25. WS 2.20; ZZTJ 106.3357–58.
26. Dengli 登利 being a Chinese transcription of Tengri (T·ngri), an epithet regularly attached to Khaghans: Kroll, A Student’s Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese, 81. See an example of this use in reference to a Türk “Khaghan of Heaven,” “Tengri Khaghan” 登利可汗: Jiu Tang shu 144A.5177. In SoS 95.2322 we are told of the Wei monarchs that “it was their custom to sacrifice to Heaven in the fourth month,” that is, in the spring. See also Kawamoto Yoshiaki 川本芳昭, Gi Shin Nanbokuchō jidai no minzoku mondai 魏晋南北朝时代の民族问题 (Tōkyō: Kyūko Shoin, 1998), 276ff.
27. Boodberg, “Marginalia to the Histories of the Northern Dynasties,” 308–12; and Luo Xin 罗欣, Hei zhan shang de Bei Wei huang di 黑毡上的北魏皇帝 (Beijing: Hai tun chu ban she, 2014), 17–18, who argues that this was the perpetuation of an Inner Asian ritual. Boodberg points out that this ritual was performed later in Inner Asian history; and it is seen among the Mongols, who are said to have been following a custom used by the Taghbach and the Türks: Rachewiltz, The Secret History of the Mongols, 1: 316–17.
28. JS 9.235, 123.3086–87; ZZTJ 106.3358.
29. WS 2.20; ZZTJ 106.3364.
30. Jennifer Holmgren, “The Harem in Northern Wei Politics,” JESHO 26.1 (1983): 76; Andrew Eisenberg, Kingship in Early Medieval China (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 32ff.; Luo Xin 罗新, “Bei Wei zhi qin kao” 北魏直勤考, in his Zhong gu bei zu ming hao yan jiu, 80–107.
31. BS 22.805 (WS 25.643); ZZTJ 106.3351. Following the note in Bei shi, 831–32 note 1, here I use the wording in WS 25.643 rather than BS 22.805. Li, Bei Wei Pingcheng shi dai, 42, reads xiang yi as “farmers” accompanying Zhangsun’s people.
32. It has been suggested that this was part of the basis for the claim in the southern histories that Shiyijian was taken to Chang’an: Zhang, Bei Wei zheng zhi shi, 1: 172–73.
33. WS 2.21; BS 15.579 (WS 15.385); ZZTJ 106.3368.
34. WS 27.661–62. This clan, important in the early Wei, is the first of the nei ru groups in Wei shu’s “Monograph on Offices and Clans” (113.3006). Their original name was Qiumuling 丘穆陵, shortened to Mu under Xiaowen; his name in the Wei shu text is thus “Mu Chong.” See Yao, Bei chao Hu xing kao, 25–28.
35. The wolf is of course a symbol in the mythologies of many societies, often playing a more important role than it did among the Taghbach in the making of peoples. The origins of the Mongols, for instance, was attributed to the mating of a Blue Wolf with a doe: Rachewiltz, Secret History of the Mongols, 1: 1, 224. Much earlier, the wolf was a prominent theme in Chinese animal art of the Bronze Age, and also among the Xiongnu: see Bunker, Ancient Bronzes, 49–51, and figure 194 on p. 238; and a piece ascribed to the Xiongnu, figure 241 on p. 273. It was also a prominent theme among the Türks, in the centuries after the Taghbach: see Findley, The Turks in World History, 38; Michael R. Drompp, “The Lone Wolf in Inner Asia,” JAOS 131.4 (2011): 515–26; and Peter Golden, “Imperial Ideology and the Sources of Unity among the Pre-·inggisid Nomads of Western Eurasia,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 2 (1982): 37–76. Esther Jacobson-Tepfer, The Hunter, the Stag, and the Mother of Animals: Image, Monument, and Landscape in Ancient North Asia (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 221, in discussing the wolf describes the “delight with the world of wild animals” taken by peoples of Inner Asia. As mentioned above, one of the titles of the Northern Wei emperor Taiwu was “Wolf Lord”; see Chapter 1 and its note 4. For more on the theme among the Taghbach, see Yang Yongjun 杨永俊, “Lun Tuoba Xianbei de dong wu chong bai yi cun” 论拓跋鲜卑的动物崇拜遗存, rpt. in Zou chu shi ku de Bei Wei wang chao, ed. Jin Zhao and Alede’ertu (Beijing: Wen hua yi shu chu ban she, 2010), 2: 623–24.
