Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages. Sanping Chen

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СКАЧАТЬ happened prior to the death of the current ruler and around the institution of heir apparent. This may be the most important departure from the Steppe, where the hell of succession wars normally broke loose with the death of the khan. But as Joseph Fletcher has detailed in his “Turco-Mongol Monarchic Tradition in the Ottoman Empire,” such a feature or adaptation to the sedentary society was not unique in China, as it was also attested in other “conquest regimes.”

      In his pioneering treatise on the political history of the Tang, which provided the first systematic examination of the phenomenon of the unstable Tang institution of heir apparent (to which I owe much of the inspiration for the current chapter), Chen Yinke has analyzed the importance of controlling the Xuanwu Gate in the capital in numerous coups d'état during the early Tang.⁶⁰ However, I depart from his theory by considering the discussion of the key factions of people instead of geography in these incidents a more consequential topic. Not only does one see the reason for the notoriety of the Xuanwu Gate in the period, but it also sheds light on the process of how this Särbo-Chinese regime slowly evolved into something more in line with a native dynasty.

      For the era under examination, namely the first 150 years of the Tang, one of the key elements in the succession struggle was various imperial guard units. This in my view was the cause for the Xuanwu Gate's prominence in these coups during the period. For blood tanistry struggles in an agrarian society, Fletcher has introduced the term “surrogate nomads” for the equivalent of tribes and tribal military elites who would fight out the succession wars on the Steppe. For the early Tang, the “surrogate” qualifier would seem almost superfluous, because the ranks of imperial guards were filled with people not just of nomadic origin but literally fresh from the Steppe. A good example was the three hundred Türk troops Prince Jiancheng planned to use to attack Li Shimin's residence (Xin Tang shu 79.3542).⁶¹ In fact at times these figures were said to be so numerous that they filled half of the positions at court (ZZTJ 193.6098), which were apparently mostly military. Many were actually mentioned or even named in succession struggles. Li Duozuo, a prominent imperial guard of Mojie ethnicity (widely regarded as the predecessor of the Manchu), on whom was bestowed the royal family name (Jiu Tang shu 109.3296–97), was a typical case. This was hardly the best indication of a “native” dynasty, though the standard records have almost certainly suppressed or played down as much as possible the role of these “Barbarian” figures in setting the course of Chinese history.

      Another important dimension of the unmistakable Turco-Mongol trait of the early Tang was its continued military and political expansion in almost all directions. Again a great number of non-Hàn ethnic generals and naturally an even greater number of such troops were used in this endeavor. In fact, the Tang ethnic generals have became a fecund study subject for modern historians.⁶² These studies demonstrate that the phenomenon was a rather unusual case in Chinese history. That is, if we exclude the Mongol forces in the Qing's march into Central Asia, an exact repetition of the Tang's advances one millennium earlier. As the imperial guards actively participated in these campaigns, their prestige at the court and their role in the succession struggle continued. The ancient Orkhon inscriptions mentioned explicitly that the Türk troops had fought the wars for the Tabgach/Tuoba emperors.⁶³ But this complaint masked the other side of the coin: the important role of these Türk generals and soldiers in choosing the very emperors they would serve under as well as the grossly out of proportion positions they filled at the Tang court.

      The expansion of the Tang was gradually checked by the advent of two new powers: the Arabs and the Tibetans. A new Uighur power was also emerging on the Steppe. In the meantime, the unstoppable process of sinicization was slowly but steadily taking its toll. One of the signs was the role of personal slaves and eunuchs in the succession struggle. For example, in Emperor Xuanzong's military move to eliminate Princess Taiping's supporters, which culminated in the princess's suicide and Emperor Ruizong's final “retirement,” two important players were Wang Maozhong, a family slave of Korean descent, and Gao Lishi, a eunuch (ZZTJ 210.6683; Jiu Tang shu 106.3252). Emperor Xuanzong, who started as a strong Turco-Xianbei monarch, would gradually turn into an uninterested and disengaged emperor, of the kind of which the later native Ming dynasty would see many. The appearance of the second Eastern Türk Empire was invariably hailed as a conquered people casting off the Tang yoke. Few realize that the development might be more appropriately viewed as the consequence of the growing alienation felt by a (junior) partner in a Särbo-Turco-Chinese joint venture that was tilting more and more toward agrarian traditions. Pulleyblank seems to be the only author to have noted this Turco-Chinese partnership,⁶⁴ albeit failing to recognize the crucial Xianbei factor that, like the Manchus, was the key element binding the Steppe and the agrarian communities into a true empire. In my view, the reappearance of an Eastern Türk empire was not unlike the case of Outer Mongolia gaining independence after the end of the Qing, a Manchu-Mongol-Chinese dynasty.

      With the onset of the An Lushan Rebellion in 755, the outward expansion of the Tang came to a sudden stop. Yet the stubborn Steppe heritage of succession struggles did not go right out of the political arena with our last Turco-Xianbei monarch, though its fundamental aspects underwent a sea change.

      The key transformation was that the court eunuchs replaced the regular imperial guards in deciding the outcome of the succession struggle,⁶⁵ a natural development with the end of the glories of the expansion wars. The new power brokers would continue this role until almost the very end of the Tang. Fletcher's term “surrogate nomads” would now do full justice to them. Not by accident, the coming of eunuchal power at the Tang court closely resembled, for example, a similar development in the declining years of the Safavid dynasty of Iran, after the latter's practice of appointing the royal princes to provincial governorship (also an early Tang policy) was replaced by their confinement to the harem (similar measures were adopted by the Tang too, as discussed earlier) in order to avoid succession contentions.⁶⁶ With the control of imperial guards gradually falling into the hands of the court eunuchs and the guard ranks filled mostly with rich playboys from the capital (ZZTJ 254.8237), the political drama was now played out within the walls of the inner palace. The strategic importance of the Xuanwu Gate, together with the prestige of the many guard units, was soon lost. For example, a late Tang source⁶⁷ has an eyewitness report on the deplorable condition during the Yuanhe era (806–20) of an originally prestigious imperial guard office. However, these new changes are mostly beyond the scope of this book.

       The Process of Sinicization

      The case of Prince Chengqian had many historical precedents and parallels. In addition to Tuoba Xun, the Northern Wei heir apparent, two other prominent cases were that of the Sui heir apparent Yang Yong and Taizong's elder brother Crown Prince Jiancheng, Chengqian's uncle. Careful study of these cases reveals an interesting pattern of succession struggles during the era: the “bandwagon” of sinicization and the patronage of classical Chinese scholarship or other authentic Chinese literature and arts as a most effective tool in such contentions, when the regime was hard-pressed for political legitimacy to rule the entire Central Kingdom.

      In the case of Emperor Yangdi of the Sui, we see his marriage at a young age to a daughter of a prominent southern royal family (in fact the daughter of a puppet Later Liang emperor); his patronage of the Southern Buddhist temples; his love of almost everything connected to the south, which before the final unification was seen even by many in the north as the site of the “legitimate” Chinese regime; and, last but not least, his status as an extraordinarily talented man of Chinese literacy⁶⁸—all of this certainly had figured in his successful contention for the throne against his elder brother and the Confucian dizhang rule of succession.

      Li Shimin's bid for the throne is a very old and thoroughly studied topic. Many factors for his triumph over his elder brother have been proposed: his unmatched military deeds in solidifying the dynasty, his command of a large group of talented followers, his ability to control the crucial Xuanwu Gate, his preemptive strike, and so on.⁶⁹ But the issue of sinicization has not attracted enough attention in the context of his eventual СКАЧАТЬ