The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 06. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368
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FOREIGNERS
II
FOREIGNERS
Just how alien were these peoples to the societies that they conquered by force
of arms? And what did they have in common? In
a
larger historical perspec-
tive
it
is possible to view the dynasties of conquest as one more phase in the
age-old confrontation between the Chinese and their northern neighbors that
has existed since the Western Chou period, when the heartland of Chou
in
the Wei River valley was invaded by seminomadic peoples.
6
Under
the
Ch'in and Han,
the
Hsiung-nu confederation was the chief
adversary of the Chinese, followed
in
the third century
A.D.
by the Hsien-pi
and other tribes, who were successful
in
dominating China's northern prov-
inces and establishing states
of
their own on Chinese soil. After the T'ang
dynasty had lost
its
hegemony and finally disintegrated into several states
from the early tenth century onward, the border conflict took on a new form.
The reunification
of
China under
the
Sung after 960 was paralleled
by a
steadily growing consolidation
of
polities founded by peoples north
of
the
borders
of
China proper.
It
would, however,
be
wrong
to
see the polities
founded
by
the northerners
as
nomad empires
in
contrast with the stable
empire of the sedentary Chinese. The peoples who founded the states of Liao,
Hsia, Chin, and Yiian were not, by any means, all nomads. Both the Khitans
and the Mongols in the beginning had an economy based on pastoralism, and
their wealth was predicated on their vast herds of
horses,
sheep, and camels.
Nevertheless, none
of
the "nomadic" neighbors
of
China was exclusively
pastoral. There was always some marginal agriculture and also extensive
trade that supplied them with those goods that could not be produced from
cattle raising. Before their conquests in China, the Khitan had some farming
and permanent settlements, with Chinese artisans and Chinese and Uighur
traders.
The Jurchens were not nomads at all in the strict sense. Even those "wild"
Jurchen living
in
the forested mountains of eastern Manchuria were
a
seden-
tary people, living by hunting, fishing, and some agriculture. They did not
live in tents, but in villages consisting of wooden cabins. The Jurchen in the
plains
of
Manchuria, which had been
a
part
of
the Po-hai state until
its
annexation by the Khitans, were not nomads either, although they had huge
herds
of
horses. These differences
in
life-style
and
economy among
the
Jurchen are reflected in the terms "civilized" (shu) and "wild"
{sheng)
Jurchen,
which were already current under the Liao. The Tanguts, too, had a complex
mixed economy long before their rise
to
independence. Thus
to
lump to-
6 See Herbert Franke, "The role of"the state
as
a structural element in polyethnic societies," in
Foundations
and
limits of state power
in
China,
ed. Stuart R. Schram (London and Hong Kong, 1987), pp. 87-112.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
12 INTRODUCTION
gether the founders of all these regimes and characterize them as "nomad
invaders" would certainly be a naive oversimplification.
Another simplification of which historians must be aware is terminology.
When we use the terms Khitan, Jurchen, Tangut, or Mongol, we should
remember that each of these terms referred not to a single homogenous
people but a complex reality. The names of
Khitan,
Jurchen, or Tangut are in
reality those of federations under the leadership of Khitans and so forth. The
names are those of the linguistically dominant groups within these federa-
tions.
The federations themselves were each polyethnic and multilingual, as
the various contributions to this volume will make abundantly clear. The
Khitan federation, for example, included tribes and ethnic groups with
Turkic affiliations such as the Hsi or the Uighurs; others were undoubtedly
Mongols like the Shih-wei or of Tungus stock like the civilized Jurchen, but
the common language within the federation must have been Khitan. Later
the federation was expanded to include Po-hai and Han Chinese. The same is
true for the Jurchens, among whose confederates we find other Tungus tribes
and, in addition, Mongols. The Mongols themselves had absorbed Turkic-
speaking tribes like the Onggiid, not to mention Central Asians who had
come within the Mongolian orbit after the great expeditions against Central
and Western Asia. The ethnic and linguistic composition of the peoples
bordering on China in the north and west was always fluid: Whole tribes
either voluntarily joined the dominant tribe or were placed under their
leadership by force or persuasion.
It was a common policy of
all
these peoples to incorporate the warriors of a
subdued or allied tribe into their armies, generally under their previous
commanders. All conquerors followed this same integrative policy in regard
to the Chinese population after the annexation during their conquests of
regions with preponderantly Chinese sedentary settlements. The technical
skills of the Chinese were welcome for the manufacture of weapons and the
operation of siege machinery for use against walled towns. Other Chinese
recruits served as infantrymen, whereas the cavalry remained in most cases
the prerogative of the non-Chinese contingents. The "Khitan," "Jurchen,"
and "Mongolian" armies were always multinational and included a large
number of Chinese soldiers.
