Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages. Sanping Chen

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ or Tuoba, fully two centuries after the collapse of the last Tuoba regime.²⁴ Because of the paucity of data, it is difficult to ascertain the Türks' exact geographic perception of contemporary East Asia. But Sui shu (52.1341) clearly showed that the Türks were well aware of the existence of the southern state of Chen. Then, even after several hundred years, al-Kasšari stated unmistakably that Tawγac/Tabgach was only part of Sin or China. Moreover, and against the inevitable analogy of the modern Russian word for China, al-Kasšari also gave an etymology of the name Tawγac: It was “[t]he name of a tribe of the Turks who settled in those regions”!²⁵

      Second, the attitude of the early Tang regime toward the traditional Chinese gentry can be taken as a most useful indicator of its own self-identity. In addition to the regime's persistent efforts to suppress the prestige of the traditional gentry class as mentioned earlier, Li Yuan, the founding emperor, had this explanation for his son Li Shimin's growing political independence and aspiration (ZZTJ 190.5959): “This boy has long been commanding troops in the provinces. Taught by educated men, he is no longer my son of the old days.” Though the passage has been cited by a great many authors, few have noted the critically important fact that the phrase “educated men” was literally dushu Hàn, “educated Hàn,” in Jiu Tang shu (64.2415–16). Sima Guang, most likely based on a later (Song dynasty) understanding, changed it to the more elegant word shusheng, “educated men,” editing out the crucial implication. Perhaps wholeheartedly corrupted by the “educated Hàn” as the father had charged, the son, according to a Tang author,²⁶ would also call the famous courtier Wei Zheng a tianshe Hàn, “house-owning Hàn peasant,” in the privy imperial quarters and in the presence of his consort Empress Zhangsun, who was of Tuoba descent. Again Sima Guang edited it to a mere tianshe weng, “old house-owning peasant” (ZZTJ 194.6096).

      In my view, the two quotations cited earlier are the best reflection of the Li clan's ethnic self-identity, for in the period immediately preceding the Sui and Tang, the term Hàn when occurring in such phrases was always a derogatory appellation used by the Xianbei and related Northerners for the Hàn or otherwise sinicized people. In fact, the very etymology of the character hàn as a vocative, going back all the way to the era of Tuoba domination, is the reason for the term's persistent derogatory connotation today, more than a millennium after the Tuoba's subjugation of the Hàn people to second-class status. As far as I am aware, the Yuan-Ming scholar Tao Zongyi,²⁷ apparently prompted by the similarly low status of the Hàn people under the Mongol rule, was the first to observe this connection, followed by many modern authors.²⁸

      Although the Hàn slur was gradually picked up by other courtiers during Empress Wu Zetian's reign, an episode recorded in a Tang period source, Chaoye qianzai (Popular Records of the Court and Commonalty 4.89), clearly showed that the traditional meaning and target were not lost on the gentry class. Besides, no better classical usage of the term could be found than the father/son's application to “educated men” and “house-owning peasant,” typical of a sedentary, agricultural Central Kingdom but foreign to nomadic tribespeople. These cases are also good examples of how “elegant” editing by historians actually corrupted the original stories.

      If one finds the above arguments and evidence fragmentary or argues that the cases represented just the occasional and transient remnants of the imperial house's previous Northern exposure, a far clearer and better focused picture of the imperial clan's ethnic identity can be established by a systematic analysis of the succession struggles in the early Tang, as I show in the following sections.

       The Case of Crown Prince Chengqian

      First I examine the case of Emperor Taizong's original heir apparent in some detail, because it epitomizes not only some crucial political and cultural issues of the era but also the problems with both standard historiography and modern scholarship in studying these issues. In addition, this episode also sheds light on the so-called process of sinicization.

      The case is succinctly described (or one may say glossed over) in The Cambridge History of China, which has this to say about Taizong's first heir apparent: “The prince apparently was intelligent and capable…As he grew older, however, the heir apparent began to behave in ways which seemed both abnormal and scandalous to the Chinese courtiers, and he may well be mentally unbalanced. He began to reject his Chinese identity and heritage, used the Turkish language, and dressed himself and his entourage in Turkish costume.”²⁹ This is indeed an accurate narration according to the standard Tang records. But can we take the official lines, especially the alleged “mental problems,” at their face value?

      Arthur Wright also calls the whole affair a “scandal” caused by Prince Chengqian's “strange neurosis,” but he does point out its connections with the Li clan's family history.³⁰ Edwin Pulleyblank gives what I think is the most relevant observation on this case: he calls Prince Chengqian's “strange neurosis” “atavistic predilections for the Turkish life-style.”³¹

      I demonstrate here that the whole affair was hardly a “scandal,” that Prince Chengqian did not have a “strange neurosis,” and that the predilections were not “atavistic.” On the contrary, one may find that Prince Chengqian's many acts were not much different from those of other Li boys of the time, just as the young Li Shimin, the future Emperor Taizong, once behaved, and the so-called scandal would seem no more than the norm of the Lis' family life.

      Let us look at Li Shimin, the father himself. By many stories, including his own admission, Li Shimin was as “wild” in his youth as Prince Chengqian was reported to have behaved: a passion for archery and horsemanship (which continued throughout his life and were exercised with his largely ethnic, Turkic in particular, imperial guards) but little knowledge of the classics.³² In fact, Li Shimin continued some of his old habit as an emperor (ZZTJ 192.6021–22, 192.6042). Yet the same acts of his son Chengqian were depicted, very likely seasoned with exaggerated or made-up “deviate” details, as scandalous offences.

      As for rejecting the “Chinese identity” and taking on “Turkish” things, it can be demonstrated with evidence provided here and in a later chapter that Emperor Taizong himself had a well-established Turkic or tribal identity and was conversant in Turkic. In particular, Li Shimin, while still a prince, became a “sworn brother” of several prominent Türk persons. They include Tuli (Tölis) Qaghan of the Eastern Türk (ZZTJ 191.5992); the loyal Türk general Ashina Simo (Cefu yuangui [Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau] 980.11516), who was given the imperial clan name Li (Jiu Tang shu 194.5156; Xin Tang shu 215.6037), and the Western Türk prince, later Duolu Qaghan (Jiu Tang shu 194.5183).

      If anything, Prince Chengqian could only be accused of being too filial a son of the many aspects of the clan's life his father found best absent from the official history. The suppression of Li Shimin's childhood name in all records is a good example. Chengqian's “scandalous relationship” with an actor-entertainer (ZZTJ 196.6191), while hardly exceptional among the long list of imperial homosexual liaisons from the Hàn dynasties on down, also fits the Turco-Xianbei patronage of the performing arts as examined earlier.

      This is a typical case of how modern authors tend to go to great lengths to explain things that would have seemed quite natural after the Lis' Turco-Xianbei identity is recognized. Another example is Emperor Taizong's six famous horses whose reliefs were carved at the imperial mausoleum (another Turco-Mongol trait). Edward Schafer in his famous study of the Tang exotica concludes that the six horses “came to T'ai Tsung from the Turks” partly because one of them had the name Teqin biao, “prince's roan.”³³ This subjective interpretation for the Turkic word tegin is hardly necessary after realizing, first, that the term was also a well-recognized Tuoba Xianbei title,³⁴ and, second, when the horse was being ridden, the future Emperor Taizong was none other than a prince (Quan Tang wen [Complete Anthology of Tang Prose], 10.124).

      Regarding СКАЧАТЬ