The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 06. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368
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THE REIGN OF HSING-TSUNG 121
centered at Tun-huang, was the state of Sha-chou, ruled by the Chinese
warlord family of
Ts'ao.
This latter seems also to have passed under Uighur
dominance during the early eleventh century. In 1006 the Sha-chou ruler
Ts'ao Shou had sent a tribute mission to Sheng-tsung's court, which seems to
have encouraged Sheng-tsung to attack the neighboring Uighur state in Kan-
chou. Expeditions were sent against Kan-chou in 1008, 1009, and 1010.
Although the Khitan achieved some limited success, sacking Su-chou and
deporting its population in 1010, these campaigns failed to conquer the area,
which was at the same time under attack from the Hsia. Another expedition
in 1027 laid Kan-chou under siege but failed to take the city, and it ended in
disaster when the retreating Khitan army was ambushed in southwest Mongo-
lia by the Tsu-pu tribes, who always strongly resisted Khitan attempts to
expand to the west.
The Hsia, meanwhile, continued with their gradual incorporation of the
area known as Ho-hsi (western Kansu). In 1020 they built a new capital city
at Hsing-chou (modern Yin-ch'uan, later renamed Hsing-ch'ing). By 1036
they occupied the Kan-chou area, and although Sha-chou remained at least
semiautonomous until the 1050s, the Hsia claimed that even Khotan, deep
in the Tarim basin, was its vassal. In 1038 the Hsia king Li Yiian-hao
proclaimed himself emperor of the state of Ta Hsia and sent an embassy to
K'ai-feng repudiating, in a provocative and insolent letter, his vassal relation-
ship with the Sung. The new Hsia emperor had been married to a Khitan
princess in 1031 shortly after Hsing-tsung's accession, but the royal couple
did not agree, and early in 1038, when the princess died, the Khitan court
sent an envoy to inquire into the circumstances of her death.
1
'
6
For some
strange reason the
Liao shih
makes no mention of Yuan-hao's assumption of
the imperial title or the Khitan court's response.
The Sung, meanwhile, took strong action. They first revoked all the titles
that Yuan-hao held from the Sung court, placed a reward on his head, and
suspended the border trade on which the prosperity of the Tanguts heavily
depended. Gradually the relations between the Sung and the new Tangut
state deteriorated, until in 1040 the border clashes escalated into full-scale
war. Fighting dragged on spasmodically until 1044, broken by a series of
negotiations. In spite of all their efforts the Sung armies suffered a succession
of major defeats, the Tanguts proving themselves formidable adversaries.
At the beginning of this confrontation the Liao court did not intervene,
receiving embassies from both sides, each of whom reported their progress in
the war. That the Sung were in serious trouble soon became clear, however,
and after a particularly disastrous Sung defeat in 1042, the Khitan decided to
136 LS, 18, p. 220; 115, p. 1526.
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122 THE LIAO
put pressure on them for territorial concessions in the long-disputed area of
Kuan-nan. This diplomatic pressure led to a peaceful resolution. In 1042 the
Khitan dropped their territorial claims in return for an increase in the annual
subsidy from the Sung court to 200,000 taels of silver and 300,000 bolts of
silk. The treaty confirmed the "fraternal relations" established in 1005, and
apparently the Khitan promised the Sung that they would attempt to
presuade Yiian-hao to conclude a peace agreement with K'ai-feng. The Sung
court believed the Hsia and the Liao to be close allies. But this alliance was
largely imaginary: When in 1043 Yiian-hao requested that the Khitan join
him in attacking Sung, Hsing-tsung refused, and gradually a serious rift
developed between the Hsia and the Khitan.
For some time, Yiian-hao had shown willingness to conclude a peace
agreement with the Sung, but the terms he asked were unacceptable, and his
communications were considered insulting. Negotiations dragged on for two
years and finally came to a conclusion after the Sung court learned that
hostilities had broken out between the Hsia and the Khitan and that a first
Khitan punitive expedition in 1044 had failed.
