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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 northwards 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.
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 life-time. 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.
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 Ephthalites, who had been allied with the Juan-juan; this made the Turks the dominant power in Central Asia. The Ephthalites (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 re-conquest 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 Anhwei 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 northwards 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".
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
Chapter Eight
THE EMPIRES OF THE SUI AND THE T'ANG
(A) The Sui dynasty (A.D. 580-618)
1 Internal situation in the newly unified empire
The last of the northern dynasties, the Northern Chou, had been brought to an end by Yang Chien: rapid campaigns had made an end of the remaining petty states, and thus the Sui dynasty had come into power. China, reunited after 360 years, was again under Chinese rule. This event brought about a new epoch in the history of the Far East. But the happenings of 360 years could not be wiped out by a change of dynasty. The short Sui period can only be described as a period of transition to unified forms.
In the last resort the union of the various parts of China proceeded from the north. The north had always, beyond question, been militarily superior, because its ruling class had consisted of warlike peoples. Yet it was not a northerner who had united China but a Chinese though, owing to mixed marriages, he was certainly not entirely unrelated to the northern peoples. The rule, however, of the actual northern peoples was at an end. The start of the Sui dynasty, while the Chou still held the north, was evidence, just like the emergence in the north-east some thirty years earlier of the Northern Ch'i dynasty, that the Chinese gentry with their landowning basis had gained the upper hand over the warrior nomads.
The Chinese gentry had not come unchanged out of that struggle. Culturally they had taken over many things from the foreigners, beginning with music and the style of their clothing, in which they had entirely adopted the northern pattern, and including other elements of daily life. Among the gentry were now many formerly alien families who had gradually become entirely Chinese. On the other hand, the foreigners' feudal outlook had influenced the gentry, so that a sense of distinctions of rank had developed among them. There were Chinese families who regarded themselves as superior to the rest, just as had been the case among the northern peoples, and who married only among themselves or with the ruling house and not with ordinary families of the gentry. They paid great attention to their genealogies, had the state keep records of them and insisted that the dynastic histories mentioned their families and their main family members. Lists of prominent gentry families were set up which mentioned the home of each clan, so that pretenders could easily be detected. The rules of giving personal names were changed so that it became possible to identify a person's genealogical position within the family. At the same time the contempt of the military underwent modification; the gentry were even ready to take over high military posts, and also to profit by them.
The new Sui empire found itself faced with many difficulties. During the three and a half centuries of division, north and south had developed in different ways. They no longer spoke the same language in everyday life (we distinguish to this day between a Nanking and Peking "High Chinese", to say nothing of dialects). The social and economic structures were very different in the two parts of the country. How could unity be restored in these things?
Then there was the problem of population. The north-eastern plain had always been thickly populated; it had early come under Toba rule and had been able to develop further. The region round the old northern capital Ch'ang-an, on the other hand, had suffered greatly from the struggles before the Toba period and had never entirely recovered. Meanwhile, in the south the population had greatly increased in the region north of Nanking, while the regions south of the Yangtze and the upper Yangtze valley were more thinly peopled. The real South, i.e. the modern provinces of Fukien, Kwangtung and Kwangsi, was still underdeveloped, mainly because of the malaria there. In the matter of population the north unquestionably remained prominent.
The founder of the Sui dynasty, known by his reign name of Wen Ti (589-604), came from the west, close to Ch'ang-an. There he and his following had their extensive domains. Owing to the scanty population there and the resulting shortage of agricultural labourers, these properties were very much less productive than the small properties in the north-east. This state of things was well known in the south, and it was expected, with good reason, that the government would try to transfer parts of the population to the north-west, in order to settle a peasantry round the capital for the support of its greatly increasing staff of officials, and to satisfy the gentry of the region. This produced several revolts in the south.
As an old soldier who had long been a subject of the Toba, Wen Ti had no great understanding of theory: he was a practical man. He was anti-intellectual and emotionally attached to Buddhism; he opposed Confucianism for emotional reasons and believed that it could give him no serviceable officials of the sort he wanted. He demanded from his officials the same obedience and sense of duty as from his soldiers; and he was above all thrifty, almost miserly, because he realized that the finances of his state could only be brought into order by the greatest exertions. The budget had to be drawn up for the vast territory of the empire without any possibility of saying in advance whether the revenues would come in and whether the transport of dues to the capital would function.