36. BS 15.580 (WS 15.385–86).
37. ZZTJ 106.3372. See also the passage under the eighth month of 388 in ZZTJ 107.3385, taken from BS 15.561–62 (WS 15.370).
38. WS 23.606, 24.613; ZZTJ 107.3378–79.
39. WS 2.23.
40. WS 2.34; ZZTJ 111.3486–88. On the importance of these raids onto the steppe in building Wei power, see Klein, “Contributions of the Fourth Century Xianbei States,” 77–80; on seizure of goods and people as a critical contribution to the early Wei treasury, see Wang, Zhuan xing qi de Bei Wei cai zheng yan jiu, Chapter 1.
41. Sagawa, “You mu yu nong geng zhi jian,” suggests that among its other purposes, the Deer Park served as the imperial house’s ranch.
42. WS 2.23, 24; BS 80.2671 (WS 83A.1812); ZZTJ 107.3396–99.
43. Such practices are not seen only in East Asia. Bradley Parker in his chapter “What’s the Big Picture· Comparative Perspectives on the Archaeology of Empire,” in The Archaeology of Imperial Landscapes: A Comparative Study of Empires in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean World, ed. Bleda S. Düring and Tesse Dieder Stek (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 342, describes forcible resettlement in the Incan empire of highland herdsmen to function as more easily controlled farmers in the lowlands, suggesting similar practices may have taken place in the ancient Near East. Though it would be an exaggeration for the situation in Dai to say as Parker suggests for the Incan and neo-Assyrian empires that “[I]n an effort to limit the mobility of some indigenous populations and perhaps because grain surpluses might be more easily controlled and diverted than animal resources, imperial authorities monopolized herding thus removing it from the local economy,” still we can see in and around the Datong Basin a counterpart to this: “By forcing local or resettled populations to rely on plant-based agriculture, imperial authorities effectively tied local inhabitants to particular plots of cultivatable land where they could, of course, be more easily controlled and exploited,” as described above in James Scott’s Against the Grain.
44. This key issue of early Wei history is a good example of the uneven nature of the regime’s recorded history, being known only through a handful of offhand remarks. The details of the policy are not clear and there has been much discussion of the matter by modern scholars. An early and good introduction to this is to be found in Tang, “Tuoba guo jia,” 204–5. See also a broad overview of various ways historians have treated this set of issues—particularly the issue of centralization vs. persistence of the power of local lords—in Matsushita Ken’ichi 松下宪一, Hokugi Kozoku taiseiron 北魏胡族体制论 (Sapporo: Hokkaidō Daigaku Daigakuin Bungaku Kenkyūka, 2007), Chapter 1.
45. One example may be the set of graves found on the edge of the desert, 150 miles north of Zhangjiakou, in the report by Chen Yongzhi et al., “The Results of the Excavations of the Yihe-Nur Cemetery in Zhengxiangbai Banner (2012–2014),” The Silk Road 14 (2016): 42–57, esp. 56.
46. For other examples by which entire groups were incorporated into Shegui’s own following, see WS 2.21, 22; and Zou Da 邹达, “Bei Wei de bing zhi” 北魏的兵制, Da lu za zhi shi xue cong shu di yi ji 4 (1970): 163 (in the same passage, however, Zou points out that it was because of the relative weakness of Shegui’s position that this could only be on an ad hoc basis). Han Guopan 韩国盘, Bei chao jing ji shi tan 北朝经济试探 (Shanghai: Shanghai ren min chu ban she, 1958), 23, points out that Shegui’s policies were to a significant extent continuations of Fu Jian’s previous impositions; for a specific example of this, see JS 113.2899. There has been debate on the nature of the restrictions placed by Shegui on settled populations: whether they were fixed to a particular plot of farmland, or to particular yearly routes as pastoralists; see Matsushita, Hokugi Kozoku taiseiron, 17. It seems probable that different groups received different kinds of assignments in a complex pattern for which little evidence has been preserved. The “movement” forbidden in the Wei case may also have been both physical movement, and transfer of loyalty from one leader to another. See Peter B. Golden, Central Asia in World History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 81, for discussion of a similar process by which Chinggis Khan splintered and reorganized previously independent polities into military/social units based on 10s; and Christopher Atwood, “Historiography and Transformation of Ethnic Identity in the Mongol Empire: the ·ng’üt Case,” Asian Ethnicity 15.4 (2014): 514–34. For general discussion of such processes among Inner Asian peoples, see also Di Cosmo, “Aristocratic Elites,” 28.