The war between the erstwhile allies broke out over
some
Tangut tribesmen
living inside the Liao border who rebelled and sought refuge in Hsia territory
in early summer 1044.
The Liao
blamed
Li
Yiian-hao for having instigated the
rebellion of these tribes, though they had almost certainly caused the trouble
themselves by their plans
to
fortify their Hsia border and to ban the horse trade
on which the tribesmen depended. When the rebellion erupted in 1044, the
Liao immediately sent a punitive expedition into Hsia territory.
The Sung court seized their opportunity to conclude their own negotia-
tions with Hsia. In the winter of 1044 a treaty with Hsia was signed, under
which the Hsia ruler accepted the status of
a
Sung vassal. In return the Sung
agreed to pay the Hsia an annual subsidy similar to that paid to the Khitan,
though on a smaller scale: 72,000 ounces of silver and 153,000 bolts of silk,
plus a large quantity of tea annually. Border trade was also regularized, and
markets were opened to the Tanguts. But the treaty contained one major
flaw: Unlike that concluded with the Liao, it failed to define the border
between the states, and consequently there were constant boundary disputes
and outbreaks of warfare for the next seventy years.
Although Sung had taken advantage of the outbreak of war between the
Khitan and the Hsia, the Khitan invasion of 1044 had not gone well. After
the initial invasion ended in heavy defeat and the loss of two of the Khitan
commanders, a major force was mobilized on the frontier. In the ninth
month the emperor's brother Chung-yuan and the northern commissioner for
military affairs Hsiao Hui were given command of the Liao vanguard armies
for a full-scale invasion. Li Yuan-hao now sent envoys and even came in
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THE REIGN OF TAO-TSUNG 123
person to try to make peace with the Liao emperor. But Hsing-tsung's
counselors were so confident of victory that they persuaded the emperor to
reject the offer of peace and to settle the matter on the battlefield. It was a
disastrous decision. The Liao army was overwhelmed by the Tanguts in a
pitched battle in the Ho-lan Mountains west of the Hsia capital. Many high-
ranking Khitan, including the emperor's brother-in-law, were captured by
the Tanguts. Hsing-tsung was now forced to accept Yuan-hao's earlier offer of
submission, and peace was restored.
The defeat upset the emperor and the court alike. In 1048, with the death
of Li Yuan-hao, the Hsia throne passed to an infant prince, and the Tangut
court was enfeebled by a bitter power struggle. The Khitan saw their opportu-
nity for vengeance, and in the autumn of 1049 a large Liao army invaded
Hsia and advanced on the capital in three separate columns. One group under
Hsing-tsung's personal command encountered little resistance but was forced
to retreat owing to a lack of water and pasture for its horses. Another column
led by the emperor's brother-in-law Hsiao Hui advanced south along the
Yellow River, supported by a flotilla of warships and supply vessels, but was
ambushed and seriously defeated with very heavy losses, Hsiao Hui barely
escaping with his life. The third column was slightly more successful. It
raided a separate palace built by Yiian-hao in the Ho-lan Mountains for his
favorite consort. The young widow and several high-ranking Tangut officials
were captured, but this was small consolation for the heavy losses elsewhere.
A second campaign in 1050 was somewhat more successful. Liao forces
plundered the Hsia countryside and accepted the surrender of a Tangut
general. The mother of the infant Hsia emperor petitioned the Liao court,
asking to resume tributary relations, and a formal tribute embassy was sent
to Liao in 1050. However, several years elapsed before the two sides finally
came to terms. Liao finally dropped its demand for the repatriation of the
Tangut tribesmen who had rebelled in 1044, in exchange for compensation,
and so the Tanguts agreed to deliver annual tribute. The Liao kept Yuan-
hao's widow and retained one of the captured border fortresses. In 1053
peaceful relations were finally restored, but the relationship between the two
states remained extremely cool for several decades.
