The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 06. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368
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THE HSIA STATE AND THE MONGOLIAN CONQUEST 211
prince to the Mongolian khan's court and conspiring with various unnamed
powers to resist the Mongols.
121
The
Secret
history of
the Mongols
relates an incident, nowhere else recorded:
Progressing toward Tangut territory in the winter of 1225, Chinggis stopped
to hunt wild horses and suffered serious injuries when his horse bolted and
threw him. The march was halted and camp pitched to await the khan's
recovery. As a face-saving measure, Chinggis sent envoys to inform the
Tangut ruler he was being called to account for his reckless impudence. From
the Tanguts' response, Chinggis would judge whether to withdraw or pro-
ceed with his invasion. When the Mongolian envoys were received at the
Tangut court, Asha Gambu was again present, for he claimed responsibility
for the reckless words he had spoken earlier and further mocked the Mongols,
challenging them to battle. Upon hearing this reply, Chinggis pledged to
avenge the insult, "Even though we may die, let us challenge their boasts!"'
22
What lies behind the episode we can only speculate, but it appears that the
Tangut court was again dominated by a powerful minister rather than by its
emperor. Certainly Asha Gambu's defiant refusal to negotiate or compromise
provoked the Mongols' devastatingly thorough obliteration of the Tangut
state.
The Mongolian armies first reduced the Tanguts' Ho-hsi provinces, isolat-
ing the capital. Hei-shui (Edzina) and neighboring locales fell in the second
month of 1226. From his summer camp at Hun-ch'ui-shan (perhaps the Ch'i-
lien Mountains), the Mongolian khan directed operations against Su-chou
and Kan-chou, and the Mongolian general Siibetei led a separate force to
subdue the Sa-li Uighur prince and other tribes inhabiting the mountains
south of Kan-chou and Sha-chou (see Map 14).
Two Tangut officers in Mongolian service, Ch'a-han and Hsi-li Ch'ien-pu,
participated in the campaigns. At Su-chou, Hsi-li Ch'ien-pu's elder brother
was commander of the garrison and put up a spirited defense despite his
sibling's pleas to surrender. When the city fell, the Mongols spared Hsi-li's
relatives but massacred the rest of the population.
I23
At Kan-chou, Ch'a-han likewise tried to persuade his own younger brother
and father, who commanded the city's defenses, to avoid the fate of Su-chou.
The loyalist deputy commander killed them both and refused to surrender.
121 YS, 1, pp. 23—4; Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo (Paris, 1959), vol. 1, pp. 309-11; Igor de
Rachewiltz, "The secret history of the Mongols: Chapter twelve,"
Papers
on Far
Eastern
History, 31
(1985),
pp. 21—5, 44-55, and "The Hsi-yu lu by Yeh-lii Ch'u-ts'ai," Monumtnta
Serica,
21 (1962),
pp.
63-4, n. :
3
8.
122 Rachewiltz, "The secret history of the Mongols: Chapter twelve," p. 23.
123 YS, 121, p. 2977; 122, pp. 3008—9, 3011; 120, p. 2955. On Hsi-li Ch'ien-pu, see Pai Pin and
Shih Chin-po, "Ta Yuan Su-chou lu ye k'o ta lu hua ch'ih shih hsi chih pei," Min tsu yen chiu, 1
(•979). PP- 68-80.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
,_-'—\
100 200 300 km
100
200
miles
MAP
14. Chinggis's invasion of Hsi Hsia, 1226-7
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THE HSIA STATE AND THE MONGOLIAN CONQUEST 213
Nevertheless, after Kan-chou's subjugation Ch'a-han managed to save its
populace, owing to his great prestige and length of service in the Mongols'
cause. Only thirty-six men who had resisted surrender were executed.
I24
In autumn the main Mongolian army passed southeast to Hsi-ling (Liang-
chou),
an important urban center. Its defender, Wo Cha-tse (a descendant of
Wo Tao-ch'ung), surrendered after a brief resistance, and the districts of
Ch'o-lo and Ho-lo quickly followed suit.
