Shu Han's difficulty was that its population was not large enough to be

able to stand against the northern State of Wei; moreover, it was

difficult to carry out an offensive from Shu Han, though the country

could defend itself well. The first attempt to find a remedy was a

campaign against the native tribes of the present Yuennan. The purpose of

this was to secure man-power for the army and also slaves for sale; for

the south-west had for centuries been a main source for traffic in

slaves. Finally it was hoped to gain control over the trade to India.

All these things were intended to strengthen Shu Han internally, but in

spite of certain military successes they produced no practical result,

as the Chinese were unable in the long run to endure the climate or to

hold out against the guerrilla tactics of the natives. Shu Han tried to

buy the assistance of the Tibetans and with their aid to carry out a

decisive attack on Wei, whose dynastic legitimacy was not recognized by

Shu Han. The ruler of Shu Han claimed to be a member of the imperial

family of the deposed Han dynasty, and therefore to be the rightful,

legitimate ruler over China. His descent, however, was a little

doubtful, and in any case it depended on a link far back in the past.

Against this the Wei of the north declared that the last ruler of the

Han dynasty had handed over to them with all due form the seals of the

state and therewith the imperial prerogative. The controversy was of no

great practical importance, but it played a big part in the Chinese

Confucianist school until the twelfth century, and contributed largely

to a revision of the old conceptions of legitimacy.

The political plans of Shu Han were well considered and far-seeing. They

were evolved by the premier, a man from Shantung named Chu-ko Liang; for

the ruler died in 226 and his successor was still a child. But Chu-ko

Liang lived only for a further eight years, and after his death in 234

the decline of Shu Han began. Its political leaders no longer had a

sense of what was possible. Thus Wei inflicted several defeats on Shu

Han, and finally subjugated it in 263.

The situation of the state of Wu was much less favourable than that of

Shu Han, though this second southern kingdom lasted from 221 to 280. Its

country consisted of marshy, water-logged plains, or mountains with

narrow valleys. Here Tai peoples had long cultivated their rice, while

in the mountains Yao tribes lived by hunting and by simple agriculture.

Peasants immigrating from the north found that their wheat and pulse did

not thrive here, and slowly they had to gain familiarity with rice

cultivation. They were also compelled to give up their sheep and cattle

and in their place to breed pigs and water buffaloes, as was done by the

former inhabitants of the country. The lower class of the population was

mainly non-Chinese; above it was an upper class of Chinese, at first

relatively small, consisting of officials, soldiers, and merchants in a

few towns and administrative centres. The country was poor, and its only

important economic asset was the trade in metals, timber, and other

southern products; soon there came also a growing overseas trade with

India and the Middle East, bringing revenues to the state in so far as

the goods were re-exported from Wu to the north.

Wu never attempted to conquer the whole of China, but endeavoured to

consolidate its own difficult territory with a view to building up a

state on a firm foundation. In general, Wu played mainly a passive part

in the incessant struggles between the three kingdoms, though it was

active in diplomacy. The Wu kingdom entered into relations with a man

who in 232 had gained control of the present South Manchuria and shortly

afterwards assumed the title of king. This new ruler of "Yen", as he

called his kingdom, had determined to attack the Wei dynasty, and hoped,

by putting pressure on it in association with Wu, to overrun Wei from

north and south. Wei answered this plan very effectively by recourse to

diplomacy and it began by making Wu believe that Wu had reason to fear

an attack from its western neighbour Shu Han. A mission was also

dispatched from Wei to negotiate with Japan. Japan was then emerging

from its stone age and introducing metals; there were countless small

principalities and states, of which the state of Yamato, then ruled by a

queen, was the most powerful. Yamato had certain interests in Korea,

where it already ruled a small coastal strip in the east. Wei offered

Yamato the prospect of gaining the whole of Korea if it would turn

against the state of Yen in South Manchuria. Wu, too, had turned to

Japan, but the negotiations came to nothing, since Wu, as an ally of

Yen, had nothing to offer. The queen of Yamato accordingly sent a

mission to Wei; she had already decided in favour of that state. Thus

Wei was able to embark on war against Yen, which it annihilated in 237.

This wrecked Wu's diplomatic projects, and no more was heard of any

ambitious plans of the kingdom of Wu.

The two southern states had a common characteristic: both were

condottiere states, not built up from their own population but conquered

by generals from the north and ruled for a time by those generals and

their northern troops. Natives gradually entered these northern armies

and reduced their percentage of northerners, but a gulf remained between

the native population, including its gentry, and the alien military

rulers. This reduced the striking power of the southern states.

On the other hand, this period had its positive element. For the first

time there was an emperor in south China, with all the organization that

implied. A capital full of officials, eunuchs, and all the satellites of

an imperial court provided incentives to economic advance, because it

represented a huge market. The peasants around it were able to increase

their sales and grew prosperous. The increased demand resulted in an

increase of tillage and a thriving trade. Soon the transport problem had

to be faced, as had happened long ago in the north, and new means of

transport, especially ships, were provided, and new trade routes opened

which were to last far longer than the three kingdoms; on the other

hand, the costs of transport involved fresh taxation burdens for the

population. The skilled staff needed for the business of administration

came into the new capital from the surrounding districts, for the

conquerors and new rulers of the territory of the two southern dynasties

had brought with them from the north only uneducated soldiers and

almost equally uneducated officers. The influx of scholars and

administrators into the chief cities produced cultural and economic

centres in the south, a circumstance of great importance to China's

later development.

3 _The northern State of Wei_

The situation in the north, in the state of Wei (220-265) was anything

but rosy. Wei ruled what at that time were the most important and

richest regions of China, the plain of Shensi in the west and the great

plain east of Loyang, the two most thickly populated areas of China. But

the events at the end of the Han period had inflicted great economic

injury on the country. The southern and south-western parts of the Han

empire had been lost, and though parts of Central Asia still gave

allegiance to Wei, these, as in the past, were economically more of a

burden than an asset, because they called for incessant expenditure. At

least the trade caravans were able to travel undisturbed from and to

China through Turkestan. Moreover, the Wei kingdom, although much

smaller than the empire of the Han, maintained a completely staffed

court at great expense, because the rulers, claiming to rule the whole

of China, felt bound to display more magnificence than the rulers of the

southern dynasties. They had also to reward the nineteen tribes of the

Hsiung-nu in the north for their military aid, not only with cessions of

land but with payments of money. Finally, they would not disarm but

maintained great armies for the continual fighting against the southern

states. The Wei dynasty did not succeed, however, in closely

subordinating the various army commanders to the central government.

Thus the commanders, in collusion with groups of the gentry, were able

to enrich themselves and to secure regional power. The inadequate

strength of the central government of Wei was further undermined by the

rivalries among the dominant gentry. The imperial family (Ts'ao Pei, who

reigned from 220 to 226, had taken as emperor the name of Wen Ti) was

descended from one of the groups of great landowners that had formed in

the later Han period. The nucleus of that group was a family named

Ts'ui, of which there is mention from the Han period onward and which

maintained its power down to the tenth century; but it remained in the

background and at first held entirely aloof from direct intervention in

high policy. Another family belonging to this group was the Hsia-hou

family which was closely united to the family of Wen Ti by adoption; and

very soon there was also the Ssu-ma family. Quite naturally Wen Ti, as

soon as he came into power, made provision for the members of these

powerful families, for only thanks to their support had he been able to

ascend the throne and to maintain his hold on the throne. Thus we find

many members of the Hsia-hou and Ssu-ma families in government

positions. The Ssu-ma family especially showed great activity, and at

the end of Wen Ti's reign their power had so grown that a certain Ssu-ma

I was in control of the government, while the new emperor Ming Ti

(227-233) was completely powerless. This virtually sealed the fate of

the Wei dynasty, so far as the dynastic family was concerned. The next

emperor was installed and deposed by the Ssu-ma family; dissensions

arose within the ruling family, leading to members of the family

assassinating one another. In 264 a member of the Ssu-ma family declared

himself king; when he died and was succeeded by his son Ssu-ma Yen, the

latter, in 265, staged a formal act of renunciation of the throne of the

Wei dynasty and made himself the first ruler of the new Chin dynasty.

There is nothing to gain by detailing all the intrigues that led up to

this event: they all took place in the immediate environment of the

court and in no way affected the people, except that every item of

expenditure, including all the bribery, had to come out of the taxes

paid by the people.

With such a situation at court, with the bad economic situation in the

country, and with the continual fighting against the two southern

states, there could be no question of any far-reaching foreign policy.

Parts of eastern Turkestan still showed some measure of allegiance to

Wei, but only because at the time it had no stronger opponent. The

Hsiung-nu beyond the frontier were suffering from a period of depression

which was at the same time a period of reconstruction. They were

beginning slowly to form together with Mongol elements a new unit, the

Juan-juan, but at this time were still politically inactive. The

nineteen tribes within north China held more and more closely together

as militarily organized nomads, but did not yet represent a military

power and remained loyal to the Wei. The only important element of

trouble seems to have been furnished by the Hsien-pi tribes, who had

joined with Wu-huan tribes and apparently also with vestiges of the

Hsiung-nu in eastern Mongolia, and who made numerous raids over the

frontier into the Wei empire. The state of Yen, in southern Manchuria,

had already been destroyed by Wei in 238 thanks to Wei's good relations

with Japan. Loose diplomatic relations were maintained with Japan in the

period that followed; in that period many elements of Chinese

civilization found their way into Japan and there, together with

settlers from many parts of China, helped to transform the culture of

ancient Japan.

(B) The Western Chin dynasty (A.D. 265-317)

1 _Internal situation in the Chin empire_

The change of dynasty in the state of Wei did not bring any turn in

China's internal history. Ssu-ma Yen, who as emperor was called Wu Ti

(265-289), had come to the throne with the aid of his clique and his

extraordinarily large and widely ramified family. To these he had to

give offices as reward. There began at court once more the same

spectacle as in the past, except that princes of the new imperial family

now played a greater part than under the Wei dynasty, whose ruling house

had consisted of a small family. It was now customary, in spite of the

abolition of the feudal system, for the imperial princes to receive

large regions to administer, the fiscal revenues of which represented

their income. The princes were not, however, to exercise full authority

in the style of the former feudal lords: their courts were full of

imperial control officials. In the event of war it was their duty to

come forward, like other governors, with an army in support of the

central government. The various Chin princes succeeded, however, in

making other governors, beyond the frontiers of their regions, dependent

on them. Also, they collected armies of their own independently of the

central government and used those armies to pursue personal policies.

