A Jurchin Prince

This is a jurchen Prince of the Jin Dynasty.  They were a tribe related to the Manchu and a little more distantly to the Mongols. They had been a vassal in the Liao dynasty until they revulted and supplanted them.

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Xuanzong and Yang Guifei Sprinkling Cold Water on the Barbarian

Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei 

Sprinkling Cold Water on the Barbarian 

During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong  the T'ang Chinese made deep inroads into Turkestan right up to the borders of modern day Iran. They were forced to pull back when defeated by an Arab army of Islam at the battle of Talas.
These adventures in Central Asia caused an infusion of Soghian and Turkish culture into China. We can see in this period a huge upsurge in Central Asian Funeral objects in Chinese tombs.

Tang Dynasty Camels with Riders and Pet Monkeys 

When the T'ang invaded the Tarim Basin they faced the Sogdians and GokTurks, The Turks responded by showering the Chinese with the best of Turkish culture. Not the austere and constrained face of Islamic culture but the joyful exuberance of the Tengri worshiping urks of old.

Bactrian Camel with Musicians 

The doors opened and trade flourished Musicians as we see above flooded into China introducing new music and new dance.

But this shift triggered a backlash that culminated when the emperor Xuanzong's concubine Yang Guifei performed the "Sprinkling Cold Water on the Barbarian" dance at court. This was a Turkic dance that involved dancing nude in water and frolicking in mud. Proper Chinese court society was outraged and the dance was outlawed.

An 18th century Japanese painting Xuan Zong and Yang Guifei by Harunobu

Xuan Zong and Yang Guifei are forever immortalized in a poem that over a billion students have learned in China and Japan.

The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

China’s Emperor yearning, for beauty that shakes a kingdom,
Reigned for many years, searching but not finding,
Until a child of the Yang, hardly yet grown,
Raised in the inner chamber, unseen by anybody,
But with heavenly graces that could not be hidden,
Was chosen one day for the Imperial household.
If she turned her head and smiled she cast a deep spell,
Beauties of Six Palaces vanished into nothing.
Hair’s cloud, pale skin, shimmer of gold moving,
Flowered curtains protected on cool spring evenings.
Those nights were too short. That sun too quick in rising.
The emperor neglected the world from that moment,
Lavished his time on her in endless enjoyment.
She was his springtime mistress, and his midnight tyrant.
Though there were three thousand ladies all of great beauty,
All his gifts were devoted to one person.
Li Palace rose high in the clouds.
The winds carried soft magic notes,
Songs and graceful dances, string and pipe music.
He could never stop himself from gazing at her.
But the Earth reels. War drums fill East Pass,
Drown out  ‘The Feathered Coat and Rainbow Skirt’.
Great Swallow Pagoda and Hall of Light,
Are bathed in dust - the army fleeing Southwards.
Out there Imperial banners, wavering, pausing
Until by the river forty miles from West Gate,
The army stopped. No one would go forward,
Until horses’ hooves trampled willow eyebrows.
Flower on a hairpin. No one to save it.
Gold and jade phoenix. No one retrieved it.
Covering his face the Emperor rode on.
Turned to look back at that place of tears,
Hidden by a yellow dust whirled by a cold wind.
As Shu waters flow green, Shu mountains show blue,
His majesty’s love remained, deeper than the new.
White moon of loneliness, cold moon of exile.
Bell-chimes in evening rain were bronze-edged heartbeats.
So when the dragon-car turned again northwards
The Emperor clung to Ma-Wei’s dust, never desiring
To leave that place of memories and heartbreak.
Where is the white jade in heaven and earth’s turning?
Lakes and gardens are still as they have been,
T’ai-yi’s hibiscus, Wei-yang’s willows.
A flower-petal was her face, a willow-leaf her eyebrow,
How could it not be grief just to see them?
Plum and pear blossoms blown on spring winds
Maple trees ruined in rains of autumn.
Palaces neglected, filled with weeds and grasses,
Mounds of red leaves spilled on unswept stairways.
Burning the midnight light he could not sleep,
Bells and drums tolled the dark hours,
The Ocean of Heaven bright before dawn,
The porcelain mandarin birds frosted white,
The chill covers of kingfisher blue,
Colder and emptier, year by year.
And the loved spirit never returning.
A Taoist priest of Ling-chun rode the paths of Heaven,
He with his powerful mind knew how to reach the Spirits.
The Courtiers troubled by the Emperor’s grieving,
Asked the Taoist priest if he might find her.
He opened the sky-routes, swept the air like lightning,
Looked everywhere, on earth and in heaven,
Scoured the Great Void, and the Yellow Fountains,
But failed in either to find the one he searched for.
Then he heard tales of a magic island
In the Eastern Seas, enchanted, eternal,
High towers and houses in air of five colours,
Perfect Immortals walking between them,
Among them one they called The Ever Faithful,
With her face, of flowers and of snow.
She left her dreams, rose from her pillow,
Opened mica blind and crystal screen,
Hastening, unfastened, clouded hair hanging,
Her light cap unpinned, ran along the pavement.
A breeze in her gauze, flowing with her movement,
As if she danced ‘Feathered Coat and Rainbow Skirt’.
So delicate her jade face, drowned with tears of sadness,
Like a spray of pear flowers, veiled with springtime rain.
She asked him to thank her Love, her eyes gleaming,
He whose form and voice she lost at parting.
Her joy had ended in Courts of the Bright Sun,
Moons and dawns were long in Faerie Palace.
When she turned her face to look back earthwards
And see Ch’ang-an - only mist and dust-clouds.
So she found the messenger her lover’s gifts
With deep feeling gave him lacquer box, gold hairpin,
Keeping one half of the box, one part of the hairpin,
Breaking the lacquer, splitting the gold.
‘Our spirits belong together, like these precious fragments,
Sometime, in earth or heaven, we shall meet again.’
And she sent these words, by the Taoist, to remind him
of their midnight vow, secret between them.
‘On that Seventh night, of the Herdboy and the Weaver,
In the silent Palace we declared our dream was
To fly together in the sky, two birds on the same wing,
To grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree.’
Earth fades, Heaven fades, at the end of days.
But Everlasting Sorrow endures always.
© Copyright on this poem  2000 A. S. Kline, All Rights Reserved

