Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (39 page)

TIBET

From the mid-tenth century on, after a century about which very little is known, a cultural resurgence in the form of the restoration of institutional Buddhism began in the former lands of the Tibetan Empire. Because the postimperial historical sources on Tibet are almost completely religious in interest and were written by monks,
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little is known about the political entities that supported the Buddhist revival. It is generally accepted that monastic Buddhism has always spread widely only with state support, and indeed, the earliest movement to reinstitute Buddhism is known to have been undertaken by King Yeśes ‘Od of Guge in western Tibet, who was captured during a military campaign against the Karluk Turks and died in captivity. It is thus clear that the religious restoration followed pol itical expansion, just as it did in the rest of Eurasia.
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The fact that the Guge royal dynasty claimed descent from the lineage of the Tibetan imperial family, whether justified or not, strongly supports the supposition that their primary goal was the restoration of the family’s long-lost imperial power.

The Buddhist movement began in three areas outside of Central Tibet: the east (modern Khams Province), the northeast (modern Amdo Province), and the Guge Kingdom in the northwest (modern Mngáris Province). The variety of Buddhism that spread again in Tibet was perhaps a continuation of the form that had developed there during the Tibetan Empire and had been barely maintained by monks living in frontier regions. However, under the influence of the great Guge teacher Rin-chen Bzangpo (985–1055), who had studied in India, and especially after the arrival of Âtiśa (d. 1054)—an Indian teacher from the monastery of Vikramaśîlâ in Magadha, India, who had come to the kingdom in 1042 at the invitation of Byang-chub ‘Od, brother of the new king ‘Od-lde—a newer form of Buddhism spread at the expense of the older teachings. This form of esoteric Buddhism was based on the New Tantras translated by Rin-chen Bzangpo and Âtiśa, among others.
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Âtiśa subsequently moved to Central Tibet and taught there until his death; it is probable that his move there was accompanied by the pol itical movement of his Guge patrons in that direction as well.

The most important single political-religious development in Tibet at this time was, however, due to ‘Brog-mi, a contemporary of Âtiśa, who had studied in Vikramaśîlâ for eight years before returning to Tibet. In 1043 he built a monastery in Gtsang Province in Central Tibet, brought a teacher from India, and took in students, including members of the powerful ‘Khon clan. In 1073 he founded the monastery of Saskya, which was kept under the control of one or another branch of the ‘Khon clan by having the usual succession of celibate abbots pass from uncle to nephew. The power of the ‘Khon clan grew along with their Saskyapa sect until they were the leading Tibetan Buddhist sect, and perhaps the dominant political power, by the early thirteenth century.

The major sectarian division of Tibetan Buddhism developed at this time. The majority practitioners, who relied on texts translated from Sanskrit for their legitimacy, referred to Buddhism as Chos,
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while the others referred to it as Bon.
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Within the
Chos
tradition many sects developed.
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Buddhism in its new forms quickly spread across Tibet and displaced earlier forms of the religion.

NORTH CHINA AND THE EASTERN STEPPE

After the Rebellion of Huang Ch’ao (d. 884), which grew from banditry to devastate much of the remaining T’ang realm—including even the far southeastern port of Canton, where the rebel slaughtered an estimated 120,000 people, mainly Arab, Persian, and other foreign merchants—the power of the T’ang Dynasty effectively ended and Littoral zone commercial ports further south, outside China, supplanted Canton in importance.
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The northern and western regions that had been under Chinese domination, including the southern part of the Eastern Steppe and the eastern edge of Central Asia, were dominated by Central Eurasian peoples in Chinese-style semi-independent states, many of which gradually became fully independent.
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They ruled over territory that included both part of Central Eurasia and part of North China and competed with each other and with Chinese-ruled states to the south.

