neutral, and in 415 he was able to conquer the
“Later Ch'in” in Shensi. The first aim of this campaign was to make
more accessible the trade routes to Central Asia, which up to now had
led through the difficult mountain passes of Szechwan; to this end
treaties of alliance had been concluded with the states in Kansu
against the “Later Ch'in”. In the second place, this war was intended
to increase Liu Yue's military strength to such an extent that the
imperial crown would be assured to him; and finally he hoped to cut the
claws of pro-Huan Hsuean elements in the “Later Ch'in” kingdom who, for
the sake of the link with Turkestan, had designs on Szechwan.
3 The Liu-Sung dynasty (A.D. 420-478) and the Southern
Ch'i dynasty (479-501)
After his successes in 416-17 in Shensi, Liu Yue returned to the
capital, and shortly after he lost the chief fruits of his victory to
Ho-lien P'o-p'o, the Hun ruler in the north, while Liu Yue himself was
occupied with the killing of the emperor (419) and the installation of
a puppet. In 420 the puppet had to abdicate and Liu Yue became emperor.
He called his dynasty the Sung dynasty, but to distinguish it from
another and more famous Sung dynasty of later time his dynasty is also
called the Liu-Sung dynasty.
The struggles and intrigues of cliques against each other continued
as before. We shall pass quickly over this period after a glance at the
nature of these internal struggles.
Part of the old imperial family and its following fled northward
from Liu Yue and surrendered to the Toba. There they agitated for a
campaign of vengeance against South China, and they were supported at
the court of the Toba by many families of the gentry with landed
interests in the south. Thus long-continued fighting started between
Sung and Toba, concerned mainly with the domains of the deposed
imperial family and its following. This fighting brought little success
to south China, and about 450 it produced among the Toba an economic
and social crisis that brought the wars to a temporary close. In this
pause the Sung turned to the extreme south, and tried to gain influence
there and in Annam. The merchant class and the gentry families of the
capital who were allied with it were those chiefly interested in this
expansion.
About 450 began the Toba policy of shifting the central government
to the region of the Yellow River, to Loyang; for this purpose the
frontier had to be pushed farther south. Their great campaign brought
the Toba in 450 down to the Yangtze. The Sung suffered a heavy defeat;
they had to pay tribute, and the Toba annexed parts of their northern
territory.
The Sung emperors who followed were as impotent as their
predecessors and personally much more repulsive. Nothing happened at
court but drinking, licentiousness, and continual murders.
From 460 onward there were a number of important risings of princes;
in some of them the Toba had a hand. They hoped by supporting one or
another of the pretenders to gain overlordship over the whole of the
southern empire. In these struggles in the south the Hsiao family,
thanks mainly to General Hsiao Tao-ch'eng, steadily gained in power,
especially as the family was united by marriage with the imperial
house. In 477 Hsiao Tao-ch'eng finally had the emperor killed by an
accomplice, the son of a shamaness; he set a boy on the throne and made
himself regent. Very soon after this the boy emperor and all the
members of the imperial family were murdered, and Hsiao Tao-ch'eng
created the “Southern Ch'i” dynasty (479-501). Once more the remaining
followers of the deposed dynasty fled northward to the Toba, and at
once fighting between Toba and the south began again.
This fighting ended with a victory for the Toba and with the final
establishment of the Toba in the new capital of Loyang. South China was
heavily defeated again and again, but never finally conquered. There
were intervals of peace. In the years between 480 and 490 there was
less disorder in the south, at all events in internal affairs. Princes
were more often appointed to governorships, and the influence of the
cliques was thus weakened. In spite of this, a stable regime was not
built up, and in 494 a prince rose against the youthful emperor. This
prince, with the help of his clique including the Ch'en family, which
later attained importance, won the day, murdered the emperor, and
became emperor himself. All that is recorded about him is that he
fought unsuccessfully against the Toba, and that he had the whole of
his own family killed out of fear that one of its members might act
exactly as he had done. After his death there were conflicts between
the emperor's few remaining relatives; in these the Toba again had a
hand. The victor was a person named Hsiao Yen; he removed the reigning
emperor in the usual way and made himself emperor. Although he belonged
to the imperial family, he altered the name of the dynasty, and reigned
from 502 as the first emperor of the “Liang dynasty”.
[Illustration: 8 Detail from the Buddhist cave-reliefs of Lung-men.
From a print in the author's possession.]
[Illustration: 9 Statue of Mi-lo (Maitreya, the next future Buddha),
in the 'Great Buddha Temple' at Chengting (Hopei). Photo H.
