A History of China (37 page)

However, shortly thereafter, all three of these intersecting and interacting neighbors – the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, and the Tang – faced internal divisions and weaknesses, which contributed to their loss of influence and authority in central Asia. The Uyghurs were the first to be dislodged from central Asia, as they were bedeviled by conflicts among their rulers and their elite. In 840, the Kyrgyz nomadic confederation ousted the Uyghurs from Mongolia. At about the same time, turmoil wracked Tibet, as the king was assassinated and the succession was disrupted. The unsettled conditions undermined Tibet’s foreign endeavors, and around 850 it began to lose its grip on one after another of its central Asian oases. The principal towns and oases that the Tibetans had so assiduously overwhelmed and occupied in the previous century now broke away and restored their independence, although most nominally accepted Tang sovereignty. However, the Tang’s own pressing financial and political problems diverted it from efforts to reimpose its rule on these central Asian sites.

Additional evidence of the Tang’s decline may be observed in the mid-ninth­-century suppression of Buddhism, regarded as one of the few major religious persecutions in Chinese history. The Tang imperial family had, from the ­outset, been linked with Daoism, and the Dezong and Xianzong ­(778–820) emperors were ardent Daoists and less sympathetic to Buddhism. Paradoxically, the astonishing success of Buddhism during the Tang aroused suspicion and hostility, which the financially drained dynasty appears to have manipulated for its own purposes. An 819 memorial by the renowned Confucian Han Yu (768–824) expressed the resentment of intellectuals about Buddhism. In urging less court support for Buddhism, Han Yu emphasized its non-Chinese nature and its supposed clash with Chinese values and practices. Buddhism had been imported from abroad, and the Buddha himself was of “barbarian origin.” The Buddha’s message was expressed in “barbarian” language, which had prevented him from understanding the significance to the Chinese of the family and the emperor. Han Yu added several scurrilous remarks about an esteemed sacred relic, a bone of the Buddha. Other critics also dwelt on Buddhism as a foreign religion and its supposed deviation from Chinese customs and beliefs. Still other Chinese found the celibacy of Buddhist monks and the calls for deprivation of ­sensual pleasures repugnant.

Emperor Wuzong (814–846), who also favored Daoism, had more mundane motivations for unleashing an assault on Buddhism. The Buddhist ­monasteries, through lavish benefactions from fervent believers, through gifts and ­exemptions from the court, and through their own exertions, had amassed considerable wealth, making them vulnerable to a declining and fiscally strapped dynasty. Some had substantial estates, and careful cultivation of their lands had generated sizable profits, most of which was tax free. Similarly, monks and nuns were not liable for taxes or military service, a fact that enraged many ordinary Chinese. Such prosperity had enabled the monasteries to construct elaborate building complexes and to fashion gold and silver objects. This wealth attracted attention and made the Buddhists a prime target in the hostilities that erupted in unstable times. In 843, the fourth year of his reign, Wuzong and his minister Li Deyu signaled their intention to act against the Buddhist clergy. The court mandated that monks who had married, served as physicians, or in any other way breached monastic regulations be defrocked. Shortly thereafter, it expanded the order to include the Manichean clergy, the religious group with whom the Uyghurs were identified. Several thousand nuns and monks were expelled, and the court confiscated much of the property owned by the Manicheans.

From the initial mandate until Wuzong’s death in 846, the court issued edicts and pronouncements that amounted to a full-scale campaign against the Buddhist religious establishment. Ennin (793 or 794–864), a Japanese Buddhist pilgrim, chanced to be in China at this very time, and his account of his observations offers a graphic description of the repressive policies directed against the Buddhists. According to his narrative, the court chipped away at one Buddhist custom or privilege after another. Initially it banned Buddhist fasting periods; then it prevented Buddhists from worshipping certain sacred relics and defaced or destroyed a number of Buddhist images and texts. Early in 845, it launched its most devastating assaults on Buddhism, first confiscating the estates of many monasteries and subsequently ordering local officials throughout the empire to provide a list of the monks, nuns, and monasteries within their jurisdictions. It used these lists when it unleashed its systematic attack later in the year. Within a short time, the court ordered the razing of about forty thousand small, predominantly rural temples and shrines and sanctioned the destruction of more than four thousand monasteries, permitting only one temple for each important prefecture and four each in Changan and Luoyang, the two capitals. About a quarter of a million monks and nuns were defrocked, and approximately 150,000 laborers who had toiled in the estates and ­workshops of the monasteries were “freed” (although they were now liable for taxation). Buddhist scriptures and venerated relics were damaged or irreparably destroyed, and court officials confiscated and then melted down gold and silver statues, the residue going into the government’s coffers. Emperor Wuzong’s death in 846 brought a halt to this devastating persecution of Buddhists. However, Buddhism never recovered the political and economic power it had attained during the Tang.