This cautious calculation was entirely justified, but it aroused great opposition. Both east and south were used to a much better style of living; yet the gentry of both regions were now required to cut down their consumption. On top of this they were excluded from the conduct of political affairs. In the past, under the Northern Ch'i empire in the north-east and under the Ch'en empire in the south, there had been thousands of positions at court in which the whole of the gentry could find accommodation of some kind. Now the central government was far in the west, and other people were its administrators. In the past the gentry had had a profitable and easily accessible market for their produce in the neighbouring capital; now the capital was far away, entailing long-distance transport at heavy risk with little profit.
The dissatisfied circles of the gentry in the north-east and in the south incited Prince Kuang to rebellion. The prince and his followers murdered the emperor and set aside the heir-apparent; and Kuang came to the throne, assuming the name of Yang Ti. His first act was to transfer the capital back to the east, to Loyang, close to the grain-producing regions. His second achievement was to order the construction of great canals, to facilitate the transport of grain to the capital and to provide a valuable new market for the producers in the north-east and the south. It was at this time that the first forerunner of the famous "Imperial Canal" was constructed, the canal that connects the Yangtze with the Yellow River. Small canals, connecting various streams, had long been in existence, so that it was possible to travel from north to south by water, but these canals were not deep enough or broad enough to take large freight barges. There are records of lighters of 500 and even 800 tons capacity! These are dimensions unheard of in the West in those times. In addition to a serviceable canal to the south, Yang Ti made another that went north almost to the present Peking.
Hand in hand with these successes of the north-eastern and southern gentry went strong support for Confucianism, and a reorganization of the Confucian examination system. As a rule, however, the examinations were circumvented as an unimportant formality; the various governors were ordered each to send annually to the capital three men with the required education, for whose quality they were held personally responsible; merchants and artisans were expressly excluded.
2 Relations with Turks and with Korea
In foreign affairs an extraordinarily fortunate situation for the Sui dynasty had come into existence. The T'u-chueeh, the Turks, much the strongest people of the north, had given support now to one and now to another of the northern kingdoms, and this, together with their many armed incursions, had made them the dominant political factor in the north. But in the first year of the Sui period (581) they split into two sections, so that the Sui had hopes of gaining influence over them. At first both sections of the Turks had entered into alliance with China, but this was not a sufficient safeguard for the Sui, for one of the Turkish khans was surrounded by Toba who had fled from the vanished state of the Northern Chou, and who now tried to induce the Turks to undertake a campaign for the reconquest of North China. The leader of this agitation was a princess of the Yue-wen family, the ruling family of the Northern Chou. The Chinese fought the Turks several times; but much more effective results were gained by their diplomatic missions, which incited the eastern against the western Turks and vice versa, and also incited the Turks against the Toba clique. In the end one of the sections of Turks accepted Chinese overlordship, and some tribes of the other section were brought over to the Chinese side; also, fresh disunion was sown among the Turks.
Under the emperor Yang Ti, P'ei Chue carried this policy further. He induced the Toeloes tribes to attack the T'u-yue-hun, and then himself attacked the latter, so destroying their power. The T'u-yue-hun were a people living in the extreme north of Tibet, under a ruling class apparently of Hsien-pi origin; the people were largely Tibetan. The purpose of the conquest of the T'u-yue-hun was to safeguard access to Central Asia. An effective Turkestan policy was, however, impossible so long as the Turks were still a formidable power. Accordingly, the intrigues that aimed at keeping the two sections of Turks apart were continued. In 615 came a decisive counter-attack from the Turks. Their khan, Shih-pi, made a surprise assault on the emperor himself, with all his following, in the Ordos region, and succeeded in surrounding them. They were in just the same desperate situation as when, eight centuries earlier, the Chinese emperor had been beleaguered by Mao Tun. But the Chinese again saved themselves by a trick. The young Chinese commander, Li Shih-min, succeeded in giving the Turks the impression that large reinforcements were on the way; a Chinese princess who was with the Turks spread the rumour that the Turks were to be attacked by another tribe—and Shih-pi raised the siege, although the Chinese had been entirely defeated.