It is therefore rather doubtful that we should view the wars of the Sung
against their adversaries as purely national or racial wars of resistance against
foreigners, and we might even regard the wars between Sung on the one hand
and Liao, Hsia, Chin, or the Mongols on the other as almost a special form of
Chinese civil war in which one side fought under foreign command and
disposed of more or less strong contingents of non-Chinese troops.
Such suggestions are, of
course,
tentative, and a more definite interpreta-
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
FOREIGNERS 13
tion would require more research into warfare in the period from the tenth to
the thirteenth centuries and, above all, a numerical breakdown of the Liao,
Chin, and Mongolian armies according to nationalities. But to cite one
example, when the Chin ruler, the prince of Hai-ling (r. 1150-61), mobi-
lized his state for a campaign against the Sung in 1159 and 1160, the
predominantly Jurchen meng'-an mou-k'o army numbered 120,000 men,
whereas not fewer than 150,000 Han Chinese were conscripted for the cam-
paign, plus 30,000 sailors for warfare on the waterways and lakes of central
China. The majority of his military rank and file was therefore not "Jurchen"
but Chinese.
Finally, it must be remembered that the antagonism between Chinese and
non-Chinese cannot be construed in the traditional Chinese way as a confron-
tation between high civilization and barbarism. It cannot, by any means, be
assumed that the conquerors who founded their states on Chinese soil from
the tenth century onward came from nowhere and started from a very low
level of political organization and cultural achievement.
The Hsi Hsia state of the Tanguts was a special case insofar as they were
not conquerors or invaders but had been living for centuries in the same
region, which became the nucleus of their state. The Tanguts' ethnogenesis
was less one of conquest but, rather, of a gradual absorption of other tribal
elements into a federation that included also Chinese, Tibetans, and smaller
ethnic groups in the Ordos region and what is now Kansu Province. They,
too,
could not by the wildest stretch of the imagination be described as
primitive barbarians when they achieved formal independence in the middle
of the eleventh century.
Although it would be an exaggeration to regard the polities of the various
federations as fully sinicized, it is a historical fact that the complex interac-
tion between the Chinese empires and their so-called barbarian neighbors
had been going on for centuries. One indicator of Chinese influence on the
institutional framework of the neighboring peoples is the many loan words
of official titles that were borrowed from Chinese. By the early T'ang period
the Turks (T'u-chiieh) had already adopted several titles from Chinese. Many
native Khitan official titles were also borrowed from Chinese, for example,
hsin-kun, which in Chinese is chiang-chun "general," or the title of hsiang-
wen,
which occurs in several transcriptions and is derived from Chinese
hsiang-kung, an honorific designation for a chancellor or minister. The Mon-
gols too, even before the proclamation of Chinggis khan as supreme ruler in
1206,
had adopted into their language the Chinese word ivang, "king," as
ong, and t'ai-tzu, "prince," via the Turkic
tays'i,
as taisi in Mongolian. Both
words are used in the
Secret
history of
the
Mongols.
Such loan words show the
prestige and influence of Chinese institutions and terminology even if they
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
14 INTRODUCTION
were
now
employed
in a
social
or
political setting different from that
of
their Chinese models.
VASSALS
AND
OVERLORDS
Another aspect
of the
interaction between Chinese
and
foreigners that
had
begun long before
the
dynasties
of
conquest were founded
are the
tributary
relations
and the
role
of
non-Chinese polities
in the
organization
of the
frontier areas.
In
Chinese political terminology, they were regarded
as
outer
vassals
{wai-ch'en).
These vassals were only loosely integrated into the Chinese
orbit; they were expected
to
appear with local products
as
tribute
at the
Chinese imperial court.
The
Khitans
had
done this more
or
less regularly
since
the
seventh century A.D.,
and
many Khitan grandees were rewarded
with honorary ranks
and
noble titles
by the
T'ang emperors. Some
of
them
were awarded
the
surname
Li,
which shows that they
had
been given
the
privilege
of
bearing
the
family name
of
the ruling T'ang house. Such adop-
tions were
by no
means rare
and
served
to
draw foreign leaders closer
to the
imperial court.
