The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 06. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368
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Huang t'ou Uighurs
Original nucleus of Hsia-chou
Territory conquered 995—1005
Territory conquered 1028—50
Territory occupied 1063-81
Territory occupied 1136-7
_
J |
300 km
200 miles
MAP
IO. The growth of the Hsi Hsia state
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
172 THE HSI HSIA
capital to enlarge its farming population and tax base. That same year the
Sung court recognized the fait
accompli
by formally returning to Li Chi-ch'ien
the five Ordos prefectures surrendered by Li Chi-p'eng in 982. Meanwhile,
another front had opened at Liang-chou, five hundred /*' southwest of Ling -
chou, the hub of tribute-trade traffic and horse commerce between the Kansu
corridor and K'ai-feng.
LIANG-CHOU AND TANGUT EXPANSION INTO HO-HSI
For many years Liang-chou had been governed by a confederation of mixed
Tibeto-Chinese tribes residing in the well-watered valleys, called the Liu-ku,
of the mountains to its south. The confederation was divided into left and
right wings under the nominal leadership of a great chieftain. In 1001 the
fourth-generation incumbent of this position was abruptly displaced by P'an-
lo-chih,
34
an obscure but influential figure. P'an-lo-chih's rise to power has
been attributed to a supposed connection with the powerful rLangs clan of
Sum-pa, which ruled P'an-chou (modern Sung-p'an, Szechwan) and had
supplied high ministers to the Tibetan monarchs.
35
Backed by the thirteen
Che-lung tribes, another group associated with Liang-chou, P'an-lo-chih's
elevation to the leadership of Liu-ku probably resulted from the support of
the Sung authorities in Ch'in-chou (modern T'ien-shui, Kansu), who may
well have viewed him as a stronger deterrent to Li Chi-ch'ien than his
predecessor had been. Nevertheless, the previous Liu-ku chieftain remained
as leader of the left wing and, characteristically, also received Sung backing as
a counterweight to P'an-lo-chih.
The commercial and strategic value of the triangle formed by Hsi-ning,
Lan-chou, and Liang-chou figured in Tangut thinking as early as 985, when
Li Chi-ch'ien sent troops to attack Hui-chou (on the east bank of the Yellow
River, northeast of Lan-chou). Tangut attacks on Liang-chou began in 996 or
earlier and intensified after the capture of Ling-chou. Late in 1003 Li Chi-
ch'ien occupied Liang-chou, accepting the feigned surrender of P'an-lo-chih,
who had fled the city. A Tibetan ambush ensued, however, in which the
Tanguts were routed and their leader was mortally wounded. He died early in
1004 near Ling-chou, at the age of forty-one.
36
34 This name is given the reading Po-lo-chih by some Chinese scholars.
35 On Liang-chou, see Maeda, Kasti, pp. 383—99; Hsu Sung (1781—1848), ed., Sung bui yao chi kao
(Peking, 1936; repr. Peking, 1957; Taipei, 1975), 195, fang yii 21, pp. i4-23b (pp. 7654-8);
Iwasaki Tsutomu, "Seiryofu Hanrashi seiken shimatsu ko," Tohogaki, 47 (1974), pp.
25—41,
and
"Seiryofu seiken no metsubo to Soka zoku no hatcen," in Suzuki
Shun
sense:
koki
kinen Toyoshi
ronso,
ed.
Suzuki Shun sensei koki kinen Toyoshi ronso henshu iinkai (Tokyo, 1975), pp. 73-88.
36 On discrepancies in the dating of Li Chi-ch'ien's death, see Tai Hsi-chang's commentary in his Hsi
Hsia chi (Peking, 1924), in vol. 4 olChung bua wen shih
ts'ung
sbu, ed. Wang Yiin-wu (Taipei, 1968),
3,
pp. 20b—21a.
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THE RISE OF THE TIBETAN TSUNG-KO DYNASTY 173
Revenge soon followed. A group of Tanguts secretly joined with a Che-
lung splinter group and assassinated P'an-lo-chih in the middle of 1004.