In the Sui period the Chinese were faced with a further problem. Korea or, rather, the most important of the three states in Korea, had generally been on friendly terms with the southern state during the period of China's division, and for this reason had been more or less protected from its North Chinese neighbours. After the unification of China, Korea had reason for seeking an alliance with the Turks, in order to secure a new counterweight against China.
A Turco-Korean alliance would have meant for China a sort of encirclement that might have grave consequences. The alliance might be extended to Japan, who had certain interests in Korea. Accordingly the Chinese determined to attack Korea, though at the same time negotiations were set on foot. The fighting, which lasted throughout the Sui period, involved technical difficulties, as it called for combined land and sea attacks; in general it brought little success.
3 Reasons for collapse
The continual warfare entailed great expense, and so did the intrigues, because they depended for their success on bribery. Still more expensive were the great canal works. In addition to this, the emperor Yang Ti, unlike his father, was very extravagant. He built enormous palaces and undertook long journeys throughout the empire with an immense following. All this wrecked the prosperity which his father had built up and had tried to safeguard. The only productive expenditure was that on the canals, and they could not begin to pay in so short a period. The emperor's continual journeys were due, no doubt, in part simply to the pursuit of pleasure, though they were probably intended at the same time to hinder risings and to give the emperor direct control over every part of the country. But the empire was too large and too complex for its administration to be possible in the midst of journeying. The whole of the chancellery had to accompany the emperor, and all the transport necessary for the feeding of the emperor and his government had continually to be diverted to wherever he happened to be staying. All this produced disorder and unrest. The gentry, who at first had so strongly supported the emperor and had been able to obtain anything they wanted from him, now began to desert him and set up pretenders. From 615 onward, after the defeat at the hands of the Turks, risings broke out everywhere. The emperor had to establish his government in the south, where he felt safer. There, however, in 618, he was assassinated by conspirators led by Toba of the Yue-wen family. Everywhere now independent governments sprang up, and for five years China was split up into countless petty states.
(B) The T'ang dynasty (A.D. 618-906)
1 Reforms and decentralization
The hero of the Turkish siege, Li Shih-min, had allied himself with the Turks in 615-16. There were special reasons for his ability to do this. In his family it had been a regular custom to marry women belonging to Toba families, so that he naturally enjoyed the confidence of the Toba party among the Turks. There are various theories as to the origin of his family, the Li. The family itself claimed to be descended from the ruling family of the Western Liang. It is doubtful whether that family was purely Chinese, and in any case Li Shih-min's descent from it is a matter of doubt. It is possible that his family was a sinified Toba family, or at least came from a Toba region. However this may be, Li Shih-min continued the policy which had been pursued since the beginning of the Sui dynasty by the members of the deposed Toba ruling family of the Northern Chou—the policy of collaboration with the Turks in the effort to remove the Sui.
The nominal leadership in the rising that now began lay in the hands of Li Shih-min's father, Li Yuean; in practice Li Shih-min saw to everything. At the end of 617 he was outside the first capital of the Sui, Ch'ang-an, with a Turkish army that had come to his aid on the strength of the treaty of alliance. After capturing Ch'ang-an he installed a puppet emperor there, a grandson of Yang Ti. In 618 the puppet was dethroned and Li Yuean, the father, was made emperor, in the T'ang dynasty. Internal fighting went on until 623, and only then was the whole empire brought under the rule of the T'ang.