The
conferment
of
offices also played
a
role
in the
loose
integration
of
non-Han leaders into
the
Chinese institutional hierarchy.
We
find, for example, that
in 649 the
Khitans were organized into
the
government-general (tu
tu-fu)
of
the Sung-mo region
in
Manchuria.
It is not
always easy
to
determine
to
what extent this inclusion
in the
Chinese outer
hierarchies
was
purely nominal. Such tribes
or
nations certainly remained
fully independent
in
managing their internal affairs.
But the
resonant
Chi-
nese titles granted
to
their leaders conferred prestige.
The situation
of
the Jurchens
in the
Liao state was similar
to
that
of the
Khitan
in the
T'ang world.
For
generations
the
ancestors
of the
dynastic
founder A-ku-ta
had
held
the
title
of
commanding prefect
(chieh-tu shih)
in
the Liao border hierarchy, so that he too was not an absolute newcomer on
the
political stage when
he
assumed
the
title
of
emperor
in
1115.
In
addition
to
the national Chinese state
of
Sung, during
the
Liao dynasty
a new
center
of
political gravity
had
evolved
in the
north where
the
modes
of
dealing with
frontier populations followed
the
precedents
of
T'ang
and
Sung.
It
has
been suggested that
the
case was different
for the
Mongols
and
that
they rose
to
power completely outside
the
Chinese framework
of
frontier
organization. This would imply that
the
Mongolian tribes under
the
leader-
ship
of
Temiijin, who was proclaimed khan
in
1206,
had not
previously been
subject
to
interaction with
an
imperial court
and
that their consolidation
as
the dominant power
in the
steppe region
was not
affected
by
their involve-
ment
in
tributary relations
and the
concomitant formalities such
as the
conferment
of
titles
by a
central power. This interpretation, however,
has to
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
VASSALS AND OVERLORDS 15
be abandoned. It was based on the picture of the early history of the Mongols
before 1206 given in the
Secret history
of
the
Mongols.
This source represents
Temiijin and the Mongols, both his allies and adversaries, as steppe nomads
completely untouched by Chinese or any other high civilization, without
statehood and without close relations with a Chinese empire. In the second
half of the twelfth century this empire would have been, for the Mongols, the
Chin state, and the Chin dynastic history {Chin shih) is completely silent on
the subject of Mongols as vassals.
The Sung sources, however, give a completely different picture and show
that the ancestors of Chinggis Khan were not only adversaries of the Chin but
also vassals with a state {kuo) of their own.
7
It can be easily explained why
both the
Secret
history and the Chin dynastic history have omitted this epi-
sode.
The
Secret
history is a romanticized epic in which the career of Temiijin
appears as a rise from the humblest of beginnings to supreme power; there
was no room in this national epic for any mention of the fact that Temiijin's
ancestors had been vassals of another state. The Chin dynastic history, too,
was compiled under Mongolian rule, and its authors somewhat understand-
ably omitted all references to the vassal status of Chinggis khan or his
predecessors.
The information from which we may conclude that the early Mongols had
a kuo of their own all comes from Sung sources. It is reported that in 1147
after an outbreak of warfare, the Mongols were pacified by Chin presents and
that the ruler of their state of Meng-ku took an imperial title and adopted his
own reign title (nien-hao), T'ien-hsing (Heavenly Rising).
8
The Mongolian
leader under whom this occurred has been identified by some scholars as
Khabul khan, Temiijin's grandfather who, even according to the
Secret
history,
"ruled over all the Mongols." Sung sources also mention that Temiijin him-
self had attended the Chin court in his capacity as one of its outer vassals.' It
is therefore clear that Temiijin was not, as the
Secret history
wishes to make us
believe, an adventurer with an obscure tribal background but the descendant
of a princely family that had received recognition, investiture, and gifts from
the Chin court.
These examples show how deeply and how long the leaders of the rising
powers of Khitans, Jurchens, and Mongols had already been exposed to
contacts with a central imperial power and that by the time they were about
to found an imperial state they had achieved a considerable level of political
and cultural sophistication. They knew and understood the "Chinese" sys-
7
See
Charles
A.
Peterson, "First Sung reactions
to the
Mongol invasion
of the
north, 1211—1217,"
in
Crisis and prosperity
in
Sung China,
ed.
John
W.
Haeger (Tucson, 1975),
p. 248.
8 Yu-wen Mou-chao,
Ta
Chin
kuo
chih (KHCPTS
ed.), 12, pp.
