The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 06. Alien Regimes and Border States, 907-1368

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THE PREDYNASTIC KHITAN

TABLE 6

The Yao-lien khaghans

I Wa Personal name Ch'ii-lieh; puppet ruler set up by K'o-t'u-yii in 730. Killed

with K'o-t'u-yii in 734. Ancestor of the tribe. Also named as Ch'u-t'e.

Li Kuo-che A restored leader of the Ta-ho line and former colleague of K'o-t'u-yii. When

K'o-t'u-yii was defeated by the T'ang, Li murdered him and his puppet ruler

Wa and was appointed governor-general of Sung-mo by the T'ang court in

735.

But in the same year he was deposed by Nieh-li (Ya-li), the li-chin

(commander in chief) who abdicated power in favor of Tsu-wu of the Yao-

lien.

II Tsu-wu Originally a minister of Nieh-li, who enthroned him. Personal name Ti-lien,

Chinese name Li Huai-hsiu. In 745 the T'ang court appointed him governor-

general of Sung-mo and Prince Ch'ung-shun and married him to Princess

Ching-le. Later that year he murdered the princess and rebelled. In 746 the

court appointed Li Chieh-lo, who had been an ambassador to court in 722,

to succeed him, but he remained at Ch'ang-an, as he could not take Tsu-wu's

position.

Ill- Hu-la

IV Su

V Su-chih Also written Hsien-chih.

VI Chao-ku

VII Yeh-lan Said by the Liao-shih to be identical with Ch'ii-shu, who submitted to the

T'ang in 842.

VIII Pa-la Also named Hsi-erh or Hsi-erh-chih.

IX Hen-te-chin Also named Ch'in-te. Became khaghan in 901.

-The Liao-shih notes that after the An Lu-shan rebellion the succession of khaghans is not entirely

clear.

Unfortunately, the T'ang historical sources break off their accounts of

relations between the T'ang court and the Khitan at this crucial point and

give no further information about the Khitan until the last decade of the

ninth century, when the events leading up to the foundation of the Khitan

state were already beginning. To fill in this crucial gap we must rely on the

Liao shih, which provides a list of the Yao-lien khaghans, who ruled the

Khitan throughout this period (see Table 6). The Liao shih's compilers admit

that this list is not completely reliable. They also provide a more detailed

genealogy of the I-la tribe, from which the Liao dynastic founder, (Yeh-lii) A-

pao-chi, came (see Figure i).

This genealogy may have been composed as early as the 940s, and it was

certainly composed with a view to establishing the legitimacy of the Yeh-lii

royal house. Presumably with an eye to their many Chinese subjects, the

Khitan royal house claimed descent from a Chinese culture-hero, the legend-

ary emperor Shen-nung, protector of agriculture in the Chinese pantheon.

This Chinese-style myth was, however, far less important to the Khitan

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52 THE LIAO

themselves than was their own legendary account of the founding of their

people. According to this myth, the first ancestor of the Khitan, Ch'i-shou

khaghan, was once riding on a white stallion down the valley of the Lao-ho

River, to its confluence with the Huang-shui River (Shira muren), where he

encountered a woman riding in a cart drawn by a gray ox. The place can be

identified with the ancient grazing grounds of the Khitan and the Hsi. The

man and woman married and produced eight sons, who became the ancestors

of the eight tribes that subsequently made up the Khitan nation. During the

Liao dynastic period, statues of Ch'i-shou khaghan, his wife, and their eight

sons were worshiped at the sacred Mu-yeh Mountain in this same area, the

ceremonies being accompanied by the symbolic sacrifice of a white stallion

and a gray bull.

How ancient this tradition

was is

impossible to ascertain, but the number

eight tribes as the nucleus of the Khitan already appears in the earliest sources,

and there seems to have been an almost-unbroken tradition of eight ancient

tribes (with even some degree of continuity in their names) from the fifth

century until the time of

A-pao-chi.

This legend of eight original tribes was

closely connected with the pre-dynastic system of elected leadership. Every

three years the chieftains of the eight tribes gathered together to elect (or

confirm in his office) one of their number to serve as khaghan of the confedera-

tion. The khaghan's tenure of office was not for life; he might

removed from

his office and replaced. In such a case he would bear no malice against his

successor and would be allowed to return unmolested to head his own tribe.

