발해 정체성과 거란/요제국 하 단구르의 일관성

Bohai/Parhae Identity and the Coherence of Dan gur under the Kitan/Liao Empire*

Article information

Int J Korean Hist. 2016;21(1):11-44
Publication date (electronic) : 2016 February 28
doi : https://doi.org/10.22372/ijkh.2016.21.1.11
**Collis Professor, Department of History, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
크로슬리파멜라 카일**
**다트마우스대학교 역사학과 겸임교수
Received 2015 December 18; Revised 2016 January 26; Accepted 2016 February 27.

Abstract

요사(遼史)는 926년 요제국이 발해를 멸망시켰으며, 이후 발해민들을 노예상태로 전락시키고, 제국에 재정착시켰다고 기록한다. 근대 고고학은 거란어로 쓰여진 금석학적 자료와 함께 이러한 전개의 몇 부분을 확인했지만, 보다 복잡한 이야기를 제시한다. 아이신 기오로 울라희춘(愛新覺羅 烏拉熙春), 요시모토 미치마사(吉本道雅), 임상선, 사와모토 미츠히로, 그리고 왕샹준은 926년의 요제국의 발해 침략을 둘러싼 정치적 환경과 그 거주민들의 지위를 조명했다. 대부분의 발해민들은 발해 귀족, 군인, 그리고 고위관료들이 지역행정부에서 확고한 역할을 유지하고 있던 그들의 전통적인 영역에 남아있었다. 이 논문은 요제국 행정부 활동, 즉 다가문과 같은 발해의 귀족, 그리고 고모한(高謨翰)과 같은 지식인 계층에 대한 발해의 영향력과 발해 인구변동의 예측치에 주목한다. 이를 통해 기존 대표적인 문헌자료에서 제시되었던 것 보다 중요하다고 할 수 있는 북동지방 정치전통의 전환에 미친 발해의 역할을 제시하고자 한다. 발해민들은 요제국이 침략하여 그들을 외지고 열악한 환경으로 좌초시킨 이후 정체성과 사회적 구조가 파괴된 불행한 존재였다기 보다는, 실제적인 하나의 정치적 연속성이며, 여진족, 궁극적으로는 만주라는 그들의 계승자에 대한 중대한 영향을 미쳤다는 것이다.

Trans Abstract

The Liao shi [Liaoshi] (遼史) suggests that in 926 the Liao empire destroyed the state of Bohai, and afterward forced the Bohai people into servitude and resettlement across the empire. Modern archaeology together with epigraphical sources in the Kitan language confirm some of this narrative, but suggest a far more complicated story. Researches by scholars such as Aisingioro Ulhicun, Yoshimoto Michimasa, Im Sangsŏn, Sawamoto Mitsuhiro and Wang Shanjun have shed new light on the political circumstances of the Liao invasion of Bohai in 926 and the subsequent status of its inhabitants. A majority of the Bohai population remained in their traditional territories, where Bohai aristocrats, soldiers and high-ranking officials retained distinct roles in local administration. This essay looks at Bohai influence upon Liao administrative practices, the status of Bohai aristocrats of the Da lineage and elites such as Gao Mohan, and the probable outlines of Bohai demography to suggest that the Bohai role in transmission of Northeastern political traditions, in particular, may have been much more important than would be suggested on the basis of standard literary resources. Instead of being a doomed people whose identities and social structures evaporated after Liao resettlement policies stranded them in remote and inhospitable surroundings, the Bohai story may actually be one of political continuity and a seminal influence upon their successors, the Jurchens and ultimately the Manchus.

Introduction

In 1778 the Researches on Manchu Origins (滿州源流考 Manzhou yuanliu kao) opened with the thoughts of the Qianlong emperor on the continuities in Northeastern history, and the role of its various peoples and regimes in formation of the long, distinct heritage to which he thought the Qing were heirs. Among them he referred repeatedly to the Bohai (渤海), to whom he traced the use of the five-capitals, a writing system, and a leadership hierarchy that he believed was evident in early Qing history and still in use among Northeastern peoples.1 Modern historians are appreciative of the emperor’s sense of Northeastern distinctness, but his assertions regarding the seminal role of the Bohai seem romantic in light of the defeat and destruction of the Bohai state by the Liao empire, and the resettlement of Bohai across the Liao territories, where they gradually assimilated with locals and died out as a tradition. The possibility of an important role in transmission of a political or cultural heritage would appear to have been foreclosed. But modern archaeology and comparative history have cast new light both on Liao practices and on the probable condition of the former Bohai territories under Liao domination.

The people, state and territory referred to today as Parhae (Balhae) or Bohai (渤海)2, have intrigued historians for many decades. The reasons for interest in Bohai can differ with national historical context it may be based on genealogical connections to Koguryŏ (Goguryeo) or the Mohe, or territory, or language, or merely the fascination of a widely-distributed and clearly influential culture that is now vanished.3, This paper is not about Bohai state or culture before 926, but about the status of the groups referred to as Bohai in the historical records relating to the Liao empire,4 which ended the Bohai ruling dynasty in 926 and within a decade subsumed Bohai territory, administered most of former Bohai through a dependent state, relocated many Bohai subjects as prisoners of war, and subsequently impressed others into servitude through abduction or surrender.

The basic history of the Bohai government in Manchuria is well-known.5 What is relevant to this essay is the fact that despite the complex origins of the Bohai state’s population, in 926 a Bohai identity was well defined. By this I mean that in Koryŏ (Goryeo), Liao, Heian Japan and Song there was a fairly clear understanding of what Bohai had been and who its legacy population was, even if it can be difficult for modern historians to decode whether references were to the court and royal family, or the ruling castes, or the general population. When refugees from the population once ruled by Bohai fled to Koryŏ, they were easily identified as aliens, and within Liao, Bohai populations were readily identified in official history, biographies in both Chinese and Kitan, and administrative regulations. The Bohai of Liao were for the most part reduced to a dependent class, with historians and archaeology noting their wide distribution throughout the empire.

This essay tests an identity model I recently used in discussing the Han 韓 lineage of Jizhou (part of modern Tianjin municipality in China). This is a group of Chinese descendants who rose to extreme prominence in the early Liao period, eventually controlling the installation of Liao emperors and the military policies of the empire into the early eleventh century. Primarily as a product of the influence of Song works such as Qidan guozhi (契丹國志), and the fragmentary Liaoshi (遼史) completed in the early Yuan period, the Han of Jizhou have been regarded as a single narrative unit, representing elite Han (漢) under Liao rule. However, I argued that the evidence of meaningful genetic or cultural designation of the Han lineage as Han was weak. After the 920s, the individuals usually meant when referring to the Han lineage of Jizhou were actually Kitan aristocrats whose cultural, social and professional lives were indistinguishable from other Kitan aristocrats. They were one lineage among many who descended from at least one prominent Chinese ancestor, but had over time been inducted into the Kitan aristocracy, after which contemporary evidence demonstrates they were no longer identified as Han. In the case of these individuals, they had not undergone “Kitanization,” but had undergone “aristocratization.”6, Nevertheless, there was a large population of Han (and Han’er 漢兒) under the domination of the Liao empire, and it was this dependent population that was given a distinct cultural label.7, In practice, aristocracy was its own identity under Liao, and labels such as Han, Fan (番), Xi (奚) and zhenghu (正戶) (for Kitans) were signifiers of dependency —primarily individuals registered in the estates, or ordu,8 whose social and labor lives were under the control of Kitan aristocrats or the Liao court. These dependent individuals could be farmers, slaves, or officials —what was remarkable was their dependent status and their signifiers of cultural attribution marked them as distinct from aristocrats. In this essay, the status of individuals who in the Song, Koryŏ and Yuan records were identified as Bohai of the Liao period is reviewed in comparison to the history of the Han and Han-descended Kitan aristocrats.