99-100.
9
See Li Hsin-ch'uan, Chien-yen i lai
cb'ao
yeh
tsa chi (KHCHTS ed.), 19, p. 585.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
16 INTRODUCTION
tern. Their rise to imperial status took place within the institutional frame-
work that had dominated Sino-foreign relations, and so it is not difficult to
imagine how foreign rulers themselves might have aspired to become Sons of
Heaven and to hand out investitures or receive tribute instead of being
enfeofred by, or sending delegations bearing tributes to, their overlords. The
image of the universal emperors of early T'ang who had ruled over a much
larger territory than the Sung had also certainly influenced the leaders of the
neighboring tribal federations, who gradually asserted themselves and eventu-
ally succeeded in becoming emperors and Sons of Heaven in their own right.
MULTISTATE SYSTEM
The fragmentation of the geographical area of China into several states, each
under its own Son of Heaven, was certainly nothing new for the Chinese.
Such a division had already existed for more than three centuries between
Han and Sui and again came into being during the period of the Five
Dynasties in the early tenth century. Insofar as the simultaneous existence of
a plurality of states is concerned, the period of the dynasties of conquest was
not different from earlier ages of political disunity. But there were some new
elements in the situation.
One of these was a major shift in political centers. The region around
Peking (Yen) had been for centuries a comparatively unimportant border area
in the far north, essentially
a
border garrison city that did not play a consider-
able political, cultural, or economic role in China
as
a whole. When the Liao
made Yen-ching (their Southern Capital, Nan-ching) one of their five capitals
and the principal administrative center for the entire settled region of the
empire, this changed the situation drastically. The Liao were followed by the
Chin who also ruled from Yen-ching, now called their Central Capital,
Chung-tu, and the Mongols whose emperors resided with a large part of their
metropolitan offices in the city, now called the Great Metropolis, Ta-tu.
Both the Chin and the Mongolian Yiian built an imposing imperial city in
what is now Peking, with sumptuous palaces and parks. Much that impresses
the visitor even today goes partly back to the Chin and Yiian periods when
Peking for the first time in history became a national metropolis.
During the Five Dynasties the two cities that had throughout recorded
history been the rival loci of supreme political authority, Ch'ang-an and
Loyang, finally lost their preeminence. After the 88os Ch'ang-an was in ruins
and would never again be more than a provincial capital, and the whole
northwest declined into the backwater. After the Liang set up its capital in
K'ai-feng in Ho-nan, the center of
the
transport network of the eastern plain,
Loyang went into decline as well. K'ai-feng was again adopted as the capital
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
MULTISTATE SYSTEM 17
by the Sung who reunified the empire. The first step in the transfer of the
center of Chinese political gravity to the northeast took place after 1127
when the Sung lost all of north China and their capital at K'ai-feng. The
Southern Sung regime subsequently established its "temporary capital" at
Hang-chou, which developed into a second metropolis, even more splendid
than K'ai-feng. Meanwhile the Chin, masters of north China, established
their Central Capital at Peking. With the destruction of the Southern Sung
state in the years following 1276, Hang-chou too, lost forever its role as a
national political center, and for almost a century the whole of China was
governed from Peking until the Mongolian court was expelled in 1368 and
withdrew into the Mongolian steppe country. The Ming at first established
their capital in Nanking, but after 1420 the court was moved back to
Peking, where it remained until the end of the empire in this century. This
shift of the political center to the northeast changed Peking, previously a
provincial backwater with no cultural identity, into the capital of a unified
China, a populous metropolitan city producing a wide range of manufactures
and the scene of manifold cultural activities. Economically, however, the
northeast had been an impoverished and unproductive area even before it
bore the full weight of the first Mongolian onslaughts, and Peking remained
dependent on imports of grain from the rich provinces in the Yangtze region,
which in turn necessitated a complete reorganization of the domestic trans-
port system by both land and water.
As we have seen, China had repeatedly been reunified by regimes originat-
ing on the northern border. This had happened under the Sui and the Sung
and was reenacted under the Yuan. The idea that China could be unified only
from the north had almost become a stereotype by the thirteenth century, and
it was used as a political argument by Khubilai when after his accession he
proposed that the Sung conclude a peace with the Mongols. Of course both
emperors in Peking and Hang-chou considered themselves as legitimate
rulers over the Chinese world. The aspirations of the Mongols, however,
exceeded by far those of the Chinese states of the past, for the Mongols
regarded as their legitimate domain not only China but the entire world.