Thereupon the Che-lung confederation collapsed. Its loyalist faction expelled
the others and elected P'an-lo-chih's youngest brother, Ssu-to-tu, to govern
Liang-chou. Ssu-to-tu promptly gained Sung recognition, but his power base
was
considerably diminished. Plague further afflicted the area for
years
follow-
ing 1006. Several eminent Liu-ku leaders reportedly defected to the Tanguts
while other tribes gravitated toward a new locus of Tibetan authority that
was forming farther south around the Tsung-ko tribes in the Huang River
valley east of Kokonor at Ho-chou.
THE RISE OF THE TIBETAN TSUNG-KO DYNASTY
Tsung-ko designates the region of
Amdo
east of Kokonor (in modern eastern
Tsinghai Province) (see Map 11). It was also the name of a town (Tsung-ko-
ch'eng) located midway between modern Hsi-ning (then called Ch'ing-t'ang)
and Le-tu (then called Miao-ch'uan), and of a river (Tibetan: Tsong-kha). The
Tsung-ko tribes first appear in Sung sources as the allies of the loyal Che-lung
faction at Liang-chou." After P'an-lo-chih's death they consolidated an alli-
ance with the Kan-chou Uighurs to protect their mutual commercial inter-
ests.
The Tsung-ko escorted Uighur merchant-envoys along a route that
bypassed Liang-chou far to the south and traversed Hsi-ning to reach Ch'in-
chou in Sung territory.
Around this time, partly to counter the growing Tangut pressure on the
region, the Amdo elders cast about for a new overlord of suitably venerable
lineage. To the west, in a district of Kao-ch'ang, they found such a person in
Ch'i-nan-ling Wen-ch'ien-pu (997-1065), whose alleged descent from the
Yarlung royal house gave him a stronger claim to Tibetan loyalties than P'an-
lo-chih had proffered. Moreover, he was soon endowed with religious quali-
ties appropriate to his royal station. Ch'i-nan-ling was first escorted to Ho-
chou, where the local people named him Ku-ssu-lo,
38
meaning "son of
Buddha" (Tibetan:
rgyal-sras)
and aspired to establish him as head of
a
royal
government. But an ambitious Tsung-ko monk, Li-li-tsun (or Li-tsun), and
the Miao-ch'uan chieftain, Wen-pu-ch'i, abducted Ku-ssu-lo and took him
northwest to K'uo-chou, where, around 1008, he was enthroned as king
(Tibetan:
btsan-po)
at the age of
twelve.
As the new regime flourished, it was
37 Iwasaki, "Seiryofu seilcen no metsubo," pp. 73-88; Maeda,
Kasei,
pp. 505—9, 575-7; see Luciano
Petech, "Tibetan relations with Sung China and with the Mongols," in
China among
equals:
The Middle
Kingdom
and
its
neighbors,
ioth—14/h
centuries,
ed. Morris Rossabi (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983),
pp.
176—7, for relevant information from Tibetan sources.
38 This name is also read Chiao-ssu-lo by some scholars.
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174
THE HSI HSIA
300kr
lobmilsis
j.
~C|Ving
:
rang
(Hsi-ning)
MAP
II. The Tsung-ko region
moved again to Li-li-tsun's seat of power at Tsung-ko-ch'eng. There Li-li-
tsun made himself chief minister and married two (or one?) of his nieces
(some accounts say daughters) to Ku-ssu-lo.
In 1014 Ku-ssu-lo contacted the Sung authorities at Wei-chou (Kansu,
P'ing-liang) and was granted an official appointment. Early in 1015 a joint
embassy from the Tsung-ko leaders reached the Sung court. Already, reports
from Ch'in-chou and Wei-chou officials had indicated that the Tsung-ko
Tibetans boasted of sixty thousand to seventy thousand troops willing to
oppose Tangut advances with the court's support but that on the other hand,
they were also inciting border tribes to unite and resist Sung penetration of
their pasturelands in the Wei River valley. Furthermore, a power struggle
was coming to a head between Li-li-tsun and his protege. By 1016 Li-li-tsun
had shed his clerical status and had taken wives from sixteen clans. He had
repeatedly petitioned the Sung court for enfeoffment and even requested the
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE RISE OF THE TIBETAN TSUNG-KO DYNASTY 175
title
ofts'an-p'u
(Tibetan:
btsan-po)
in defiance of Ku-ssu-lo's presumed author-
ity over him. Distrustful of Li-li-tsun but believing that he might prove
useful, in 1016 the court gave him, too, a nominal appointment.
