24. As Peter Golden notes, the Mongols also regarded talented administrators as one of the spoils of war: Central Asia, 87.
25. Ge Jianxiong 葛剑雄 et al., Zhongguo ren kou shi 中国人口史, 6 vols. (Shanghai: Fudan da xue chu ban she, 2000–2002), 1: 475, points out that the population figures of Wei shu 106A&B, the “Di xing zhi,” are not reliable, but estimates that the high point of Wei’s population would have been about 35 million; the great majority, of course, were Chinese farmers. This figure is much lower than the 63 million of the (much larger) Former Han empire (1: 399), and approximately the (what Ge Jianxiong believes to be real) figure for Western Jin (1: 458).
26. WS 110.2850; Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 28–29. Though WS 110.2850 states these were settled in officially designated “hinterland” territories (jiao dian 郊甸) beyond the domain, those hilly territories could not have supported this influx of population. Quite sensibly, the early modern historian Hu Sanxing glosses a Zi zhi tong jian passage (114.3591) by simply saying “the eight units were distributed throughout the inner domain.” For further discussion, see Li Ping, Bei Wei Pingcheng shi dai, 53–57; Yu, Bei Wei zhi guan zhi du kao, 23–27.
27. See Hou Xudong 侯旭东, “On Hamlets (cun) in the Northern Dynasties,” EMC 13–14.1 (2007): 99–141, and esp. 132; this is a translation and adaptation of Hou’s “Bei chao de cun luo” 北朝的村落, rpt. in his Bei chao cun min de sheng huo shi jie—chao ting, zhou xian yu cun li 北朝村民的生活世界-朝廷，州县与村里 (Beijing: Shang wu yin shu guan, 2005), 26–59. Care is needed here, since none of the examples raised by Hou in the piece is from the Datong Basin, and most are from the sixth century.
28. WS 25.644 tells us that hunting was used “to feed the army” 以充军实.
29. Wang, Zhuan xing qi de Bei Wei cai zheng yan jiu, 46–48, et passim.
30. WS 4B.108–9; Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 95.
31. WS 28.682 (in the text, it is the contemporary name of the Sanggan, Lei 灅, that is used); and for concentration of agriculture in this region, see Li Ping, Bei Wei Pingcheng shi dai, 55–57. The man to be executed in the story is called in Wei shu “He Ba.” Yao Weiyuan (Bei chao Hu xing kao, 84) analyzes his clan name as Suhe, a group among the “White” (Bai) Serbi first defeated in the region by Liwei (see Chapter 5). The Wei shu text goes on to say that the statement by Ba-x-x of the Suhe clan was a hint that the brother should escape altogether, which he did. Enraged, Taiwu then killed all members of the family upon whom he could lay hands.
32. As mentioned in Chapter 5 (note 67), the early fourth-century Taghbach khaghan Yituo is said to have spit upon the Shenhe Slope, causing elms to grow up there; while several generations later, elms again sprouted out on the slope where Madam Helan had given birth to Shegui: WS 1.7, 2.19. A century later, the situation was very different. Sagawa, “You mu yu nong geng zhi jian,” 134, citing Li Daoyuan, Shui jing zhu shu 1: 3.235, mentions a trip made by Li in 494 accompanying Xiaowen into the Yinshan, where he saw “the mountains were without trees; just bare earth and that is all.”
33. The 三十六署百工伎巧 were thus a part of the 100,000 marched north in 398: BS 1.17; Ce fu yuan gui 册府元龟 486.5818. (And see note 5 in this chapter regarding apparent errors in WS 2.32). For one example, see mention of discovery of a Wei government tile factory outside of Pingcheng, at which are seen styles used in the city of Ye: Okamura, Unkō sekkutsu no kōkogaku, 14. Some of the crafts, on the other hand, were left down on the plains, such as foundries located near the resources needed to construct armor for the troops: WS 2.41. For the status of these workmen and their families, see Scott Pearce, “Status, Labor and Law: Special Service Households under the Northern Dynasties,” HJAS 51.2 (1991): 89–138.
34. Comparison can, of course, be made to the “soldier” household that emerged in this period; and also with the be 部 of early Japan. The organization of these artisan units is a field of medieval East Asian history that needs more examination, to the extent that is possible on the basis of text or excavation. Some good work here has been done by Okamura, Unkō sekkutsu no kōkogaku, 51–55. For excellent work on the artisans of the first East Asian empire, see Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, Artisans in Early Imperial China (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2007); and for early development of the Chinese “factory,” Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things.
35. Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 103.