Such a form of political organization was not unique to the Khitan but was

also found among other northern peoples. It was a device to ensure that

leadership was in the hands of a capable man enjoying the confidence of his

tribal peers. The "hereditary" leadership first of the Ta-ho and later of the

Yao-lien clans was thus not a simple hereditary succession determined by

primogeniture. Although the clan provided a pool of eligible candidates,

succession did not necessarily pass to the senior clan member or even to a

member of the senior generation. Rather, it was a succession subject to

election and periodical confirmation by the leaders of

the

other tribal groups.

A-pao-chi, the founder of the Liao dynasty, was not a member of the ruling

Yao-lien clan, but of

tribe called the I-la (later given the clan name Yeh-lii).

To give legitimacy to his claim to leadership, the official Liao genealogy

traced the leadership from Ch'i-shou khaghan to a certain Ya-li who was the

direct ancestor of the Yeh-lii clan. Ya-li is rather arbitrarily identified with

Nieh-li or Ni-li, a partisan of K'o-t'u-yii, who is said to have murdered the

Ta-ho leader, Li Kuo-che, whom the T'ang had tried to establish as leader

after K'o-t'u-yii's death in 734. Nieh-li reorganized the fragmented Khitan

tribes after the end of the Ta-ho confederation and led the Khitan for some

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THE BACKGROUND OF A-PAO-CHI S RISE TO POWER 53

time before abdicating in favor of a certain Tsu-wu from the Yao-lien clan,

whose members ruled the Khitan for nine generations, adopting for the first

time the title of khaghan. Meanwhile, from generation to generation, Nieh-

li's descendants, the I-la, also seem to have held various high offices in the

confederation. The point of these genealogies is that they demonstrate that

the I-la tribe had an ancestral claim to the leadership that Ya-li/Nieh-li had

long ago relinquished to the Yao-lien.

In 906 or 907 when the last Yao-lien khaghan, Hen-te-chin or Ch'in-te,

was deposed because of his ineffectual leadership, the leaders of the eight

tribes elected in his place the commander in chief of the confederation's forces

(the

yii-yiieh),

A-pao-chi, the chieftain of the I-la tribe. The old order had

come to an end.

THE BACKGROUND OF A-PAO-CHl'S RISE TO POWER

It is impossible to understand the sudden emergence of

the

Khitan as a major

power in northern Asia without first carefully looking at the international

situation at the end of the ninth century. It is tempting to ascribe the

Khitan's rise simply to the collapse of T'ang authority. But this was only one

part of

complex series of changes that took place in the late ninth century.

The destruction of the Uighur empire by the Kirgiz in the early 840s had

freed the Khitan from their overlords and left a power vacuum in the north-

ern steppe, which had been dominated by Turkic peoples since the sixth

century. The Khitan no longer had a powerful and well-organized neighbor

to the west and northwest. Although the Chinese historians on whom we

depend for our information naturally concentrate on the success of the Khitan

in establishing a strong dynastic regime, including the northeastern margin

of traditionally Chinese territory, the real success of the early period of

expansion was perhaps their wide-ranging conquests in the steppe and later

in Manchuria. The Khitan's military efforts were first directed against their

strongest tribal neighbors, the Hsi and Shih-wei. Not until they were sub-

dued and the Khitan were firmly in control of

the

area beyond the line of the

modern Great Wall did they turn to attack their more formidable adversaries,

first the rich, powerful, and well-organized Chinese-style state of Po-hai

(Parhae) in eastern Manchuria and then China

itself.

It is important to put aside the arrogant presuppositions of Chinese histori-

ans about the "normative" relationships between "barbarous" tribal pasto-

ralists and a China that was the indisputable center, the cultural, political,

and moral center alike of the human world, and to try to view the relation-

ship through Khitan eyes. To the Khitan, China was not simply an all-

powerful neighbor or a source of "superior" culture, but to all the steppe

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54 THE LIAO

peoples it was above all immensely, unbelievably wealthy and the producer of

an infinite variety of goods. Some of these were necessities (for none of the

nomadic peoples were entirely self-sufficient); some were luxuries in demand

among the Khitan elite; and some were articles that could be traded to the

neighboring peoples or bartered into the

flow

of commerce that still stretched

across Inner Asia to the west.