I25
From there Chinggis khan proceeded to cross the Yellow River and march
downstream northeastward toward Ling-chou. By this time it seems that the
Tangut emperor had died of fright, at the age of forty-five. A luckless
kinsman, Wei-ming Hsien, inherited the throne. When the Mongols in-
vested Ling-chou in the eleventh month, the Tanguts dispatched one last
ambassador to the Chin court, requesting the Jurchens to withhold further
embassies. A large Tangut army under Wei-ming's command marched south-
west to relieve the siege of Ling-chou. Chinggis hastened across the frozen
river to meet the advancing relief force and routed it in an icy battle. Yeh-lii
Ch'u-ts'ai witnessed the collapse and sack of Ling-chou in December: "All the
officers contended with each other to seize children, women and valuables.
His Excellency {i.e., Yeh-lii] took only a few books and two camel-loads of
rhubarb."
126
After reducing Ling-chou, Chinggis khan set up his camp nearby at Yen-
chou-ch'uan. Leaving behind an army to close in on the Hsia capital, he
himself then moved southward, again crossing the Yellow River, and ad-
vanced west through Lin-t'ao to Chi-shih-chou. In spring of 1227 the Mon-
gol khan swept through Lin-t'ao, conquering its major districts, and halted
to "escape the summer heat" in the Liu-p'an Mountains.
I27
The khan was an
ailing man, and this is probably where he died.
The siege of Chung-hsing lasted for six months. Finally, the hopelessly
surrounded Tangut monarch capitulated in the sixth month of 1227. News of
Chinggis khan's death was concealed until Wei-ming Hsien emerged from
the capital walls according to the agreed terms of his surrender. The Mongols
slew him forthwith and sacked the city. Ch'a-han managed to avert a total
massacre and rescued scattered survivors of the debacle.
128
It has been suggested that the Mongols' treatment of the Tangut royal
124 YS, 120, pp. 2955-6.
125 YS, 134, p. 3254; 146, pp. 3465-6; 1, p. 24. On the reading
ch'o,
see Paul Pelliot, Review of E.
Haenisch, "Die letzten Feldziige Cinggis Han's und sein Tod. Nach der ostasiatischen Ueber-
lieferung," Alia Major, 9 (1933), pp. 503—51, and Toungpao, 31 (1934), p. 161.
126 YS, 146, p. 4355; Rachewiltz, "The His-yu lu," p. 65, n. 142. Tangut rhubarb was famed for its
medicinal properties.
127 Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo, vol. 1, pp.
310—
11,
failed to identify Chi-shih chou as the Chin
prefecture in Lin-t'ao circuit south, not north, of the Yellow River.
128 YS, 120, p. 2956.
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214
THE HSI
HSIA
family and the unusually sanguinary massacre of
the
Chung-hsing population
"were meant to provide Chinggis with a suitable escort in the afterlife," in
which the "virtue" of the enemy king was transformed into a beneficial
protective spirit serving the deceased khan."
9
Despite the picture of total devastation painted here, many Tangut sur-
vived the fall of Hsia and entered Yuan service. As
se-mu
(Western and
Central Asians) they enjoyed a status and privileges superior to those ac-
corded to either
the
Jurchens or the Khitans, let alone the
Chinese.
I3
°
Central
China (Hopei and Anhwei) harbored small communities of Tanguts who
evidently continued to use their script until the end of the Ming period.
Branches of the royal clan broke away and emigrated to western Szechwan,
northern Tibet, and perhaps even northeast India, becoming local rulers of
secular or Buddhist establishments.'J
1
From their T'o-pa roots to their post-Mongolian manifestations, in legend
and in life, the creators of the Hsia state left behind a complex historical
legacy that is still far from being fully understood or appreciated. Fortu-
nately, archaeology has supplied an abundance of Hsia texts and other arti-
facts,
far more than now exist from Khitan or Jurchen society. As this
material becomes available in translations and facsimiles published by schol-
ars in the Soviet Union, China, and Japan, it will one day be possible to write
a cultural and social history of Hsia that does not rely almost exclusively on
Chinese chronicles.