Bohai Origins of Dongdan, Dingan and Liao Dongjing

In Tang times, the Bohai state occupied the Pacific coast of Northeast Asia, roughly between Changbaishan (長白山)/Paektusan (白頭山) in the south and territories of the Heishui (黑水) Mohe in the north. This corresponds to the Primorskii Krai of Russia and modern Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces of China (with a small portion of eastern Liaoning province). It has become conventional to declare that in 926 Liao destroyed Bohai and in its place established the puppet state of Dongdan (東丹國) but it is not clear that this adequately represents what documents, epigraphy and archeology show.9, After the destruction of the Bohai state by Liao forces, the land was not directly incorporated into the Liao territories. For a decade the Kitan imperial kinsman Yelü Bei (耶律倍) and then his successor attempted to create a semi-independent satrapy based at the former Bohai Supreme Capital (Shangjing/Sanggyŏng 上京), the fortified city of Huhancheng/Holhansŏng (忽汗城) in the former Tang administrative district of Longquan fu/Yongch’ŏnbu (龍泉府).10, Political chaos and weak administration of the Bohai territories prompted the Liao court to promote members of the former Bohai royal family, the Da (Korean Tae/Dae, 大),11 to share control of the former Bohai territories with imperially-appointed Yelü aristocrats from Abaoji’s own Diela (迭剌) federation.

The Liaoshi indeed says that after the defeat of Bohai its name was changed to Dongdan.12, Studies of Kitan-language epigraphic finds show that “Dongdan” was a name limited to written Chinese venues. Kitan inscriptions refer to the former Bohai territories as Dan gur,13, “Dan country.” The name was centuries old and, as will be explored below, it resonates with Northeastern state names of Bohai’s past and future. It was not a new term invented for the subordinated territory. The name Dongdan used in sources outside the Liao empire was not derived from an explicit or implied “Dong Qidan guo (東契丹國)”—despite the convention of writing the second phonetic element in Dongdan with the same character (丹) as the second character in Qidan. In fact Aisingioro Ulcihun found a variety of ways of referring to the former Bohai territories, including Hou [Later] Bohai (後渤海), Dan 丹 (a pejoritive Silla and Koryŏ term for residents and states in Manchuria), and Mohe, some of them lingering into the Jin and Yuan periods.14 Aisingioro is also skeptical of Liu Pujiang’s conclusion that Dongdan was nothing but an ephemeral puppet state of Liao. She points out that the fierce struggle of local magnates to throw off the domination of Yelü Bei and his faction extended to attempts to establish a strategic alliance with Heian Japan, and there may have been continued attempts into the eleventh century to appeal to Song China and Koryŏ Korea. This suggests a continuing coherence among Bohai elites and an attempt to steer an independent course, to the extent that Kitan military power could be resisted. It is significant that Liao terms of reference for the Bohai territories did not change after the military defeat of the main Bohai forces or after the establishment of a Kitan-dependent administration; the name change, including the remark in the Liaoshi, is an artifact of written-Chinese sources, and could have originated in Korean use (perhaps in Silla times) or in Song China.

Bohai secessionism and resistance to Yelü domination was very unevenly distributed, with a concentration at the old Bohai Supreme Capital at Longquan fu, where the post-Bohai state of Dingan/Chŏng’an (定安) was declared sometime after the Liao court cancelled the occupation privileges of Yelü Bei and initiated a full-scale Liao war to occupy Dan gur, the remaining territories of Bohai.15, This prevented Liao from putting an administrative center atop the fairly populous Bohai capital. Instead, Liao was forced to create a fortified city well to the west, in the vicinity of modern-day Liaoyang, Liaoning province of China, which was to become the new Liao “Eastern Capital” (Dongjing/Tonggyŏng 東京). 16, The campaign to destroy or subordinate Bohai continued for half a century after 926. In a petition to the Song emperor in 981, the designated Dingan king Wu Xuanming/O Hŏnmyŏng (烏玄明) declared his population to be “remaining commoners of Bohai” (渤海遺黎), and described the region as heavily damaged by and under imminent destruction by Liao.17 Expeditions against Dingan from Liao did not conclude until the establishment of Liao military occupation of the whole area in 991 —the beginning of Liao difficulties with Koryŏ, which received many of the Dingan refugees and felt its own borders threatened by the new Liao military establishments.

The destruction of Dingan and the acquisition of Longquan fu was the late stage in the process by which the Liao state adapted the multi-capital system of Bohai (with the same number of capitals, five, and conceptually similar city plans of fortification and sectioning).18, The new Liao base for monitoring and administering Dan gur, Dongjing, was primarily a Bohai city, though whether the population had been previously in place, had mostly been transferred by force, or induced to migrate to Dongjing is now unclear.19, In the early tenth century its population appears to have been over 40,000.20, Because of its location and perhaps because of its political functions, the general area of Dongjing remained the Kitan/Liao connection to Dan gur until the eleventh century; Yelü Longyun’s entrusted county (touxia), which was somewhere in the Dongjing vicinity, was well known as a center for the concentration of Bohai people taken as prisoners in war or enslaved after criminal convictions.21

The general Liao plan for administration of the territory after 936 resembled that used in the case of the Sixteen Prefectures of North China, acquired by Liao from Later Tang (後唐) (923–936) at roughly the same time: County level government was based upon the functions and structures used before the incorporation into the Kitan empire, while the upper ranks of the administration were a synthesis of Tang and Bohai (in this case) traditional offices with intendants reporting to the Liao court. In effect this meant that both the former Bohai and former Later Tang territories were governed at the lowest level by magistrates (zhizhou/chichu 知州 and 知縣 zhixian/chihyŏn) modeled on the government of Tang, while at the top they were governed by aristocrats in civil official roles, carrying titles adapted from Tang and Song government (in the case of the Sixteen Prefectures), or from Koguryŏ/Mohe/Bohai political legacies in the case of Dan gur. High ranking military men or, in the case of Bohai, members of the royal family could be assimilated into the aristocracy, often involved in marriage exchanges with the extended Liao imperial lineage. Literate men might serve as local officials, but in many cases were assigned to aristocrats or the imperial court as scribes, accountants, translators or advisors. And a portion of the common Bohai population was left in place to work in agriculture and be taxed; others were dispatched to distant areas under development or in need of manual labor, enrolled in the ordu system of aristocratic estates or similar entrusted counties, or enlisted in the imperial armies. Though these possibilities were clearly present both for Han and for Bohai, it appears that in the event the patterns were different.