Great reforms then began. A new land law aimed at equalizing ownership, so that as far as possible all peasants should own the same amount of land and the formation of large estates be prevented. The law aimed also at protecting the peasants from the loss of their land. The law was, however, nothing but a modification of the Toba land law (chuen-t'ien), and it was hoped that now it would provide a sound and solid economic foundation for the empire. From the first, however, members of the gentry who were connected with the imperial house were given a privileged position; then officials were excluded from the prohibition of leasing, so that there continued to be tenant farmers in addition to the independent peasants. Moreover, the temples enjoyed special treatment, and were also exempted from taxation. All these exceptions brought grist to the mills of the gentry, and so did the failure to carry into effect many of the provisions of the law. Before long a new gentry had been formed, consisting of the old gentry together with those who had directly aided the emperor's ascent to the throne. From the beginning of the eighth century there were repeated complaints that peasants were "disappearing". They were entering the service of the gentry as tenant farmers or farm workers, and owing to the privileged position of the gentry in regard to taxation, the revenue sank in proportion as the number of independent peasants decreased. One of the reasons for the flight of farmers may have been the corvee laws connected with the "equal land" system: small families were much less affected by the corvee obligation than larger families with many sons. It may be, therefore, that large families or at least sons of the sons in large families moved away in order to escape these obligations. In order to prevent irregularities, the T'ang renewed the old "pao-chia" system, as a part of a general reform of the administration in 624. In this system groups of five families were collectively responsible for the payment of taxes, the corvee, for crimes committed by individuals within one group, and for loans from state agencies. Such a system is attested for pre-Christian times already; it was re-activated in the eleventh century and again from time to time, down to the present.
Yet the system of land equalization soon broke down and was abolished officially around A.D. 780. But the classification of citizens into different classes, first legalized under the Toba, was retained and even more refined.
As early as in the Han period there had been a dual administration—the civil and, independent of it, the military administration. One and the same area would belong to a particular administrative prefecture (chuen) and at the same time to a particular military prefecture (chou). This dual organization had persisted during the Toba period and, at first, remained unchanged in the beginning of the T'ang.
The backbone of the military power in the seventh century was the militia, some six hundred units of an average of a thousand men, recruited from the general farming population for short-term service: one month in five in the areas close to the capital. These men formed a part of the emperor's guards and were under the command of members of the Shensi gentry. This system which had its direct parallels in the Han time and evolved out of a Toba system, broke down when short offensive wars were no longer fought. Other imperial guards were staffed with young sons of the gentry who were stationed in the most delicate parts of the palaces. The emperor T'ai-tsung had his personal bodyguard, a part of his own army of conquest, consisting of his former bondsmen (pu-ch'ue). The ranks of the Army of conquest were later filled by descendants of the original soldiers and by orphans.
In the provinces, the armies of the military prefectures gradually lost their importance when wars became longer and militiamen proved insufficient. Many of the soldiers here were convicts and exiles. It is interesting to note that the title of the commander of these armies, tu-tu, in the fourth century meant a commander in the church-Taoist organization; it was used by the Toba and from the seventh century on became widely accepted as title among the Uigurs, Tibetans, Sogdians, Turks and Khotanese.
When the prefectural armies and the militia forces weakened, special regional armies were created (from 678 on); this institution had existed among the Toba, but they had greatly reduced these armies after 500. The commanders of these new T'ang armies soon became more important than the civil administrators, because they commanded a number of districts making up a whole province. This assured a better functioning of the military machine, but put the governors-general in a position to pursue a policy of their own, even against the central government. In addition to this, the financial administration of their commands was put under them, whereas in the past it had been in the hands of the civil administration of the various provinces. The civil administration was also reorganized (see the table on pages 83-84).
Towards the end of the T'ang period the state secretariat was set up in two parts: it was in possession of all information about the economic and political affairs of the empire, and it made the actual decisions. Moreover, a number of technical departments had been created—in all, a system that might compare favourably with European systems of the eighteenth century. At the end of the T'ang period there was added to this system a section for economic affairs, working quite independently of it and directly under the emperor; it was staffed entirely with economic or financial experts, while for the staffing of the other departments no special qualification was demanded besides the passing of the state examinations. In addition to these, at the end of the T'ang period a new department was in preparation, a sort of Privy Council, a mainly military organization, probably intended to control the generals (section 3 of the table on page 83), just as the state secretariat controlled the civil officials. The Privy Council became more and more important in the tenth century and especially in the Mongol epoch. Its absence in the early T'ang period gave the military governors much too great freedom, ultimately with baneful results.