Since An Lu-shan's rebellion the Khitan had seen their erstwhile overlords

the Uighurs grow enormously wealthy by extracting huge subsidies from the

T'ang court in return for their keeping the peace and trading their only major

asset

—

a supply of horses for the T'ang cavalry. The great troupes of Khitan

who flocked to Yu-chou under the name of

"embassies"

were far more anxious

to have the opportunity to acquire Chinese goods for themselves, especially

fine

silks,

than to have contact with China's superior civilization, whereas the

governors of Yu-chou, who kept the majority of the members of these embas-

sies at their own provincial capital, also undoubtedly provided them with the

opportunity to trade, above all to sell the fine horses for which the Khitan

were famous. The Khitan down to A-pao-chi's time had no territorial ambi-

tions in T'ang China. They wanted Chinese wealth, Chinese manufactures,

and Chinese captives, especially those with special skills. When these could

not be acquired through trade, their raids across the Chinese border were

swift forays aiming to carry off livestock, captives, and any portable wealth

back to their own people.

In the decades following the collapse of the Uighur empire, the China

faced by the Khitan changed dramatically. In the 840s T'ang China remained

an extremely powerful empire whose armies had repeatedly inflicted crushing

defeats on the Khitan and whose central palace armies could come in over-

whelming force to the aid of any border province that was critically threat-

ened. The governors of Hopei, with whom the Khitan had the closest ties,

may have enjoyed a great degree of autonomy, but they had never seriously

tried to break free of the T'ang.

From the mid-87os, however, the T'ang order speedily crumbled in the

face of endemic disorder and massive rebellions. After Huang Ch'ao's disas-

trous rebellion was finally crushed in 884, the T'ang court was isolated in the

area around the capital, and the empire was divided among some

fifty

provin-

cial regimes, many of them no longer even maintaining the fiction of loyalty

to the throne, and all of them highly militarized. The position was totally

unstable and the emperor powerless, from the 890s a mere puppet main-

tained by one or other of

the

northern warlords. When the Khitan came into

contact or conflict with the Chinese after 890, there was no longer any

central power with which they could deal; instead, their dealings were with

the governors of the provinces immediately across the border.

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THE BACKGROUND OF A-PAO-CHl'S RISE TO POWER 55

MAP

I . The Khitan and north China,

A.D.

908

This does not imply, however, that the Chinese frontier defenses were

suddenly rendered impotent. The T'ang had long depended on the virtually

independent governors of Ho-pei to defend the northeastern border, and as

China grew increasingly militarized, such independent provincial power

centers came to support large armies. The only difference was that hard-

pressed frontier governors could no longer call on support from the central

government in emergencies, but only on their allies, in other provinces.

There was an ever-changing web of such volatile alliances among these

regional regimes.

At the beginning of the tenth century the border with the Khitan was

controlled by two major provincial powers (see Map 1). In the west, the

northern part of the modern province of Shansi formed the province of Ho-

tung, with its capital at T'ai-yiian. This critical area had since 883 been

governed by the formidable general Li K'o-yung, who had played a major

part in the final suppression of Huang Ch'ao. He and many of the elite of his

province - within which the T'ang government had, since the seventh cen-

tury, settled many groups of tribesmen of varied origins

—

were Sha-t'o

Turks,

renowned for their valor and ferocity. In the 890s he became one of the

main contenders in the bloody power struggles in northern China. Although

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56 THE LIAO

Li K'o-yung was temporarily overshadowed by Chu Wen, in the 920s his

descendants would set up a dynasty of their own, the Later T'ang.

Farther to the east the Khitan faced the province of Lu-lung, the northern-

most part of Hopei, which, like the other Hopei provinces, had enjoyed

semi-independence for 150 years under hereditary governors who paid no

revenue to the government in Ch'ang-an and refused to allow court-

appointed officials in the territory they controlled. With its center at Yu-

chou, Lu-lung was fiercely independent, and the area had a long history of

anti-T'ang feeling. From 895 until 907 it was ruled by a powerful and

bellicose general named

Liu

Jen-kung, who owed his position to the support

K'o-yung.

To protect its long border against both the attacks of rival warlords and

tribal raids, Lu-lung, which was poor and more sparsely peopled than the

other Hopei provinces and unable to support a large standing army, relied

heavily on well-organized militia forces

(t'uan-chieh),

especially in its north-

ern frontier districts. Most of the Lu-lung military were natives of the

province, and many of their families had served in the army for several

generations.

The militiamen fought not for a distant court and a remote

emperor but for their homes and families. They were noted for their bravery.

They not only repulsed Khitan raids, but under Liu Jen-kung they them-

selves took the initiative, crossing the border to burn off the Khitans' pas-

tures,

take captives, and drive off their herds of horses, sheep, and cattle.