Aristocratic Incorporation of the Da/Tae Lineage

Sometime between 926 and 936 the Liao court was forced to realize that however untrustworthy the dethroned Da lineage of old Bohai was, the party forming around Yelü Bei (耶律倍, 899–937) was more untrustworthy. Bei had been his father Abaoji’s favorite from an early point, and when the state was created in 916 he was declared heir apparent. Bei was, like many Kitan aristocrats, acclaimed as accomplished both in literature and in warcraft, and distinguished himself in Liao conquests of the second and third decades of the tenth century. The Liaoshi credits him with not only leading the 926 invasion of Bohai together with his father but with planning it. Shortly before Abaoji’s death in the fighting around the Bohai city of Fuyu/Puyŏ (夫餘 in modern Jilin province of China), the emperor seems to have given Bei the title of Dongdan wang 王. From that point, the narrative of Bei as it has come to us —primarily in the Liaoshi, Qidan guozhi and Zizhi tongjian (資治通鑑)— takes a predictable form: After Abaoji’s death, there was a duplicitous plot by the empress dowager and her younger son, Yelü Deguang, to deprive Bei of the throne. Deguang was elevated to emperor, and was suspicious that Bei would attempt a coup; ultimately he forced Bei to flee in 930 with a personal entourage (and an impressive number of books) to the state of Hou Tang, which at the time still held the Sixteen Prefectures.22 As part of the plan of undermining Bei’s remaining influence, we are told, the Dongdan administrative base was moved to Dongjing, and a portion of the Bohai population with it, but Bei’s wife continued to govern Dongdan until her death in 940. In the remarkable later chapter of his life, Bei became the brilliant Hou Tang painter, Li Zanhua (李贊華), to whom are attributed the most iconic Kitan-themed paintings of the period. His life under Hou Tang was otherwise marked by sadism, treachery and apparently by madness. He married into the imperial family (hence his Li surname) but his wife renounced him and became a Buddhist nun. He may have played a role in destabilizing the court, contributing to the revolt by Shi Jingtang that eventually led to Liao absorption of the Sixteen Prefectures.

Kitan tomb inscriptions, however, appear to tell a different story.23, Whether Yelü Bei’s perversions really surfaced only in later life and after his exile is unclear in the Liao narrative, and the reasons for him being by-passed for the emperorship may not be solely due to treachery against him by all members of his immediate family. Aisingioro Ulcihun and Yoshimoto Michimasa argue that at least one designation in the Chinese-character inscriptions —primarily the tomb of Yelü Zongjiao (宗教)— (on which a good deal of Bohai/Dan gur history is now based), “sag e king of old Bohai” (故渤海聖王), actually refers not to Yelü Bei but to the last Bohai king, Da Yinzhuan/Tae Insŏn (大諲譔), who was given the Kitan name Urgu and apparently served in high positions during the period when Yelü Bei was supposed to be running Dongdan. Looking at these and other inscriptions, Sawamoto Mitsuhiro described early Dan gur government as designed for the wealth of the Diela federation within the Liao imperial lineage, as distinguished from the Kitan court or Liao government. 24 This suggests that the historiographical tradition asserting that Yelü Bei was loaded with titles by Abaoji and given sole responsibility for occupying “Dongdan” is at least partly mistaken; at best, Yelü Bei was sharing power with selected members of the Da royal family and overseers working for Diela interests. This also helps explain Bei’s rapid departure from Dan gur in 930; it may have been not only his brother the emperor but also disgruntled Da lineage members who threatened his authority and his safety. If he was succeeded in Dan gur by his wife, it is evident that she too did not rule over the Da royals but with them.

Sawamoto speculates that the location of Dongjing itself was determined by Diela property interests, and not by a court attempt to undermine Yelü Bei’s power base in Dan gur. Overall, the theme of Diela property and security interests in Dan gur helps to illuminate the probable purpose and function of the Bohai orduBohai zhang (渤海帳)— which according to the Liaoshi was established by Abaoji in 926.25, In the Liaoshi description this sounds like a possible infrastructure for Dan gur population registrations, joining similar institutions for the lineages of subject peoples, as well as the imperial uncles,26 the Yaolian and Yishi lineage groups. But this was evidently a property management system —land, buildings, produce, animals and people— that ran parallel to the political administration of Dan gur. The ordu, whose first director was a high-ranking Bohai commoner, was there to look after the financial interests of the Diela in Dan gur. No Da lineage members are noted as serving in the ordu administration, as they did in the Dongdan civil and military administrations.

By Bohai custom, use of the Da surname was limited to recognized members of the royal lineage and not used by all descendants of Parhae founder Da Zuorong/Tae Choyŏng (d. 719) (大祚榮); other descendants including cadet lineages used a variety of surnames. There is one perspective from which Da-surnamed lineage quickly became part of the central Kitan elite. It was typical for the Kitan court to readily acknowledge any royal connections among friend or foe (the Da lineage were both). On the strength of that, girls and young women from the Da lineage were sought for marriage with the imperial family or others of the highest ranking lineages of the empire. In Chinese-character tomb inscriptions, these women were sometimes described as Bohai, with the qualifier “coming out of the Da lineage” (渤海娘子大氏之所出也).27 More often, they were simply referred to as members of the Da lineage (大氏) without reference to Bohai. This was consistent with the Kitan identity ethos of the aristocracy: The aristocratic element was absolute, and specified cultural identity was not only unnecessary but usually avoided, as it suggested inferiority and dependency. Again, favored captives or immigrants were aristocratized, not Kitanized.

Whether male members of the Da lineage could make the transition to aristocracy is much less clear. Men surnamed Da are easily found among Kitan officials—Wang Shanjun culled citations for 15 of them in the Liaoshi alone—but with one exception they were of middle to high-middle rank and overwhelmingly served in Dan gur or Liao Dongjing.28 If they were in any sense aristocrats they were hanging on the edge. Though many Kitan aristocrats were military or civil officials for a time, officials were not by definition aristocrats; they were prominent and well-compensated members of the dependent population. The evidence suggests that men of the Da lineage were primarily appointed as functionaries in Dan gur. This is consistent with the content of inscriptions in Chinese and in Kitan suggesting that the Da lineage retained very significant power in Dan gur, and was incorporated into the imperial lineage via marriage of Da women. But they were unique in being very poorly represented among —if not excluded from—aristocratic titles for men, and there is so far no direct evidence that they received the Yelü (耶律) “national surname” (guoxing 國姓). This is not surprising, since it was the Da surname itself that made these men and women valuable to the Liao court, and gave them uniquely privileged and circumscribed status in the empire.

Bohai Elites under Liao

While Da royals fulfilled relatively well-scripted roles in the Liao empire, it can be hypothesized on the basis of comparison to some originally Han lineages that non-Da Bohai military and probably some civilian elites may have had a better chance of being translated into Kitan aristocrats. Civil or military duties could bring a very small number of Han or Bohai into close proximity with aristocrats or the imperial family, perhaps even close enough to become protégés of aristocrats or marry into these families and become the fathers of aristocrats or civil officials themselves. This happened to a good number of Han families, the most famous of whom were the Han of Jizhou (薊州) (or Yutian 玉田), the lineage of Han Kuangsi (韓匡嗣) (917–982) and Yelü Longyun (耶律隆運) (941–1011).29 In those cases, entry into the aristocracy changed their personal identities dramatically, in all aspects from their careers to the design of their tombs to the style of their biographies in the Liaoshi. Aristocrats of Liao had no distinct cultural identities, and it was common for them at some point or other to be awarded the “national surname”, though it is probable that some individuals continued to invoke their Chinese surnames on occasion. They spoke Kitan and Chinese, could be literate in both, enjoyed poetry and falconry, read Confucian classics and sometimes Buddhist sutras. They were identified in their biographies by their patrilines or their tribal affiliations. They were different from their ancestors, who had been identified in the histories as coming from somewhere in the Sixteen Prefectures, or perhaps just as Han ren (漢人) —or, if captured or servile, as Han’er. And they were different from distant cousins who continued as part of the dependent, or common, populations, whether as officials, laborers or slaves. They were Kitan aristocrats.