THE REIGN OF TAO-TSUNG
In 1055 Hsing-tsung, still only thirty-nine years old, fell sick and died on
one of his constant progresses. He left an empire at peace with its major
neighbors. In the previous year he had granted a high-ranking office to the
crown prince of Kory6, at the king's request. The king of Hsia had sent
envoys requesting a dynastic marriage with a Khitan princess, and another
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124
THE
LIAO
bearing a solemn oath of
amity.
At the beginning of 1055 Hsing-tsung had
received the customary embassy from Sung, which presented him with two
trained elephants, and more envoys from Hsia.
Internally, too, Hsing-tsung's empire was relatively peaceful and prosper-
ous,
though relations with his mother, the empress dowager, remained
strained. His brother Chung-yuan, once put forward as a candidate for the
throne, had been long entrenched as governor of the Southern Capital and
had just had a son.'
37
Hsing-tsung was succeeded by his eldest son Yeh-lii Hung-chi (1032-
1101;
Khitan name Nieh-lin or Ch'a-la, subsequently canonized as Tao-
tsung),
who for the past three years had worked together with his father in
conducting the routine business of government.
li%
Hsing-tsung clearly in-
tended that his son should not only succeed him but that when he did so he
should also be prepared to rule. Tao-tsung ascended the throne "before his
father's coffin," issued a modest and conciliatory edict to his court, and began
a complex round of ritual acts and sacrifices at the various ancestral tombs
and shrines. Embassies were exchanged, as custom dictated, with Kory6,
Hsia, and Sung. One of the ambassadors from Sung was the famous scholar
and historian Ou-yang Hsiu. The international order established under Tao-
tsung's father thus continued undisturbed.
There was no immediate dispute over the succession. The empress dowa-
ger Ch'in-ai had remained resentful about Hsing-tsung's having excluded her
from a dominant role in politics in 1035 and, even after his death, could not
even pretend to mourn for him, chiding his lamenting widow, "You're still a
young woman
—
why distress yourself like this?" Only a year before she had
told a Sung ambassador that she favored the true Khitan form of succession
between brothers, not hereditary succession from father to son.
1
*' She would
clearly have supported the claims of Chung-yuan, whose title, Imperial
Younger Brother, carried in a Khitan context an implied claim to the throne
and whom she had once plotted to enthrone in Hsing-tsung's place.
Hsing-tsung himself had clearly appreciated the danger that Chung-yuan
might succeed him. In 1054 he remarked to the Sung ambassador Wang
Kung-chen, "I have a recalcitrant younger brother. If one day he acquires my
kingdom, I fear that the Southern Court [i.e., the Sung] will not be able to
sleep quietly at night!"'
40
But in any case, the empress dowager took no
action, even though her brothers and relatives held high positions and could
certainly have influenced the succession. Chung-yuan was given a new dig-
137 LS, 20, p. 247.
138 LS, 21, p. 251.
139 HCP, 177, p. 4282.
140 HCP, 177, pp. 4282—3.
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THE REIGN OF TAO-TSUNG 125
nity, as imperial great uncle, and was granted unique personal privileges.
The emperor did not address him by his given name, nor did Chung-yuan do
obeisance. But having been accorded these unusual marks of respect, he was
sent back to the Southern Capital to govern its people in the name of the new
emperor. Empress Dowager Ch'in-ai was given the title of grand empress
dowager (t'ai-huang t'ai-hou), and Tao-tsung's mother, Empress Jen-i, became
empress dowager.
141
Chung-yuan was appointed commander in chief (yti-
yiieh) in 1056, and the grand empress dowager fell ill and died at the end of
1058.