It is thus possible that it was not so much T'ang weakness that allowed the

Khitan to weld their tribes into a powerful nation at the end of the ninth

century but, rather, that it was the removal of central constraints on the

aggressive border governors in Ho-tung and Lu-lung, and the tough stance

these provinces

—

Lu-lung in particular

—

took toward their Khitan neigh-

bors,

that provoked them to unite. The T'ang's central power may have

vanished forever, but the Chinese border provinces were as powerful and as

thoroughly militarized as before. It was in this situation that A-pao-chi

emerged to turn the Khitan tribes into a powerful dynasty.

THE RISE OF A-PAO-CHI

The founder of the Khitan state was A-pao-chi (872—926), later canonized as

Emperor T'ai-tsu of the Liao (reigned 907-26), although that dynastic name

was not yet adopted in his own lifetime. Born in 872, he came from the I-la

tribe.

Later, some years after A-pao-chi's death, the tribe adopted the sur-

name of

Yeh-lii,

which our sources often ascribe retrospectively but anachro-

8 See Matsui Shuichi, "Roryo hanchin ko," Shigaku zasshi, 68 (1939), pp. 1397—1432.

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THE RISE OF A-PAO-CHI 57

nistically to clan members of earlier generations. Originally they, like all

other Khitan except the consort Hsiao clan in dynastic times, had no sur-

names. The I-la tribe had risen to prominence among the Khitan in the last

years of

the

ninth century, and they ranked only after the Yao-lien, the clan of

the khaghans. Within the I-la tribe, succession to the chieftainship

(i-li-chin)

did not descend directly from father to son but followed a pattern common

among the nomadic peoples by which brothers rather than sons often suc-

ceeded to a title. Figure 1 shows the line of descent and the holders of the

chieftainship, but their actual order of succession and dates are impossible to

establish. The I-la had built up their power not simply by war and plunder

but also by a system of

alliances.

They had established a complex pattern of

intermarriage with another clan - later to adopt the surname Hsiao - who

were of Uighur origin and well acquainted with the Chinese border regions.

Under the chieftainship of A-pao-chi's father Sa-la-ti (posthumously can-

onized as Te-tsu) the Khitan had begun to practice more advanced agricul-

ture,

to foster the production of iron and salt, and to encourage weaving. Nor

was the power of the I-la confined to their own tribe. A-pao-chi's paternal

uncle, (Yeh-lii) Shih-lu, already held the most important office among the

Khitan below that of khaghan; he was the

yii-yiieh,

something akin to prime

minister and commander in chief of all the Khitan forces.

A-pao-chi thus grew up among the commanders of a race of nomadic

warriors who were already experimenting with a more varied style of life and

assimilating many Chinese refugees and captives and tribal people into their

society. A man of huge stature and high intelligence, he seems to have known

Chinese, although he deliberately avoided using it in dealings with his fellow

Khitan, fearing that exposure to Chinese ideas might cause them to lose their

identity and martial spirit. A-pao-chi swiftly rose to prominence not simply

because of his parentage but thanks to his military prowess, proved in

constant skirmishes and campaigns against the Khitans' neighbors. By the

end of the ninth century he was the

ta-tna

hsiieh-sha-li,

the commander of the

khaghan's personal guard.

In 901 A-pao-chi was elected chieftain of the I-la tribe. In this role he

undertook attacks on the Shih-wei to the north, on the Jurchen in the

northeast, and on the powerful Hsi to the south, against whom he directed

repeated forays. In 902 he led a massive raid on the Chinese border province

Ho-tung.

As governor of the province, Li K'o-yung was preoccupied with

preserving his province against Chu Wen, who was steadily consolidating his

power in northern China and had been beaten back by Li K'o-yung from Ho-

tung in 901 and again in 902. A-pao-chi returned from this raid with

95,000 captives and huge numbers of camels, sheep, horses, and oxen. In

903 he again raided northern Ho-tung, taking several cities and capturing

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58 THE LIAO

much booty. Toward the end of 903, A-pao-chi turned his attention to Lu-

lung Province, raiding the frontier districts north of present-day Peking. In

the autumn of that year he was elected

yii-yiieh,

commander in

chief.

He was

still only thirty-one.