As the T’ang collapsed, a plethora of small local dynasties were created by former governors and generals in what had been T’ang territory. One of the earliest Sino-Central Eurasian states to form, and the first large one, was based in Ho-tung, the province east of the great bend of the Yellow River. It began as a semi-independent province ruled by the Sha-t’o Turkic general Li K’o-yung (r. 883–907), who defeated Huang Ch’ao in 883 and forced him to withdraw from North China. In 913 Li K’o-yung’s son Li Ts’un-hsü (r. 907–926) defeated the ruler of Lu-lung, the long-independent northeastern province that had been An Lu-shan’s power base. In 923 he overthrew the large realm of Later Liang (907–923), which had included the two former T’ang capitals and had been founded by the former ally of Huang Ch’ao who brought about the violent final end of the T’ang.
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Li Ts’un-hsü then declared his establishment of the Later T’ang Dynasty (923–937). With the Sha-t’o unification of North China proper, plus most of the Sino-Central Eurasian frontier west of Manchuria (except for the Tangut-ruled area of the eastern Ordos along the Great Wall directly across the Yellow River to their west), the Sha-t’o, followed by the Chin (937–946) and Han (947–950) dynasties, had to face the growing power of their erstwhile ally—the Liao Dynasty founded by the Mongolic Khitan to their north and northeast—who repeatedly attacked them in the 940s.
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The Hsi-hsia (’Western Hsia’) Dynasty, based in the Ordos, owed its founding to the descendants of Tibeto-Burman-speaking Tangut (Miñak) people there, most of whom had migrated from their homeland in northeastern Tibet under pressure from the growing Tibetan Empire. They had been settled in the eastern Ordos region in the early T’ang period. By the time of the An Lu-shan Rebellion, the Tanguts were the dominant local power in the region. Late in the T’ang, their chief T’o-pa Ssu-kung (r. 881-ca. 895), head of the traditional leading clan of the Tangut, drove the rebel Huang Ch’ao from the capital, Ch’ang-an and, as a reward, was appointed military governor of the three prefectures of Hsia, Sui, and Yin. Under his successors, the Tanguts slowly expanded to the southwest in the direction of their old homeland in northeastern Tibet and westward toward Central Asia. In 1002 they captured Ling-chou, to the west of their Hsia-chou home, and made it their first capital, renaming it Hsi-p’ing-fu the following year. They formally proclaimed their dynasty in 1038. As the Tanguts prospered and their state continued to grow, they built a new capital directly to the west across the Yellow River.
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They gradually added half of Kansu and the former Tibetan Empire territories south of Hsi-ning as far as the Tibetan Ch’ing-t’ang Kingdom and established a prosperous, stable empire that lasted into the Mongol epoch, despite frequent wars with the Tibetans and others to their southwest and with the Chinese of the Sung Dynasty (Northern Sung 960–1125; Southern Sung 1125–1279)
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on their southeastern border. The Tanguts came to dominate east-west trade from China to Central Asia—to some extent resuscitating the early T’u-yü-hun realm in this respect—but they also controlled some of the north-south trade between China and the Eastern Steppe because their empire also extended to the east across the Ordos, where it faced the Khitan to the north and east.

A number of small kingdoms founded by Chinese, Uighurs, and Tibetans arose in the Kansu and Kokonor area that had constituted the heart of the Mdosmad Province of the Tibetan Empire. The most important of these was Ch’ing-t’ang, in the Kokonor area. The kingdom prospered by serving as an alternative route for merchants passing between Eastern Central Asia and Sung China. It also occasionally assisted the Sung militarily in its struggle with the Tanguts, who expanded up to the borders of Ch’ing-t’ang and exerted a great deal of pressure on the kingdom.
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The Khitan, a Mongolic-speaking people whose ancestors had come out of the Hsien-pei confederation in late Antiquity,
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had begun dominating the area to the northeast of China in the early T’ang period.
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After the T’ang Dynasty’s collapse, under the leadership of A-pao-chi (r. 907/916–926, posthumously T’ai-tsu), founder of the Liao Dynasty (916–1125), they expanded into northeastern China, the Eastern Steppe (924),
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and southern Manchuria.
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The Khitan thus ruled the eastern area of the frontier that overlapped former North China and Central Eurasia, while the Tanguts ruled the western area of the frontier. Both realms included territory inhabited mainly by Chinese and territory inhabited mainly by Central Eurasians. Like some other Central Eurasian peoples in the northeast, the Khitan still practiced the traditional comitatus, at least during their formative years, and their state was clearly organized around the “khan and four bey” system, with a particularly interesting variant in which the Khitan had five capitals, or
ordu,
one for each of the four directions plus one for the center.
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The Khitan maintained a strong presence in the Eastern Steppe partly because of opposition to Sinicization by Khitan conservatives who wanted to preserve their nomadic life-style. Both steppe and settled Khitan were later of crucial importance to the Mongols’ success in North China. The Khitan established a very close relationship with the Uighurs during the Liao Dynasty period.
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Between 1120 and 1123 the Liao Dynasty was overthrown by the Tungusic Jurchen, who had long been enemies of the Khitan.