Hammer-Morrisson.]
4 The Liang dynasty (A.D. 502-556)
The fighting with the Toba continued until 515. As a rule the Toba
were the more successful, not at least through the aid of princes of
the deposed “Southern Ch'i dynasty” and their followers. Wars began
also in the west, where the Toba tried to cut off the access of the
Liang to the caravan routes to Turkestan. In 507, however, the Toba
suffered an important defeat. The southern states had tried at all
times to work with the Kansu states against the northern states; the
Toba now followed suit and allied themselves with a large group of
native chieftains of the south, whom they incited to move against the
Liang. This produced great native unrest, especially in the provinces
by the upper Yangtze. The natives, who were steadily pushed back by the
Chinese peasants, were reduced to migrating into the mountain country
or to working for the Chinese in semi-servile conditions; and they were
ready for revolt and very glad to work with the Toba. The result of
this unrest was not decisive, but it greatly reduced the strength of
the regions along the upper Yangtze. Thus the main strength of the
southern state was more than ever confined to the Nanking region.
The first emperor of the Liang dynasty, who assumed the name Wu Ti
(502-549), became well known in the Western world owing to his love of
literature and of Buddhism. After he had come to the throne with the
aid of his followers, he took no further interest in politics; he left
that to his court clique. From now on, however, the political
initiative really belonged to the north. At this time there began in
the Toba empire the risings of tribal leaders against the government
which we have fully described above. One of these leaders, Hou Ching,
who had become powerful as a military leader in the north, tried in 547
to conclude a private alliance with the Liang to strengthen his own
position. At the same time the ruler of the northern state of the
“Northern Ch'i", then in process of formation, himself wanted to
negotiate an alliance with the Liang, in order to be able to get rid of
Hou Ching. There was indecision in Liang. Hou Ching, who had been
getting into difficulties, now negotiated with a dissatisfied prince in
Liang, invaded the country in 548 with the prince's aid, captured the
capital in 549, and killed Emperor Wu. Hou Ching now staged the usual
spectacle: he put a puppet on the imperial throne, deposed him eighteen
months later and made himself emperor.
This man of the Toba on the throne of South China was unable,
however, to maintain his position; he had not sufficient backing. He
was at war with the new rulers in the northern empire, and his own
army, which was not very large, melted away; above all, he proceeded
with excessive harshness against the helpers who had gained access for
him to the Liang, and thereafter he failed to secure a following from
among the leading cliques at court. In 552 he was driven out by a
Chinese army led by one of the princes and was killed.
The new emperor had been a prince in the upper Yangtze region, and
his closest associates were engaged there. They did not want to move to
the distant capital, Nanking, because their private financial interests
would have suffered. The emperor therefore remained in the city now
called Hankow. He left the eastern territory in the hands of two
powerful generals, one of whom belonged to the Ch'en family, which he
no longer had the strength to remove. In this situation the generals in
the east made themselves independent, and this naturally produced
tension at once between the east and the west of the Liang empire; this
tension was now exploited by the leaders of the Chou state then in the
making in the north. On the invitation of a clique in the south and
with its support, the Chou invaded the present province of Hupei and in
555 captured the Liang emperor's capital. They were now able to achieve
their old ambition: a prince of the Chou dynasty was installed as a
feudatory of the north, reigning until 587 in the present Hankow. He
was permitted to call his quasi-feudal territory a kingdom and his
dynasty, as we know already, the “Later Liang dynasty”.
5 The Ch'en dynasty (A.D. 557-588) and its ending by the Sui
The more important of the independent generals in the east, Ch'en
Pa-hsien, installed a shadow emperor, forced him to abdicate, and made
himself emperor. The Ch'en dynasty which thus began was even feebler
than the preceding dynasties. Its territory was confined to the lower
Yangtze valley. Once more cliques and rival pretenders were at work and
prevented any sort of constructive home policy. Abroad, certain
advantages were gained in north China over the Northern Ch'i dynasty,
but none of any great importance.
Meanwhile in the north Yang Chien had brought into power the Chinese
Sui dynasty. It began by liquidating the quasi-feudal state of the
“Later Liang”. Then followed, in 588-9, the conquest of the Ch'en
empire, almost without any serious resistance. This brought all China
once more under united rule, and a period of 360 years of division was
ended.