The members of the families allied with the ruling house, for their

part, did all they could to extend their own power. Thus the first ruler

of the dynasty was tossed to and fro between the conflicting interests

and was himself powerless. But though intrigue was piled on intrigue,

the ruler who, of course, himself had come to the head of the state by

means of intrigues, was more watchful than the rulers of the Wei dynasty

had been, and by shrewd counter-measures he repeatedly succeeded in

playing off one party against another, so that the dynasty remained in

power. Numerous widespread and furious risings nevertheless took place,

usually led by princes. Thus during this period the history of the

dynasty was of an extraordinarily dismal character.

In spite of this, the Chin troops succeeded in overthrowing the second

southern state, that of Wu (A.D. 280), and in so restoring the unity of

the empire, the Shu Han realm having been already conquered by the Wei.

After the destruction of Wu there remained no external enemy that

represented a potential danger, so that a general disarmament was

decreed (280) in order to restore a healthy economic and financial

situation. This disarmament applied, of course, to the troops directly

under the orders of the dynasty, namely the troops of the court and the

capital and the imperial troops in the provinces. Disarmament could

not, however, be carried out in the princes' regions, as the princes

declared that they needed personal guards. The dismissal of the troops

was accompanied by a decree ordering the surrender of arms. It may be

assumed that the government proposed to mint money with the metal of the

weapons surrendered, for coin (the old coin of the Wei dynasty) had

become very scarce; as we indicated previously, money had largely been

replaced by goods so that, for instance, grain and silks were used for

the payment of salaries. China, from _c_. 200 A.D. on until the eighth

century, remained in a period of such partial "natural economy".

Naturally the decree for the surrender of weapons remained a

dead-letter. The discharged soldiers kept their weapons at first and

then preferred to sell them. A large part of them was acquired by the

Hsiung-nu and the Hsien-pi in the north of China; apparently they

usually gave up land in return. In this way many Chinese soldiers,

though not all by any means, went as peasants to the regions in the

north of China and beyond the frontier. They were glad to do so, for the

Hsiung-nu and the Hsien-pi had not the efficient administration and

rigid tax collection of the Chinese; and above all, they had no great

landowners who could have organized the collection of taxes. For their

part, the Hsiung-nu and the Hsien-pi had no reason to regret this

immigration of peasants, who could provide them with the farm produce

they needed. And at the same time they were receiving from them large

quantities of the most modern weapons.

This ineffective disarmament was undoubtedly the most pregnant event of

the period of the western Chin dynasty. The measure was intended to save

the cost of maintaining the soldiers and to bring them back to the land

as peasants (and taxpayers); but the discharged men were not given land

by the government. The disarmament achieved nothing, not even the

desired increase in the money in circulation; what did happen was that

the central government lost all practical power, while the military

strength both of the dangerous princes within the country and also of

the frontier people was increased. The results of these mistaken

measures became evident at once and compelled the government to arm

anew.

2 _Effect on the frontier peoples_

Four groups of frontier peoples drew more or less advantage from the

demobilization law--the people of the Toba, the Tibetans, and the

Hsien-pi in the north, and the nineteen tribes of the Hsiung-nu within

the frontiers of the empire. In the course of time all sorts of

complicated relations developed among those ascending peoples as well

as between them and the Chinese.

The Toba (T'o-pa) formed a small group in the north of the present

province of Shansi, north of the city of Tat'ungfu, and they were about

to develop their small state. They were primarily of Turkish origin, but

had absorbed many tribes of the older Hsiung-nu and the Hsien-pi. In

considering the ethnical relationships of all these northern peoples we

must rid ourselves of our present-day notions of national unity. Among

the Toba there were many Turkish tribes, but also Mongols, and probably

a Tungus tribe, as well as perhaps others whom we cannot yet analyse.

These tribes may even have spoken different languages, much as later not

only Mongol but also Turkish was spoken in the Mongol empire. The

political units they formed were tribal unions, not national states.

Such a union or federation can be conceived of, structurally, as a cone.

At the top point of the cone there was the person of the ruler of the

federation. He was a member of the leading family or clan of the leading

tribe (the two top layers of the cone). If we speak of the Toba as of

Turkish stock, we mean that according to our present knowledge, this

leading tribe (_a_) spoke a language belonging to the Turkish language

family and (_b_) exhibited a pattern of culture which belonged to the

type called above in Chapter One as "North-western Culture". The next

layer of the cone represented the "inner circle of tribes", i.e. such

tribes as had joined with the leading tribe at an early moment. The

leading family of the leading tribe often took their wives from the

leading families of the "inner tribes", and these leaders served as

advisors and councillors to the leader of the federation. The next lower

layer consisted of the "outer tribes", i.e. tribes which had joined the

federation only later, often under strong pressure; their number was

always much larger than the number of the "inner tribes", but their

political influence was much weaker. Every layer below that of the

"outer tribes" was regarded as inferior and more or less "unfree". There

was many a tribe which, as a tribe, had to serve a free tribe; and there

were others who, as tribes, had to serve the whole federation. In

addition, there were individuals who had quit or had been forced to quit

their tribe or their home and had joined the federation leader as his

personal "bondsmen"; further, there were individual slaves and, finally,

there were the large masses of agriculturists who had been conquered by

the federation. When such a federation was dissolved, by defeat or inner

dissent, individual tribes or groups of tribes could join a new

federation or could resume independent life.

Typically, such federations exhibited two tendencies. In the case of the

Hsiung-nu we indicated already previously that the leader of the

federation repeatedly attempted to build up a kind of bureaucratic

system, using his bondsmen as a nucleus. A second tendency was to

replace the original tribal leaders by members of the family of the

federation leader. If this initial step, usually first taken when "outer

tribes" were incorporated, was successful, a reorganization was

attempted: instead of using tribal units in war, military units on the

basis of "Groups of Hundred", "Groups of Thousand", etc., were created

and the original tribes were dissolved into military regiments. In the

course of time, and especially at the time of the dissolution of a

federation, these military units had gained social coherence and

appeared to be tribes again; we are probably correct in assuming that

all "tribes" which we find from this time on were already "secondary"

tribes of this type. A secondary tribe often took its name from its

leader, but it could also revive an earlier "primary tribe" name.

The Toba represented a good example for this "cone" structure of

pastoral society. Also the Hsiung-nu of this time seem to have had a

similar structure. Incidentally, we will from now on call the Hsiung-nu

"Huns" because Chinese sources begin to call them "Hu", a term which

also had a more general meaning (all non-Chinese in the north and west

of China) as well as a more special meaning (non-Chinese in Central Asia

and India).

The Tibetans fell apart into two sub-groups, the Ch'iang and the Ti.

Both names appeared repeatedly as political conceptions, but the

Tibetans, like all other state-forming groups of peoples, sheltered in

their realms countless alien elements. In the course of the third and

second centuries B.C. the group of the Ti, mainly living in the

territory of the present Szechwan, had mixed extensively with remains of

the Yueeh-chih; the others, the Ch'iang, were northern Tibetans or

so-called Tanguts; that is to say, they contained Turkish and Mongol

elements. In A.D. 296 there began a great rising of the Ti, whose leader

Ch'i Wan-nien took on the title emperor. The Ch'iang rose with them, but

it was not until later, from 312, that they pursued an independent

policy. The Ti State, however, though it had a second emperor, very soon

lost importance, so that we shall be occupied solely with the Ch'iang.

As the tribal structure of Tibetan groups was always weak and as

leadership developed among them only in times of war, their states

always show a military rather than a tribal structure, and the

continuation of these states depended strongly upon the personal

qualities of their leaders. Incidentally, Tibetans fundamentally were

sheep-breeders and not horse-breeders and, therefore, they always

showed inclination to incorporate infantry into their armies. Thus,

Tibetan states differed strongly from the aristocratically organized

"Turkish" states as well as from the tribal, non-aristocratic "Mongol"

states of that period.

The Hsien-pi, according to our present knowledge, were under "Mongol"

leadership, i.e. we believe that the language of the leading group

belonged to the family of Mongolian languages and that their culture

belonged to the type described above as "Northern culture". They had, in

addition, a strong admixture of Hunnic tribes. Throughout the period

during which they played a part in history, they never succeeded in

forming any great political unit, in strong contrast to the Huns, who

excelled in state formation. The separate groups of the Hsien-pi pursued

a policy of their own; very frequently Hsien-pi fought each other, and

they never submitted to a common leadership. Thus their history is

entirely that of small groups. As early as the Wei period there had been

small-scale conflicts with the Hsien-pi tribes, and at times the tribes

had had some success. The campaigns of the Hsien-pi against North China

now increased, and in the course of them the various tribes formed

firmer groupings, among which the Mu-jung tribes played a leading part.

In 281, the year after the demobilization law, this group marched south

into China, and occupied the region round Peking. After fierce fighting,

in which the Mu-jung section suffered heavy losses, a treaty was signed

in 289, under which the Mu-jung tribe of the Hsien-pi recognized Chinese

overlordship. The Mu-jung were driven to this step mainly because they

had been continually attacked from southern Manchuria by another

Hsien-pi tribe, the Yue-wen, the tribe most closely related to them. The

Mu-jung made use of the period of their so-called subjection to organize

their community in North China.

South of the Toba were the nineteen tribes of the Hsiung-nu or Huns, as

we are now calling them. Their leader in A.D. 287, Liu Yuean, was one of

the principal personages of this period. His name is purely Chinese, but

he was descended from the Hun _shan-yue_, from the family and line of Mao

Tun. His membership of that long-famous noble line and old ruling family

of Huns gave him a prestige which he increased by his great organizing

ability.