This idea was unmistakably expressed in the messages that they sent to rulers
in Western and Central Asia and even in Europe demanding surrender to the
great khan and that show that the term "All under Heaven"
(t'ien-hsia)
that
had originated in China had for the Mongols a much wider and more compre-
hensive meaning and included virtually the whole known world as parts of
their "world empire in waiting." This ideology also lay behind the far-
reaching expeditions that Khubilai dispatched at enormous cost as far away as
Burma, Champa, Java, and Japan. All those countries had, in a loose way,
found a marginal place in the tributary system of the Sung, sending missions
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
18 INTRODUCTION
when
it
suited their rulers.
But it had
never occurred
to
the Sung court
to try
to enforce tribute
by
sending military expeditions overseas, despite their
considerable naval power.
The
imposition
by the
Mongols
of
indirect rule
over Tibet can also be seen
as
an
expression of their worldwide ambitions.
No
Chinese dynasty
had
ever exercised
any
degree
of
authority over Tibet;
the
Sung
had
been content
to
stabilize their Tibetan frontiers
and
left
it at
that.
The huge economic, technical,
and
military potential of China was thus used
by
the
Mongols
in the
service
of
an expansionist ideology whose ambitious
aims surpassed anything
to
which purely Chinese states
had
ever aspired
in
the past.
TREATY RELATIONS
The political organization of the East Asian world before
the
reunification
of
China under
the
Yuan
can be
described
as an age of
treaties. Although
in
principle
a
treaty recognizing other regimes
as
either legitimate
or
equal
might seem incompatible with
the
ideology
of
an
imperial state claiming
to
rule over All under Heaven,
the
conclusion
of
treaties with other powers
had
a long history
in
China.
As
early
as the
second century B.C.
the Han had
practiced
a
policy
of
appeasement toward
the
Hsiung-nu
and
tried
to
keep
this unruly tribal federation away from China's borders through gifts, mostly
of silk,
and
marital alliances,
and the
making
of
concessions
to
neighboring
political entities
if
these were required
by
circumstances became
a
recurrent
element
in
Chinese international relations. Such agreements were, however,
always considered
to be
only
a
temporary and second-best solution
in
dealing
with dangerous enemies,
a
solution
to
which
a
dynasty might resort when
all-out victory
and
submission could
not be
achieved.
The period
of
the dynasties
of
conquest
in
the eleventh
and
twelfth centu-
ries was,
for the
Sung, characterized
by a
high degree
of
realpolitik. Neither
the Khitan
nor the
Jurchen state could
be
defeated
by
military means,
and
the history
of
Sung-Liao
and
Sung-Chin relations became
an
alternation
between relatively short wars
and
long periods
of
peace bought chiefly
by
large payments
in
textiles and silver. The treaty of Shan-yuan concluded early
in 1005 between Sung and Liao became
a
model
for
handling later conflicts,
for after
the
Liao state
had
succumbed
to the
Chin
the
latter regarded
themselves as
the
legal successors
of
Liao
and therefore entitled
to
receive
the
same gifts from
the
Sung court
as
they
had
done.
In
addition
to
the promise
of gifts (which
the
recipients preferred
to
call "tribute"
(kung),
a term meticu-
lously avoided
by the
Sung because
of its
implications
of
subjection),
the
contents
of the
treaty agreed
on the
correct delimitation
of the
borders,
together with rules prescribing
how to
deal with disturbances
in the
border
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
TREATY RELATIONS 19
region and unauthorized crossings of the frontier. The treaties or corollary
agreements also established licensed border markets for state-supervised inter-
national trade.
But perhaps the most important inherent content of a treaty was the
mutual recognition of the two states, and the establishment of regular diplo-
matic intercourse between them. Routine embassies went both ways, for
felicitation at the New Year and on the birthday of the other ruler. Other
occasions for sending embassies were death of an emperor or a close relative.
These diplomatic exchanges
—
which were entirely Chinese in concept, rit-
ual,
and rhetoric - were regulated in great detail on both sides, and much
attention was paid to the ceremonial rules for the travel of the ambassadors
and their reception in audience. Apart from such regular embassies it was
always the practice to send envoys if problems arose or if a treaty was under
negotiation.