I42
In the early years of Tao-tsung's reign, two men, Hsiao Ko
14
' and Hsiao
A-la,'
44
held great influence at court. The latter was a son of Hsiao Hsiao-mu
and thus was a member of the still extremely powerful clan of the empress
dowager Ch'in-ai. Hsiao A-la had been brought up in the palace and had
become a close friend of Hsing-tsung, whom he had served as a state coun-
selor and as viceroy of the Eastern Capital. He also was married to a royal
princess. On Tao-tsung's accession he was made northern commissioner for
military affairs, and so he now shared power at court with the opportunistic
Hsiao Ko. The two soon fell out. Hsiao A-la asked to retire but was sent from
court to be viceroy of the Eastern Capital, probably in 1059. In 1061 he
came to court at the time of a great ancestral ceremony
14
' and offered harsh
and trenchant criticism of the conduct of the government. Hsiao Ko, the
target of these criticisms, denounced him to the emperor, and in spite of the
empress dowager's pleas, the emperor ordered Hsiao A-la to be strangled.
The Liao shih, which praises A-la highly for his unswerving loyalty and
political understanding, speculates that had he not been executed, neither
Chung-yiian's rebellion nor the later execution of the empress and murder of
the heir apparent would have occurred. Be this as it may, the killing of A-la
was a grave political error and the first serious instance of Tao-tsung's bad
judgment and abiding weakness, his never-failing willingness to believe
slanderous accusations even when they were leveled at those closest to him.
For the time being the court was left in the hands of the self-seeking Hsiao
Ko (who retired in 1062) and Yeh-lii Jen-hsien and Yeh-lii I-hsin.
During these years, the court was riven by intense personal rivalries that
the emperor was too weak to mediate or resolve. Moreover, basic problems
persisted, chief among them the continued tension caused by the progressive
sinification of the Khitan state and the imposition of central authority over
141 LS, 21, p. 252; 71, p. 1204.
142 LS, 21, p. 236.
143 LS, 113, pp. 1510-11.
144 LS, 90, p. 1355.
145 According to LS, 90, p. 1355, the occasion was the rain ceremony (u-ie
//');
according to LS, 113, p.
1511,
it was the southern suburban sacrifice. The latter seems more likely.
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126 THE
LIAO
what had traditionally been tribal matters. The long-established tendency
toward "rationalization," centralization, and Chinese influence continued,
even though at first the new emperor was at pains to establish something of
a
collegial atmosphere at court, where his officials and Khitan dignitaries
would feel free to offer unconstrained advice.'
46
Symbolic of
these
tendencies,
in 1055 all officials, not, as hitherto, only the emperor and members of the
Chinese Southern Administration, were required to wear Chinese court dress
at major ceremonies.
147
Both the new emperor and his empress were highly cultivated and well
educated in Chinese, and they wrote poetry. He was deeply interested both in
Confucian learning and in Buddhism. Perhaps the most striking evidence of
Tao-tsung's inclinations in favor of Chinese culture and institutions is the
increased emphasis he placed on Chinese-style education for potential officials
and on the examination system. The numbers of
chin-shih
passed at each
examination (these were usually held at about four-year intervals) leapt from
fifty or sixty under Hsing-tsung to well over a hundred.'
48
In 1059 the state
educational system was reformed by the establishment of prefectural and
county schools,"»» as well as colleges for higher learning in the five capitals
and the superior prefectures of Huang-lung and Hsing-lung.'
5
° In 1060 a
second imperial academy
{Kuo-tzu chien)
was set up at the Central Capital,'
5
'
in addition to the academy at the Supreme Capital which had been estab-
lished under A-pao-chi.
1
'
2
Finally, ritual observances were ordered in honor
of various Confucian sages and teachers.'"
The emperor became personally involved in the conduct of the examina-
tions.
In 1070 a new special palace examination entitled the "Examination
for the worthy and good"
(Hsien-liang
k'o)
was established, the entrants for
which had to submit 100,000 words of their writings.
1
'
4
In 1072 Tao-tsung
himself wrote the questions for both the
chin-shih
and the palace examination
for the worthy and good.