3 _Struggles for the throne_

We shall return to Liu Yuean later; we must now cast another glance at

the official court of the Chin. In that court a family named Yang had

become very powerful, a daughter of this family having become empress.

When, however, the emperor died, the wife of the new emperor Hui Ti

(290-306) secured the assassination of the old empress Yang and of her

whole family. Thus began the rule at court of the Chia family. In 299

the Chia family got rid of the heir to the throne, to whom they

objected, assassinating this prince and another one. This event became

the signal for large-scale activity on the part of the princes, each of

whom was supported by particular groups of families. The princes had not

complied with the disarmament law of 280 and so had become militarily

supreme. The generals newly appointed in the course of the imperial

rearmament at once entered into alliance with the princes, and thus were

quite unreliable as officers of the government. Both the generals and

the princes entered into agreements with the frontier peoples to assure

their aid in the struggle for power. The most popular of these

auxiliaries were the Hsien-pi, who were fighting for one of the princes

whose territory lay in the east. Since the Toba were the natural enemies

of the Hsien-pi, who were continually contesting their hold on their

territory, the Toba were always on the opposite side to that supported

by the Hsien-pi, so that they now supported generals who were ostensibly

loyal to the government. The Huns, too, negotiated with several generals

and princes and received tempting offers. Above all, all the frontier

peoples were now militarily well equipped, continually receiving new war

material from the Chinese who from time to time were co-operating with

them.

In A.D. 300 Prince Lun assassinated the empress Chia and removed her

group. In 301 he made himself emperor, but in the same year he was

killed by the prince of Ch'i. This prince was killed in 302 by the

prince of Ch'ang-sha, who in turned was killed in 303 by the prince of

Tung-hai. The prince of Ho-chien rose in 302 and was killed in 306; the

prince of Ch'engtu rose in 303, conquered the capital in 305, and then,

in 306, was himself removed. I mention all these names and dates only to

show the disunion within the ruling groups.

4 _Migration of Chinese_

All these struggles raged round the capital, for each of the princes

wanted to secure full power and to become emperor. Thus the border

regions remained relatively undisturbed. Their population suffered much

less from the warfare than the unfortunate people in the neighbourhood

of the central government. For this reason there took place a mass

migration of Chinese from the centre of the empire to its periphery.

This process, together with the shifting of the frontier peoples, is one

of the most important events of that epoch. A great number of Chinese

migrated especially into the present province of Kansu, where a governor

who had originally been sent there to fight the Hsien-pi had created a

sort of paradise by his good administration and maintenance of peace.

The territory ruled by this Chinese, first as governor and then in

increasing independence, was surrounded by Hsien-pi, Tibetans, and other

peoples, but thanks to the great immigration of Chinese and to its

situation on the main caravan route to Turkestan, it was able to hold

its own, to expand, and to become prosperous.

Other groups of Chinese peasants migrated southwards into the

territories of the former state of Wu. A Chinese prince of the house of

the Chin was ruling there, in the present Nanking. His purpose was to

organize that territory, and then to intervene in the struggles of the

other princes. We shall meet him again at the beginning of the Hun rule

over North China in 317, as founder and emperor of the first south

Chinese dynasty, which was at once involved in the usual internal and

external struggles. For the moment, however, the southern region was

relatively at peace, and was accordingly attracting settlers.

Finally, many Chinese migrated northward, into the territories of the

frontier peoples, not only of the Hsien-pi but especially of the Huns.

These alien peoples, although in the official Chinese view they were

still barbarians, at least maintained peace in the territories they

ruled, and they left in peace the peasants and craftsmen who came to

them, even while their own armies were involved in fighting inside

China. Not only peasants and craftsmen came to the north but more and

more educated persons. Members of families of the gentry that had

suffered from the fighting, people who had lost their influence in

China, were welcomed by the Huns and appointed teachers and political

advisers of the Hun nobility.

5 _Victory of the Huns. The Hun Han dynasty (later renamed the Earlier

Chao dynasty)_

With its self-confidence thus increased, the Hun council of nobles

declared that in future the Huns should no longer fight now for one and

now for another Chinese general or prince. They had promised loyalty to

the Chinese emperor, but not to any prince. No one doubted that the

Chinese emperor was a complete nonentity and no longer played any part

in the struggle for power. It was evident that the murders would

continue until one of the generals or princes overcame the rest and made

himself emperor. Why should not the Huns have the same right? Why should

not they join in this struggle for the Chinese imperial throne?

There were two arguments against this course, one of which was already

out of date. The Chinese had for many centuries set down the Huns as

uncultured barbarians; but the inferiority complex thus engendered in

the Huns had virtually been overcome, because in the course of time

their upper class had deliberately acquired a Chinese education and so

ranked culturally with the Chinese. Thus the ruler Liu Yuean, for

example, had enjoyed a good Chinese education and was able to read all

the classical texts. The second argument was provided by the rigid

conceptions of legitimacy to which the Turkish-Hunnic aristocratic

society adhered. The Huns asked themselves: "Have we, as aliens, any

right to become emperors and rulers in China, when we are not descended

from an old Chinese family?" On this point Liu Yuean and his advisers

found a good answer. They called Liu Yuean's dynasty the "Han dynasty",

and so linked it with the most famous of all the Chinese dynasties,

pointing to the pact which their ancestor Mao Tun had concluded five

hundred years earlier with the first emperor of the Han dynasty and

which had described the two states as "brethren". They further recalled

the fact that the rulers of the Huns were closely related to the Chinese

ruling family, because Mao Tun and his successors had married Chinese

princesses. Finally, Liu Yuean's Chinese family name, Liu, had also been

the family name of the rulers of the Han dynasty. Accordingly the Hun

Lius came forward not as aliens but as the rightful successors in

continuation of the Han dynasty, as legitimate heirs to the Chinese

imperial throne on the strength of relationship and of treaties.

Thus the Hun Liu Yuean had no intention of restoring the old empire of

Mao Tun, the empire of the nomads; he intended to become emperor of

China, emperor of a country of farmers. In this lay the fundamental

difference between the earlier Hun empire and this new one. The question

whether the Huns should join in the struggle for the Chinese imperial

throne was therefore decided among the Huns themselves in 304 in the

affirmative, by the founding of the "Hun Han dynasty". All that remained

was the practical question of how to hold out with their small army of

50,000 men if serious opposition should be offered to the "barbarians".

Meanwhile Liu Yuean provided himself with court ceremonial on the Chinese

model, in a capital which, after several changes, was established at

P'ing-ch'eng in southern Shansi. He attracted more and more of the

Chinese gentry, who were glad to come to this still rather barbaric but

well-organized court. In 309 the first attack was made on the Chinese

capital, Loyang. Liu Yuean died in the following year, and in 311, under

his successor Liu Ts'ung (310-318), the attack was renewed and Loyang

fell. The Chin emperor, Huai Ti, was captured and kept a prisoner in

P'ing-ch'eng until in 313 a conspiracy in his favour was brought to

light in the Hun empire, and he and all his supporters were killed.

Meanwhile the Chinese clique of the Chin dynasty had hastened to make a

prince emperor in the second capital, Ch'ang-an (Min Ti, 313-316) while

the princes' struggles for the throne continued. Nobody troubled about

the fate of the unfortunate emperor in his capital. He received no

reinforcements, so that he was helpless in face of the next attack of

the Huns, and in 316 he was compelled to surrender like his predecessor.

Now the Hun Han dynasty held both capitals, which meant virtually the

whole of the western part of North China, and the so-called "Western

Chin dynasty" thus came to its end. Its princes and generals and many of

its gentry became landless and homeless and had to flee into the south.

(C) The alien empires in North China, down to the Toba (A.D. 317-385)

1 _The Later Chao dynasty in eastern North China (Hun_; 329-352)

At this time the eastern part of North China was entirely in the hands

of Shih Lo, a former follower of Liu Yuean. Shih Lo had escaped from

slavery in China and had risen to be a military leader among

detribalized Huns. In 310 he had not only undertaken a great campaign

right across China to the south, but had slaughtered more than 100,000

Chinese, including forty-eight princes of the Chin dynasty, who had

formed a vast burial procession for a prince. This achievement added

considerably to Shih Lo's power, and his relations with Liu Ts'ung,

already tense, became still more so. Liu Yuean had tried to organize the

Hun state on the Chinese model, intending in this way to gain efficient

control of China; Shih Lo rejected Chinese methods, and held to the old

warrior-nomad tradition, making raids with the aid of nomad fighters. He

did not contemplate holding the territories of central and southern

China which he had conquered; he withdrew, and in the two years 314-315

he contented himself with bringing considerable expanses in

north-eastern China, especially territories of the Hsien-pi, under his

direct rule, as a base for further raids. Many Huns in Liu Ts'ung's

dominion found Shih Lo's method of rule more to their taste than living

in a state ruled by officials, and they went over to Shih Lo and joined

him in breaking entirely with Liu Ts'ung. There was a further motive for

this: in states founded by nomads, with a federation of tribes as their

basis, the personal qualities of the ruler played an important part. The

chiefs of the various tribes would not give unqualified allegiance to

the son of a dead ruler unless the son was a strong personality or gave

promise of becoming one. Failing that, there would be independence

movements. Liu Ts'ung did not possess the indisputable charisma of his

predecessor Liu Yuean; and the Huns looked with contempt on his court

splendour, which could only have been justified if he had conquered all

China. Liu Ts'ung had no such ambition; nor had his successor Liu Yao

(319-329), who gave the Hun Han dynasty retroactively, from its start

with Liu Yuean, the new name of "Earlier Chao dynasty" (304-329). Many

tribes then went over to Shih Lo, and the remainder of Liu Yao's empire

was reduced to a precarious existence. In 329 the whole of it was

annexed by Shih Lo.