His campaigns continued without a break. In 904, 905, and 907 A-pao-

chi mounted campaigns in the north against the Black Cart tribe of the

Shih-wei, and in 906 there were two separate attacks on the Hsi. But his

main attention was now focused on the Chinese border, where he was

increasingly embroiled with the tough frontier forces of Liu Jen-kung, the

governor of Lu-lung. In

905

A-pao-chi negotiated a peace settlement with

his far more formidable neighbor Li K'o-yung, the Sha-t'o ruler of Ho-tung

and a major contender for power in northern China. At the head of a force

of seventy thousand Khitan and tribal cavalry, A-pao-chi met with Li at

Yiin-chou (present-day Ta-t'ung), where they swore brotherhood, symboli-

cally exchanging their gowns and horses. Li K'o-yung was, of course,

anxious to preserve his northern border and also to enter into a military

alliance that would stand him in good stead in his ongoing struggle with

Chu Wen; A-pao-chi sought Li K'o-yung's neutrality while he dealt with

Lu-lung. The treaty shows that A-pao-chi was by now a major force to be

reckoned with, his personal standing eclipsing that of the khaghan, his

nominal ruler. In the eyes of the border Chinese at least, he was already the

leader of the Khitan people.

Meanwhile, hostilities continued on the border of Lu-lung, which was

raided each year from 903 to 907. In one of these cross-border raids an

adopted son of the governor, Liu Jen-kung, was captured. Liu, however,

retaliated by crossing the border each autumn to burn off the grasslands,

thereby denying the Khitan grazing for their herds. On one of these raids

they even took captive a brother of A-pao-chi's wife. These counterraids

caused great hardship, loss of livestock, and famine among the Khitan, so

that the weak khaghan Hen-te-chin was reduced to bribing Liu Jen-kung to

leave the Khitan pastures intact by giving him large numbers of horses. In

907 Hen-te-chin came up for reelection as khaghan. The tribal chieftains,

shamed by his passive response to Liu Jen-kung, deposed him and elected A-

pao-chi as khaghan in his place.

A-pao-chi appointed his cousin Tieh-li-t'e

9 T'o-t'o et al., eds., Liao shih, i,p. 2 (hereafter cited as LS) gives the date 905. However, Hsueh Chii-

cheng et al., eds., Chiu Wu-laishih (Peking, 1976), 137, p. 1828, gives the date as 907, as do Ssu-ma

Kuang et al., comps., Tzu chih

I'ung

Men, 266, pp. 8676—9. Ssu-ma K'uang's critical note (k'ao-i)

cites early sources, since lost, in support of both dates.

10 This follows the version of events in Ou-yang Hsiu, comp., Hun Wu-tai shih (Peking, 1974), 72, p.

886.

Hsueh Chii-cheng, Chiu Wu-tai shih, 137, pp. 1827-8, says that A-pao-chi succeeded in the

normal way by election. LS, 1, p. 2, however, gives a quite different account, according to which

Hen-te-chin died ac the end of 906, whereupon the Khitan leaders who had received his deathbed

injunction appointed A-pao-chi in his place. However, this must be a falsification. Hen-te-chin

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THE RISE OF A-PAO-CHI 59

to replace him as chieftain of the I-la," and his own younger brother La-ko

became chief of the Yeh-lii clan.

Whatever his military successes, A-pao-chi might never have won lasting

control over the Khitan people had he not pursued a constructive strategy

toward the peoples he conquered. His attacks were primarily aimed at acquir-

ing additional manpower. Captured tribesmen were made followers and at-

tached to his entourage. Some of them were simple herdsmen, but others,

especially those from among the Hsi and Shih-wei, were skilled metal work-

ers and artisans. Most of the Chinese captives were settled in his own territo-

ries,

often in what are called "Chinese cities" (Han

ch'eng).

The first record of

such a settlement dates from as early as 902, when A-pao-chi was still only

the chieftain of the I-la tribe.

The city, Tung-lou (Lung-hua), was built

near the Khitan founder's traditional residence and was settled with captives

from northern Shansi. Later, several hundred families of Jurchen captives

were also settled there. We know of some forty other cities of the same sort

established later, some by A-pao-chi's younger brother An-tuan and some by

other members of the nobility. Often we are told where the Chinese popula-

tion came from; they seem to have been usually settled as a group taken

during the same campaign.