1
"
Tensions over the application of Chinese-style law on the Khitan subjects
of Liao surfaced again early in the reign. In 1058 tribal judges
(i-li-pi)
were
ordered to refer their decisions in all capital cases to the local prefect or
146 For an analysis of the political polarization of Tao-tsung's reign, see Ch'en Shu, Ch'i-tan chtng chih
sbih kao (Peking, 1986), pp. 137-52.
147 LS, 56, p. 908.
148 Wittfogel and Feng, p. 492 (table).
149 LS, 48, pp. 807, 811, 817—21.
150 LS, 48, pp. 807, 811, 820.
15:
LS, 48, p. 807.
152 LS, 47, p. 788.
153 LS, 21, p. 258.
154 LS, 22, p. 269.
155 LS, 23, p. 275.
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THE REIGN OF TAO-TSUNG 127
magistrate for review. Sentence was not to be carred out unless the prefect
certified that there had been no miscarriage of justice. If anyone claimed the
sentence was unjust, it had to be referred to the central government for a
decision.
1
'
6
Once again tribal justice was placed under the scrutiny of a
Chinese-style local administration.
Chung-yuan had, as we have seen, interceded on behalf of the Khitan
interest in similar circumstances in 1044. It may well have been an anti-
Chinese nativist faction that in 1063 led him to attempt a coup d'etat.
The
revolt
of Chung-yuan in 1063
The sources, which give confused, fragmentary and contradictory accounts of
this affair,
157
suggest that Chung-yiian was not the prime mover but that he
was dragged into a conspiracy
as
a figurehead by his ambitious son Nieh-lu-ku,
who had been appointed southern commissioner for military affairs in 1061,
and
a
group of dissident noblemen. Chief among these were Yeh-lii T'ieh-pu, a
grandson of Sheng-tsung, and Hsiao Hu-tu, the current husband of Hen-mu-
chin, the daughter of Sheng-tsung and Empress Ch'in-ai. Hsiao Hu-tu was
commissioner for military affairs in the Northern Administration.
1
'
8
Nieh-lu-ku at first decided that his father should feign illness so that the
emperor would come to visit him and that they should then take the opportu-
nity to assassinate Tao-tsung. When in the early autumn of 1063 the em-
peror went on a hunting trip to the T'ai-tzu Mountains southwest of the
Central Capital circuit (near modern Ch'eng-te), the dissidents seized their
opportunity. They led a detachment of crossbowmen to ambush the emperor
and attack his encampment. Tao-tsung could not at first believe that there
had been a rebellion, although the empress dowager had been forewarned of
the conspiracy by a loyal member of the Yeh-lii clan.
1
'
9
But in the first
encounter Tao-tsung was wounded and had his horse shot under him. Some
loyal servants saved him, and his mother, the empress dowager, took com-
mand of part of the guard and helped ward off the attackers. Nieh-lu-ku,
however, was killed by a stray arrow during the initial assault. One of the co-
conspirators, Yeh-lii Sa-la-chu, who was a member of the emperor's entour-
age,
led a group of disaffected huntsmen to assist the rebels. But the rebels
had already lost. Their real leader was dead, and they had let slip their initial
156 LS, 21, p. 256.
157 LS, 22, p. 262; 64, pp. 988—9; 112, p. 1502; 114, p. 1514 (translated in Wittfogel and Feng, p.
421);
CTKC, 9, p. 88.
158 Wang Ting, Fin
chiao
lu
(Pref.
1089), in
Pao-yen
t'angpi
chi,
ed. Ch'en Chi-ju (1606; repr. Shanghai,
1922),
pp. 2b~3a, claims chat Chung-yiian was also incited by his consort, who had had a quarrel
with Tao-tsung's young empress.
159 LS, 71, p. 1204.
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128 THE LIAO
opportunity to take the royal camp by surprise. Although they proclaimed
Chung-yuan emperor, when dawn came and the battle was joined in earnest,
they were completely routed. Chung-yuan fled southward and committed
suicide in the wilds, cursing himself for having listened to his son's plan and
becoming involved in the debacle.'
60
Hsiao Hu-tu, wounded in the battle,
also fled and drowned
himself.