At first, however, the reforms of A.D. 624 worked well. The administration showed energy, and taxes flowed in. In the middle of the eighth century the annual budget of the state included the following items: over a million tons of grain for the consumption of the capital and the palace and for salaries of civil and military officials; twenty-seven million pieces of textiles, also for the consumption of capital and palace and army, and for supplementary purchases of grain; two million strings of money (a string nominally held a thousand copper coins) for salaries and for the army. This was much more than the state budget of the Han period. The population of the empire had also increased; it seems to have amounted to some fifty millions. In the capital a large staff of officials had been created to meet all administrative needs. The capital grew enormously, at times containing two million people. Great numbers of young members of the gentry streamed into the capital for the examinations held under the Confucian system.
The crowding of people into the capital and the accumulation of resources there promoted a rich cultural life. We know of many poets of that period whose poems were real masterpieces; and artists whose works were admired centuries later. These poets and artists were the pioneers of the flourishing culture of the later T'ang period. Hand in hand with this went luxury and refinement of manners. For those who retired from the bustle of the capital to work on their estates and to enjoy the society of their friends, there was time to occupy themselves with Taoism and Buddhism, especially meditative Buddhism. Everyone, of course, was Confucian, as was fitting for a member of the gentry, but Confucianism was so taken for granted that it was not discussed. It was the basis of morality for the gentry, but held no problems. It no longer contained anything of interest.
Conditions had been much the same once before, at the court of the Han emperors, but with one great difference: at that time everything of importance took place in the capital; now, in addition to the actual capital, Ch'ang-an, there was the second capital, Loyang, in no way inferior to the other in importance; and the great towns in the south also played their part as commercial and cultural centres that had developed in the 360 years of division between north and south. There the local gentry gathered to lead a cultivated life, though not quite in the grand style of the capital. If an official was transferred to the Yangtze, it no longer amounted to a punishment as in the past; he would not meet only uneducated people, but a society resembling that of the capital. The institution of governors-general further promoted this decentralization: the governor-general surrounded himself with a little court of his own, drawn from the local gentry and the local intelligentsia. This placed the whole edifice of the empire on a much broader foundation, with lasting results.
2 Turkish policy
The foreign policy of this first period of the T'ang, lasting until about 690, was mainly concerned with the Turks and Turkestan. There were still two Turkish realms in the Far East, both of considerable strength but in keen rivalry with each other. The T'ang had come into power with the aid of the eastern Turks, but they admitted the leader of the western Turks to their court; he had been at Ch'ang-an in the time of the Sui. He was murdered, however, by Chinese at the instigation of the eastern Turks. The next khan of the eastern Turks nevertheless turned against the T'ang, and gave his support to a still surviving pretender to the throne representing the Sui dynasty; the khan contended that the old alliance of the eastern Turks had been with the Sui and not with the T'ang. The T'ang therefore tried to come to terms once more with the western Turks, who had been affronted by the assassination; but the negotiations came to nothing in face of an approach made by the eastern Turks to the western, and of the distrust of the Chinese with which all the Turks were filled. About 624 there were strong Turkish invasions, carried right up to the capital. Suddenly, however, for reasons not disclosed by the Chinese sources, the Turks withdrew, and the T'ang were able to conclude a fairly honourable peace. This was the time of the maximum power of the eastern Turks. Shortly afterwards disturbances broke out (627), under the leadership of Turkish Uighurs and their allies. The Chinese took advantage of these disturbances, and in a great campaign in 629-30 succeeded in overthrowing the eastern Turks; the khan was taken to the imperial court in Ch'ang-an, and the Chinese emperor made himself "Heavenly Khan" of the Turks. In spite of the protest of many of the ministers, who pointed to the result of the settlement policy of the Later Han dynasty, the eastern Turks were settled in the bend of the upper Hwang-ho and placed more or less under the protectorate of two governors-general. Their leaders were admitted into the Chinese army, and the sons of their nobles lived at the imperial court. No doubt it was hoped in this way to turn the Turks into Chinese, as had been done with the Toba, though for entirely different reasons. More than a million Turks were settled in this way, and some of them actually became Chinese later and gained important posts. |
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