This intensive diplomatic intercourse required a great deal of paperwork,
and the contemporary sources have preserved a huge amount of diplomatic
correspondence, so that modern historians find themselves almost over-
whelmed by the sheer mass of materials. There is hardly a period in Chinese
premodern history for which diplomacy can be studied in such detail as for
the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Sung, and probably also the Liao and
Chin envoys, had the statutory duty to write a detailed report of the mission
after their return to the home capital. Some of these reports have survived and
provide fascinating information on conditions in the northern states as
viewed by the Sung envoys, and it must be regretted that no similar accounts
from the other side survive.
The recognition of the other imperial states did, however, not imply a true
equality of status. Their ruler's rank as emperor (buang-tt) was mutually
conceded, but with a fine distinction added: Pseudofamilial terminology
provided a differentiation in status. The two emperors addressed themselves
as older or younger brother or as uncle and nephew so that at least a pretense
of nonequality could be maintained. China was, as a result of this develop-
ment, ruled in theory by one single fictitious "family." This implied hierar-
chical differences between the rival emperors, for in the Chinese family
system no equal status was imaginable. A painful exception from this pattern
was,
for the Sung, the treaty of 1141, which stipulated that the Sung were
subjects
(ch'eri)
of the Chin, so that the Sung emperor could be addressed in
Chin correspondence by his family and personal name, a deep humiliation
that was redressed only more than two decades later in 1164 after the Chin
invasion of Sung under the prince of Hai-ling had failed and both sides were
anxious to resume a policy of peaceful coexistence.
From a formal point of view the treaties regulating the bilateral relations
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
2O INTRODUCTION
differed from Western concepts insofar
as no
common paper was drafted
to
which both sides added their signatures
and
seals. Instead, each party issued
an oath-letter with identical contents
in
which adherence
to the
stipulations
of the agreement
was
solemnly promised, invoking Heaven
and the
gods
of
the soil. The contents, of
course,
had
to
be negotiated beforehand so that
the
treaty's solemnization
by
oath became
a
formality. This procedure took
for
granted that both sides were acting according
to
the same standards. In other
words, only those states with similar
or
nearly similarly organized govern-
ments
and
chanceries could
be
treaty partners.
The
treaty partners
of the
Sung
—
the
Liao,
Hsi
Hsia,
and
Chin
- all had
adopted Chinese institutions
that could guarantee procedural equality. This kind of equality extended also
to
the
reception
of
embassies.
The
rituals surrounding them went back
to
ancient Chinese concepts. These rites
and
ceremonies
can
already
be
found
described
in the
ritual compilations
Li-chi
and /-//
(the Book
of
rites
and the
Book
of
ceremonials)
and
reflect
the
multistate system
of the
late Chou
period. There
was
thus
a
continuity linking preimperial China with
the
sophisticated diplomatic procedures
of
a
later age.
There
can be no
doubt that diplomatic intercourse through embassies and
correspondence strengthened
and
accelerated
the
absorption
of
the conquest
states into
the
Chinese world.
Not
only
was the
procedure modeled
on
Chinese precedents;
the
diplomatic language was Chinese.
It
does
not
seem
that any letter from Liao or Chin
or
Hsi Hsia
to the
Sung was ever written
in
the native language
and
script
or
that
a
parallel text
to the
Chinese version
was drafted
in
their
own
language. We also
do not
know whether
the
oath-
letters
of the
northern states that
had to be
ritually deposited
in
their own
ancestral temples were written
in
the native language.
It
seems safe to assume
that however multilingual the states might have been, the diplomatic lingua
franca throughout continental East Asia was Chinese.
This
had not
always been
so.
When
the
T'ang emperor Mu-tsung
con-
cluded
a
treaty with Tibet
in
821-2,
two
versions were drawn
up, one in
Chinese
and one in
Tibetan,
and on the
occasion
of
the treaty
the
Tibetans
erected
a
stele
in
Lhasa on which both the Tibetan and the Chinese texts were
inscribed. There
is no
evidence
for
such bilinguality
in
treaties from
the
eleventh
to
the thirteenth century. Even the letters written by the Mongols
to
the Sung
in the
thirteenth century were,
it
seems, exclusively
in
Chinese and
not accompanied
by
Mongolian versions.
The
Mongols used either Chinese
personnel
or
non-Chinese
who
were sufficiently sinicized
to
conduct their
diplomacy
in
East Asia, just
as the
Liao
and
Chin
had
done previously.
The
national Chinese state
of
Sung
was
therefore more
or
less dispensed from
studying Khitan, Jurchen, Tangut,
or
Mongolian. We know that some Sung
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