Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages. Sanping Chen
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Название: Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages
Автор: Sanping Chen
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Историческая литература
Серия: Encounters with Asia
isbn: 9780812206289
isbn:
From lengthy, ongoing discussions with Dr. Chen over the years, I have come to realize that his unusual approach to Chinese history results from deeply held principles. Among these the most important is that the historian is duty bound to report his findings, regardless of their implications. A corollary of this principle is that the historian may not lie about or color what he discovers concerning the past. For Dr. Chen, this becomes a moral imperative, such that he cannot remain silent when confronted with the facts of history.
Although Dr. Chen not infrequently mentions the prehistoric period (Neolithic, Bronze Age, and early Iron Age), the early period (the classical era or era of antiquity), and the late imperial period, his main focus is on the medieval period (roughly the first millennium AD). Many events that were profoundly formative for the future of East Asian civilization occurred during this period: the advent of Buddhism, the rise of Taoism as a religion, the first stirrings of the written vernacular, the perfection of literary genres, the incorporation into the Chinese body politic of non-Sinitic peoples in all directions, and so forth. Despite the crucial role this period played in the development of East Asian history, it is relatively little studied and, in general, poorly known, whether by specialists or by laypersons. This is particularly so for the first half of the period, and it is precisely that stretch of five or six hundred years upon which Dr. Chen places his greatest emphasis.
What, then, are a few of Dr. Chen's astonishing discoveries that he presents in this book?
1. Mulan was not Chinese.
2. The East Asian “unicorn” was very different, both in appearance and in significance, from the one-horned creature of Western imagination.
3. The royal house of the Tang Dynasty, which constituted the apogee of premodern Chinese civilization, was in large measure “barbaric.”
4. Despite general Chinese dislike for dogs, canine imagery and terminology have been positively utilized among certain significant groups in East Asia.
5. Both the Huns and the Bulgars have their congeners in East Asia.
6. Iranian peoples were prominent in trade, religion, and other noteworthy aspects of medieval Chinese society.
7. Naming practices changed dramatically in response to influences from the Steppe.
8. One of China's most revered poets, Bai Juyi, had intimate connections with Central Asia.
Sanping Chen's ability to make, and to firmly document, these remarkable discoveries is due to his open-mindedness and insightfulness, but above all to his persistent inquisitiveness. While not everyone will acquiesce to the entirety of Dr. Chen's findings, no reputable scholar can afford to ignore them with impunity.
Dr. Chen's expositions of his discoveries are captivating in and of themselves. When combined with the solid content that they convey, his chapters make for compelling reading. Above all, these are not mere exercises in the realignment of exotic, alien arcana. Rather, everything that Dr. Chen writes about in this inspiring work has profound implications for our understanding of the present, which is a product of the cumulative past. We are greatly in Sanping Chen's debt for his sustained researches as well as for the creative clarity of his vision.
Introduction
On the afternoon of July 30, 1980, three Chinese historians discovered, on a granite rock face inside a stone cavern in the Xing'an Mountains in northeast China (more exactly at 50°38'N, 123°36'E), an inscription dated September 5, 443, by far the most ancient sample of writing in this part of Asia.1 This important discovery, or rather confirmation, of the inscription's existence not only helped identify the original homestead of the Tuoba, an ancient nomadic people and the main subject of this book, but also vindicated the accuracy of Wei shu (History of the [Tuoba] Wei Dynasty), previously considered one of the least reliable Chinese dynastic histories.
However, a seemingly minor discrepancy or rather neglect by the text preserved in Wei shu as compared with the actual inscription indicates that, after establishing themselves as the undisputed masters of northern China, the Tuoba monarchs were still known by their nomadic designation qaghan instead of the Chinese title huangdi, or “son of heaven.” This distinction would serve as an important clue to the Tuoba's lasting legacy expounded in this book, as well as a good example of what I would term a Confucianist bias in the written sources on which most of our understanding of the period is based.
The Tuoba first appeared in the history of East Asia as a marginal nomadic group in the second half of the third century. From the beginning, they were regarded as part of the general Xianbei complex or conglomerate, the new dominating yet largely decentralized nomadic power in northern Asia. The Xianbei had displaced the Xiongnu, widely regarded as the forerunners of the Huns who would terrorize Europe several centuries later.
The Tuoba rose to prominence in the late fourth century, especially strong after they destroyed the main forces of the rival Murong power, then the leading Xianbei group in northern China, on December 8, 395, in a superbly executed surprise pursuit under the energetic and daring leadership of the young Tuoba Gui (371–409). Eight months after this decisive military victory, the Tuoba chief formally adopted the Chinese imperial protocol. On this juncture of history, the Yuan dynasty historian Hu Sanxing (1230–1302), in his famous annotated edition of Sima Guang's immortal Chinese chronology Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, abbreviated in this book as ZZTJ), made the following incisive comments: “The rise of Tuoba Gui led to the hardening of the North-South partition, which in turn led to the eventual absorption of the South by the North. Alas, from the Sui era onward, sixty to seventy percent of those who were prominent in their times have been descendants of the Tuoba [and other Xianbei and Xiongnu groups led by the Tuoba]!”2
In other words, from this point on, the Tuoba and their descendants pretty much set the course of Chinese history, not just politically but also culturally, for nearly a millennium before another nomadic people, the Mongols, swept much of the Asian continent. A reader otherwise well versed in Chinese history may wonder why such an important group was not heard of more frequently in all of the very large volume of history about China. This good question is just one of several issues the current collection tries to address.
Another subject that is often neglected, particularly in comparison with that of the Mongol era, is how these earlier “Barbarian” invasions greatly stimulated the movements of peoples, commodities, and, not least, ideas across the Eurasian continent in the ancient world, especially along but not limited to the Silk Road. In my view, the well-known and much studied cosmopolitanism of the Tang dynasty was the culmination of a chain of events to which the Tuoba had been a major contributor yet for which they have heretofore received little recognition.
The prevailing perceptions of the two most cosmopolitan periods in China's premodern history, namely the Tang and the Yuan, are sharply different. The former is viewed as the accomplishment of an enlightened but largely native Chinese regime, whereas the latter is regarded as the outcome of the conquest of China by a nomadic power. One of the main reasons for this difference is the Sinitic façade the Tang (and its cousin the Sui) royal house had successfully woven for itself, obscuring the family's ethnic and cultural origin and identity. Thus the ethnic identity of the Tang house becomes one of the topics of this collection.
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