Between 1013 and 1016 the Tsung-ko Tibetans quarreled with their
Uighur allies and blocked the route to Kan-chou. At this time Tangut troops
had stepped up their offensive against the Uighurs and Liang-chou (some
sources credit the Uighur soldiers under P'an-lo-chih's command with Li
Chi-ch'ien's death). In 1015 a Tangut garrison again occupied that city but
was ousted in 1016 by the Uighurs who killed Ssu-to-tu. Liang-chou then
returned to joint Tibetan—Uighur control for another fifteen years. Tsung-ko
and Kan-chou resolved their differences after a new Uighur khan was elected
in 1016, but there is evidence suggesting tension and rivalry between the
two peoples over the fate of Liang-chou
itself.
39
In 1016—17 both Li-li-tsun and Ku-ssu-lo were implicated in a tribal
uprising along the headwaters of the Wei River, provoked in part by the
Sung's pushing forward its defense perimeter into this territory, building
forts and wood-collecting stations. The unrest culminated in a resounding
Tibetan defeat at the hands of Ts'ao Wei (973-1030), the prefect and pacifica-
tion commissioner of Ch'in-chou, in the ninth month of 1016. Fighting
continued sporadically into 1017. By 1018 Ts'ao Wei reported that Tibetan
resistance was shattered, that Ku-ssu-lo had retreated, and that all his erst-
while subjects had submitted hostages to Ch'in-chou. According to some
reports, Ku-ssu-lo held Li-li-tsun accountable for these reverses. Sometime in
the early 1020s, Ku-ssu-lo finally moved to Miao-ch'uan and took its
chief-
tain, Wei-pu-ch'i, as his new minister.
40
For many years after this, Ku-ssu-lo's circumstances are obscure. Some-
time later the Sung authorities in Ch'in-chou sent agents to Miao-ch'uan to
regularize relations with him, in response to his occasional petitions for trade
and recognition. This possibly occurred after the fall of Kan-chou to the
Tanguts in 1028, although the precise dating of the Tangut conquest of Ho-
hsi remains largely guesswork, according to Sung historian Li T'ao (1114—
83).
4I
Both Ku-ssu-lo and his minister Wen-pu-ch'i received Sung appoint-
ments in 1032. Just at that time, however, Wen-pu-ch'i mutinied and
imprisoned his master. Ku-ssu-lo escaped, killed his captor, and reestab-
39 SeeSS,
41)0
passim,
(esp. p. 14115), and
Sung
hui yao chi kao, 197, fan i 4, pp. 3-9 (pp. 7701—4), on
the Uighur involvement with Liang-chou and Tsung-ko; see also Iwasaki Tsutomu, "Soka jo
Kokushira seiken no seikaku to kito,"
Chuo
daigaku Ajia thi
kenkyu,
2 (1978), pp. 1—28.
40 Ku-ssu-lo's and Li-li-tsun's names are, however, still coupled in Sung reports as late as 1024. Li-li-
tsun disappears from the record after 102;, when he successfully petitioned the Sung court for a
monthly stipend (despite rumors that he had been killed by Ts'ao Wei's troops in 1016).
41 HCP, in,p. 17a. Ts'ao Wei has an entry in $»»£ A/V>£ra^/«, vol. 2, pp. 1063-4; and in Ch'ang Pi-te,
Wang Te-i et al., comps., Sungjen chuan chi tzu liao
suo
yin (Taipei, 1974-6), vol. 3, pp. 2197—8.
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176 THE HSI HSIA
lished his headquarters further upstream at Ch'ing-t'ang. To this fortress
flocked many refugees from the Tangut annexation of Ho-hsi. After Liang-
chou fell to the Tanguts, about 1032, the former Tibetan and Uighur allies of
Ssu-to-tu also swelled Ku-ssu-lo's following.