Gao Mohan (高模翰) (d.959)30, was once a Bohai soldier of high repute. His biography in the Liaoshi describes him as especially adept at horse-back archery and effective in exhorting soldiers to battle. He escaped to Koryŏ in 926 and married into the royal family. Because he was convicted of poisoning a colleague he was later forced to leave Koryŏ, after which he joined Liao. He distinguished himself in campaigns against the remnant Later Tang regime and helped secure the Sixteen Prefectures for Liao in 936. Afterwards he married into the Liao imperial family, his portrait was displayed in the imperial palace, his descendants by his imperial wife were enfeoffed, and in the last year of his life he was awarded his own ordu and given ceremonial office —all repeated patterns with high officials or generals inducted into the aristocracy. But the nature of his ceremonial office shows that Gao Mohan’s aristocratic status was unusual, possibly unique: He was made ranking (or “right”) minister (zhongtaixiang 中台省右相) of the Dan gur administration, pointing to his Bohai origins and away from unqualified Kitan aristocratic status. Some of his sons and grandsons are independently attested, but are given no particular cultural identity, suggesting aristocratic standing. Others, however—particularly in later generations— suggest that the lineage did not retain aristocratic status. His descendants were prominent among scholars of the Dongjing area and are introduced in their biographies as Bohai.31

Looking at the Gao family case with the same framework as the Han 韓 family case, it makes sense that Gao Mohan—the first generation of the family to come into the Kitan state—was identified as Bohai. This suggests a status roughly cognate to that of Han Zhigu, the ancestor of Yelü Longyun; Zhigu was identified as Han (in fact as Han’er), even though his descendants were not. Absence of evidence that the Bohai tag was carried in the second and third generations after Gao Mohan suggests that his immediate descendants were considered part of the ruling class, which might have been automatic, since by the time Gao joined Liao he was a member of the Koryŏ imperial family. At least one other family originally surnamed Gao is also shown in the Liaoshi to have ascended to the ruling class and lost their surname and cultural designation; this other lineage (the descendants of Gao Xun, 高勛)32 were a branch of the Later Jin (後晉, 936–947) royal family.

Gao Mohan’s last ceremonial office in Dan gur is ambiguous. On the one hand it might mean that he was considered one among the Kitan aristocrats who were frequently given ceremonial or actual directorships in the Southern Chancellory (南院), a department that many historians read as dedicated to rule over Chinese populations using Chinese institutions. But the actual appointment pattern in the Southern administration shows that it was entirely in the control of Kitan aristocrats, not in the hands of officials whom the Chinese of the Sixteen Prefectures would understand as “Chinese.”33 Gao could have been given his Dan gur office in his role as the Kitan aristocrat in place to look after Kitan interests, or he could have been appointed as a putative Bohai there to reassure the local population —or both. What we know today of Kitan aristocratization leaves questions about the career of Gao Mohan, and whether there were factors that kept Bohai subordinate and culturally distinct in the Liao system, despite achievements and intimacy with the imperial lineage.

Bohai as a Resettled Dependent Population

Parallels between the fates of the Sixteen Counties Han population and the fates of the Dan gur Bohai populations can be observed, but there were also differences. Since the publication of History of Chinese Society: Liao in 1949, historians have followed the estimates of Wittfogel and Feng (often without attribution), setting the total of Kitans at a “peak” of 750,000, Bohai at 650,000, Chinese at almost 3 million, and various others (Uighurs, Turks, Mohe/Jurchens, Mongols, and so on) at about 200,000.34, The figures hold up fairly well in light of new archeological and environmental studies. In the Liao period, population in the general area of modern Inner Mongolia and western Liaoning was somewhat lower than it probably was in the late Tang, and the distribution was different. This distribution was possibly a result of the forced population movement referred to in Liaoshi, but might be equally due to changes in building technologies that permitted more concentration in lower, more moist locations than had been favored in earlier times.35, A good deal of recent scholarship in China has demonstrated the role of Bohai farmers, from at least the eighth century on, in the intensive agricultural and urban development of southern Manchuria.36 Given the huge extent of Bohai political dominance before 926, the variety of peoples under the influence of Bohai economy and culture, and the role of the Bohai in developing the eastern parts of the Liao empire, I believe that Wittfogel and Feng’s estimate of 650,000 Bohai refers only to the population registered in the ordu and redistributed westward. It is reasonable to assume that the actual Bohai population as of about 900 was somewhere between 1.5 million and 4 million people. This would mean that the residents of the Bohai territories far outnumbered Kitans within the Liao empire (including Dan gur after 926), and might have been only slightly less than the population of the Sixteen Prefectures in 926. Koryŏ records show Bohai arriving in groups of a few hundred to a few thousand, suggesting that the total number must have been something under 100,000; whether they stayed or whether they returned to Bohai territories, or moved on to China or Japan is unclear.

The dispersal of some portion of the common Bohai population after 926 to parts of the Kitan empire is better documented in the Liaoshi than many other events,37, and confirmed by archaeology.38, The proportion of the population dispersed in relation to the total population of Bohai has not been well understood. Reviews of the reports of dispersal —the earliest of which were ordered by Abaoji himself— suggest that fewer than a hundred localities, overwhelmingly in the vicinity of Dongjing (Diela economic territory) but ultimately reaching to the western edges of the empire, including the banks of the Orkhon river, were established for resettled Bohai.39, After Dongjing, the greatest number of Bohai might have been concentrated in the vicinity of the Liao Supreme Capital (today near Chifeng, Inner Mongolia); the Liaoshi specifies resettlement sites at Supreme Capital’s Changtai (長泰), Dingba (定霸), Lu (潞), Yixu (易俗), Fuyu (扶余), Changning (長寧) counties (縣) as the districts to which Bohai were redistributed after 926.40 It appears that these resettled Bohai groups ranged in size from a few hundred to as many as 5000 households (hu 戶), suggesting that by the middle of the tenth century 100,000 to 200,000 individuals had been removed to Liao imperial lands. This would mean that the Bohai population of Dan gur was reduced by anywhere from a tenth to a quarter of what the population had been at the beginning of the tenth century. There is no evidence for Liao or Jin times of dramatically reduced agricultural production in Dan gur; removed Bohai may have been replaced by Han, Korean, or tribal workers. Transfers large enough to impede the agricultural production of Dan gur could not been advantageous to the income of Kitan aristocrats, whether Diela or otherwise affiliated. But even removal of a minority of the population was an expensive operation, and one the empire must have had compelling reasons to have undertaken.