The Chinese cities were walled (to keep the populace in as much as for

defense) and built on the rectangular Chinese model, with gates on four

sides,

lookout towers, streets, and markets with drum and bell towers. Some

had Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist temples; ancestral shrines; and postal

relay stations. They were not penal colonies or places of exile; rather, they

became lively centers of trade and manufacturing, and many of their Chinese

populace were not prisoners but voluntary refugees from disorder and oppres-

sion in the Chinese border provinces. These settlers, voluntary and involun-

tary alike, were largely instrumental in laying the foundations of the Khitan

state.'3

A-pao-chi's strength did not come only from captives, important as was

their role. Many Khitan warriors from all the tribes joined his own personal

following, and he gradually built up a personal power base that undermined

the traditional tribal structure of the Khitan and the balance of power among

remained a powerful chieftain for some time. Ssu-ma Kuang, Tzu

chih

t'ung

chien,

266, p. 8678 (k'ao-i)

cites a lost source recording that in 908 both he and A-pao-chi offered tribute to the Liang court.

11 LS, i, p. 3.

12 LS, 1, p. 2.

13 The most thorough study of these "Chinese cities" is by Yao Ts'ung-wu, "Shuo A-pao-chi shih tai te

Han ch'eng," Kuo

hsiieh

chi k'an, 5 (1935), pp. 53—78; repr. in vol. 2 of his

Tung-pei

shih lun

ts'ung

(Taipei, 1959), pp. 193—216. A later study by Sechin Jagchid, "The Kitans and their cities," Central

Asiatic Journal, 25 (1981), pp. 70—88, is also useful, building on the work of the Mongolian historian

Kh.

Perlee on the identification of the sites of many Liao cities. See also Ch'en Shu, Ch'i-tan

she

hui

ching

chi shih kao (Peking, 1963; repr. 1978), pp. 83—109.

60 THE LIAO

the tribes. Eventually he was able to eliminate not only the old leadership

but the system of leadership

itself.

A-PAO-CHI BECOMES THE NEW KHAGHAN AND ASCENDS

THE THRONE

The basic annals of the

Liao shih

tell us that A-pao-chi "ascended the imperial

throne" and founded

dynasty of his own

907. Other sources date this

event vaguely somewhere between 904 and 922.

The eleventh-century

Hsin

Wu-tai shih gives

different account

the event, saying that A-pao-chi

refused to resign from his position

oiyii-yiieh

or khaghan when his reelection

was due

and

left

the

Khitan federation, together with

his

followers and

Chinese subjects, to set up his own "tribe." Further confusion arises from the

Liao shih

itself,

for

elsewhere

records

second ceremony of accession

916.

The date 907 itself arouses suspicion, as

coincides with the formal

end of the T'ang.

the context of their known concerns about the legiti-

macy of the Liao dynastic succession, it was thus a convenient and significant

date for the Liao historians to choose for the beginning of their dynasty.

The confusion may best be reconciled by assuming that A-pao-chi became

the unchallenged leader of

the

Khitan in the traditional sense in 907 and that

in 916, when he was due to have presented himself once again to the tribal

leaders for reelection, he instead carried out a formal ceremony of accession to

the throne, adopted

reign title,

and

took

some

the institutional

trappings of a Chinese-style emperor, thus declaring his equality of status

with the Chinese rulers of the Liang.

A great deal happened between these two crucial dates. A-pao-chi contin-

ued his campaigns to pacify the tribal peoples. In 908 he attacked the Shih-

wei.

910 and 911, uprisings among the Hsi had to be put down. In 912

he attacked

the

Chu-pu-ku

(or

Chih-pu-ku)

on the

distant northwestern

frontier of his territories in present-day Mongolia. In 915

was the turn of

14 The precise chronology of the Khitan before the 930s is all but impossible to establish. In the main

follow the Liao dynastic history {Liao shih), though

is often self-contradictory and at variance with

other historical works dealing with

the

Five Dynasties and early Sung China. For this early period

confusions abound: A-pao-chi's name, for example, occurs as A-pu-chi, A-pao-chin, or An-pa-chien.

The date when

his

posthumous temple name was given appears variously

926

947. The date

when the Khitan state took the dynastic name Liao is given

different sources as 926, 937, 938,

947.

Later

resumed the name Ch'i-tan kuo. The date of the change is given as either 983

1013:

The title Liao was resumed

1066. But the Liao shih does not even record the substitution of the new

dynastic title

or the

resumption

the dynastic name Liao. Some

these inconsistencies simply

cannot

resolved. Many

course arise from the fact that until later

the tenth century, the Liao

had not developed

systematic dynastic record, and when the record

the early reigns was finally

compiled late

the eleventh century, its compilers confused the issue by projecting back into these

early years developments that in fact date from the mid-tenth century or even later. To annotate fully

every disputed name, event,

date would

impossible without overloading this account with

footnotes.