42
To the extent that is possible to date these events, 1032 stands out as a
turning point in the career of Ku-ssu-lo and the rise of Ch'ing-t'ang as a vital
commercial and political center between Sung, Hsia, Liao, and Inner Asia. It
is also the year in which Li Yiian-hao, the most famous and formidable of the
Tangut rulers, came to power, inaugurating an era of direct confrontation
between the rival regimes at Ch'ing-t'ang and Hsing-chou (the new Hsia
capital).
LITE-MING, 1004-1032
We must now look back and retrace events among the Tanguts since the
beginning of the century. Li Chi-ch'ien's eldest son, A-i (b. 989), succeeded
his father in 1004 at the age of twenty-one and was known thereafter as Li Te-
ming. Intent on pushing the Tanguts' power westward to Kan-chou and
beyond, Li Te-ming first moved to secure good relations with both Liao and
Sung.
In 1004 the new Tangut ruler was invested by the
Liao
with the title of Hsi-
p'ing
wang,
which was upgraded in 1010 to that of king of Hsia
{Hsia
kuo
wang),
as his father had been styled. However, apart from routine diplomatic
exchanges (presumably the Tanguts sent annual tribute envoys to the Liao
court),
Tangut-Khitan relations began to expose their true adversarial colors.
Unrest and rebellion among their northwestern Tsu-pu (Tatar) subjects
prompted Liao to field armies against the Kan-chou Uighurs in 1008, 1010,
and 1026, in an effort to secure its distant borders. Probably none of these
campaigns achieved its intended result in spite of limited local victories.
Likewise, Tangut forces also attacked the Uighurs in 1008, 1009, 1010, and
thereafter. In 1015 they captured Liang-chou, only to be defeated and driven
out by the Uighurs in the next years. It is not likely, however, that Liao and
Hsia acted in concert against Kan-chou, in the light of their rivalry for
control over Ho-hsi and its trade routes, a control that was of marginal
importance to the Liao but was vital to the survival of the Tangut state.
43
In 1006 the Liao court had entertained an embassy from the other major
Ho-hsi regime, the state centered at Sha-chou (modern Tun-huang), whose
ruler Ts'ao Tsung-shou solicited investment from both the Sung and the Liao.
42 Two recent studies of Ch'ing-t'ang and Ku-ssu-lo are Chu Ch'i-yuan, "Ku-ssu-lo cheng ch'iian hsing
ch'eng ch'u t'an," Hsi-tsang yen cbiu, 2 (1982), pp. 68—77; and Sun Chii-yiian, "Ch'ing-t'ang lu chi
kao,"
Hsi-tsang yen chiu, 2 (1982), pp. 144—55.
43 Iwasaki, "Sieryofu seiken no metsubo," pp. 79—80; Okazaki, Tanguto, pp. 239—89.
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LI TE-MING 177
His heir Ts'ao Hsien-shun, the last recorded Ts'ao ruler of Sha-chou, likewise
contacted both courts upon his succession in 1014. The fact that around this
time Sha-chou rulers began to refer to themselves as the Sha-chou Uighurs,
and later in 1041 to 1042 as the Sha-chou Pei-t'ing khaghanate, has
prompted speculation that Kan-chou had absorbed Sha-chou before its own
conquest. Many Kan-chou Uighurs doubtless resettled in Sha-chou and Kua-
chou at this time, but it was perhaps more likely to have been Uighurs from
the T'ien-shan area who took over Sha-chou in the early 1020s. Moreover,
given the long and initmate relationship between the western Uighurs of
Turfan and the Khitans, a Uighur presence in Sha-chou would block Tangut
ambitions in that region, to Liao's advantage. Indeed, Sha-chou resisted
absorption by the Tangut for several more decades.