In light of this devastation, it might seem strange to argue that the ­suppression of Buddhism was probably not based on religious discrimination. Instead, economic considerations motivated the court’s subjugation of Buddhism. There were, by and large, no major doctrinal disputes that ­precipitated the attack. Fervent believers continued to worship without hindrance. The more intellectually inclined were still attracted by the Buddhist worldview. Buddhism did not disappear from China, nor did the court proscribe its message or censor or ban its writings. The secular activities of the Buddhist hierarchy and its resulting economic prosperity, not its ideology, provoked the repression.

The court’s newly obtained wealth from the Buddhist monasteries did not, ­however, stem its continued decline. Though Chinese and foreign contemporary observers wrote that the country was remarkably prosperous and appeared to be well organized, tax evasion and government corruption remained rampant. The number of landless and thus homeless peasants who had been unable to pay taxes or had been compelled to sell or commend their land to tax-exempt landlords or simply give up their lands increased. Government policies accelerated, rather than arrested, rural distress. Eunuchs continued to meddle in and control court decision making and to decide upon the imperial succession, and, in at least two cases, they murdered an emperor. The emperors were less competent, and instability and irregularities at court almost predictably led to banditry, rebellion, and outbreaks by the court’s own demoralized troops. The initial insurrections in the 850s and 860s originated either along the frontiers or in regions far from the capitals, but the incidence of rebellions within the central core of China increased. To deflect such outbreaks, the court on occasion pledged to provide relief to the peasants and others who were suffering as a result of the turbulence afflicting China, but its efforts were feeble and were often subverted by its own officials.

Such minimal responses to the social and economic crises in the ­countryside naturally stimulated further outbreaks. It would be misleading to label these disturbances peasant rebellions since they involved such a mélange of ­criminals, peasants, disaffected military men, vagabonds, petty thieves, failed civil-­service examination candidates, and locally powerful individuals who lacked formal education and were thus blocked from entrance into officialdom. In fact, peasants often suffered from the depredations of these groups. Commanders of the rebel bands were not of peasant origin. Huang Chao (d. 884), the eventual principal leader of a so-called peasant rebellion, had initially studied for but failed the civil-service examinations. Without other prospects, he then joined with a certain Wang Xianzhi (d. 878) in the selling and, allegedly, smuggling of salt.

Huang Chao’s biography in the Tang dynastic history attributes the ­rebellion he and Wang Xianzhi organized to brigandage, but does not deny the famine that struck the peasantry in some regions. The difference in the rebellion led by Wang and Huang and other earlier outbreaks was location. Wang and Huang attacked and occupied areas in the heartland, not the periphery, of China, whereas the earlier violence had been confined to the frontiers. Starting in 874, Wang’s forces moved into various sites around the eastern section of the country directly north of the Yangzi River, and by 876 they had captured towns close to Luoyang. Rifts between Wang and Huang surfaced at that point, temporarily weakening the rebels and leading to a Tang victory over and execution of Wang in 878. Huang became the unrivalled commander of the rebel forces and headed toward south China, the most prosperous region in the country. In 879, his troops entered and sacked Guangzhou, the formerly thriving port for trade with Southeast Asia, India, and west Asia. An Arab account written by Abu Zaid of Siraf within a couple of decades of Huang’s rebellion estimated that Huang’s forces massacred 120,000 Muslims, Jews, and other foreigners. Arab historian al-Mas’udi, in a text written in the mid tenth century, put the figure at 200,000. Both numbers are inflated, but they nonetheless indicate that the rebels attributed some of China’s problems to the exploitation of ­foreigners, particularly merchants.