The criteria determining who would be resettled and who would continue to reside in the Dongjing-Dan gur continuum are unknown, but it may be possible to compare this situation to the fate of Han residents of the Sixteen Counties that were incorporated into Kitan in 936, after having been ruled by the Later Tang regime. The population of these districts (roughly present-day Beijing and Tianjin municipalities) at the time of their absorption was probably something on the order of 2.5 million. A large portion, if not most, remained where they were, to continue farming, manufactures and trade. Literate men could be recruited as officials, either in the Sixteen Prefectures or in other parts of the empire where Chinese-speaking farmers or technicians were clustered. Other literate men could be impressed as secretaries and advisors to Kitan aristocrats, or even to the emperors. In their new locations, Han-descended scholars or laborers could encounter additional Han who had been taken prisoner in war or in raiding of Song territories. All these also have been aspects of Bohai experience. In the case of Bohai, parts of the economy resembled the farming regions of Tang China, and at the local level Bohai government also resembled Tang, with literate officials who may have been educated on the general Tang curriculum of the Chinese classics serving as what was in essence county magistrates. After the destruction of the Bohai state, literate Bohai men could serve just as well as their Han counterparts as Dan gur local officials, or as scribes, secretaries or advisors; incidental evidence in the Liaoshi suggests that they did all these. More distinctive of Bohai redistribution was the fierce reputation of Bohai soldiers and their high numbers recruited for the Liao imperial bodyguard; some of these men were members of the aristocratic (but non-Da) lineages of old Bohai, which hardly suggests that the Kitan court suspected that resentment seethed among Bohai elites or soldiers. Much larger numbers of Bohai soldiers were sent to reinforce Liao occupation of the Sixteen Prefectures, particularly the “Southern Capital” (南京) in modern-day Beijing. The Liaoshi also mentions Bohai garrisons in all corners of the empire, often mixed with a small number of Han soldiers.41

The transfers are not explicitly explained by any contemporary source. The Liaoshi and Qidan guozhi, as well as the Zizhi tongjian account elaborated from them. All imply that Yelü Deguang was fearful that Yelü Bei or his sympathizers could use the Bohai population of Dan gur to foment a coup against the empire. Since the earliest removals are dated to the time of Abaoji, before the invasion of Dan gur, this is a partial explanation at best. Fear of Bohai uprisings, perhaps abetted by Koryŏ, Hou Tang (before 938) or Song, is a far better explanation. It has on its side the actual uprisings led by Bohai leaders of Dan gur in the late eleventh century, which laid the foundation for the Jurchen rebellions that eventually ended Liao. If the Liao court had an acute understanding of the potential for political and economic disruption in Dan gur caused by Bohai disaffection, they might well have been motivated to spread the Bohai population as widely and thinly as possible. Yet there is a weakness in this explanation. If the reasons for Bohai resettlement were political and strategic above all, then Bohai elites should have been the first to be sent to far distances, enrolled in the ordu of Kitan noblemen, or absorbed as thoroughly as possible into the Kitan aristocracy and military. However, the pattern of Bohai distribution appears to have been the opposite. Former Bohai aristocrats, including members of the Da lineage, were actually permitted or encouraged to continue to live in Dan gur, and even to take roles in its governance. The dispersed and ordu-managed Bohai were the commoners.

Sawamoto Mitsuhiro has explained of the dispersal of the Bohai as part of a larger trend in the Abaoji era of aggressive resource seizure for distribution to imperial followers, and particularly the Diela federation, as a way of stabilizing the political supremacy of Abaoji and then his successor Yelü Deguang.42 The issue was particularly delicate because Abaoji had been working to undermine Diela unity (they had recently been broken into seven sub-federations) because they represented a challenge to his personal rule; appeasement of the Diela by generous plumping of their ordu and concomitant increase in their wealth was a logical measure, and may have been particularly urgent after the failure of Yelü Bei’s attempt to set up an expropriation regime in Dan gur. After Bei’s departure, Diela members or their representatives were moved into Dan gur to manage the area along with reliable members of the Da lineage. In Wang’s interpretation, the need to satiate Diela demands for distribution of expropriated wealth explains both the rapid and wide dispersal of a portion of the Bohai commoner population and the preservation of a residual Bohai political structure in Dan gur.

There is a good deal of evidence supporting Sawamoto’s explanation. Im Sangsŏn has pointed out that Qidan guozhi makes clear that removal of Bohai to the Dongjing region and even points west began well before the full-scale Kitan assault on Bohai in 926.43 The fall of the Bohai state might best be seen as part of the process of vigorous wealth extraction from Dan gur as a means of establishing Abaoji’s supremacy over restless Kitan federations that is, Dan gur was not a goal in itself, and its conquest was not the event that initiated removals of the Bohai laboring populations. This could explain the relative lack of interest on the part of Liao in directly annexing Dan gur, changing its name, or substantially changing its administrative structure; even the Da lineage were left in their basic political position in Dan gur so long as they did not threaten the Kitan extractive enterprise. The awarding of Bohai laborers to Diela sub-federations could have been largely a political gesture, since it was in essence booty distribution. The Sixteen Prefectures had not yet been acquired, and so Han were not as easy as Bohai to secure. When it was possible to distribute Han in substantial numbers after 938, this was clearly done. From this perspective, the distribution of the Bohai takes on the character of both political economy and convenience, rather than a grand plan to deprive Yelü Bei of a political base, or to prevent a Bohai rebellion, or to punish the Bohai people for the half-century of warfare required to achieve Liao dominance in Dan gur.

There remain several distinctive questions regarding both the retention of major elements of Dan gur’s political infrastructure and the status of the redistributed common Bohai population. Recent Chinese scholarship on the history of the Northeast in the Tang period now tends to describe the Han (who are taken to be flatly Chinese) and Bohai as having parallel importance in the region’s development. This is premised upon the observation that the Bohai state elites were literate in Chinese and schooled in Chinese political thought both before and after the Liao invasion, and that a very significant portion of the Bohai population were farmers who were critical to the region’s economic development and by implication its urbanization.44 There is undoubtedly a good foundation for these interpretations, though they leave out the long history of cultural kinship with both Korea and the traditionally Tungusic regions of the Northeast. It is tempting to extend this parallel to the fates of Han and Bohai under Liao. But there are several aspects of the Bohai experience during Liao that are distinctive.

Conclusion

I have argued elsewhere that cultural ascription was a trait of the dependent classes in the Liao period, and that aristocrats were not designated by cultural or ancestral tags (even though ancestry may have been ubiquitously represented in their Kitan names).45, Most narratives of Liao history suggest that the Bohai were lower in status and treated more harshly than the Han, but the evidence for this is not direct. In terms of the civil administration and the punitive codes, Bohai was not a distinct status or schedule of punishments. The great divisions were Han—meaning farmers, merchants, household servants and civilian functionaries whose ancestry was traced to territories once administered by the Tang empire; Fan—meaning non-Kitan pastoralists or hunters, primarily Turkic, non-farming Tungusic, Mongolic or Iranic speakers; and zhenghu, the Kitan-speaking dependent class of the ordu. In legal matters, the Bohai were subject under the Han laws on the orders of Abaoji,46 evidently because parts of the former Bohai territories had been administered under a civil administrative system adapted directly from Tang, and because the Bohai mode of living—by the time of the state’s demise—was basically similar to that of the northern Chinese, based on farming and trade. That is to say, Mohe who did not adopt this manner of life had not been considered Bohai (or Han for purposes of taxes and punishments), but had remained Mohe of one designation or another (and in the legal system, Fan) and would form an important source of the Jurchen population in future.

