From the point of view of sinification, ethnic origin, an issue for which the monk Falin paid a heavy personal price, is not of real significance here. Some persistent or occasional “atavistic” appearances of Northern influences notwithstanding, one could argue that little is found in the standard (i.e., official) histories to suggest that the Li regime was culturally anything but a “native” Chinese dynasty.
To address this issue, one might first ask a different question: Despite the fact that various Xiongnu and Xianbei groups dominated the political arena in northern China for almost three hundred years between the collapse of the Western Jin and the founding of the Sui, and the usually unacknowledged fact that their descendants continued to do so for several hundred more years, as the comments by the Yuan dynasty historian Hu Sanxing quoted in the Introduction clearly stated, why is it that one can learn so little about their cultural heritage in traditional historiography? Even the linguistic affinity of the Tuoba Xianbei remains to this day a matter of controversy, a subject I shall further elaborate in an appendix.
In his narration of the Turco-Persian Ghaznavid sultanate in the eastern Iranian world, David Morgan made this interesting observation: “Although the Ghaznawids were of Turkish origin, there seems to have been little that was identifiably Turkish about the way in which their empire was run, or indeed about the culture they patronized. We should, however, remember that our sources were written by Persian contemporaries, who might have been unlikely to lay much stress on the non-Persian…elements that may have been present.”9 Similarly, Herbert Franke, while discussing the legitimation of the most conspicuous “conquest” dynasty in Chinese history, commented, “A Chinese official history like the Yüan-shi is not very explicit about the Buddhist and Lamaist elements inherent in Yüan statehood, and one has to turn to the Tibetan and Mongol sources, even though the latter ones are mostly relatively late and sometimes unreliable and fanciful.”10
As one will see, Morgan's and Franke's observations are also pertinent to the Tang records. However, unlike the case of the Ghaznavids, which was contested by Fuad Köprülü, a modern Turkish historian,11 there is not a single Xianbei soul left today to question the “all-Chinese” Tang history; and unlike the Yuan world, there were few alternative sources on the Tang, which totally dominated, not only politically, but also culturally, the vast land from Samarkand to the Sea of Japan.
In her study of early modern China, Pamela Crossley contends that the term “sinicization” or “sinification” is an obsolete concept.12 “Ethnicity,” or ethnic study, would appear to be, at least morphologically (and politically), a more correct substitute. However, even she seems to admit that an abstract notion of ethnicity is no more self-evident or more clearly defined than the obsolete concept of sinicization.
The question of appropriate nomenclature notwithstanding, I shall try to demonstrate in the remainder of this chapter the marked contrast between the Tang and other native imperial houses regarding succession and other politico-cultural attributes of a dynasty, as well as the conspicuous cultural gap between the Tang imperial house and the contemporary Confucian gentry class. Finally, I raise serious doubts about the correctness of characterizing the Tang as a “native” or “basically sinified” imperial house. Borrowing the etymology Xianbei < *Särbi first suggested by Edwin Pulleyblank and adopted by Peter Golden, I contend that the first half of the Tang might be more aptly called a Särbo-Chinese (or Xianbeo-Chinese) regime.13
The Cultural Gap
The conventional view that the Tang represented a native Chinese dynasty very much depends on the premise that the Lis were either of Hàn origin or had “basically sinified” by the time of the founding of the dynasty. I shall contend that neither was true.
The earlier quotations regarding the Ghaznavids and on the Yuan clearly demonstrate how one-sided sources created biased or even false politico-cultural images of an ethnic regime. Careful examination of the historical sources of the era reveals many cases of the Li clan's non-Hàn cultural traits and identity. What may be more important is the marked distance between the imperial house and the traditional Chinese gentry regarding these issues as well as the contemporary awareness of this difference. Following is a brief summary of some of the most notable examples.
1. Language. In a later chapter I show that the Tuoba Xianbei tongue continued to be used by the Li clan as their first or family language. Moreover, even the term Guoyu, “national language,” was kept for a while during the Tang. Liu Pansui, Chen Yinke's student, first made this important discovery based on an entry in Xin Tang shu (The New History of the Tang Dynasty, 44.1160). The contemporary Chinese gentry's attitude toward this was best reflected in a noted passage in Yanshi jiaxun (Family Instructions for the Yan Clan):
There was a court official who once said to me, “I have a son who is seventeen and has quite a good epistolary style. I shall teach him the Xianbei language and to play the pipa (a favored foreign instrument), in the hope that he will gain a certain degree of proficiency in these. With such accomplishments he is sure to gain favour with men in high places. This is a matter of some urgency.” At that time I hung my head and made no reply. Strange indeed is the way this fellow teaches his son. Even if, by such means, you could become a minister, I would not wish you to do so.14
2. Affinity. The Tang was the last Chinese dynasty before the Manchus to marry off royal princesses to the Steppe khans and chieftains. This practice was clearly documented in the official compilation of Tang officialdom and institutions (Tang huiyao [Institutional History of the Tang]). There are also more detailed modern studies.15 The practice was so prevalent that the word konchuy, transcribing the Chinese term gongzhu, “princess,” was simply regarded by Ziya Gökalp, an early twentieth-century proponent of Pan-Turkism, as an ancient Turkic word for “wife.”16 In the meantime, the leading Chinese gentry families steadfastly refused to establish matrimonial relations with the imperial house. More strikingly, their rejection of the honor of an imperial marriage persisted for more than two centuries, lasting well into the late Tang era, despite the royal family's repeated initiatives (Xin Tangshu 119.4306, 172.5205–6; ZZTJ248.8036.17
3. Clan relationship. The Tang represented a unique case in Chinese history in which the imperial house bestowed its own clan name, Li, not only on a few Hàn Chinese persons but more frequently on ethnic leaders and chieftains, be they Turk, Tangut, Uighur, Kitan, or Iranian/Persian. In the same study of the marriage practice of Tang royal princesses, Wang Tongling compiled a rather extensive table on this issue.18 As the Yuan dynasty historian Hu Sanxing particularly noted (ZZTJ 172.8879), the Zhuxie Shatuo Turkic tribe founded the Later Tang dynasty based largely on having received this imperial honor. I also add a rather revealing case missing in Wang Tongling's exhaustive table: As late as the Huichang period (841–46), the main business for a Kirghiz embassy, per an imperial edict by Emperor Wuzong (reign 840–46), was to register themselves with the imperial clan office (Xin Tang shu 217b.6150), highlighting the alleged common ancestry of the Kirghiz qaghan and the Tang house. In his detailed treatise on the collapse of the Uighur Empire, Michael Drompp has documented this interesting relationship.19 On the other hand, it is well documented and studied that the Tang imperial house made repeated efforts to suppress the leading gentry clans' social prestige and privilege (ZZTJ 195.6135–36, 200.6318.). I may even ascribe the emergence of the Chinese civil services examinations under the Sui and Tang to this distrust in old Hàn aristocratic clans.
4. Clothing. It is well known that Tang fashions were under heavy foreign influence. Xiang Da's pioneering study on this subject has been followed up by many other authors.20 As the famous Tang poet Yuan Zhen's social jeremiad Faqu (Quan Tang shi [Complete Anthology of Tang Poetry] 419.1025) described, the love of exotic style, custom, and makeup became feverish during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong. While most modern authors emphasize the Iranian and Iranic connections and the influence coming from the Western Regions, I take note of the fact that much of this represented the Steppe heritage, including the