Bactrian Camel, Riders, and Dogs Early Tang Dynasty

Kashgar, Kashi. Kaxgar,Xinjiang ROC

Kashgar is the old name of Kashi (Kaxgar) in the  Xinjiang province of China. It is an Oasis city on the northern rim of the Tarim Basin. In the days of the Silk Route the route had two branches around the Tarim Basin, either north through Kashgar or south through Khotan (Hotan, Xinjiang

China). 

Abakh Khoja Tomb, Kashgar (Kaxgar), Haohan Village (Ayziret), Xinjiang
Yale University

Before Balasagun  Kashgar was the capitol of the Kara khanid confederation. It was populated primarily by Karluk who were part of the Kara khanid confederation. Of course the Kara Khanids were vassal to the Turkmen Seljuk.

By 1934 Kashgar was majority Uygur.  There was a significant Hui Hui minority and when the British tried to steal West China the Hui Hui who in the west were called Tongans or Dongans sacked the British Consulate killing many of the British provocateurs. 

Balasagun Kyrgyzstan

Balasagun is an ancient Sogdian city that gained in importance when the the  had their capital here, Then Western Liao moved west and made it their capital. The Sogdians were Indo-European and related to the Persians. The Western Liao were the Khitan and were akin to the Mongols and Tartars.

Burana Tower in Balasagun Kyrgyzstan

Balasagun is in the Chuy Valley between Bishkek and Issyk-Kul Lake. Balasagun was the leading city of the Kara-Khanid Khanate from 999 AD until it was taken by the Kara-Khitan Khanate in 1137. It was then captured by the Mongols in 1218. The Mongols called it Gobalik which means Pretty City.
When I look at the Burana Tower it reminds me of Seljuk architecture. That fits since the Kara Khanid were vassals of the Seljuk. In fact the beginning of the end for the Seljuk began when they lost to the Kara Khitans and the Karakhanids were forced out of Balasagun.

A Kara Khitan Hunting Party

I was looking for Jurchen queue when I found this picture of a Kara Khitan hunting party. When I saw the horse blanket I immediately thought of the classic Persian painting The Sleep of Rustam. See detail below

Here in Sleep of Rustam by Sultan Muhammad we see the traditional view of Rustan. Compare the stripes to the two saddle blankets. Rustam was not originally a Persian legend he came from further east. 