This meant only that “Han” was not a genealogical or cultural designation primarily, but was an administrative designation for those residing in civilly-administered districts; this dimension of “Han,” later explicit in Jin and Yuan law, has been well developed in scholarly discussion. With regard to Bohai, there are many suggestions in published scholarship that the Liao ruling castes were sensitive to Bohai as a dependent identity distinct from Han, because of the suspicion that Bohai would attempt to throw off Kitan rule in Dan gur, or that Bohai residing in Koryŏ would aid a rebellion of Bohai within Kitan-dominated territory. The motives of Liao in resettling Bohai in distant and unfamiliar areas may not have been greatly different from the motives for resettling Han. The reason that Bohai resettlement figures so prominently in the Liaoshi may well be that the moment of Bohai government collapse and Liao access to large numbers of Bohai farmers, particularly 926 to 938 (that is, before large numbers of Han were available), coincided with political tension with the ambitious Diela federation and with resolution of the walking political crisis that was Yelü Bei. For the remainder of the Liao period, Bohai registration among distance farming, mining and smelting communities was a vivid reminder of aristocratic indebtedness to Abaoji. Here the material connection of cultural tagging and dependent status is explicit, since designations such as Bohai or Han marked the origin of the granted population and tied the grants to the original booty distributions in Abaoji’s time.

If the Kitans were really motivated by unflagging suspicion of the Bohai, it suggests an abiding identity consciousness among the Bohai for which we have little direct evidence. Anthropologists and archeologists have asked, for instance, how much the physical remains today suggest a continuing cultural distinctiveness among resettled Bohai. Outside historical Dan gur —particularly in Mongolia— sites that are now identified with the Bohai show slight traces of a continuing material culture. Of course, resettled and ordu-registered Bohai were of special interest to the Liao court, because their identities by definition were reminders of Abaoji’s magnanimity toward loyal aristocrats. In their dispersal across the empire, Bohai may have been more closely documented and observed than Han; certainly, the Liaoshi provides more detail on Bohai locations. Among Bohai who were not expatriated, cultural distinctiveness remained fairly clear. In present-day Primorskii Krai there are many sites establishing very distinctive material and social patterns, which were not only durable but continued to have influence for centuries —over the Kitans, over the Jurchens, and over their successors in Northeast Asia. As with other evidence, this suggests that the greater portion of the Bohai population remained in the Northeast. This is most likely related to the fact that before the establishment of the Liao empire both the Sixteen Prefectures and Dan gur were very well-developed agriculturally, and had expert farming populations. The income of the empire could not be significantly improved by sending a major portion of these populations to undeveloped or unproductive areas. On the other hand, measured distribution of laborers and literate men from these populations to individual aristocratic ordu could have had a clear political utility for Abaoji, and for any of his successors feeling obliged to renew the grants of population in order to reinforce their standing among loyal aristocrats.

What is historically significant about these developments is less the fate or effects of the distributed populations, and more the willingness of the Liao court to allow Bohai political structures in Dan gur to remain in place. The coherence of Dan gur under Liao was distinct, for the evident reason that unlike the Sixteen Prefectures —which had been an outcropping of the Tang and then Hou Tang civil bureaucracies— Dan gur had actually been an entire functioning state, with an aristocracy, court, circuit and county-level bureaucracy, and army. Liao was meticulous about disassembling the old Bohai military force, but when it came to the territorial name, aristocracy, and civil government, the touch of Liao was light. Not only were Bohai aristocrats not absorbed on any significant scale into the Kitan aristocracy, they were instead encouraged to maintain or recapture their connections to Dan gur. This may have been the most efficient method of keeping income flowing from the Dan gur agricultural sector after the installation of some Kitan aristocrats as co-administrators, and would probably have been the shortest route to political stability.

Perhaps more striking, the political continuities in Manchuria may actually have been signified by a continuous name. In the Jinshi, Aguda gives his reasons for calling his state “Great Gold” (Da Jin, 大金) as “gold [Jin] is stronger than iron [Liao],” a strangely illogical explanation, contradicted at several points in the same history.47, The inspiration was supposed to have come from a Bohai official who surrendered to the Jin founder Aguda and became a valued assistant. Though the explanations for the title have varied in detail, there is normally little doubt that it was suggested by a Bohai and adopted by a Jurchen warlord turning himself into an emperor. But it is infrequently noted that this was the second time (at a minimum) that a “Da Jin (大金)” state had existed in Manchuria. The earlier had been the first state founded by the Bohai leader Da Zuorong in 719. The state was founded in a period of enthusiasm across eastern Eurasia for Maitreya-inspired millennial ideology, probably related to Wu Zetian’s brief interregnum in China between 690 and 705. “Great Jin” could have been inspired by the Indian name for China, Mahācinasthana, “Great China Place” —if so, it would indicate Da’s own pretensions to Maitreya-endorsed rulership, and claims to have displaced China as the center of Maitreya revelation.48

Use of the name was very brief, but it evidently appeared again when Kim Kungye seceded from Silla in 901, calling his state Later Koguryŏ and soon changing the name to Majin (摩震)—a possible contraction of Mahācinasthana, a probable referent to the earlier Da Jin state of the Bohai and an indication of Kim’s own claims to Maitreya-linked legitimacy.49 Perhaps independently, “Jin” seems to have lingered around the general vicinity of lower Manchuria, evident not only in Da Jin and Majin, but probably also in Da Zhen/Tae Chin (震) (振) the alternate name for Da Zuorong’s state of Da Jin and revived in the Jin-period rebel state name of Da Zhen (variously written 大振 or 大震) in the former Bohai territories. The monosyllable might even have stabilized the -zhen element in nuzhen (earlier written as nudi 奴狄 and nuzhi 奴直). Whether Buddhist or local in origin (we have too few Mohe or Bohai words to know if it meant something else), the name persisted in the Jin-Zhen complex, and is evidently the Kitan “Dan” of Dan gur and Dongdan. Its meaning is not as important to us now as its signification of acknowledged political and possibly cultural continuity in southern Manchuria, at least from the early eighth century to the end of the Jurchen Jin in the thirteenth century —and possibly beyond, reflected in the Qing founding lineages selection of aisin [“gold”] as part of the lineage name.

The Qing memory of political resilience and continuity in the Northeast may be one that modern archeology is making more credible all the time. The long term effect may have been to maintain a Northeastern political core that loosely corresponds to the Qianlong emperor’s narrative. With more political independence and a greater residual population than Liaoshi interpretations have previously suggested, Dan gur may have provided the resources for centralization, communication and political hierarchy that buoyed or accelerated the Jurchen insurgencies against Liao in the early twelfth century, which could in turn have contributed to the vigor with which the relatively populous Jurchen Jin empire overran Liao, and the persistence of Jurchen political institutions in the Northeast during Yuan and Ming times —ultimately allowing Jurchen federations to generate not one empire ruling some or all of China, but two.

Notes

*

I am very grateful to my three reviewers for their generous comments and suggestions.

1

Crossley, “Manzhou yuanliu kao and Formalization of the Manchu Heritage”; Niu. “Historical Writing and the Formation of the Qing Empire’s Political Influence: Based on the 滿洲源流考 Manzhou yuanliu kao.”