129 Rachweiltz, "The secret history of the Mongols: Chapter twelve," pp. 49-50.
130 Elizabeth Endicott-West,
Mongolian rule
in China (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), pp. 66-7: "The sons
and brothers of Mongolian, Muslim, Uighur, Naiman, and Tangut
ta-lu-hua-ch'ib [darughachi]
were
governed by separate and more favorable yin regulations than the relatives of Khitan, Jurchen, and
northern Chinese
ta-lu-hua-ch'ih."
131 Shih Chin-po and Pai Pin, "Ming tai Hsi Hsia wen ching chuan ho shih chuang ch'u t'an,"
K'ao
ku
hsiieh
pao,
1 (1977), pp. 143-64; Guiseppe Tucci,
Tibetan painted scrolls
(Rome, 1949), vol. 1, p.
164;
Stein, "Mi-flag et Si-hia," p. 237, n. 2; Wu, Hsi
Hsia shih
kao,
pp. 127-37.
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CHAPTER 3
THE CHIN DYNASTY
GENERAL REMARKS
It has long been recognized that the dynastic pattern is not a very satisfactory
criterion for periodizing Chinese history. A certain exception must, however,
be made for dynasties of conquest in which the rule of an imperial house is at
the same time a period of foreign domination. One of these is the Chin
dynasty (n
15—1234),
which first overthrew the Khitan state of Liao and
continued alien rule over large parts of northern China, although under a
different ruling group, the Jurchen people. It is too easily forgotten that the
region of modern Peking was continuously under non-Chinese rule - with
all the resulting social and anthropological influences - for more than four
hundred years. First the Khitans invaded the north of China, then the
Jurchens came, and finally, from the early thirteenth century onward the
Mongols, who, in contrast with Khitans and Jurchens, were successful in
subjugating the whole of China. The rule of the Chin dynasty and the
Jurchens is therefore a link in the chain of non-Chinese invasions from the
northern border regions into China proper; at the same time, however, the
Chin state had many distinctive features. Not the least important of these
were the methods by which the Jurchens dominated the Chinese. The
Khitans, the Jurchens, and the Mongols in turn each practiced a different
way of government and accepted Chinese civilization to varying degrees. A
comparison of these features may therefore lead to a comparative typology of
alien rule over China.
There are reasons for regarding the Chin dynasty as little more than just
a traditional stage in the foreign domination of northern China. With the
Jurchens, a Tungusic people appears for the first time in world history as an
identifiable entity and as a great political power. After the downfall of the
Jurchen state of Chin, Tungusic tribes did not disappear altogether from the
scene. Centuries later the Jurchens' direct descendants, the Manchus, re-
peated the achievements of their forefathers and rose to the status of mili-
tary dominance. This time, in the seventeenth century, they succeeded
where the Jurchens of the twelfth century had failed: They subjugated the
215
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210 THE CHIN DYNASTY
whole of China. We should add that the dynastic name of Chin (Chinese for
"gold") was the first name of a Chinese dynasty to become known in
medieval Europe. Marco Polo mentions a "gold king"
(rot
d'or),
which is a
faithful rendering of the name that the Mongols had given to the ruler of
the Chin state; the Mongolian words Altan khan mean "Golden khan." The
account by Marco Polo is, however, fantastic, as he also tells of an encoun-
ter between the "gold king" and the legendary Prester John. It is therefore
one of the many ironies of historical transmission that the first Chinese
dynastic name to be encountered in a European medieval source was that of
a non-Chinese dynasty.