6 Cultural achievements of the south
For nearly three hundred years the southern empire had witnessed
unceasing struggles between important cliques, making impossible any
peaceful development within the country. Culturally, however, the
period was rich in achievement. The court and the palaces of wealthy
members of the gentry attracted scholars and poets, and the gentry
themselves had time for artistic occupations. A large number of the
best-known Chinese poets appeared in this period, and their works
plainly reflect the conditions of that time: they are poems for the
small circle of scholars among the gentry and for cultured patrons,
spiced with quotations and allusions, elaborate in metre and
construction, masterpieces of aesthetic sensitivity—but unintelligible
except to highly educated members of the aristocracy. The works were of
the most artificial type, far removed from all natural feeling.
Music, too, was never so assiduously cultivated as at this time. But
the old Chinese music disappeared in the south as in the north, where
dancing troupes and women musicians in the Sogdian commercial colonies
of the province of Kansu established the music of western Turkestan.
Here in the south, native courtesans brought the aboriginal,
non-Chinese music to the court; Chinese poets wrote songs in Chinese
for this music, and so the old Chinese music became unfashionable and
was forgotten. The upper class, the gentry, bought these girls, often
in large numbers, and organized them in troupes of singers and dancers,
who had to appear on festal occasions and even at the court. For
merchants and other people who lacked full social recognition there
were brothels, a quite natural feature wherever there were considerable
commercial colonies or collections of merchants, including the capital
of the southern empire.
In their ideology, as will be remembered, the Chinese gentry were
always in favour of Confucianism. Here in the south, however, the
association with Confucianism was less serious, the southern gentry,
with their relations with the merchant class, having acquired the
character of “colonial” gentry. They were brought up as Confucians, but
were interested in all sorts of different religious movements, and
especially in Buddhism. A different type of Buddhism from that in the
north had spread over most of the south, a meditative Buddhism that was
very close ideologically to the original Taoism, and so fulfilled the
same social functions as Taoism. Those who found the official life with
its intrigues repulsive, occupied themselves with meditative Buddhism.
The monks told of the sad fate of the wicked in the life to come, and
industriously filled the gentry with apprehension, so that they tried
to make up for their evil deeds by rich gifts to the monasteries. Many
emperors in this period, especially Wu Ti of the Liang dynasty,
inclined to Buddhism. Wu Ti turned to it especially in his old age,
when he was shut out entirely from the tasks of a ruler and was no
longer satisfied with the usual pleasures of the court. Several times
he instituted Buddhist ceremonies of purification on a large scale in
the hope of so securing forgiveness for the many murders he had
committed.
Genuine Taoism also came to the fore again, and with it the popular
religion with its magic, now amplified with the many local deities that
had been taken over from the indigenous population of the south. For a
time it became the fashion at court to pass the time in learned
discussions between Confucians, Buddhists, and Taoists, which were
quite similar to the debates between learned men centuries earlier at
the wealthy little Indian courts. For the court clique this was more a
matter of pastime than of religious controversy. It seems thoroughly in
harmony with the political events that here, for the first time in the
history of Chinese philosophy, materialist currents made their
appearance, running parallel with Machiavellian theories of power for
the benefit of the wealthiest of the gentry.
Principal dynasties of North and South China
North and South
Western Chin dynasty (A.D. 265-317)
North South
1. Earlier Chao (Hsiung-nu) 304-329 1. Eastern Chin (Chinese)
317-419
2. Later Chao (Hsiung-nu) 328-352
3. Earlier Ch'in (Tibetans) 351-394
4. Later Ch'in (Tibetans) 384-417
5. Western Ch'in (Hsiung-nu)385-431
6. Earlier Yen (Hsien-pi) 352-370
7. Later Yen (Hsien-pi) 384-409
8. Western Yen (Hsien-pi) 384-395
9. Southern Yen (Hsien-pi) 398-410
10. Northern Yen (Hsien-pi) 409-436
11. Tai (Toba) 338-376
12. Earlier Liang (Chinese) 313-376
13. Northern Liang (Hsiung-nu)
397-439
14. Western Liang (Chinese?) 400-421
15. Later Liang (Tibetans) 386-403
16. Southern Liang (Hsien-pi)
379-414
17. Hsia (Hsiung-nu) 407-431
18. Toba (Turks) 385-550
2. Liu-Sung 420-478
3. Southern Ch'i 479-501
19. Northern Ch'i (Chinese?)550-576 4. Liang 502-556
20. Northern Chou (Toba) 557-579 5. Ch'en 557-588
21. Sui (Chinese) 580-618 6. Sui 580-618