44
Liao did not cultivate relations with the Kokonor Tibetans until the 1050s,
but evidently Li-li-tsun did solicit Khitan support, to no avail. In 1018 he
asked permission to send tribute envoys through Hsia territory to the Liao
court. No such embassies are recorded
as
having arrived, however, presumably
owing to the Tanguts' opposition. Their refusal of Li-li-tsun's request, accord-
ing to one account, induced the Khitan emperor to lead troops, disguised as a
hunting party, on a punitive raid into Tangut territory. Li Te-ming routed the
Liao host and the following year was compensated with investment as king of
Great Hsia (Ta Hsia), with a gold seal and the honorary rank of director of the
Department of State Affairs (Shang shu ling).
4
' Though its details
are
dubious,
the episode hints at disruptive tensions between the Tanguts and the Liao
court. Li Te-ming's efforts to smooth relations succeeded to the extent that he
acquired a royal Khitan bride for his son and heir, Li Yiian-hao, upon the
accession of the new Liao emperor, Hsing-tsung, in 1031.
The conclusion of the treaty of Shan-yuan between Sung and Liao in 1004—
5 and its subsequent smooth operation had created a favorable climate for Li
Te-ming's negotiations with China. He may well have delayed his own first
contacts with the Sung in part to await the outcome of the Sung-Liao peace
negotiations. Both sides were eager to come to terms, despite immediate and
irresolvable differences. Although Li Te-ming rejected Sung Chen-tsung's
initial demands, which included the return of Ling-chou and the submission
of royal hostages to the Sung court (something unprecedented in Tangut
history), a compromise was reached, permitting his investiture in 1006 as
military governor of Ting-nan with the title Prince of Hsi-p'ing and the
granting of silk, cash, and tea and annual donations of winter clothing. Thus
formal tributary relations were established and Sung recognized the de facto
sovereignty of
the
Tangut ruler. Throughout his reign Li Te-ming pressed the
44 SS, 490, pp. 14123—4; Maeda, Kasei, pp. 560—70; Moriyasu Takao, "Uiguru to Tonko," in
Tonko
no
nkishi, vol. 2 of
Kfiza
Tonko,
ed. Enoki Kazuo (Tokyo, 1980), pp. 331-5.
45 LS, 16, p. 183; SS, 485, pp. 13991—2.
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178 THE HSI HSIA
Chinese court for greater trade concessions and, less successfully, for the right
to sell Tangut salt across the border. The first government market
(ch'iieh
ch'ang)
was opened at Pao-an commandery (Chih-tan, Shensi) in 1007. Later,
in 1026 private markets
(ho shih ch'ang)
were permitted in Ping-chou (mod-
ern T'ai-yiian) and Tai-chou (modern Tai-hsien) in northern Shansi.
At this time because Sung emperors were committed to maintaining peace
along the borders, minor frontier clashes and flourishing sales of salt and
other contraband did not weaken Li Te-ming's favorable standing with the
Sung throne. The Tangut royal house prospered as streams of envoys to K'ai-
feng took full advantage of their trading privileges in the Chinese capital to
ensure a steady flow of rich gifts to their monarch. In 1020 a new Hsia
capital was built northwest of Ling-chou on the opposite bank of the Yellow
River, near the site of Huai-yiian-chen. Named Hsing-chou (this was
changed to Hsing-ch'ing fu in 1033), the new center of government enjoyed
a superior strategic position between the Alashan, guarding its rear, and the
Yellow River, flanking its southern and eastern approaches. By the early
twelfth century the Hsia capital was commonly called Chung-hsing, perhaps
a Chinese equivalent of its Tangut name. The Mongolian name, Erighaya,
was probably also derived from the Tangut name of the capital and was used
to refer to the Ning-hsia region.«
6
During Li Te-ming's later years his eldest son, Li Yiian-hao, commanded
the Tangut armies in Ho-hsi and gained a reputation as a soldier and strate-
gist. Many sources recount alleged conversations between father and son, in
which the young prince criticized Li Te-ming's subservience to the Sung and
his greed for the Chinese products obtained through border trade. He be-
lieved that his father's policies were undermining the pastoral basis of Tangut
society and economy, thus threatening their cultural values and no doubt
their military prowess. In particular, Li Yiian-hao denounced Li Te-ming's
practice of executing trade agents who failed to obtain good bargains in the
Sung markets.