Yeh-lii Ming, the viceroy of the Southern Capital, had been a party to the
plot and, when he received news of Chung-yiian's defeat, led a force of Hsi
troops into the capital city and armed them, planning to join in the uprising.
But his deputy governor mobilized the Chinese garrison to resist them, and
when urgent orders arrived from the emperor, he arrested and executed Yeh-
lii Ming. A group of
envoys
who were on a mission to the Sung court at the
time of the uprising were also involved in the conspiracy, and as soon as they
returned to Liao territory, they were arrested and sent to the capital for
execution.
It seems clear that this
was
not simply another of
the
recurrent opportunis-
tic attempts to seize power by rival members of the royal family or the result
of a simple family feud. Rather, it resulted from a wide-reaching conspiracy
by several important and powerful people. What precisely were their motives
it is impossible to say with certainty, but it seems most likely that they
rebelled to prevent further encroachments on the privileges of the Khitan
tribal nobility. Whatever the reasons for the uprising, Tao-tsung's reaction
was swift and drastic. All the conspirators were executed together with their
immediate families, among them Hsiao Ko, whose son was married to
Chung-yiian's daughter. There were extensive changes among the holders of
the highest offices.
It was not to be the last serious incident involving the royal clan in Tao-
tsung's long and generally peaceful reign.
The
dominance
of
Yeh-lii
l-hsin and his faction
Even before Chung-yiian's rebellion, power at the Liao court had been gradu-
ally shifting into the hands of a group of officials led by Yeh-lii I-hsin (d.
1083;
Khitan name Hu-tu-kun). '
6l
A member of the Five Divisions
(wu yuan
pu) lineage of the royal clan, I-hsin had risen from an impoverished youth to
become a palace attendant under Hsing-tsung and, by the end of that reign,
to become a guard commander. Under Tao-tsung he was given further favors
160 CTKC, 14, p. 153, and Wang Ting,
Fen chiao
lu, p. 3b, claim incorrectly that he was executed.
161 For his biography, see LS, no, pp. 1483—6.
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THE REIGN
OF
TAO-TSUNG
129
and
in 1059 was
appointed southern chancellor
and
then transferred
to the
northern Chancellery
in the
same year.
I-hsin's rapid rise
to
power coincided with
the
decline
of
the junior patriar-
chal line
(shao
fu
chang)
of the
Hsiao consort clan, which
had
held great
influence ever since Hsiao P'ai-ya became northern prime minister
in 1005.
This office
had
subsequently been almost monopolized
by
members
of the
junior patriarchal line,
and
during Hsing-tsung's reign their power
had
been
underpinned
by the
empress dowager Ch'in-ai.
Her
death
in 1058
marked
the real
end of
their dominance, although some individual members
of the
lineage continued
to
fill high positions.
Shortly before Chung-yiian's rebellion, I-hsin
had
cemented
a
personal
alliance with another powerful man,
the
then southern chancellor Yeh-lii Jen-
hsien (1013-72; Khitan name Ch'a-la),'
62
who had
risen
to
prominence
during
the
negotiations with
the
Sung
in
1042. Jen-hsien
had
long been
one
of the principal opponents
of
Chung-yuan
and his
faction,
who in 1060
tried
to engineer
his
removal from
the
capital
by
having
him
appointed
com-
mander
in
chief on
the
troublesome northwestern frontier so as
to
give them
a
free hand
at
court. I-hsin managed
to
foil this plan
by
interceding with
Tao-
tsung,
and
later
he and
Jen-hsien played crucial roles
in
defeating
the
rebel-
lion.
16
' After
the
rebellion they jointly controlled
the
Northern Commission
for Military Affairs
for a
while,
and in
1065 Jen-hsien became commander
in
chief.
For
the
next fifteen years I-hsin dominated
the
court
and the
emperor.