The Jurchen were in origin a Southern Tungusic–speaking forest people from far eastern Manchuria (the modern Russian area of Primor’e). They were not steppe nomads like the Mongolic Khitan and later Mongols. Nevertheless, they became acquainted with the steppe style of warfare and state formation during the long period in which the Jurchen were subjects of the Khitan. After soundly defeating the Khitan armies sent against them in Manchuria, in 1115 the Jurchen declared themselves an empire under the Chin (’gold’) Dynasty. They pressed their advantage against the weakened Liao, capturing their remaining territory in southern Manchuria. In 1117 the Sung Dynasty attempted to reach an agreement with the Chin to cooperate in the defeat and partition of the Liao territory. The Sung hoped thereby to restore Chinese territorial control over much of the region once governed by the T’ang in the north. But the Jurchen had already become strong enough that they did not need the Sung, and the Sung attacks on the Liao failed. The Chin and Sung then signed a treaty in 1123 whereby the Chin would allow the Sung to retake a small part of the Liao territory in return for payment annually of 200,000 taels of silver and 300,000 bolts of silk as recompense for lost income from the territories in question. With the capture and deposition of the last Liao prince in 1125, the Jurchen replaced the Khitan as rulers of northeastern China and Manchuria. However, Sung relations with the Jurchen deteriorated, and in 1125 the Jurchen invaded Sung, capturing Shansi and Hopei and crossing the Yellow River to besiege the Sung capital at K’ai-feng, directly east of Loyang.

The Sung accepted the Chin peace terms, by which the Sung gave up the lost provinces and agreed to pay an annual indemnity of 300,000 taels of silver, 300,000 bolts of silk, and one million strings of bronze coins. In 1126 the king of Koryo (Korea) accepted Chin vassal status, as had the Tangut Hsi-hsia. When the Sung violated some terms of the treaty, the Chin again attacked, this time capturing and sacking K’ai-feng. The emperor and the retired emperor Hui-tsung (one of the greatest artists and calligraphers in Chinese history) and many other members of the imperial court were taken captive. Hui-tsung abdicated, and the Sung enthroned another emperor, but the dynasty was essentially defeated. The Chin returned home in 1127, leaving a diminished Sung, which was forced to move the capital still further south to Hang-chou, in 1138. Nevertheless, the Sung proved stronger than the Jurchen had anticipated and recovered some of its lost territory. Another treaty was finally signed in 1142, in which the border was set as the Huai River and an annual tribute of 250,000 taels of silver and bolts of silk were to be paid to the Chin.
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When the Liao Dynasty fell to the Jurchen, a Khitan leader, Yeh-lü Ta-shih, proclaimed himself
wang
‘prince’ and abandoned the inept last Khitan ruler in 1124.
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He fled north into the steppe to the Khitan garrison at Kedun in the Orkhon River region to gather the forces that remained there. In 1130 he led his followers, including Khitans, Mongols, and Chinese, among others, northwestward out of Kedun. In 1131 or 1132,
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during what became a careful move that turned increasingly westward, he took the innovative title Gür Khan ‘universal ruler’,
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declared a Chinese-style dynastic reign-period title, and renewed the traditional Khitan overlordship over the Uighur Kingdom in the northern Tarim Basin.
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In 1134 the Eastern Karakhanid ruler in Balâsâghûn, in the Chu River valley near the Issyk Kul, asked for Yeh-lü Ta-shih’s help against the Karluk and Kangli tribesmen in his territory. Yeh-lü Ta-shih accepted. He marched into Balâsâghûn unopposed and promptly made the Karakhanid his vassal. Yeh-lü Ta-shih established his capital there in a new Khitan-style imperial encampment, Quz Ordo, and began sending his governors over all the territory of the former Eastern Karakhanids.
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Failing in an attempt to overthrow the Jurchen in 1134, he abandoned any further attempts to reestablish the Khitan in their former eastern realm. Despite such setbacks, he continued to expand his new empire until he had established his authority in the east over Kashgar, Khotan, the Kirghiz, and Beshbalik. In the west he defeated the Western Karakhanid ruler at Khujand in May 1137 and cemented the victory by his subsequent defeat of Sultan Sanjar, ruler of the Seljuks, on September 9, 1141, in the Battle of Qatwân, near Samarkand. As a result, Yeh-lü Ta-shih added Transoxiana to his realm and extended his sway as far as Khwârizm, whose ruler he forced to pay tribute (from 1142).
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The new empire came to be known as the Kara Khitai or ‘Black Khitan’ and also as a Chinese-style dynasty, the Western Liao. After the death of the Gür Khan Yeh-lü Ta-shih in 1143, the Kara Khitai focused their attention entirely on their new empire, which in the east encompassed East Turkistan and Jungharia, extending as far as western Mongolia, and in the west Transoxiana, extending as far as the growing realm of Khwarizmia.