2

The name was once commonly spelled Po-hai, which was the Wade-Giles transliteration of the Chinese characters used in virtually all Chinese histories to refer to the group and later to the state; this was often substituted in English-language scholarship with the Korean equivalent, Parhae. Research has always confirmed that the group was not by descent related to China, even if Tang-period Chinese culture had an effect upon some segments of the society. Linguistics, archaeology and textual evidence suggests ancestry partly lying with the cultures referred to today as Koguryŏ (modern Chinese Gaojuli 高句麗) and partly with the northern people designated in the Chinese records as 靺鞨—in modern Chinese transliteration, Wade-Giles Mo-ho or Mo-chieh, pinyin Mohe or Mojie, Korean Malgal— or apparent homophones. The logic behind substitution of modern Korean pronunciations of these names for modern Chinese pronunciation is unclear. Bohai as a language, people and state with diverse origins was without doubt part of a spectrum that included Koguryŏ, Puyŏ and Paekche and was closely connected with the development of medieval Korea. That does not mean that the modern Korean transliteration of these characters is a better way of representing proper names than is modern Chinese transliteration. Neither can be correct. My use of modern Chinese transliteration is not to suggest that there is anything Chinese about the proper names, but is solely to indicate that the only referent we have is Chinese characters —which in an English-language text are best indicated by their modern Chinese transliterations.

3

For background in English see Sloane, “Parhae in Historiography and Archaeology.” On Sloane’s persuasive reasoning for using Korean pronunciation for proper names not treated in the history curriculum of China, see p. 4. For wider contextualization, in English, see Northeast Asia History Foundation, A New History of Parhae; Song, The Clash of Histories in East Asia: 273–404; and Rawski, Early Modern China and Northeast Asia : 32–37.

4

The name Liao (遼) was used by the imperial family for certain periods in the tenth and eleventh century, and in other periods the state was called Qidan (its original denominator). For simplicity I follow the convention here of using Liao for the entire period from foundation of the state in 907 to fall of the state in 1125. For the chronology of state designation see Kane, “The Great Central Liao Kitan State.”

5

The earliest recognized Bohai political structure emerged from Sumo (粟末, Songmo 松漠) Mohe battles against the Tang empire, the Silla state in Korea, and the northerly Heishui Mohe in the early eighth century. Subsequently Bohai enjoyed stable relationships with Tang and Nara/Heian Japan, but never established friendship with Silla even though trade relations between Bohai and Silla were vigorous. At the highest level of Bohai were “ministers” (相, xiang/sang) who appeared to represent lineage or regional federations, and at the local level administrative terminology closely resembled the county-level government of Tang. The collapse of the Bohai state and its seizure by Yelü Bei in 926 are explained by historians in various ways: a hypothesized social weakness created by tensions between Goguryo-derived elites and Mohe commoners; an eruption of Changbaishan that disrupted the economy and discredited the leadership; the cumulative effect of years of concentrated pressure from Liao.

6

Crossley. “Outside In: Power, Identity, and the Han Lineage of Jizhou.”

7

On distinctions between han and han’er in the Liaoshi see Crossley, ibid., pp.55–56.

8

Ordu or ordo (斡魯朵) was originally a Turkic term relating to military installations. By Liao times it had the meaning of Chinese fu (府), the estates granted to aristocrats and possibly to some high-ranking commoners. (See Wittfogel and Feng, History of Chinese Society: 510–515). Frequently in LS it is also equivalent to zhang (帐) a registry or system of registry. The primary feature of an ordu was the ability to raise and support an army, and to this end the ordu included animals and grazing land, households in which the adult men were required to serve as soldiers and women, children and the elderly provided material support; weapons; ritual implements; a large house or palace for the ordu owner; buildings and anything else necessary. Usually ordu were fixed to a specified place, but it also seems clear that a few Kitan ordu were necessarily pastoral and mobile, which continued into Mongolian ordo. The Liao origin is specified in Liaoshi juan 35, “Notes on Military Garrisons” bingwei zhi (兵衛誌).

9

The Liaoshi is much more fragmentary than was assumed before 1990. Since about 1990, Kitan-language epigraphy at various sites throughout Inner Mongolia has yielded a great deal of information, some of it consistent with the content of Liaoshi but much of it supplementary, in some cases dwarfing the brief and incomplete accounts in the history. Decipherment continues, and some day it will undoubtedly be possible to write a very different history of the Liao empire than we have had up to now. See also Sawamoto, “Kittan no tōchi kyū Bokkai ryō tōchi to Tōtan koku no kōzō,” and for a broader overview with case studies see Aisingioro and Yoshimoto, Shin shutsu Kittan shiryō no kenkyū.

10

Bohai had a system of multiple capitals that was influential in later Northeastern political history, but from about 755 its primary capital was at Huhancheng. The Huhancheng site is Bohai zhen (渤海镇), part of Ning’an shi (宁安市), Mudanjiang, in Heilongjiang province of China. In Tang records this settlement was in the administrative district of Longquan fu (龍泉府), and Xin Tangshu 新唐書 (北狄列傳) comments that it was an ancient territory of the Sushen (肅慎). See also Song, “The Capital Sites of the Bohai Kingdom.” Archeologically this is the Yinggeling (莺歌岭) site, under the administration of the Heilongjiang Provincial Museum; artifacts from the site appear to go back about least 4000 years and show the area to have been extensively agricultural during that time. See Nelson, ed., The Archeology of Northeast China: 122–125.

11

For background see Zhang,” Han Tang jun wang guannian yu Bohai Da shi.”

12

Liaoshi, juan 72

13

Aisingioro, “Qidanwen Dan gur yu Dongdan guo guohao.”

14

Aisingioro Ulaxichun [Ulhicun], “Qidanwen dan gur yu Dongdan guo guohao”, ibid., pointed out that the etymology is impossible because of the phonemic quality of the Kitan language, which is distorted in the syllabic divisions imposed upon Kitan words by transliteration into Chinese characters; kita (genitive kitai) was in Aisingioro and Yoshimoto’s view the name for Kitan, which could not be divided into two phonemes despite its Chinese transliteration. Her reconstruction of the Kitan national name as kita is not universally accepted, but there is no doubt that her analysis of the phonemic issues represents a consensus.

15

On the basis of work by Wada Sei (和田清), Twitchett and Tietze identified the locations of dissident Bohai communities as “the Sungari Valley in modern Heilungkiang”, “west of the Yalu in Liao-ning”, in addition to Dingan. See Denis Twitchett and Klaus-Peter Tietze, "The Liao": 102. Readers will note that the general narrative in Twitchett and Tietze regarding the apparent absorption and management of “Dongdan” is not the narrative used in this article; their rendition is based on the Liaoshi and Qidan guozhi, and is at points disconsonant with findings from epigraphic sources in Kitan.

16

Among recent discussions see Hu, “A Tale of Five Capitals”; Bennett, “The Archaeological Study of an Inner Asian Empire.” Twitchett identified the Dongjing site as “modern Tung-ching [that is, Dongjing], Kirin [i.e. Jilin province]”; see “The Liao” op. cit.: 102; I note that in the Qing period the present Mudanjiang area was under the jurisdiction of Jilin province, and Ning’an is not only a part of the Mudanjiang municipality but only about 20 kilometers southwest of the city center.