THE JURCHEN PEOPLE AND THEIR PREDYNASTIC
HISTORY
The origin of the Jurchen people is singularly complex. The difficulties begin
with their ethnic name, which in various sources is rendered in. several
different Chinese orthographies. This chapter uses the form Jurchen, which is
warranted by the Chinese transcription Chu-li-chen and seems to be the
original form. Today, however, one frequently encounters the form Jiirched
or Jiirchid in Western scholarly literature. This is in reality the Mongolian
form of the Jurchen name (-d is a Mongolian plural suffix). The form Nii-
chen appears in the early tenth century and is obviously related to the form
Lii-chen, said to be the Khitan pronunciation of the ethnic name. Under the
Liao the syllabic element
chen
was prohibited because it occurred in the
personal name of the Liao emperor Hsing-tsung, and the Jurchen name was
therefore officially changed to Nii-chih. These inconsistencies have led to
much confusion, particularly in older Western literature. In the sixteenth
century the Jurchen called themselves Jusen, a form clearly derived from the
older form, Jurchen.
1
The linguistic affinity of the Jurchen language is, however, clear. The
Jurchens spoke a Tungusic language and therefore belonged to a linguistic
group that, some scholars believe, forms together with the Turkic and Mon-
golian languages, a genetically related family of
languages.
Today, Tungusic
languages are still spoken in parts of northeastern Siberia and eastern Man-
churia. There also is an isolated pocket of Manchu speakers in the Autono-
mous Region of the Sibe, west of Kuldja in Sinjiang. That the Jurchen
language, which had already become extinct by the end of the sixteenth
century, was a close relative of the Manchu language was early discovered in
i The various forms of the name and their phonetic problems have been exhaustively studied by Paul
Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo (Paris, 1959), vol. 1, pp. 376-90.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE JURCHEN AND THEIR PRE-DYNASTIC HISTORY 217
the West,
2
and the Manchus themselves were certainly conscious of their
Jurchen affinities. The Jurchen idiom is also the first Tungusic language ever
recorded in writing. Our chief source for linguistic studies of the Jurchen
language of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are the words preserved in
Chinese orthography in the Chin shih. Chinese—Jurchen glossaries compiled
during the sixteenth century reflect a later stage of phonetic development,
although they are useful also for a study of the "Old Jurchen" idiom spoken
under the Chin dynasty.
The original homeland of the Jurchens was the densely forested mountain
areas of eastern Manchuria and what is now the Soviet far eastern province
south of the Amur River. Relatively early - that is, in the tenth century -
the Jurchens seem to have spread into the Manchurian plains where the
Sungari River region was a center of their settlements. We should note here
that the Jurchen way of life, as opposed to Chinese sedentary and agricultural
civilization, cannot be described by the simple formula of pastoral nomadism.
In this respect the Jurchens certainly differed from the Khitans and even more
from the Mongols, both of whom corresponded much more closely to the
classical description of pastoral steppe nomadism (no permanent settlements,
living in tents, horses and camels as the chief domestic animals, little or no
agriculture). It seems that the Jurchen peoples had adapted their way of life
and economy to their respective habitat: Hunting and fishing were predomi-
nant among forest people, whereas among those living in the plains, cattle
raising and agriculture prevailed. The Jurchen raised and even exported
horses, but their chief domestic animals were oxen. Important products of
their country were hunting birds such as falcons and hawks, eagerly sought by
the Khitans and even the Chinese. A study of the tribute and gift lists in Liao
and Chinese sources shows which of the Jurchens' products were exported:
horses (for which China proper was an inexhaustible market), falcons, gold
and pearls, and forestry products (beeswax, pine seeds, ginseng, the last being
an important item in the Chinese pharmacopaeia). Obviously the Jurchens'
contributions to China's foreign trade were small, and in the system of tribu-
tary relations they were for a long time a minor element. But there can be no
doubt that it was just these occasional contacts with more developed states
that generated in the Jurchens a desire to emulate the power and splendor of
such courts as were visited by their envoys from the backwoods of Manchuria.
All Chinese sources agree that the Jurchens were a part of the Mo-ho
(Korean Malgal) tribes who used to live along what is now the border
between Korea and Manchuria. The Mo-ho themselves were not a uniform
2 This discovery was made by Claude de Visdelou (1651
—1737).
See his Hiitoin abrigk de la Tartarie, in
vol. 4 of Bibliolblque oriaitale (.Maest'icht, 1780), p. 288.
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2l8 THE CHIN DYNASTY
ethnic entity but, rather, a conglomeration
of
various elements.