36. WS 38.688.
37. See note 51 in Chapter 7.
38. As seen with He Na in Chapter 7, these were “registered households” 编户, on their own set of registers: WS 83A.1812. See Sagawa Eiji 佐川 英治, “Bei Wei de bing zhi yu she hui: cong ‘bing min fen li’ dao ‘jun min fen ji’” 北魏的兵制与社会——从“兵民分离”到“军民分籍”, Wei Jin Nan bei chao Sui Tang shi zi liao (1996.1): 49–50. As we will see, this would change over time, with increasing recruitment of populations controlled by forms of local administration inherited from the Chinese empire. But still, more than a century later, it is reported that Gao Huan, the military leader of the successor state Eastern Wei, said to his Serbi military men, “the Han people, they are your slaves; the men plow for you, the wives weave for you” 汉人是汝奴,夫为汝耕,妇为汝织 (ZZTJ 157.4882).
39. For the need for the khaghan’s permission, see Chapter 11 note 20. And for hints that some taxes were also collected on these groups, see Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 109.
40. NQS 57.985; Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 38–41.
41. Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 37–43, suggests division of the inner following of the dynasty into six units, in contrast to the eight units of the “new subjects.” It must be noted that we have very little information on this, and other quite different interpretations have been made (e.g., Koga Akimine 古贺 昭岑, “Hokugi no buzoku kaisan ni tsuite” 北魏の部族解散について, Tōhōgaku 59 [1980]: 67, where he equates the six and the eight units, and sees them all as denoting settled pastoralists; this is one of several difficult issues we will not pursue in this book.) It is possible that this was based on actual settlement of these populations in “six wards” (liu fang 六坊), based on a mention in SS 24.675 in which we are told that with the final collapse of Northern Wei Luoyang in 534 that the emperor fled west to the emerging Western Wei regime with “less than ten thousand men” from the six wards, perhaps a reference to what remained of the inner guard units (see also ZZTJ 156.4857). It is, of course, difficult to be certain of the nature of the situation, with the paucity of sources and the fact that this is Luoyang, not Pingcheng. Cen Zhongmian 岑仲勉, Fu bing zhi du yan jiu 府兵制度研究 (Shanghai: Shanghai ren min chu ban she, 1957), 19, suggests that liu fang here is a euphemism for refugees from the Six Garrisons along the northern frontier, though it must be noted that in the Sui shu passage “Six Garrisons (liu zhen 六镇)” is explicitly used just before liu fang.
42. All extant versions of this have been received in Chinese, and only in Chinese. Nonetheless, there is something of a consensus this is translation, from stories circulating among the Inner Asian populations of Wei or its successors: see Shiamin Kwa and W. L. Idema, Mulan: Five Versions of a Classic Chinese Legend with Related Texts (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 2010), xiii; and Wang Wenqian 王文倩 and Nie Yonghua 聂永华, “‘Mulan shi’ cheng shi nian dai, zuo zhe ji Mulan gu li bai nian yan jiu hui gu” 木兰诗成诗年代，作者及木兰故里百年研究回顾， Shangqiu shi fan xue yuan xue bao 23.1 (2007): 20, citing Liu Dajie 刘大杰, Zhongguo wen xue fa zhan shi 中国文学发展史 (Taibei: Taiwan Zhonghua shu ju, 1968), 306–8. Though perhaps true, these judgments are of course based on subjective reading; Xiaofei Tian urges caution in too readily assuming a northern origin to songs that were written down and preserved—perhaps actually composed—in the Yangtze region: “From the Eastern Jin through the Early Tang (317–649),” in The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature: To 1375, ed. Kang-i Sun Chang and Stephen Owen (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 267.
43. Kwa and Idema, Mulan, 1; Sanping Chen suggests that the name Mulan transcribed the Taghbach name for “bull” or “stag,” a nickname for military men: see his Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), Chapter 2.
44. WS 73.1634. The name “Poduoluo” was later changed to Pan 潘, which is how it is given in the Wei shu passage: Yao, Bei chao Hu xing kao, 217–20. Shimunek, Languages of Ancient Southern Mongolia and North China, 135, reconstructs the Chinese transcription “Poduoluo” as “*Phatala.” “Big Eye” Yang was a man of Qiang extraction, who entering the Wei army had risen through the ranks. There are, of course, other such tales from later periods of East Asian history: the most famous might be Khutulun, a great-great-granddaughter of Chinggis Khan, who according to Marco Polo could ride into the enemy ranks and snatch a captive “as deftly as a hawk pounces on a bird,” and carry him to her father Caidu (Qaidu): Henry Yule, tr., The Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903), 2: 465 (the main name given for her here is “Aijaruc”; she is, of course, the distant origin of Puccini’s Turandot). And see also Michal Biran, Qaidu and the Rise of the Independent Mongol State in Central Asia (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997), 2.