17

The source is found in the Songshi (宋史) juan 491..

18

In view of these similarities, attempts such as Hu Lin’s to explain multi-capital systems as a product of nomadism are puzzling. See “A Tale of Five Capitals,” op. cit.

19

Liaoshi, 38 (“Monograph 志 8: 2nd Geography, Dongjing Circuit” 志第八 地理志二 東京道)

20

Steinhardt, Chinese Imperial City Planning :125.

21

Crossley, “Outside In,” op. cit,: 71. The exact site of the estate is disputed but it was in the vicinity of Liao Dongjing.

22

This would not be the only problematic aspect of Zizhi tongjian’s treatment of Bohai history. See also Peter Yun’s discussion of the work’s claim that Bohai and Koryŏ were linked by a marriage alliance and that this was the alleged source of tensions between Kitan and Koryŏ. “Koryŏ–Khitan Relations and Khitan Cultural Influence in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries” : 71–72.

23

See the introduction to Sawamoto, “Kittan no tōchi kyū Bokkai ryō tōchi to Tōtan koku no kōzō,” op.cit.

24

Sawamoto, “Kittan no tōchi kyū Bokkai ryō tōchi to Tōtan koku no kōzō,” ibid.

25

Described in Liaoshi, 45, “Essay 志 15: The Hundred Ranks, Part 1: The Court of the North” 百官志一北面朝官.

26

Tian, “Liaodai shiqi Xi zu zai Chengde diqu huodong shiyi tankao.”

27

Inscription from the tomb of Yelü Longyou 隆祐 cited in Wang, “Liaodai Bohai shijia dazu kaoshu” [location: note 8].

28

Wang, “Liaodai Bohai shijia dazu kaoshu” op.cit.; Wang, “Liaodai shijia Dazu wenhua huodong shulun.”

29

Crossley, “Outside In” op.cit.

30

Liaoshi, 76: “Biography of Gao Mohan” 高模翰傳.

31

Zhang, “Liaodai Liaohai diqu de xuejiao jiaoyu yu ruxue” : 228; Wang, “You wugong dao wenzhi.”

32

Zhou, “Liaodai qianqi hanren zhongchen Gao Xun shengping fawei.” Gao Xun and his family apparently colluded with the Han Kuangsi lineage in the coup of 969 that put their candidate on the throne. See also Crossley, “Outside In,” op. cit., : 62. Evidently medieval historians of Liao assumed that the surname Gao (one of the dominant or “right” 右 surnames of Bohai) indicated Koguryŏ as contrasted to Mohe descent. LS 76: 高姓人物傳記. The origins of a third individual suramed Gao mentioned in the LiaoshiLS (75), Gao Zheng 正, are specifially stated to be unknown.

33

Wittfogel and Feng referred to the nanyuan (nan-yüan) variously as the “southern government,” “government of the South,” “court of the Southern government,” and so on (see :134, 682, passim), and translated nan-yüan shu-mi-shi of the Southern Chancellery as “Chancellor of the Southern Division.” (:474). This was the central office of the “southern” administration (南院), often represented as a Chinese counterpart to the Kitan Northern administration (北院). The sumptuary laws and linguistic practices of the empire were divided along “northern” (Kitan) and “southern” (Han) lines, in conformity with Abaoji’s prescriptions. Southern chancellors were usually not Chinese. They were very often Kitan of the Yelü lineage, but no rule applied; the Xiao consort lineage often held the Southern Chancellery, more often held the Northern, and sometimes held both. The apparent key criteria for appointment to both the Southern and Northern chancellorships were demonstrated loyalty and competence; cultural or lineage origins were of little real significance. The institutions are summarized in the Liaoshi monograph (志) on the “Hundred Officials,” Liaoshi, juan 44–45: 遼國官制, 分南、北院. 北面治宮帳、部族、屬國之政, 南面治漢人州縣、租賦、軍馬之事.” See also Crossley, “Outside In” : 68–69.

34

Wittfogel and Feng, History of Chinese Society: Liao : 58.

35

Chifeng International Collaborative Archaeological Research Project, Settlement Patterns in the Chifeng Region : 134–139. The Zhongjingdao (中京道) region was the most densely populated of the Liao emperial territories, with a peak of about 1.2 million.

36

See for example Wang, “Jilin Xibei bu Liao Jin shiqi no ngye gaodu fazhan yuanyin chudao.”

37

For background see Im, “Parhaein ŭi Kŏran naeji roŭi kangje ch’ŏnsa wa kŏjuji kŏmt’o”

38

Archaeological findings go both ways: They show the influence of Bohai building and city plans upon the Kitans, and they demonstrate the distinctiveness of Bohai settlements in the very early decades after Abaoji-period resettlement. For background on Liao-period Bohai only see Kim. “Bohai (Parhae) Studies in the Soviet Union.”; Kradin et alia, “Emgentin Kherem, a Fortress Settlement of the Khitans in Mongolia.”; Kradin and Ivliev. “Deported Nation: The Fate of the Bohai People of Mongolia.”; Kradin and Ivliev. “The Downfall of the Bohai State and the Ethnic Structure of the Kitan City of Chintolgoi Balgas, Mongolia.”; Kim. “Archaeological Studies of Bohai in Russia.” Oriens Extremus 47 (2008): 302–312.

39

Im, “Yodae chehalsa wa Tonggyŏng chiyŏk ŭi kunsa chojik.”. On recent excavations at Kedun see Michal Biran, “Unearthing the Liao Dynasty’s Relations with the Muslim World,” 243.

40

Liaoshi, 37 “Essay 志 7: Geography Part 1, Shangjing Circuit 地理志 1, 上京道, 懷州. See also Im Sangsŏn, “Parhaein ŭi Kŏran naeji roŭi kangje ch’ŏnsa wa kŏjuji kŏmt’o” op. cit., p. 195.

41

See Zhang Guoqing, “Liaodai Liaohai diqu de xuejiao jiaoyu yu ruxue” op.cit., especially 227–228.

42

Sawamoto, “Kittan no tōchi kyū Bokkai ryō tōchi to Tōtan koku no kōzō,” op. cit.

43

Im, “Parhaein ŭi Kŏran naeji roŭi kangje ch’ŏnsa wa kŏjuji kŏmt’o,” op. cit., : 195.

44

See for example Wang, “Jilin Xibei bu Liao Jin shiqi no ngye gaodu fazhan yuanyin chudao.”

45

Crossley, “Outside In” op.cit.

46

Liaoshi, 61 “Essay 志 30: Punishments and Law, Part 1” 第三十刑法志上.

47

Most historians understand the dynastic titles of Liao, Jin, and Qing as references to rivers that had figured prominently in their formative histories. In the Jin case, it was supposed to be a reference to the Anchu (Jurchen “gold”) River, where gold was panned by local peoples. Debates about the introduction of the name and its relationship to the actual political history of the early Jurchen state have flourished. For in depth discussion of the debate see Chan, “The Dating of the Founding of the Jurchen-Jin State.”

48

McBride, Domesticating the Dharma : 58–61. I am indebted to one of my reviewers for clues leading to this and the following source.

49

In 911, the name was changed again to T’aebong. Ledyard, Gari. “Yin and Yang in the China-Manchuria-Korea Triangle” : 351.

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