Although Shih Lo had long been much more powerful than the emperors of

the "Earlier Chao dynasty", until their removal he had not ventured to

assume the title of emperor. The reason for this seems to have lain in

the conceptions of nobility held by the Turkish peoples in general and

the Huns in particular, according to which only those could become

_shan-yue_ (or, later, emperor) who could show descent from the Tu-ku

tribe the rightful _shan-yue_ stock. In accordance with this conception,

all later Hun dynasties deliberately disowned Shih Lo. For Shih Lo,

after his destruction of Liu Yao, no longer hesitated: ex-slave as he

was, and descended from one of the non-noble stocks of the Huns, he made

himself emperor of the "Later Chao dynasty" (329-352).

Shih Lo was a forceful army commander, but he was a man without

statesmanship, and without the culture of his day. He had no Chinese

education; he hated the Chinese and would have been glad to make north

China a grazing ground for his nomad tribes of Huns. Accordingly he had

no desire to rule all China. The part already subjugated, embracing the

whole of north China with the exception of the present province of

Kansu, sufficed for his purpose.

The governor of that province was a loyal subject of the Chinese Chin

dynasty, a man famous for his good administration, and himself a

Chinese. After the execution of the Chin emperor Huai Ti by the Huns in

313, he regarded himself as no longer bound to the central government;

he made himself independent and founded the "Earlier Liang dynasty",

which was to last until 376. This mainly Chinese realm was not very

large, although it had admitted a broad stream of Chinese emigrants from

the dissolving Chin empire; but economically the Liang realm was very

prosperous, so that it was able to extend its influence as far as

Turkestan. During the earlier struggles Turkestan had been virtually in

isolation, but now new contacts began to be established. Many traders

from Turkestan set up branches in Liang. In the capital there were whole

quarters inhabited only by aliens from western and eastern Turkestan and

from India. With the traders came Buddhist monks; trade and Buddhism

seemed to be closely associated everywhere. In the trading centres

monasteries were installed in the form of blocks of houses within strong

walls that successfully resisted many an attack. Consequently the

Buddhists were able to serve as bankers for the merchants, who deposited

their money in the monasteries, which made a charge for its custody; the

merchants also warehoused their goods in the monasteries. Sometimes the

process was reversed, a trade centre being formed around an existing

monastery. In this case the monastery also served as a hostel for the

merchants. Economically this Chinese state in Kansu was much more like a

Turkestan city state that lived by commerce than the agrarian states of

the Far East, although agriculture was also pursued under the Earlier

Liang.

From this trip to the remote west we will return first to the Hun

capital. From 329 onward Shih Lo possessed a wide empire, but an

unstable one. He himself felt at all times insecure, because the Huns

regarded him, on account of his humble origin, as a "revolutionary". He

exterminated every member of the Liu family, that is to say the

old _shan-yue_ family, of whom he could get hold, in order to remove any

possible pretender to the throne; but he could not count on the loyalty

of the Hun and other Turkish tribes under his rule. During this period

not a few Huns went over to the small realm of the Toba; other Hun

tribes withdrew entirely from the political scene and lived with their

herds as nomad tribes in Shansi and in the Ordos region. The general

insecurity undermined the strength of Shih Lo's empire. He died in 333,

and there came to the throne, after a short interregnum, another

personality of a certain greatness, Shih Hu (334-349). He transferred

the capital to the city of Yeh, in northern Honan, where the rulers of

the Wei dynasty had reigned. There are many accounts of the magnificence

of the court of Yeh. Foreigners, especially Buddhist monks, played a

greater part there than Chinese. On the one hand, it was not easy for

Shih Hu to gain the active support of the educated Chinese gentry after

the murders of Shih Lo and, on the other hand, Shih Hu seems to have

understood that foreigners without family and without other relations to

the native population, but with special skills, are the most reliable

and loyal servants of a ruler. Indeed, his administration seems to have

been good, but the regime remained completely parasitic, with no

support of the masses or the gentry. After Shih Hu's death there were

fearful combats between his sons; ultimately a member of an entirely

different family of Hun origin seized power, but was destroyed in 352 by

the Hsien-pi, bringing to an end the Later Chao dynasty.

2 _Earlier Yen dynasty in the north-east (proto-Mongol; 352-370), and

the Earlier Ch'in dynasty in all north China (Tibetan; 351-394)_

In the north, proto-Mongol Hsien-pi tribes had again made themselves

independent; in the past they had been subjects of Liu Yuean and then of

Shih Lo. A man belonging to one of these tribes, the tribe of the

Mu-jung, became the leader of a league of tribes, and in 337 founded the

state of Yen. This proto-Mongol state of the Mu-jung, which the

historians call the "Earlier Yen" state, conquered parts of southern

Manchuria and also the state of Kao-li in Korea, and there began then an

immigration of Hsien-pi into Korea, which became noticeable at a later

date. The conquest of Korea, which was still, as in the past, a Japanese

market and was very wealthy, enormously strengthened the state of Yen.

Not until a little later, when Japan's trade relations were diverted to

central China, did Korea's importance begin to diminish. Although this

"Earlier Yen dynasty" of the Mu-jung officially entered on the heritage

of the Huns, and its regime was therefore dated only from 352 (until

370), it failed either to subjugate the whole realm of the "Later Chao"

or effectively to strengthen the state it had acquired. This old Hun

territory had suffered economically from the anti-agrarian nomad

tendency of the last of the Hun emperors; and unremunerative wars

against the Chinese in the south had done nothing to improve its

position. In addition to this, the realm of the Toba was dangerously

gaining strength on the flank of the new empire. But the most dangerous

enemy was in the west, on former Hun soil, in the province of

Shensi--Tibetans, who finally came forward once more with claims to

dominance. These were Tibetans of the P'u family, which later changed

its name to Fu. The head of the family had worked his way up as a leader

of Tibetan auxiliaries under the "Later Chao", gaining more and more

power and following. When under that dynasty the death of Shih Hu marked

the beginning of general dissolution, he gathered his Tibetans around

him in the west, declared himself independent of the Huns, and made

himself emperor of the "Earlier Ch'in dynasty" (351-394). He died in

355, and was followed after a short interregnum by Fu Chien (357-385),

who was unquestionably one of the most important figures of the fourth

century. This Tibetan empire ultimately defeated the "Earlier Yen

dynasty" and annexed the realm of the Mu-jung. Thus the Mu-jung Hsien-pi

came under the dominion of the Tibetans; they were distributed among a

number of places as garrisons of mounted troops.

The empire of the Tibetans was organized quite differently from the

empires of the Huns and the Hsien-pi tribes. The Tibetan organization

was purely military and had nothing to do with tribal structure. This

had its advantages, for the leader of such a formation had no need to

take account of tribal chieftains; he was answerable to no one and

possessed considerable personal power. Nor was there any need for him to

be of noble rank or descended from an old family. The Tibetan ruler Fu

Chien organized all his troops, including the non-Tibetans, on this

system, without regard to tribal membership.

Fu Chien's state showed another innovation: the armies of the Huns and

the Hsien-pi had consisted entirely of cavalry, for the nomads of the

north were, of course, horsemen; to fight on foot was in their eyes not

only contrary to custom but contemptible. So long as a state consisted

only of a league of tribes, it was simply out of the question to

transform part of the army into infantry. Fu Chien, however, with his

military organization that paid no attention to the tribal element,

created an infantry in addition to the great cavalry units, recruiting

for it large numbers of Chinese. The infantry proved extremely valuable,

especially in the fighting in the plains of north China and in laying

siege to fortified towns. Fu Chien thus very quickly achieved military

predominance over the neighbouring states. As we have seen already, he

annexed the "Earlier Yen" realm of the proto-Mongols (370), but he also

annihilated the Chinese "Earlier Liang" realm (376) and in the same year

the small Turkish Toba realm. This made him supreme over all north China

and stronger than any alien ruler before him. He had in his possession

both the ancient capitals, Ch'ang-an and Loyang; the whole of the rich

agricultural regions of north China belonged to him; he also controlled

the routes to Turkestan. He himself had had a Chinese education, and he

attracted Chinese to his court; he protected the Buddhists; and he tried

in every way to make the whole country culturally Chinese. As soon as Fu

Chien had all north China in his power, as Liu Yuean and his Huns had

done before him, he resolved, like Liu Yuean, to make every effort to

gain the mastery over all China, to become emperor of China. Liu Yuean's

successors had not had the capacity for which such a venture called; Fu

Chien was to fail in it for other reasons. Yet, from a military point

of view, his chances were not bad. He had far more soldiers under his

command than the Chinese "Eastern Chin dynasty" which ruled the south,

and his troops were undoubtedly better. In the time of the founder of

the Tibetan dynasty the southern empire had been utterly defeated by his

troops (354), and the south Chinese were no stronger now.

Against them the north had these assets: the possession of the best

northern tillage, the control of the trade routes, and "Chinese" culture

and administration. At the time, however, these represented only

potentialities and not tangible realities. It would have taken ten to

twenty years to restore the capacities of the north after its

devastation in many wars, to reorganize commerce, and to set up a really

reliable administration, and thus to interlock the various elements and

consolidate the various tribes. But as early as 383 Fu Chien started his

great campaign against the south, with an army of something like a

million men. At first the advance went well. The horsemen from the

north, however, were men of the mountain country, and in the soggy

plains of the Yangtze region, cut up by hundreds of water-courses and

canals, they suffered from climatic and natural conditions to which they

were unaccustomed. Their main strength was still in cavalry; and they

came to grief. The supplies and reinforcements for the vast army failed

to arrive in time; units did not reach the appointed places at the

appointed dates. The southern troops under the supreme command of Hsieh

Hsuean, far inferior in numbers and militarily of no great efficiency,

made surprise attacks on isolated units before these were in regular

formation. Some they defeated, others they bribed; they spread false

reports. Fu Chien's army was seized with widespread panic, so that he

was compelled to retreat in haste. As he did so it became evident that

his empire had no inner stability: in a very short time it fell into

fragments. The south Chinese had played no direct part in this, for in

spite of their victory they were not strong enough to advance far to the

north.