The striped horse blankets are from a tiger possibly the Siberian or Amur tiger.  I checked with my  my son Monty who is better at identifying  animals from  their pelt then anyone I know. H e also identified the other horse blanket as Leopard.

The man to the far left is the Khan and perhaps even the Gur Khan; Kuchlug. He was the last Gur Khan or King of the Kara Khitai. Gur Khan is Mongol/Khitan for supreme khan equivalent to Shahanshah or Shah of Shahs.

When the Liao were at their peak and the Jurchen were their vassal they forced the Jurchen to pay their vassalage with falcons. In fact the tribute roads were called Falcon Roads. 

See China Under Jurchen Rule: Essays on Chin Intellectual and Cultural History (S U N Y Series in Chinese Philosophy...Jan 1995 by Hoyt Cleveland Tillman and Stephen H. West page 26

The Yenisei River

Yenisei is a river in north central Siberia in the Russian Federation. It flows from the Sayan Mountains north to the Kara Sea. 2567 miles (4081 km) long.
This small and fairly obscure area is the ancestral home of the Tungusic, Mongolic, Manchu (Qinq) of China. Jin/Jurchen, Liao/Khitan and the "Native" people of the Americas.

The dragon and Phoenix in Liao Daily Life

Servants Carrying in Food (mural, Zhang Shiqing tomb, 1116), in Su Bai, ed., Zhongguo meishu quanji, huihua pian 12: Mushi bihua (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1989), pl. 171, p. 169. Mural to left of doorway, south wall, Tomb of Zhang Shiqing, Xiaba hamlet, Xuanhua County, Hebei province. approx. 180 cm h. x 310 cm w.

Zhang Shiqing's Tomb, East Wall in East Chamber (Liao Dynasty) 1093 - 1117, Xuanhua Xian, Chin

Burial practices of the Liao metal wire suits and involved puncturing the chest and removing the viscera and replacing with vegetal matter.  Guo Daibeng links this to earlier Northern Asian. Also No Chinese in the Liao dynasty were buried in metal wire suits.

Chinese Architecture by Fu Xinian and Guo Daiheng, Yale University Press (December 1, 2002)

The Jurchen AKA the later Jin dynasty

The Jurchen AKA the later Jin dynasty (1115–1234)  or the second Jin dynasty were a Tungusic people  that were later called the Manchu.

Here we have a small pattern textile typical of the Liao, Jurchen, Mongol tpe that the Mongols introduced to the west.

Scholars always want to tie the dragons to the Chinese They completly ignore the long tradition of dragons with the Khitan\Liao and the Jurchen.

Yelu Chucai Khitan/Mongol Statesmen Poet

Yelu Chucai b. 1190 d.1244. Chucai was of the Yelu clan of the Khitan /Ghidan. This was a Mongol dynasty that ruled Manchuria and Mongolia 916–1125. When the Khitan or Liao dynasty fell to the Jurchen (The later Jin also a Mongol people) Chucai’s branch of the family stayed and served the Jurchen while part of the family fled west and created a new kingdom the Western Liao. 

Here is a poem that Chucai wrote that is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  MMoA calls this poem "culturally Chinese". I think that if we were to apply MMoA logic to the Germans we would call them French since they ruled Northern France at least during WWII. It is hard to tell if that is arrogance, insensitivity, or are they simply Kowtowing to the Red Chinese goals of Pan-Asian hegemony. I must note under the Great Khan Ogodai Chucai was the chief administrator of the Mongol Empire. This at a time before the Yuan Dynasty.

"Half the population of Yun[zhong] and Xuan[de] have fled their homes;

Only the few thousand people under your care are secure.

You are among our dynasty's most able administrators.

Your good name is as lofty as Mount Tai.

On the sixteenth day of the tenth lunar month in the winter of the gengzi year, Liu Man of Yangmen requested that I write a poem on the eve of his departure. I wrote this for him in admiration of his administrative ability. Abusive officials and wily functionaries should feel ashamed! Yuquan [Yelü Chucai]"

Poem and image from:

http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/40105 

Liao Phoenix Pendant

 

Liao Dynasty A.D. 907 - 1125

Gold jewelry, gold, turquoise and agate.

From: http://www.china-art.asia/en/proView.php?proNo=514