In
T'ang
times they had become subjects
of
the Po-hai kingdom
in
southern Man-
churia. Some
of
the Mo-ho tribes formed
a
group that later,
in
the tenth
century, was known as the "Five Nations"
(wu-kuo)
in the region northeast of
modern Chi-lin and that became an element of
the
Jurchen people, or, rather,
federation. Another part of the Mo-ho were the seven tribes of the "Black
Water Mo-ho" who settled on the middle and lower Amur River ("Black
Water" (Hei-shui) was one
of
the names
of
the Amur).
It
was from these
Black Water Mo-ho that the first ancestors of the Jurchens originated, if we
are to believe the ancestral traditions current among the Jurchens in the early
twelfth century.
Before describing in more detail the gradual growth of the Jurchen tribes
into
a
federated nation,
a
word must be said about their earlier predynastic
history as reflected in Chinese sources.
It
is not clear at what date the Jurchen
name first appears in Chinese records. The name of the Mo-ho occurs already
during the late fifth century, but the earliest record of a name that could
perhaps be related to the Jurchens is A.D. 748, when an embassy of the great
and the Little Ju-che people presented gold and silver
to
the T'ang court.
These Ju-che were said to
be
one of the nine tribes of the Shih-wei federation,
which in T'ang times had extended their domination over parts of northern
and western Manchuria
and
therefore might well have included some
Tungusic-speaking elements.' Otherwise, the Jurchen name disappears until
the early tenth century. It seems that the disintegration of the T'ang empire
in the late ninth century facilitated the formation of new political units
in
more than one border region of China proper, and certainly
the
Jurchens were
no exception. They came as tribute bearers
to
the Liao court but also sent
their embassies first
to
the court of Later T'ang (an embassy
is
recorded
in
A.D.
925) and then to the Sung court from
961
onward, mostly by sea via the
Liao-tung peninsula.
The general political situation in the borderlands of China can explain why
the
Jurchens appeared just at the time they did. During the ninth century the
Po-hai kingdom, which stretched from the Gulf of Liao-tung to the northeast-
ern parts
of
Manchuria, had monopolized
the
lucrative trade and tribute
relations with China. In 926 the Po-hai state was absorbed into the Khitan
state of
Liao,
and because of the loose structure of the Liao empire, the more
distant peoples and tribes had
a
chance, with the disappearance
of
Po-hai
authority,
to
establish their own relations with other countries. After 926
those Jurchens who lived
in
the Manchurian plains,
in
particular the Liao
3 Paul Racchnevsky, "Les Che-wei etaicnt-ils des Mongols?"
in
vol.
i
of
Milanga
de
linologie offeru
a
Monsieur Paul
Demitville,
Bibliotheque de l'Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, vol. 20 (Paris, 1966),
pp.
235,
246-51.
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THE JURCHEN AND THEIR PRE-DYNASTIC HISTORY 219
River region, became the direct subjects of the Liao. They are known as the
"Civilized Jurchen," as opposed to their relatives outside Liao domination,
the "Raw" or "Uncivilized Jurchen," who still followed their old way of life as
forest settlers, hunters, and fishermen. It is not at all clear from which of
these two different Jurchen groups came the succession of
envoys
and traders
whose arrival in K'ai-feng is recorded during the period from 961 to 1019.
The Jurchen envoys who brought "fine steeds" by sea via Teng-chou in
Shantung may have come from the Civilized Jurchen who raised horses in the
flat plains of Manchuria and who had succeeded in evading the control of
their Khitan overlords. Others may have been emissaries from the Uncivi-
lized part of the Jurchen nation. We know for certain that the Khitans tried
to prevent the trade and tributary relations of their Jurchen vassals with the
Sung. In 991 they cut off the land route by building palisades near a place
through which travelers from Manchuria had to pass. But Sung—Jurchen
relations continued by the sea route until the beginning of the eleventh
century. In
IOIO the Khitans waged a campaign against Koryo in which the
Jurchens took the Korean side. The Khitans suffered a heavy defeat and
retreated. But for the Jurchens, this victory of their Korean ally had the
result that their emissaries for quite some time thereafter reached Sung China
only as members of Korean embassies.