3 _The fragmentation of north China_

The first to fall away from the Tibetan ruler was a noble of the

Mu-jung, a member of the ruling family of the "Earlier Yen dynasty", who

withdrew during the actual fighting to pursue a policy of his own. With

the vestiges of the Hsien-pi who followed him, mostly cavalry, he fought

his way northwards into the old homeland of the Hsien-pi and there, in

central Hopei, founded the "Later Yen dynasty" (384-409), himself

reigning for twelve years. In the remaining thirteen years of the

existence of that dynasty there were no fewer than five rulers, the

last of them a member of another family. The history of this Hsien-pi

dynasty, as of its predecessor, is an unedifying succession of

intrigues; no serious effort was made to build up a true state.

In the same year 384 there was founded, under several other Mu-jung

princes of the ruling family of the "Earlier Yen dynasty", the "Western

Yen dynasty" (384-394). Its nucleus was nothing more than a detachment

of troops of the Hsien-pi which had been thrown by Fu Chien into the

west of his empire, in Shensi, in the neighbourhood of the old capital

Ch'ang-an. There its commanders, on learning the news of Fu Chien's

collapse, declared their independence. In western China, however, far

removed from all liaison with the main body of the Hsien-pi, they were

unable to establish themselves, and when they tried to fight their way

to the north-east they were dispersed, so that they failed entirely to

form an actual state.

There was a third attempt in 384 to form a state in north China. A

Tibetan who had joined Fu Chien with his followers declared himself

independent when Fu Chien came back, a beaten man, to Shensi. He caused

Fu Chien and almost the whole of his family to be assassinated, occupied

the capital, Ch'ang-an, and actually entered into the heritage of Fu

Chien. This Tibetan dynasty is known as the "Later Ch'in dynasty"

(384-417). It was certainly the strongest of those founded in 384, but

it still failed to dominate any considerable part of China and remained

of local importance, mainly confined to the present province of Shensi.

Fu Chien's empire nominally had three further rulers, but they did not

exert the slightest influence on events.

With the collapse of the state founded by Fu Chien, the tribes of

Hsien-pi who had left their homeland in the third century and migrated

to the Ordos region proceeded to form their own state: a man of the

Hsien-pi tribe of the Ch'i-fu founded the so-called "Western Ch'in

dynasty" (385-431). Like the other Hsien-pi states, this one was of weak

construction, resting on the military strength of a few tribes and

failing to attain a really secure basis. Its territory lay in the east

of the present province of Kansu, and so controlled the eastern end of

the western Asian caravan route, which might have been a source of

wealth if the Ch'i-fu had succeeded in attracting commerce by discreet

treatment and in imposing taxation on it. Instead of this, the bulk of

the long-distance traffic passed through the Ordos region, a little

farther north, avoiding the Ch'i-fu state, which seemed to the merchants

to be too insecure. The Ch'i-fu depended mainly on cattle-breeding in

the remote mountain country in the south of their territory, a region

that gave them relative security from attack; on the other hand, this

made them unable to exercise any influence on the course of political

events in western China.

Mention must be made of one more state that rose from the ruins of Fu

Chien's empire. It lay in the far west of China, in the western part of

the present province of Kansu, and was really a continuation of the

Chinese "Earlier Liang" realm, which had been annexed ten years earlier

(376) by Fu Chien. A year before his great march to the south, Fu Chien

had sent the Tibetan Lue Kuang into the "Earlier Liang" region in order

to gain influence over Turkestan. As mentioned previously, after the

great Hun rulers Fu Chien was the first to make a deliberate attempt to

secure cultural and political overlordship over the whole of China.

Although himself a Tibetan, he never succumbed to the temptation of

pursuing a "Tibetan" policy; like an entirely legitimate ruler of China,

he was concerned to prevent the northern peoples along the frontier from

uniting with the Tibetan peoples of the west for political ends. The

possession of Turkestan would avert that danger, which had shown signs

of becoming imminent of late: some tribes of the Hsien-pi had migrated

as far as the high mountains of Tibet and had imposed themselves as a

ruling class on the still very primitive Tibetans living there. From

this symbiosis there began to be formed a new people, the so-called

T'u-yue-hun, a hybridization of Mongol and Tibetan stock with a slight

Turkish admixture. Lue Kuang had had considerable success in Turkestan;

he had brought considerable portions of eastern Turkestan under Fu

Chien's sovereignty and administered those regions almost independently.

When the news came of Fu Chien's end, he declared himself an independent

ruler, of the "Later Liang" dynasty (386-403). Strictly speaking, this

was simply a trading State, like the city-states of Turkestan: its basis

was the transit traffic that brought it prosperity. For commerce brought

good profit to the small states that lay right across the caravan route,

whereas it was of doubtful benefit, as we know, to agrarian China as a

whole, because the luxury goods which it supplied to the court were paid

for out of the production of the general population.

This "Later Liang" realm was inhabited not only by a few Tibetans and

many Chinese, but also by Hsien-pi and Huns. These heterogeneous

elements with their divergent cultures failed in the long run to hold

together in this long but extremely narrow strip of territory, which was

almost incapable of military defence. As early as 397 a group of Huns in

the central section of the country made themselves independent, assuming

the name of the "Northern Liang" (397-439). These Huns quickly conquered

other parts of the "Later Liang" realm, which then fell entirely to

pieces. Chinese again founded a state, "West Liang" (400-421) in western

Kansu, and the Hsien-pi founded "South Liang" (379-414) in eastern

Kansu. Thus the "Later Liang" fell into three parts, more or less

differing ethnically, though they could not be described as ethnically

unadulterated states.

4 _Sociological analysis of the two great alien empires_

The two great empires of north China at the time of its division had

been founded by non-Chinese--the first by the Hun Liu Yuean, the second

by the Tibetan Fu Chien. Both rulers went to work on the same principle

of trying to build up truly "Chinese" empires, but the traditions of

Huns and Tibetans differed, and the two experiments turned out

differently. Both failed, but not for the same reasons and not with the

same results. The Hun Liu Yuean was the ruler of a league of feudal

tribes, which was expected to take its place as an upper class above the

unchanged Chinese agricultural population with its system of officials

and gentry. But Liu Yuean's successors were national reactionaries who

stood for the maintenance of the nomad life against that new plan of

transition to a feudal class of urban nobles ruling an agrarian

population. Liu Yuean's more far-seeing policy was abandoned, with the

result that the Huns were no longer in a position to rule an immense

agrarian territory, and the empire soon disintegrated. For the various

Hun tribes this failure meant falling back into political

insignificance, but they were able to maintain their national character

and existence.

Fu Chien, as a Tibetan, was a militarist and soldier, in accordance with

the past of the Tibetans. Under him were grouped Tibetans without tribal

chieftains; the great mass of Chinese; and dispersed remnants of tribes

of Huns, Hsien-pi, and others. His organization was militaristic and,

outside the military sphere, a militaristic bureaucracy. The Chinese

gentry, so far as they still existed, preferred to work with him rather

than with the feudalist Huns. These gentry probably supported Fu Chien's

southern campaign, for, in consequence of the wide ramifications of

their families, it was to their interest that China should form a single

economic unit. They were, of course, equally ready to work with another

group, one of southern Chinese, to attain the same end by other means,

if those means should prove more advantageous: thus the gentry were not

a reliable asset, but were always ready to break faith. Among other

things, Fu Chien's southern campaign was wrecked by that faithlessness.

When an essentially military state suffers military defeat, it can only

go to pieces. This explains the disintegration of that great empire

within a single year into so many diminutive states, as already

described.

5 _Sociological analysis of the petty States_

The states that took the place of Fu Chien's empire, those many

diminutive states (the Chinese speak of the period of the Sixteen

Kingdoms), may be divided from the economic point of view into two

groups--trading states and warrior states; sociologically they also fall

into two groups, tribal states and military states.

The small states in the west, in Kansu (the Later Liang and the Western,

Northern, and Southern Liang), were trading states: they lived on the

earnings of transit trade with Turkestan. The eastern states were

warrior states, in which an army commander ruled by means of an armed

group of non-Chinese and exploited an agricultural population. It is

only logical that such states should be short-lived, as in fact they all

were.

Sociologically regarded, during this period only the Southern and

Northern Liang were still tribal states. In addition to these came the

young Toba realm, which began in 385 but of which mention has not yet

been made. The basis of that state was the tribe, not the family or the

individual; after its political disintegration the separate tribes

remained in existence. The other states of the east, however, were

military states, made up of individuals with no tribal allegiance but

subject to a military commandant. But where there is no tribal

association, after the political downfall of a state founded by ethnical

groups, those groups sooner or later disappear as such. We see this in

the years immediately following Fu Chien's collapse: the Tibetan

ethnical group to which he himself belonged disappeared entirely from

the historical scene. The two Tibetan groups that outlasted him, also

forming military states and not tribal states, similarly came to an end

shortly afterwards for all time. The Hsien-pi groups in the various

fragments of the empire, with the exception of the petty states in

Kansu, also continued, only as tribal fragments led by a few old ruling

families. They, too, after brief and undistinguished military rule, came

to an end; they disappeared so completely that thereafter we no longer

find the term Hsien-pi in history. Not that they had been exterminated.

When the social structure and its corresponding economic form fall to

pieces, there remain only two alternatives for its individuals. Either

they must go over to a new form, which in China could only mean that

they became Chinese; many Hsien-pi in this way became Chinese in the

decades following 384. Or, they could retain their old way of living in

association with another stock of similar formation; this, too, happened

in many cases. Both these courses, however, meant the end of the

Hsien-pi as an independent ethnical unit. We must keep this process and

its reasons in view if we are to understand how a great people can

disappear once and for all.

The Huns, too, so powerful in the past, were suddenly scarcely to be

found any longer. Among the many petty states there were many Hsien-pi

kingdoms, but only a single, quite small Hun state, that of the Northern

Liang. The disappearance of the Huns was, however, only apparent; at

this time they remained in the Ordos region and in Shansi as separate

nomad tribes with no integrating political organization; their time had

still to come.