47. BS 80.2672 (WS 83A.1812). The registers would necessarily have been in Chinese, with a great deal of transcription of Inner Asian names into Chinese characters. Note also that loyalties to the Helan lord did not die easily: various commanders of what had been his army raised people of Helan origin in rebellion to these measures, though the rebellion was squashed: WS 28.684.
48. Wei shu has three examples of shi ling bu luo: 28.681, 40.901, 44.987. And WS 3.62 describes a 422 southern tour of Shegui’s successor, Mingyuan, who was accompanied by “vassal magnates from the four quarters, each leading their own units.” See Yu Lunian 俞鹿年, Bei Wei zhi guan zhi du kao 北魏职官制度考 (Beijing: She hui ke xue wen xian chu ban she, 2008), 19–20. For an interesting comparison to Mongol reorganization, almost 1,000 years later, see Broadbridge, Mongol Women, Chapter 4, on “atomized” as opposed to confederated polities. Li Yanong 李亚农, Zhou zu de shi zu zhi yu Tuoba zu de qian feng jian zhi 周族的氏族制与拓跋族的前封建制 (Shanghai: Hua dong ren min chu ban she, 1954), Chapter 13, discusses the limits of this policy, to which Zhang, Bei Wei zheng zhi shi, 2: 44–48, signals agreement. See also discussion of the ideas of Li and others in Matsushita, Hokugi Kozoku taiseiron, Chapter 1; and Mou Fasong 牟发松, “Bei Wei jie san bu luo zheng ce yu ling min qiu zhang zhi zhi yuan yuan xin tan” 北魏解散部落政策与领民酋长制之渊源新探, Huadong shi fan da xue xue bao: zhe xue she hui ke xue ban 49.5 (2017): 1–12, who among other things draws on earlier scholars to make clear that the attempt to disorganize the Helan (and other polities) was not completed immediately, but was attempted repeatedly over time (9); and see also treatment of this by Mou and his fellow editors in Zhongguo xing zheng qu hua tong shi, Shi liu guo Bei chao juan 中国行政区划通史，十六国北朝卷, 2 vols. (vols. 6 and 7 of the set) (Shanghai: Fudan da xue chu ban she, 2017), 2: Appendix 1, 1038–84.
49. WS 2.24, 95.2055–56; ZZTJ 107.3402.
50. See his account among the appended chronicles of Jin shu, 130.3201–16; and a partial translation by Boodberg, “Selections from the Hu T’ien Han Yüeh Fang Chu,” 66–73 (and on 101 he speculates that this name perhaps means *b·r-b·r, “Wolf-wolf”).
51. Making an effort to calculate income and expenditure, Wang, Zhuan xing qi de Bei Wei cai zheng yan jiu, 67, estimates that, at times, the cost of the army reached 75 percent of the state budget. By contrast, in the United States in 2015 the military received 16 percent of total federal spending: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending.png, accessed 21 December 2018.
52. See WS 110.2851; Wang, Zhuan xing qi de Bei Wei cai zheng yan jiu, 35ff.
53. ZZTJ 107.3402.
54. As described by Marcel Mauss in the classic The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1990), such practices are of course a worldwide phenomenon. For similar practices in Jiankang regimes, see Andrew Chittick, Patronage and Community in Medieval China: The Xiangyang Garrison, 400–600 ce (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009); and for these among the Mongols, Rachewiltz, Secret History of the Mongols, 1: 76.
55. WS 35.819, 4B.107; and regarding routinization of the process, see Wang, Zhuang xing qi de Bei Wei cai zheng yan jiu, 164.
56. WS 2.20. And see discussion in Zhu, Wei Jin Nan bei chao she hui sheng huo shi, Kindle ed., Chapter 12 少数民族, Section 2 饮食.