47
The conquest of
Ho-hsi,
which was largely accomplished by
Li Yiian-hao, beginning with the capture of Kan-chou around 1028, may be
viewed in part as a drive to strengthen the pastoral basis of Hsia society by
expanding westward away from the Chinese agricultural periphery, where
further expansion was in any case impossible.
46 HCP, 96, p. 26b; Tai, Hsi Hsia
chi,
5, p. 15b: Chung-hsing occurs regularly in CS 61 and 62, and in
the Tangut law code (in which the Tangut form transcribes the Chinese), thus casting doubt on Wu
Kuang-ch'eng's account of the adoption of this name in 120;; see his Hsi Hsia shu shih
(Pref.,
1826);
repr. in vol. 88-91 of Shih liao ts'ungpien
hsii
pirn, ed. Kuang-wen shu-chii pien i so (Taipei, 1968),
39,
p. 11a. On the Mongolian and Tangut names, see Kychanov, Ocheri istorii, p. 56, and his "O
nekotorykh naimenovaniiakh gorodov i mestnostel byvshei territorii tangutskogo gosudarstgva," in
vol. 1 of Pis'mtnnyepamiatniki iproblemy istorii i kul'tury naradov
vostoka:
XI. godichnaia nauihnaia sissiia
U IV. AN. SSSR (Ttzisy) (Moscow, 1975), pp.
47-51.
47 SS, 485, p. 13993; Su Shih (1036—1101),
Tung-p'o
chih tin (TSCCCP ed.), 3, p. 51.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
HO-HSI AFTER THE TANGUT CONQUEST 179
Li Yiian-hao's later policies certainly aimed to define and preserve a dis-
tinct cultural identity for the Tangut state. Nothing indicates that Li Te-
ming opposed his son's succession, but the latter's ambitions already pro-
voked controversy and concern,
as
subsequent episodes of violent palace
intrigue reveal.
HO-HSI AFTER THE TANGUT CONQUEST
Chinese records present a confused and incomplete account of the Tanguts'
activities in Ho-hsi and tend to collapse the actual time that it took the Hsia
to conquer and absorb the region. Its pacification is usually dated to the year
1036.
Kan-chou was taken around 1028, Liang-chou in 1032. The west-
ernmost of
the
Ho-hsi statelets, Sha-chou, however, remained autonomous at
least until 1052-3, the year of its last tribute mission to Sung. A Tangut
reign date of 1074 appears in a cave inscription at Tun-huang, and so by then
Sha-chou was certainly under firm Tangut rule. Maeda Masana suggests that
the expansion of Islamic Kharakhanid control over Kashgar and Khotan, the
latter of which had traditionally been allied with Sha-chou, precipitated Sha-
chou's submission to Tangut authority. As early as 1038, however, Li Yiian-
hao had claimed Khotan as his vassal, although Khotan seems not to have
accepted this status. After a lapse from 1025 to 1063, Khotanese missions to
Sung resumed, and the Khotanese figured prominently in political and com-
mercial dealings at Ch'ing-t'ang.
48
Any immediate commercial profits that the Tanguts expected to reap from
their occupation of Ho-hsi were undercut when their rivals and prospective
clients began
to
use trade routes passing north and south of the Kansu
corridor. Merchants from the Tarim basin either traveled north, skirting the
southern Gobi to reach the Khitan court, or detoured southward to Ch'ing-
t'ang, which developed into a thriving entrepot. The Sung court, likewise,
did not ignore the importance of Ch'ing-t'ang as a source of horses, a link
with the Western Regions, and also as a potential military threat as a base for
joint Tibetan-Tangut operations against the Sung. After 1038 the Sung
imported most
of
their horses from the Tibetans via border markets es-
tablished
in
the northwest for this purpose. Court-imposed restraints on
Chinese expansion
in
this area were completely abandoned
in
the 1070s,
when Wang Shao was delegated to establish the Hsi-ho circuit, to "pacify"
Kokonor, and to enroll more local chieftains as subsidized clients of the Sung
48 Maeda, Kaiei, pp. 565, 628—4;; Okazaki, Tanguto, pp. 270-9. Tangut claims to Khotanese suzer-
ainty are recorded 6rst in Li Yiian-hao's letter to the Sung court (SS, 485, pp. 13995-6), and later in
Li Yiian's Ch'ing-t'ang lu, a Sung work that survives only in a truncated form in chap. 35 of Sbuofu,
comp.