6 _Spread of Buddhism_

According to the prevalent Chinese view, nothing of importance was

achieved during this period in north China in the intellectual sphere;

there was no culture in the north, only in the south. This is natural:

for a Confucian this period, the fourth century, was one of degeneracy

in north China, for no one came into prominence as a celebrated

Confucian. Nothing else could be expected, for in the north the gentry,

which had been the class that maintained Confucianism since the Han

period, had largely been destroyed; from political leadership especially

it had been shut out during the periods of alien rule. Nor could we

expect to find Taoists in the true sense, that is to say followers of

the teaching of Lao Tzu, for these, too, had been dependent since the

Han period on the gentry. Until the fourth century, these two had

remained the dominant philosophies.

What could take their place? The alien rulers had left little behind

them. Most of them had been unable to write Chinese, and in so far as

they were warriors they had no interest in literature or in political

philosophy, for they were men of action. Few songs and poems of theirs

remain extant in translations from their language into Chinese, but

these preserve a strong alien flavour in their mental attitude and in

their diction. They are the songs of fighting men, songs that were sung

on horseback, songs of war and its sufferings. These songs have nothing

of the excessive formalism and aestheticism of the Chinese, but give

expression to simple emotions in unpolished language with a direct

appeal. The epic of the Turkish peoples had clearly been developed

already, and in north China it produced a rudimentary ballad literature,

to which four hundred years later no less attention was paid than to the

emotional world of contemporary songs.

The actual literature, however, and the philosophy of this period are

Buddhist. How can we explain that Buddhism had gained such influence?

It will be remembered that Buddhism came to China overland and by sea in

the Han epoch. The missionary monks who came from abroad with the

foreign merchants found little approval among the Chinese gentry. They

were regarded as second-rate persons belonging, according to Chinese

notions, to an inferior social class. Thus the monks had to turn to the

middle and lower classes in China. Among these they found widespread

acceptance, not of their profound philosophic ideas, but of their

doctrine of the after life. This doctrine was in a certain sense

revolutionary: it declared that all the high officials and superiors who

treated the people so unjustly and who so exploited them, would in their

next reincarnation be born in poor circumstances or into inferior rank

and would have to suffer punishment for all their ill deeds. The poor

who had to suffer undeserved evils would be born in their next life into

high rank and would have a good time. This doctrine brought a ray of

light, a promise, to the country people who had suffered so much since

the later Han period of the second century A.D. Their situation remained

unaltered down to the fourth century; and under their alien rulers the

Chinese country population became Buddhist.

The merchants made use of the Buddhist monasteries as banks and

warehouses. Thus they, too, were well inclined towards Buddhism and gave

money and land for its temples. The temples were able to settle peasants

on this land as their tenants. In those times a temple was a more

reliable landlord than an individual alien, and the poorer peasants

readily became temple tenants; this increased their inclination towards

Buddhism.

The Indian, Sogdian, and Turkestani monks were readily allowed to settle

by the alien rulers of China, who had no national prejudice against

other aliens. The monks were educated men and brought some useful

knowledge from abroad. Educated Chinese were scarcely to be found, for

the gentry retired to their estates, which they protected as well as

they could from their alien ruler. So long as the gentry had no prospect

of regaining control of the threads of political life that extended

throughout China, they were not prepared to provide a class of officials

and scholars for the anti-Confucian foreigners, who showed interest only

in fighting and trading. Thus educated persons were needed at the courts

of the alien rulers, and Buddhists were therefore engaged. These foreign

Buddhists had all the important Buddhist writings translated into

Chinese, and so made use of their influence at court for religious

propaganda.

This does not mean that every text was translated from Indian languages;

especially in the later period many works appeared which came not from

India but from Sogdia or Turkestan, or had even been written in China by

Sogdians or other natives of Turkestan, and were then translated into

Chinese. In Turkestan, Khotan in particular became a centre of Buddhist

culture. Buddhism was influenced by vestiges of indigenous cults, so

that Khotan developed a special religious atmosphere of its own; deities

were honoured there (for instance, the king of Heaven of the

northerners) to whom little regard was paid elsewhere. This "Khotan

Buddhism" had special influence on the Buddhist Turkish peoples.

Big translation bureaux were set up for the preparation of these

translations into Chinese, in which many copyists simultaneously took

down from dictation a translation made by a "master" with the aid of a

few native helpers. The translations were not literal but were

paraphrases, most of them greatly reduced in length, glosses were

introduced when the translator thought fit for political or doctrinal

reasons, or when he thought that in this way he could better adapt the

texts to Chinese feeling.

Buddhism, quite apart from the special case of "Khotan Buddhism",

underwent extensive modification on its way across Central Asia. Its

main Indian form (Hinayana) was a purely individualistic religion of

salvation without a God--related in this respect to genuine Taoism--and

based on a concept of two classes of people: the monks who could achieve

salvation and, secondly, the masses who fed the monks but could not

achieve salvation. This religion did not gain a footing in China; only

traces of it can be found in some Buddhistic sects in China. Mahayana

Buddhism, on the other hand, developed into a true popular religion of

salvation. It did not interfere with the indigenous deities and did not

discountenance life in human society; it did not recommend Nirvana at

once, but placed before it a here-after with all the joys worth striving

for. In this form Buddhism was certain of success in Asia. On its way

from India to China it divided into countless separate streams, each

characterized by a particular book. Every nuance, from profound

philosophical treatises to the most superficial little tracts written

for the simplest of souls, and even a good deal of Turkestan shamanism

and Tibetan belief in magic, found their way into Buddhist writings, so

that some Buddhist monks practised Central Asian Shamanism.

In spite of Buddhism, the old religion of the peasants retained its

vitality. Local diviners, Chinese shamans (_wu_), sorcerers, continued

their practices, although from now on they sometimes used Buddhist

phraseology. Often, this popular religion is called "Taoism", because a

systematization of the popular pantheon was attempted, and Lao Tzu and

other Taoists played a role in this pantheon. Philosophic Taoism

continued in this time, aside from the church-Taoism of Chang Ling and,

naturally, all kinds of contacts between these three currents occurred.

The Chinese state cult, the cult of Heaven saturated with Confucianism,

was another living form of religion. The alien rulers, in turn, had

brought their own mixture of worship of Heaven and shamanism. Their

worship of Heaven was their official "representative" religion; their

shamanism the private religion of the individual in his daily life. The

alien rulers, accordingly, showed interest in the Chinese shamans as

well as in the shamanistic aspects of Mahayana Buddhism. Not

infrequently competitions were arranged by the rulers between priests of

the different religious systems, and the rulers often competed for the

possession of monks who were particularly skilled in magic or

soothsaying.

But what was the position of the "official" religion? Were the aliens to

hold to their own worship of heaven, or were they to take over the

official Chinese cult, or what else? This problem posed itself already

in the fourth century, but it was left unsolved.

(D) The Toba empire in North China (A.D. 385-550)

1 _The rise of the Toba State_

On the collapse of Fu Chien's empire one more state made its appearance;

it has not yet been dealt with, although it was the most important one.

This was the empire of the Toba, in the north of the present province of

Shansi. Fu Chien had brought down the small old Toba state in 376, but

had not entirely destroyed it. Its territory was partitioned, and part

was placed under the administration of a Hun: in view of the old rivalry

between Toba and Huns, this seemed to Fu Chien to be the best way of

preventing any revival of the Toba. However, a descendant of the old

ruling family of the Toba succeeded, with the aid of related families,

in regaining power and forming a small new kingdom. Very soon many

tribes which still lived in north China and which had not been broken up

into military units, joined him. Of these there were ultimately 119,

including many Hun tribes from Shansi and also many Hsien-pi tribes.

Thus the question who the Toba were is not easy to answer. The leading

tribe itself had migrated southward in the third century from the

frontier territory between northern Mongolia and northern Manchuria.

After this migration the first Toba state, the so-called Tai state, was

formed (338-376); not much is known about it. The tribes that, from 385

after the break-up of the Tibetan empire, grouped themselves round this

ruling tribe, were both Turkish and Mongol; but from the culture and

language of the Toba we think it must be inferred that the ruling tribe

itself as well as the majority of the other tribes were Turkish; in any

case, the Turkish element seems to have been stronger than the

Mongolian.

Thus the new Toba kingdom was a tribal state, not a military state. But

the tribes were no longer the same as in the time of Liu Yuean a hundred

years earlier. Their total population must have been quite small; we

must assume that they were but the remains of 119 tribes rather than 119

full-sized tribes. Only part of them were still living the old nomad

life; others had become used to living alongside Chinese peasants and

had assumed leadership among the peasants. These Toba now faced a

difficult situation. The country was arid and mountainous and did not

yield much agricultural produce. For the many people who had come into

the Toba state from all parts of the former empire of Fu Chien, to say

nothing of the needs of a capital and a court which since the time of

Liu Yuean had been regarded as the indispensable entourage of a ruler who

claimed imperial rank, the local production of the Chinese peasants was

not enough. All the government officials, who were Chinese, and all the

slaves and eunuchs needed grain to eat. Attempts were made to settle

more Chinese peasants round the new capital, but without success;

something had to be done. It appeared necessary to embark on a campaign

to conquer the fertile plain of eastern China. In the course of a number

of battles the Hsien-pi of the "Later Yen" were annihilated and eastern

China conquered (409).

Now a new question arose: what should be done with all those people?

Nomads used to enslave their prisoners and use them for watching their

flocks. Some tribal chieftains had adopted the practice of establishing

captives on their tribal territory as peasants. There was an opportunity

now to subject the millions of Chinese captives to servitude to the

various tribal chieftains in the usual way. But those captives who were

peasants could not be taken away from their fields without robbing the

country of its food; therefore it would have been necessary to spread

the tribes over the whole of eastern China, and this would have added

immensely to the strength of the various tribes and would have greatly

weakened the central power. Furthermore almost all Chinese officials at

the court had come originally from the territories just conquered. They

had come from there about a hundred years earlier and still had all

their relatives in the east. If the eastern territories had been placed

under the rule of separate tribes, and the tribes had been distributed

in this way, the gentry in those territories would have been destroyed

and reduced to the position of enslaved peasants. The Chinese officials

accordingly persuaded the Toba emperor not to place the new territories

under the tribes, but to leave them to be administered by officials of

the central administration. These officials must have a firm footing in

their territory, for only they could extract from the peasants the grain

required for the support of the capital. Consequently the Toba

government did not enslave the Chinese in the eastern territory, but

made the local gentry into government officials, instructing them to

collect as much grain as possible for the capital. This Chinese local

gentry worked in close collaboration with the Chinese officials at

court, a fact which determined the whole fate of the Toba empire.