The data of the Chin sources, although they give a highly stylized picture
of the early history of
the
Jurchens,
can be reconciled to some extent with this
outside information just summarized. The tribal chiefs who had been ances-
tors of
the
ruling clan of
the
Chin, the Wan-yen clan, were accorded imperial
designations posthumously in 1136-7, and their advisers are represented as
"chancellors." This is a feature recurrent in Chinese history, in which there
had always been a tendency to make imperial ancestors, however humble or
barbarian their origins might have been, appear
as
noble and sinified dignitar-
ies.
As the Jurchens had no written records, their earlier history had to be
transmitted orally. We have no dated evidence for before the time of the
chieftain Wu-ku-nai (1021—74), under whom the consolidation of the vari-
ous
Jurchen clans and their transformation into a nationlike federation began.
Tradition says that Wu-ku-nai was a sixth-generation descendant of the
founder of the Wan-yen clan. This clan ancestor, by the name of Han-p'u,
must therefore have lived sometime around the year 900, which is about
when the Jurchens appear on the diplomatic scene. The social life of the
Jurchens during the tenth and eleventh centuries was still largely determined
by tribal independence and individualism. Although the father of Wu-ku-nai
had already received a military title from the Liao court, such appointments
had little if any meaning and conferred no power or actual functions. They
signified little more than the recognition of a loose sovereignty of the Liao
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22O THE CHIN DYNASTY
and the acceptance of a formal vassal status. Even the Chin sources tell us that
in the middle of the eleventh century the Jurchens still had no script, no
calendar, and no offices. Another feature that points to a great measure of
clan independence is the fact that not a few place names in eastern Manchuria
in those times had names like "the town of such and such a person."
There was much resistance among the tribal chiefs against the rise to
dominance of the Wan-yen clan, and it needed a person of
the
stature of Wu-
ku-nai, the grandfather of the founder of the Chin dynasty, to overcome the
opposition of other clans. Wu-ku-nai is described as a brave warrior, a great
eater and drinker, and a lover of women. He finally succeeded in extending
his domination over the whole territory of eastern Manchuria from the
Ch'ang-pai shan, the "Ever-White Mountain," a center of religious worship
on the Korean-Manchurian border, to the "Five Nations" in the north. The
Liao appointed Wu-ku-nai as military governor
(chieh-tu-shih)
of the Uncivi-
lized Jurchen, and the Liao emperor even once received him in audience. One
of the actions that contributed to his growing power was the planned increase
in armaments through the purchase of iron and iron weapons from among the
other clans (the Jurchens had a reputation for being skillful blacksmiths). But
the chief reason that Wu-ku-nai was able to forge the recalcitrant tribes and
clans into a more organized power was the desire common to all Jurchens to
remain as independent as possible of their Khitan overlords.
One reason for the Jurchens' discontent was the bad treatment they had
suffered from the Khitans.
The
Jurchens were supposed to deliver annually to
the Liao court products of their country, such as pearls, hunting falcons, and
sable furs. It seems that much extortion and violence took place during these
annual meetings of Liao envoys and Jurchen tribute bearers at the trading
posts of the frontier regions. The fact that Wu-ku-nai himself and all his
successors held titles of military governors conferred by the Liao court did
little to make the Jurchens faithful vassals. On the other hand, the contacts
with the Liao state and the resulting acquaintance with the ways of a more
organized and structured type of government led to a growing awareness that
the traditional tribal organization would be insufficient if the Jurchens
wanted to match the Khitans. It was a grandson of Wu-ku-nai who achieved
both formal and factual independence for the Jurchens: A-ku-ta, later can-
onized as T'ai-tsu.
THE REIGN OF A-KU-TA AND THE FOUNDING OF THE
CHIN DYNASTY
Under A-ku-ta's predecessor, his elder brother Wu-ya-shu (r. 1103-13), the
Jurchens had already achieved sufficient power to be able to stabilize their
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