T'aoTsung-i (facsim. repro., Taipei, 1972), pp. 11a—13a.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
l8o
THE HSI
HSIA
court.
49
Among other effects, the increasingly belligerent activities
of
the
commanders of Ho-hsi circuit alarmed the other regional powers and brought
about
a
gradual improvement in Tangut—Khitan relations from the late 1070s
onward. Lively contacts between Hsia and Kokonor flourished at all levels.
In the twelfth century the situation in Ho-hsi was altered significantly. The
short-lived Chinese occupation of Kokonor (in 1099 and again from 1104 to
1119) and the Jurchen conquest of
Shensi
dispersed the commercial network
at Ch'ing-t'ang and removed any remaining obstacle to the Tangut annexa-
tion of the area by 1136—7, when Chin formally ceded Kokonor to Hsia.'° By
this time the Tanguts' trading position had improved considerably, as Hung
Hao's (1088-1155) diary reveals: Uighur merchants passing through Hsia
territory to Yen (modern Peking, the principal Chin capital in 1153) were
obliged to render a 10 percent tax on their goods to Tangut custom officials,
who took the best of their wares in payment. No doubt an end to warfare with
Sung and the greater stability of Tangut central government from the end of
the eleventh century onward contributed to this development.
Moreover, according to Hung Hao, after the Jurchen invasion
of
north
China, many Uighurs who had settled in the Ch'in-chou area retreated back
into Ho-hsi and became Tangut tributaries.
5
' By the mid-twelfth century
Uighurs had come
to
play
a
prominent role
in
the political and cultural
activities of the Hsia state (from the beginning they had been employed as
translators of Buddhist texts). Almost certainly, the Buddhist Khitan rulers
of Khara-Khitai (western Liao) in Central Asia maintained friendly ties with
their Tangut coreligionists, who had loyally supported the Liao dynastic
house in its last desperate days. Finally,
it
is clear from the Tangut law code
that
in
the early twelfth century, regular trade and diplomatic relations
existed between Hsia and its neighbors to the north and west.
LI YOAN-HAO (WEI-MING NANG-HSIAO, CHING-TSUNG),
1032 - 1048
Li Te-ming died in the summer of 1032, shortly after his son had incorpo-
rated Liang-chou into the Tangut empire.
52
Although Sung accounts of Li
49 Liao Lung-sheng, "Pei Sung tui T'u-fan te cheng ts'e," Tai-wan Sbih fan
la
bsiieb
li
shih
bsiieb
poo,
4
(1976),
pp. 143—4. Wang Shaohas an entry in
Sung
biographies,
vol.
2,
pp. 1137—41, and in Sung jen
chuanchi tzu liaosoyin, vol. 1, p. 203. For an account of his activities, see Ch'en Pang-chan (fl. 1598),
comp.,
Sung shih chi shih pen
mo
(Peking: 1977), 41.
50 CS, 78, p. 1772; 91, p. 2017; 26, p. 653; but the evidence is obscure and contradictory. See also Wu,
Hsi Hsia shu shih, 34,
p.
16a—b.
51 Hung Hao, Sung-mo chi wen, repr.
in
vol.
3
of Liao-hai ts'ung shu, ed Chin Yii-fu (Liao-hai shu-she,
1931—4;
repr. Taipei, 1971?), shang,
p.
3a. On Hung Hao, see
Sung
biographies,
vol.
2,
pp. 464—5;
and Sung jen chuan cbi tzu liao suoyin, vol.
2,
pp. 1505—6.
52
Sung
huiyao chi kao, 33,
li
41, p. 12b. Most accounts date his death to the winter, when the report was
first received by the Chinese court.
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