His admittedly hostile biography suggests that although
he
came
to
exer-
cise unrivaled influence,
he was
essentially
a
self-interested opportunist,
selecting worthless
and
corrupt
men for
office, taking bribes,
and
allowing
the military
to do as
they pleased. Only
the
empress's family refused
to be
dominated
by him.
Even Yeh-lii Jen-hsien,
who at
first tried
to
restrain
some
of his
more outrageous presumptions, found himself endangered
and
willingly accepted
the
post
of
viceroy
of the
Southern Capital, where
he
proved
a
model governor.
'
6
*
It
is
difficult
to
form
a
balanced picture
of
I-hsin's regime.
The
sources
for
the period
are
virulently hostile
to
both
him and his
adherents.
In the
Liao
shih
he and his
faction
are
given
a
group
of
unrelentingly negative biogra-
phies under
the
rubric "evil ministers."'
6
'
But
these were based largely
on
the veritable record written
at the
command
of
Tao-tsung's grandson
and
162 For his biography, see IS, 96, pp. 1395-7.
163 IS, no, p. 1484:96, pp. 1396—7.
164 IS, 96, p. 1387.
165 IS, no, in. See especially the preface to these chapters (p. 1483) and the historian's comment (p.
•495)-
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130 THE LIAO
successor T'ien-tso,'
56
who had good reason to hate I-hsin and execrate his
memory, as we shall see. Clearly, I-hsin's dominance was an interlude that
aroused violent passions, the memory of which was still fresh well into the
twelfth century.
What does seem clear is that I-hsin's rise to power did not mean any clear
change in policy or a break with the centralizing, pro-Chinese trends that
had continued since Hsing-tsung's reign. Nor was there an end to the ten-
sions between the centralist, pro-Chinese and the "nativist," pro-Khitan
interests that underlay Chung-yiian's rebellion. In Tao-tsung's time, how-
ever, these conflicting interests did not result in factions of different racial
composition. Some of I-hsin's supporters were ethnic Chinese, as were some
of his opponents. It is difficult to perceive the real interests underlying the
personal hatreds and alliances that divided the court.
The emperor was somehwat aloof from these political struggles and also
was weak, suspicious, and easily influenced, always ready to heed slanderous
accusations of disloyalty. He provided no real political leadership but pursued
his own interests. Tao-tsung was a naturally scholarly man: In 1064 he
ordered a search for books lacking in the imperial collections,'
67
and he
continued to take a deep personal interest in the examination system, which
was further developed in these years. Tao-tsung also developed an interest in
history. In 1074 the government distributed copies of the Shih
chi
and Han
shu,
l68
and about this time a bureau for compiling a national history for the
Liao was established, which in 1085 produced veritable records
{shih
lu) for
the first seven reigns.'
69
The emperor summoned prominent scholars to
expound various canonical texts before him, and he himself
wrote
poetry and
prose. He also continued to honor Buddhism,'
70
in some cases overriding the
hostility of local officials,'
7
' and gave lavish patronage to various monks, as
did the empress.
The nativist Khitan resistance to Chinese influences did not, however,
wither away after Chung-yiian's abortive rebellion. Nor were the Khitan
nobility weakened; in 1069, for example, the government was forced to issue
orders forbidding members of the royal clan from taking advantage of their
166 This veritable record was commissioned by T'ien-tso and completed by Yeh-lii Yen in 1103. The
Ch'i-tan kuo ehih, which the Liao shih compilers also used as a source, passes over the events of Tao-
tsung's reign in almost total silence, and what it does say is full of errors. The equally hostile Fen
chiao lu was written by Wang Ting (d. 1106) in 1089. Its survival is due to T'ien-tso's releasing the
author from banishment to a remote frontier district, where he had been kept as a result of personal
animus by Tao-tsung. See LS, 104, p. 1453.
167 LS, 22, p. 264.
168 LS, 23, p. 276.
169 LS, 24, p. 290; 104, p. 1456.
170 See the sources collected in Wittfogel and Feng, pp. 304—7.
171 LS, 24, p. 284.
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