57. See Philip Carl Salzman, When Nomads Settle: Processes of Sedentarization as Adaptation and Response (New York: Praeger, 1980); and Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World, 46–48. As has been made clear in studies of recent decades, there has always been some agriculture on the steppe: Di Cosmo, Ancient China, 169–70.
58. WS 2.24.
59. For a good description of the way early Wei cavalry traveled, see JS 124.3094; in WS 24.609, we see a comment by Fu Jian to an aide sent him by Shiyijian on the eve of Fu’s invasion that you “northerners are without steel armor or sharp weapons,” perhaps also suggesting that they were still without stirrups (for this, see more in Chapter 11). To this, the aide replied, “the northerners are strong and brave. Up on a horse they carry three weapons, and gallop along like the wind.”
60. WS 2.24, 103.2290, 24.612; ZZTJ 107.3401.
61. Note that “Wey” 卫 is properly written in Pinyin as “Wei.” But though a homophone, this is a completely different word from the “Wei” 魏 in Northern Wei. I use Gwoyeu Romanization to write the former as Wey to avoid confusion, though confusion exists in this biography as well, where he is called a cousin of Shegui but may have actually been a half-brother, Shegui’s mother on the basis of levirate having remarried an uncle of Shegui after the death of his father: see Holmgren, “Women and Political Power,” 52; Eisenberg, Kingship in Early Medieval China, 39–40.
62. BS 15.562 (WS 15.371).
63. Li, Bei Wei Pingcheng shi dai, 48; on pp. 44–46 in the same volume, Li suggests that those settled on the Prince of Wey’s agricultural colonies were herdsmen from defeated groups.
64. WS 110.2850.
65. WS 2.24. The account of the kinsman-envoy is BS 15.525 (WS 15.374). This again is a figure, given in our texts as Gu 觚, who casts confusion on the relationships within this family, since he is said to be both a son of an uncle of Shegui, and also the youngest son of Shegui’s mother, Madam Helan: for a beginning of the discussion, see Bei shi 15.584 note 28, where it is pointed out that though he was said to have been a son of Han (a son of Shiyijian), that depending on the different dates given Han had died at the age of either three or eight. Be that as it may, the detention of Gu in Zhongshan is said to have caused Madam Helan to die of grief: BS 13.492 (WS 13.324–25); she too was buried among the Jinling imperial tombs.
66. ZZTJ 107.3400; Ma, Wuhuan yu Xianbei, 264.
67. WS 32.751. The main sources for this account are ZZTJ 108.3421–25; WS 2.26–27, 95.2067–68; JS 123.3089. See also Zhang, Bei Wei zheng zhi shi, 2: 73–84.
68. JS 123.3089.
69. See further discussion in Zhang, Bei Wei zheng zhi shi, 2: 76–77.
70. WS 95.2067.
71. Most recently, in fact, retold by the poet and historian Boyang 柏杨 (Guo Dingsheng 郭定生) in a bai hua translation of Chapter 27 of the Zi zhi tong jian: Shenhe sha fu 资治通鉴：参合杀俘 (Killed and Captured at Shenhe) (Shenyang: Wan juan chu ban gong si, 2015).
72. WS 95.2067.
73. For a summation of the first view, held by Maeda Masana among others, see Wang Kai, Bei Wei Shengle shi dai, 246–52; this is also the location given Shenhe Slope in Zhongguo li shi di tu ji, Vol. 4, Map 52. For the latter view, Zhang, Bei Wei zheng zhi shi, 2: 79, cites the persuasive argument of Yan Gengwang 严耕望, Tang dai jiao tong tu kao 唐代交通图考, 7 vols. (Taibei: Zhongyang yan jiu yuan li shi yu yan yan jiu suo, 1985–), 5: Appendix 8, 1397–1402, who decisively demonstrates that the Shenhe Slope—a key topographical feature seen repeatedly in Taghbach history, lay northeast of Datong. This view is supported by Yin Xian 殷宪, “Bei Wei Pingcheng shi lue” 北魏平城事略, in Pingcheng shi gao 平城史稿 (Beijing: Ke xue chu ban she, 2012), 187; and is buttressed by several mentions in primary text, including Shui jing zhu shu 2: 13.1137–38; and WS 2.41, where it is stated that in the year 403 Shegui left the capital going northeast and passed Shenhe. And see Chapter 5 note 67.