45. The relationship of woman to army is a long, complex and important story, which is perhaps in the 21st century undergoing decisive change. Until recent decades, however, though there may have been some Amazons in some places they are hard to pin down. See an attempt to do so in Adrienne Mayor’s The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). Closer to the arena of our study here is the volume edited by Katheryn M. Linduff and Karen Sydney Rubinson, Are All Warriors Male·: Gender Roles on the Ancient Eurasian Steppe (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008). Among the articles in this work is one by Gideon Shelach, “He Who Eats the Horse, She Who Rides It·: Symbols of Gender Identity on the Eastern Edges of the Eurasian Steppe,” in which the author examines the establishment in the early first millennium bce of gender identity, and the warrior as “male,” though this was of course not necessarily the same as biological nature. Parallel to the active role of woman as manpower in the army was woman playing a derivative role as leader of the army: see Walter L. Arnstein, “The Warrior Queen: Reflections on Victoria and Her World,” Albion 30.1 (1998): 1–28, in which we are reminded that Victoria stressed that “I was always told to consider myself a soldier’s child” and wore the colors of her father’s unit while she reviewed them on horseback (4–5). While in the midst of the Crimean war she wrote that “I regret exceedingly not to be a man & to be able to fight in the war . . . there is no finer death for a man than on the battlefield!” (10).
46. This could, of course, also be translated as “men of Dai,” since the main glue binding these communities together into one was universal participation of its men in the Taghbach military. But as we shall see in more detail in Chapter 13, women were in various ways also ongoing and active participants in this militarized society.
47. See the Chinese translation of this statement in WS 2.32–33. For Cui Hong’s counter-argument (in what language we do not really know), see WS 24.620–21.
48. For examples of use of Da Dai, see the book compiled by Yin Xian 殷宪, Bei Wei Pingcheng shu ji 北魏平城书迹 (Beijing: Wen wu chu ban she, 2017), passim. See also Matsushita Ken’ichi 松下宪一 “Hokugi no kokugō ‘Dai Dai’ to ‘Dai Gi’ ” 北魏の国号’大代’と’大魏’, in his Hokugi Kozoku taiseiron, 111–59 (including the table of appearances of the term “Da Dai” on 146–57); and He Dezhang 何得章, “Bei Wei guo hao yu zheng tong wen ti” 北魏国号与正统问题, LSYJ (1992.3): 113–25. Others, in fact, put forth other suggestions for name change: a holy man (fang shi) whose name is given us as Qi Xian is said in the time of Taiwu to have put forth a proposal that the regional name “Dai” be changed to “Ten Thousand Years” 万年: WS 35.822, 114.3054. Taiwu seems to have accepted the plan for a time (WS 113.2975), but having heard the counterargument of Cui Hao, the emperor in the end dismissed the idea. It should, however, be noted that part of Cui’s argument was that it was appropriate that in referring to the regime both “Dai” and “Wei” be used 代魏兼用, as had been the case with the ancient Shang also being called “Yin” (WS 35.822).
49. See again Azar Gat, Nations, 3, and the discussion among Gat, Chris Wickham, and others in “Debate on Azar Gat’s Nations.” Looking at the Chinese world, the modern scholars Gideon Shelach and Yuri Pines (“Secondary State Formation and the Development of Local Identity,” 220) have come to recognize “undeniable common aspects of Qin in the period of the Warring States and the modern nation-state,” suggesting that through a combination of social mobility (by rising through the ranks of the Qin army) and the social engineering of an activist state, “parochial identities” were eliminated, while the people of Qin developed a shared sense of “us” as opposed to the outside “them.” William Honeychurch, “The Nomad as State Builder: Historical Theory and Material Evidence from Mongolia,” Journal of World Prehistory 26.4 (2013): 283–321, has also pointed out the particular capacity for pre-modern state-building among mobile pastoralists. On the other end of Eurasia, recent studies suggest that two or three generations before the Norman conquest, “England” had taken shape as at least an “embryonic nation,” in which every freeman took an oath of loyalty to the king: see Robert Tombs, The English and Their History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), 36–37; and George Molyneaux, The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 11–13.
50. Explorations of different forms of loyalty within the East Asia would include Naomi Standen’s Unbounded Loyalty: Frontier Crossing in Liao China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007); Jennifer Jay’s A Change in Dynasties: Loyalism in Thirteenth-century China (Bellingham: Western Washington University, 1991); and again with Shelach and Pines, “Secondary State Formation and the Development of Local Identity,” 219–22. For such phenomena in another set of societies, see discussion of Ibn Khaldun’s ·asabiyyah, “bindedness,” in Tim MacKintosh-Smith, Arabs: A 3000-year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), xxi, and of Muhammed’s creation of a “super-·asabiyyah, “a sense of solidarity and unity like none before” (148). Thomas Small, in a review of Robert Irwin’s Ibn Khaldun (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), in Times Literary Supplement, January 11, 2019, 11, carries on discussion of ·asabiyyah in an interesting way, with fascinating parallels to the people of Dai, stating that “[t]his wasn’t simply a sense of group identity. . . . Nor a sense of group homogeneity, since the societies he analysed, far from being homogeneous nations in the modern sense, were riven by ethnic tensions, class stratification and inter-tribal conflict, despite the presence of Islam as a unifying force. Rather, asabiyyah indicates a group’s capacity for harnessing their collective identity in pursuit of political dominance over other groups.”
