ENCOUNTERS WITH ASIA
Victor H. Mair, Series Editor
Encounters with Asia is an interdisciplinary series
dedicated to the exploration of all the major regions and
cultures of this vast continent. Its timeframe extends from
the prehistoric to the contemporary; its geographic scope
ranges from the Urals and the Caucasus to the Pacific. A
particular focus of the series is the Silk Road in all of its
ramifications: religion, art, music, medicine, science, trade,
and so forth. Among the disciplines represented in this
series are history, archeology, anthropology, ethnography,
and linguistics. The series aims particularly to clarify the
complex interrelationships among various peoples within
Asia, and also with societies beyond Asia.
A complete list of books in the series
is available from the publisher.
Multicultural China
in the Early Middle Ages
Sanping Chen
PENN
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2012 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used
for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this
book may be reproduced in any form by any means
without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chen, Sanping.
Multicultural China in the early Middle Ages / Sanping Chen. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Encounters with Asia)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4370-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. China—History—221 B.C.–960 A.D. 2. China—Ethnic relations— History. 3. Ethnicity—China—History. I. Title. II. Series: Encounters with Asia.
DS747.38.C43 2012
951'.01—dc23
2011035815
To the memory of my mother
Contents
Foreword: Old Wine in New Bottles
1. The Legacy of the Tuoba Xianbei: The Tang Dynasty
3. Brotherly Matters and the Canine Image: The Invasion of “Barbarian” Tongues
4. The Huns and the Bulgars: The Chinese Chapter
5. The Mystery of the “White-Drake” Oracle: The Iranian Shadows
6. Son of Heaven and Son of God
Appendix. Turkic or Proto-Mongolian? A Note on the Tuoba Language
Foreword
Old Wine in New Bottles
Victor H. Mair
After nearly half a century of isolation, China has recently reemerged as an integral member of the global economy and the international political structure. Since its rise has been so explosive, however, knowledge of Chinese culture and society in other countries is still sketchy and often highly distorted. Indeed, so long and so extraordinarily complicated is the Chinese historical record, and so richly complex is Chinese literature, that modern Chinese citizens themselves are often confused about many details of their nation's past.
Virtually everyone has heard of the brave heroine Mulan, who rides off to war (as in the Disney movie), and most of us are familiar with the mythical unicorn that heralds the coming of a sage who will rule justly, yet we see them through a glass darkly. The wonder of this book, Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages, is that it offers a completely new look at many aspects of Chinese history and culture that heretofore may have seemed bewildering or even absurd.
The author of the present volume, Sanping Chen, has the great virtue of being able to examine the past with a fresh eye. He does not take any received text or tradition at face value. Instead, he closely reexamines all the available evidence and subjects secondary interpretations to intense, critical scrutiny. The results of this type of inquiry are frequently surprising and in many cases revelatory. Yet Dr. Chen is not an iconoclast purely for the sake of iconoclasm. Instead, his goal is simply to penetrate the countless layers of obscurity and misrepresentation to get at the truth of what really happened in the past. More than any other Chinese historian that I know of, Sanping Chen is determined to confront historical data directly and without any presuppositions or agenda whatsoever.
From lengthy, ongoing discussions with Dr. Chen over the years, I have come to realize that his unusual approach to Chinese history results from deeply held principles. Among these the most important is that the historian is duty bound to report his findings, regardless of their implications. A corollary of this principle is that the historian may not lie about or color what he discovers concerning the past. For Dr. Chen, this becomes a moral imperative, such that he cannot remain silent when confronted with the facts of history.
Although Dr. Chen not infrequently mentions the prehistoric period (Neolithic, Bronze Age, and early Iron Age), the early period (the classical era or era of antiquity), and the late imperial period, his main focus is on the medieval period (roughly the first millennium AD). Many events that were profoundly formative for the future of East Asian civilization occurred during this period: the advent of Buddhism, the rise of Taoism as a religion, the first stirrings