The Hsien-pi of the newly conquered east no longer belonged to any

tribe, but only to military units. They were transferred as soldiers to

the Toba court and placed directly under the government, which was thus

notably strengthened, especially as the millions of peasants under their

Chinese officials were also directly responsible to the central

administration. The government now proceeded to convert also its own

Toba tribes into military formations. The tribal men of noble rank were

brought to the court as military officers, and so were separated from

the common tribesmen and the slaves who had to remain with the herds.

This change, which robbed the tribes of all means of independent action,

was not carried out without bloodshed. There were revolts of tribal

chieftains which were ruthlessly suppressed. The central government had

triumphed, but it realized that more reliance could be placed on Chinese

than on its own people, who were used to independence. Thus the Toba

were glad to employ more and more Chinese, and the Chinese pressed more

and more into the administration. In this process the differing social

organizations of Toba and Chinese played an important part. The Chinese

have patriarchal families with often hundreds of members. When a member

of a family obtains a good position, he is obliged to make provision for

the other members of his family and to secure good positions for them

too; and not only the members of his own family but those of allied

families and of families related to it by marriage. In contrast the Toba

had a patriarchal nuclear family system; as nomad warriors with no fixed

abode, they were unable to form extended family groups. Among them the

individual was much more independent; each one tried to do his best for

himself. No Toba thought of collecting a large clique around himself;

everybody should be the artificer of his own fortune. Thus, when a

Chinese obtained an official post, he was followed by countless others;

but when a Toba had a position he remained alone, and so the

sinification of the Toba empire went on incessantly.

2 _The Hun kingdom of the Hsia (407-431)_

At the rebuilding of the Toba empire, however, a good many Hun tribes

withdrew westward into the Ordos region beyond the reach of the Toba,

and there they formed the Hun "Hsia" kingdom. Its ruler, Ho-lien

P'o-p'o, belonged to the family of Mao Tun and originally, like Liu

Yuean, bore the sinified family name Liu; but he altered this to a Hun

name, taking the family name of Ho-lien. This one fact alone

demonstrates that the Hsia rejected Chinese culture and were

nationalistic Hun. Thus there were now two realms in North China, one

undergoing progressive sinification, the other falling back to the old

traditions of the Huns.

3 _Rise of the Toba to a great Power_

The present province of Szechwan, in the west, had belonged to Fu

Chien's empire. At the break-up of the Tibetan state that province

passed to the southern Chinese empire and gave the southern Chinese

access, though it was very difficult access, to the caravan route

leading to Turkestan. The small states in Kansu, which dominated the

route, now passed on the traffic along two routes, one northward to the

Toba and the other alien states in north China, the other through

north-west Szechwan to south China. In this way the Kansu states were

strengthened both economically and politically, for they were able to

direct the commerce either to the northern states or to south China as

suited them. When the South Chinese saw the break-up of Fu Chien's

empire into numberless fragments, Liu Yue, who was then all-powerful at

the South Chinese court, made an attempt to conquer the whole of western

China. A great army was sent from South China into the province of

Shensi, where the Tibetan empire of the "Later Ch'in" was situated. The

Ch'in appealed to the Toba for help, but the Toba were themselves too

hotly engaged to be able to spare troops. They also considered that

South China would be unable to maintain these conquests, and that they

themselves would find them later an easy prey. Thus in 417 the state of

"Later Ch'in" received a mortal blow from the South Chinese army. Large

numbers of the upper class fled to the Toba. As had been foreseen, the

South Chinese were unable to maintain their hold over the conquered

territory, and it was annexed with ease by the Hun Ho-lien P'o-p'o. But

why not by the Toba?

Towards the end of the fourth century, vestiges of Hun, Hsien-pi, and

other tribes had united in Mongolia to form the new people of the

Juan-juan (also called Ju-juan or Jou-jan). Scholars disagree as to

whether the Juan-juan were Turks or Mongols; European investigators

believe them to have been identical with the Avars who appeared in the

Near East in 558 and later in Europe, and are inclined, on the strength

of a few vestiges of their language, to regard them as Mongols.

Investigations concerning the various tribes, however, show that among

the Juan-juan there were both Mongol and Turkish tribes, and that the

question cannot be decided in favour of either group. Some of the tribes

belonging to the Juan-juan had formerly lived in China. Others had lived

farther north or west and came into the history of the Far East now for

the first time.

This Juan-juan people threatened the Toba in the rear, from the north.

It made raids into the Toba empire for the same reasons for which the

Huns in the past had raided agrarian China; for agriculture had made

considerable progress in the Toba empire. Consequently, before the Toba

could attempt to expand southward, the Juan-juan peril must be removed.

This was done in the end, after a long series of hard and not always

successful struggles. That was why the Toba had played no part in the

fighting against South China, and had been unable to take immediate

advantage of that fighting.

After 429 the Juan-juan peril no longer existed, and in the years that

followed the whole of the small states of the west were destroyed, one

after another, by the Toba--the "Hsia kingdom" in 431, bringing down

with it the "Western Ch'in", and the "Northern Liang" in 439. The

non-Chinese elements of the population of those countries were moved

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.

[Illustration: Map 4: The Toba empire _(about A.D. 500)_]

Their expansion into Kansu gave the Toba control of the commerce with

Turkestan, and there are many mentions of tribute missions to the Toba

court in the years that followed, some even from India. The Toba also

spread in the east. And finally there was fighting with South China

(430-431), which brought to the Toba empire a large part of the province

of Honan with the old capital, Loyang. Thus about 440 the Toba must be

described as the most powerful state in the Far East, ruling the whole

of North China.

4 _Economic and social conditions_

The internal changes of which there had only been indications in the

first period of the Toba empire now proceeded at an accelerated pace.

There were many different factors at work. The whole of the civil

administration had gradually passed into Chinese hands, the Toba

retaining only the military administration. But the wars in the south

called for the services of specialists in fortification and in infantry

warfare, who were only to be found among the Chinese. The growing

influence of the Chinese was further promoted by the fact that many Toba

families were exterminated in the revolts of the tribal chieftains, and

others were wiped out in the many battles. Thus the Toba lost ground

also in the military administration.

The wars down to A.D. 440 had been large-scale wars of conquest,

lightning campaigns that had brought in a great deal of booty. With

their loot the Toba developed great magnificence and luxury. The

campaigns that followed were hard and long-drawn-out struggles,

especially against South China, where there was no booty, because the

enemy retired so slowly that they could take everything with them. The

Toba therefore began to be impoverished, because plunder was the main

source of their wealth. In addition to this, their herds gradually

deteriorated, for less and less use was made of them; for instance,

horses were little required for the campaign against South China, and

there was next to no fighting in the north. In contrast with the

impoverishment of the Toba, the Chinese gentry grew not only more

powerful but more wealthy.

The Toba seem to have tried to prevent this development by introducing

the famous "land equalization system" _(chuen-t'ien)_, one of their most

important innovations. The direct purposes of this measure were to

resettle uprooted farm population; to prevent further migrations of

farmers; and to raise production and taxes. The founder of this system

was Li An-shih, member of a Toba family and later husband of an imperial

princess. The plan was basically accepted in 477, put into action in

485, and remained the land law until _c_. 750. Every man and every

woman had a right to receive a certain amount of land for 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.

[Illustration: 6 Sun Ch'uean, ruler of Wu. _From a painting by Yen

Li-pen_ (_c._ 640-680).]

[Illustration: 7 General view of the Buddhist cave-temples of Yuen-kang.

In the foreground, the present village; in the background, the rampart.

_Photo H. Hammer-Morrisson._]

Owing to his bringing up, the emperor no longer regarded himself as Toba

but as Chinese; he adopted the Chinese culture, acting as he was

bound to do if he meant to be no longer an alien ruler in North China.

Already he regarded himself as emperor of all China, so that the South

Chinese empire was looked upon as a rebel state that had to be

conquered. While, however, he succeeded in everything else, the campaign

against the south failed except for some local successes.

The transfer of the capital to Loyang was a blow to the Toba nobles.

Their herds became valueless, for animal products could not be carried

over the long distance to the new capital. In Loyang the Toba nobles

found themselves parted from their tribes, living in an unaccustomed

climate and with nothing to do, for all important posts were occupied by

Chinese. The government refused to allow them to return to the north.

Those who did not become Chinese by finding their way into Chinese

families grew visibly poorer and poorer.

5 _Victory and retreat of Buddhism_

What we said in regard to the religious position of the other alien

peoples applied also to the Toba. As soon, however, as their empire

grew, they, too, needed an "official" religion of their own. For a few

years they had continued their old sacrifices to Heaven; then another

course opened to them. The Toba, together with many Chinese living in

the Toba empire, were all captured by Buddhism, and especially by its

shamanist element. One element in their preference of Buddhism was

certainly the fact that Buddhism accepted all foreigners alike--both the

Toba and the Chinese were "foreign" converts to an essentially Indian

religion; whereas the Confucianist Chinese always made the non-Chinese

feel that in spite of all their attempts they were still "barbarians"

and that only real Chinese could be real Confucianists.

Secondly, it can be assumed that the Toba rulers by fostering Buddhism

intended to break the power of the Chinese gentry. A few centuries

later, Buddhism was accepted by the Tibetan kings to break the power of

the native nobility, by the Japanese to break the power of a federation

of noble clans, and still later by the Burmese kings for the same

reason. The acceptance of Buddhism by rulers in the Far East always

meant also an attempt to create a more autocratic, absolutistic regime.

Mahayana Buddhism, as an ideal, desired a society without clear-cut

classes under one enlightened ruler; in such a society all believers

could strive to attain the ultimate goal of salvation.