Despite his initial victories, Huang Chao had a fatal flaw: he was unable to gain the support of the skilled administrators who could have helped him ­govern the regions he had occupied. Perceiving him as a rebel, they steered clear of him, making him appear more like a plunderer than a ruler. Although he moved into regions of south China, he did not establish an administration. In 880 he occupied Luoyang and in 881 his troops entered Changan, but the results were no different. He failed to set up a government, and within a few months Tang troops challenged his control over Changan. The Chinese sources attribute his ineffectiveness in attracting educated administrators to his bloodthirstiness and his cavalier condoning of massacres. During the struggle for Changan, he reputedly slaughtered eighty thousand innocents when he recaptured the city. Such evidence naturally reflects the official viewpoint of the Chinese winners in this conflict and, as such, is suspect. To be sure, many noncombatants were brutally murdered, but there is no reason to believe that Huang’s forces were any more vindictive or malevolent than the Tang troops. It was simply that the excesses of Huang’s forces were recorded and, without doubt, exaggerated, while the violent misdeeds of the imperial armies were ignored. The view that Huang was responsible for the absolute devastation of Changan is also overstated. After about two thousand years of serving as one of China’s capitals, Changan never became the capital of a united country. Huang’s own actions appear, however, to challenge the notion that he deliberately ransacked the city. In 880, he founded the Greater Qi dynasty in Changan. There would seem to be little reason to destroy the city he hoped to establish as his capital. The four years of battles and sieges that followed his accession probably did as much damage to the city as the pillaging by his own forces. Here again the Chinese sources portray a loser – a “rebel” – in the most ­negative light.

By 882, the court had recognized that its army could not, by itself, ­overwhelm the rebels. A stalemate had developed around Changan. Like their ancestors in the mid eighth century who had summoned foreign troops to help in ­crushing the An Lushan rebellion, court officials made the fateful decision to call upon foreigners to subdue Huang Chao and to prop up the existing dynasty. In 883, the court sought the assistance of Li Keyong (856–908), a Shato Turk then residing in the modern province of Shanxi, to suppress the rebels. Within a year, Li Keyong had reasserted imperial authority in Changan and had so soundly trounced the rebels that Huang, unwilling to surrender or to fall into enemy hands, committed suicide. The Tang had been restored, and the court returned to the capital, but at a significant cost.

The Tang did not have a lengthy respite after the failure of Huang’s ­rebellion. Its financial system was chaotic; it could not count upon a steady supply of revenue through taxes; many civilian and military governors had become ever freer of court control; foreigners such as Li Keyong dominated north-central and northeast China; and eunuchs persisted in exerting power in the capital. Court policy was almost suicidal. It antagonized Li Keyong, the very leader who had saved the dynasty, and by 890 a war had erupted with the Shato ruler. The court continued to decline, which permitted Zhu Wen (852–912), a former ally of Huang Chao, to occupy the capital, execute many eunuchs, and murder one of the emperors. In 907, he took the final step of overthrowing the last Tang emperor and establishing the Liang dynasty, with himself as Emperor Taizu. He controlled part of north China but was unable to assert his authority over much of the rest. Li Keyong ruled modern Shanxi and northern Hebei, and his Shato Turks contested the Liang’s power for the remainder of its troubled tenure (less than two decades). South China fragmented into what became known as the Ten Kingdoms, none of which could forge unity. In effect, in its lack of a centralized government, post-Tang China came to ­resemble the post-Han era and the Warring States period.

Before its almost anticlimactic demise, the Tang had witnessed a splendid cultural efflorescence. The economic prosperity, the political stability, and the spirited élan of the initial phases of Tang rule provided a favorable environment for literature and the visual arts, the latter of which was described earlier. Like the patronage offered to the arts, the imperial and elite support for literature nurtured the careers of remarkable writers. The support of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism in the early Tang offered a philosophical and religious underpinning and thus fostered literature and art as well. Similarly, Tang cosmopolitanism offered exposure to foreigners and foreign ideas and products, which influenced the themes and styles addressed by the writers.