Throughout the early period of Buddhism in the Far East, the question

had been discussed what should be the relations between the Buddhist

monks and the emperor, whether they were subject to him or not. This was

connected, of course, with the fact that to the early fourth century the

Buddhist monks were foreigners who, in the view prevalent in the Far

East, owed only a limited allegiance to the ruler of the land. The

Buddhist monks at the Toba court now submitted to the emperor, regarding

him as a reincarnation of Buddha. Thus the emperor became protector of

Buddhism and a sort of god. This combination was a good substitute for

the old Chinese theory that the emperor was the Son of Heaven; it

increased the prestige and the splendour of the dynasty. At the same

time the old shamanism was legitimized under a Buddhist

reinterpretation. Thus Buddhism became a sort of official religion. The

emperor appointed a Buddhist monk as head of the Buddhist state church,

and through this "Pope" he conveyed endowments on a large scale to the

church. T'an-yao, head of the state church since 460, induced the state

to attach state slaves, i.e. enslaved family members of criminals, and

their families to state temples. They were supposed to work on temple

land and to produce for the upkeep of the temples and monasteries. Thus,

the institution of "temple slaves" was created, an institution which

existed in South Asia and Burma for a long time, and which greatly

strengthened the economic position of Buddhism.

Like all Turkish peoples, the Toba possessed a myth according to which

their ancestors came into the world from a sacred grotto. The Buddhists

took advantage of this conception to construct, with money from the

emperor, the vast and famous cave-temple of Yuen-kang, in northern

Shansi. If we come from the bare plains into the green river valley, we

may see to this day hundreds of caves cut out of the steep cliffs of the

river bank. Here monks lived in their cells, worshipping the deities of

whom they had thousands of busts and reliefs sculptured in stone, some

of more than life-size, some diminutive. The majestic impression made

today by the figures does not correspond to their original effect, for

they were covered with a layer of coloured stucco.

We know only few names of the artists and craftsmen who made these

objects. Probably some at least were foreigners from Turkestan, for in

spite of the predominantly Chinese character of these sculptures, some

of them are reminiscent of works in Turkestan and even in the Near East.

In the past the influences of the Near East on the Far East--influences

traced back in the last resort to Greece--were greatly exaggerated; it

was believed that Greek art, carried through Alexander's campaign as far

as the present Afghanistan, degenerated there in the hands of Indian

imitators (the so-called Gandhara art) and ultimately passed on in more

and more distorted forms through Turkestan to China. Actually, however,

some eight hundred years lay between Alexander's campaign and the Toba

period sculptures at Yuen-kang and, owing to the different cultural

development, the contents of the Greek and the Toba-period art were

entirely different. We may say, therefore, that suggestions came from

the centre of the Greco-Bactrian culture (in the present Afghanistan)

and were worked out by the Toba artists; old forms were filled with a

new content, and the elements in the reliefs of Yuen-kang that seem to us

to be non-Chinese were the result of this synthesis of Western

inspiration and Turkish initiative. It is interesting to observe that

all steppe rulers showed special interest in sculpture and, as a rule,

in architecture; after the Toba period, sculpture flourished in China in

the T'ang period, the period of strong cultural influence from Turkish

peoples, and there was a further advance of sculpture and of the

cave-dwellers' worship in the period of the "Five Dynasties" (906-960;

three of these dynasties were Turkish) and in the Mongol period.

But not all Buddhists joined the "Church", just as not all Taoists had

joined the Church of Chang Ling's Taoism. Some Buddhists remained in the

small towns and villages and suffered oppression from the central

Church. These village Buddhist monks soon became instigators of a

considerable series of attempts at revolution. Their Buddhism was of the

so-called "Maitreya school", which promised the appearance on earth of a

new Buddha who would do away with all suffering and introduce a Golden

Age. The Chinese peasantry, exploited by the gentry, came to the support

of these monks whose Messianism gave the poor a hope in this world. The

nomad tribes also, abandoned by their nobles in the capital and

wandering in poverty with their now worthless herds, joined these monks.

We know of many revolts of Hun and Toba tribes in this period, revolts

that had a religious appearance but in reality were simply the result of

the extreme impoverishment of these remaining tribes.

In addition to these conflicts between state and popular Buddhism,

clashes between Buddhists and representatives of organized Taoism

occurred. Such fights, however, reflected more the power struggle

between cliques than between religious groups. The most famous incident

was the action against the Buddhists in 446 which brought destruction to

many temples and monasteries and death to many monks. Here, a mighty

Chinese gentry faction under the leadership of the Ts'ui family had

united with the Taoist leader K'ou Ch'ien-chih against another faction

under the leadership of the crown prince.

With the growing influence of the Chinese gentry, however, Confucianism

gained ground again, until with the transfer of the capital to Loyang it

gained a complete victory, taking the place of Buddhism and becoming

once more as in the past the official religion of the state. This

process shows us once more how closely the social order of the gentry

was associated with Confucianism.

(E) Succession States of the Toba (A.D. 550-580): Northern Ch'i dynasty,

Northern Chou dynasty

1 _Reasons for the splitting of the Toba empire_

Events now pursued their logical course. The contrast between the

central power, now become entirely Chinese, and the remains of the

tribes who were with their herds mainly in Shansi and the Ordos region

and were hopelessly impoverished, grew more and more acute. From 530

onward the risings became more and more formidable. A few Toba who still

remained with their old tribes placed themselves at the head of the

rebels and conquered not only the whole of Shansi but also the capital,

where there was a great massacre of Chinese and pro-Chinese Toba. The

rebels were driven back; in this a man of the Kao family distinguished

himself, and all the Chinese and pro-Chinese gathered round him. The Kao

family, which may have been originally a Hsien-pi family, had its

estates in eastern China and so was closely associated with the eastern

Chinese gentry, who were the actual rulers of the Toba State. In 534

this group took the impotent emperor of their own creation to the city

of Yeh in the east, where he reigned _de jure_ for a further sixteen

years. Then he was deposed, and Kao Yang made himself the first emperor

of the Northern Ch'i dynasty (550-577).

The national Toba group, on the other hand, found another man of the

imperial family and established him in the west. After a short time this

puppet was removed from the throne and a man of the Yue-wen family made

himself emperor, founding the "Northern Chou dynasty" (557-580). The

Hsien-pi family of Yue-wen was a branch of the Hsien-pi, but was closely

connected with the Huns and probably of Turkish origin. All the still

existing remains of Toba tribes who had eluded sinification moved into

this western empire.

The splitting of the Toba empire into these two separate realms was the

result of the policy embarked on at the foundation of the empire. Once

the tribal chieftains and nobles had been separated from their tribes

and organized militarily, it was inevitable that the two elements should

have different social destinies. The nobles could not hold their own

against the Chinese; if they were not actually eliminated in one way or

another, they disappeared into Chinese families. The rest, the people of

the tribe, became destitute and were driven to revolt. The northern

peoples had been unable to perpetuate either their tribal or their

military organization, and the Toba had been equally unsuccessful in

their attempt to perpetuate the two forms of organization alongside each

other.

These social processes are of particular importance because the ethnical

disappearance of the northern peoples in China had nothing to do with

any racial inferiority or with any particular power of assimilation; it

was a natural process resulting from the different economic, social, and

cultural organizations of the northern peoples and the Chinese.

2 _Appearance of the (Goek) Turks_

The Toba had liberated themselves early in the fifth century from the

Juan-juan peril. None of the fighting that followed was of any great

importance. The Toba resorted to the old means of defence against

nomads--they built great walls. Apart from that, after their move

southward to Loyang, their new capital, they were no longer greatly

interested in their northern territories. When the Toba empire split

into the Ch'i and the Northern Chou, the remaining Juan-juan entered

into treaties first with one realm and then with the other: each realm

wanted to secure the help of the Juan-juan against the other.

Meanwhile there came unexpectedly to the fore in the north a people

grouped round a nucleus tribe of Huns, the tribal union of the

"T'u-chueeh", that is to say the Goek Turks, who began to pursue a policy

of their own under their khan. In 546 they sent a mission to the western

empire, then in the making, of the Northern Chou, and created the first

bonds with it, following which the Northern Chou became allies of the

Turks. The eastern empire, Ch'i, accordingly made terms with the

Juan-juan, but in 552 the latter suffered a crushing defeat at the hands

of the Turks, their former vassals. The remains of the Juan-juan either

fled to the Ch'i state or went reluctantly into the land of the Chou.

Soon there was friction between the Juan-juan and the Ch'i, and in 555

the Juan-juan in that state were annihilated. In response to pressure

from the Turks, the Juan-juan in the western empire of the Northern Chou

were delivered up to them and killed in the same year. The Juan-juan

then disappeared from the history of the Far East. They broke up into

their several tribes, some of which were admitted into the Turks' tribal

league. A few years later the Turks also annihilated the 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".

[Illustration: 8 Detail from the Buddhist cave-reliefs of Lungmen. _From

a print in the author's possession_.]

[Illustration: 9 Statue of Mi-lo (Maitreya, the next future Buddha), in

the 'Great Buddha Temple' at Chengting (Hopei). _Photo H.

Hammer-Morrisson_.]

4 _The Liang dynasty_ (A.D. 502-556)

The fighting with the Toba continued until 515. As a rule the Toba were

the more successful, not at least through the aid of princes of the

deposed "Southern Ch'i dynasty" and their followers. Wars began also in

the west, where the Toba tried to cut off the access of the Liang to the

caravan routes to Turkestan. In 507, however, the Toba suffered an

important defeat. The southern states had tried at all times to work

with the Kansu states against the northern states; the Toba now followed

suit and allied themselves with a large group of native chieftains of

the south, whom they incited to move against the Liang. This produced

great native unrest, especially in the provinces by the upper Yangtze.

The natives, who were steadily pushed back by the Chinese peasants, were

reduced to migrating into the mountain country or to working for the

Chinese in semi-servile conditions; and they were ready for revolt and

very glad to work with the Toba. The result of this unrest was not

decisive, but it greatly reduced the strength of the regions along the

upper Yangtze. Thus the main strength of the southern state was more

than ever confined to the Nanking region.