51. See discussion of the guo ren, which he translates as “compatriots,” in Klein, “Contributions of the Fourth Century Xianbei,” 95–97.
52. See the excellent description of the situation given in Yan Gengwang, “Bei Wei shang shu zhi du,” 89.
53. Matsushita, Hokugi Kozoku taiseiron, 139: e.g., Xin Tang shu 79.3545.
54. This was the Juqu, of the “Lushui Hu.” See Chapter 12; and JS 129.3189.
55. On the place of imperial kinsmen in the officer corps, see Liu Jun 刘军, “Lun Bei Wei qian qi zong shi zai jin jun zhong de di wei ji zuo yong” 论北魏前期宗室在禁军中的地位及作用, Xuchang xue yuan xue bao 32.1 (2013): 12–15. On the term “*tigin,” see Luo Xin, “Bei Wei zhi qin kao,” 92. Taken from the Chinese transcription zhi qin 直勤, this term has also been reconstructed as *tegin, *tekin.
56. WS 113.2974. The recruiters, we are told, sought “talented and well-thought-of adult men” (nian zhang you qi wang zhe 年长有器望者).” It is not clear if the volunteers were in some way transferred into the six-unit system.
57. Patrick Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 16; and also the comments of Michael Nylan on multiple layers of “micro-identities”: “Talk about ‘Barbarians’ in Antiquity,” 590.
58. See Matthew Liebmann, “Parsing Hybridity: Archaeologies of Amalgamation in Seventeenth-century New Mexico,” in The Archaeology of Hybrid Material Culture, ed. Jeb J. Card (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013), 31, and his quoting of the Oxford English Dictionary on p. 30. In the term as we use it in this study, the questions of colonialism and post-colonialism don’t take on the significance described by Liebmann. See also discussion of when the term is not appropriately used in Bryan Miller, “The Southern Xiongnu in Northern China,” along with his interesting comments at the end of the piece (186–87) of the undoing of the “precarious middle ground” between distinct cultures that had existed with the Southern Xiongnu, and development under Northern Wei and its successors of “new cultures,” on a new “central ground.”
59. The last emperor to personally lead troops was the reformer Xiaowen. It is interesting to note that despite the deep cultural and institutional reforms he attempted to impose upon his realm, Xiaowen argued vigorously against the argument that he should not himself lead the army: see ZZTJ 138.4331. (Though it must also be noted that this was on the eve of his leading his troops south in 493 to relocate them to Luoyang.)
60. WS 34.799. Wang Luor was a man whose family came originally from the Wei River valley.
61. WS 3.51. And see the story of Mingyuan’s great-grandfather, the Dai king Shiyijian, involving among other things concern over the paucity of silks: WS 1.16.
62. For the 411 rally, the editors of the Zhonghua shu ju edition of Wei shu give evidence that though originally present in the 12th month the event has dropped out of the Wei shu annals; see 66 note 4. For the review in the first month of 413, see WS 3.52.
63. Rachewiltz, Secret History of the Mongols, 1: 104 et passim. For more on borrowing of Chinese terms by the Mongols, see Ruth Dunnell, Chinggis Khan: World Conqueror (Boston: Longman, 2010), 17.
64. Kroll, A Student’s Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese, 84.
65. WS 2.27.
66. WS 108A.2734.
67. HS 94A.3752; Huang, “Tuoba Xianbei zao qi guo jia,” 75.
68. Liu Puning, “Becoming the Ruler of the Central Realm: How the Northern Wei Dynasty Established Its Political Legitimacy,” JAH 52.1 (2018): 104, makes the interesting point that the emperor conducted the southern—Chinese-style—sacrifice on his own, while the western sacrifice was conducted with kinsmen, and so was presumably the enactment of a shared mandate with his clansmen.
69. WS 2.32, 34, 108A.2734–36; NQS 57.985; Kang Le 康乐, Cong Xi jiao dao Nan jiao: guo jia ji dian yu Bei Wei zheng zhi 从西郊到南郊─国家祭典与北魏政治 (Taibei: Dao he chu ban she, 1995), 167–69.
70. Yves Bonnefoy and Wendy Doniger, eds., Asian Mythologies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 331.
71. WS 113.2972–73.
72. WS 113.2972, 2974.
73. Discussing the zhong san post in particular (see just below), Zheng Qinren 郑钦仁 finds that the Inner Court post was filled overwhelmingly with military men of Inner Asian derivation through the reign of Taiwu: Bei Wei guan liao ji gou yan jiu 北魏官僚机构研究 (Taibei: Dao he chu ban she, 1995), 191. And see also discussion in Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 66–67; and in Kubozoe Yoshifumi 洼添庆文, Boshi o mochiita Hokugi-shi kenkyū 墓志を用いた北魏史研究 (To·kyo·: Kyu·koshoin, 2017), Section III, Chapter 2, 447–89. Eight hundred years later, the Mongol keshig, “guard,” similarly played a role in both military and civil affairs: David M. Farquhar, The Government of China under Mongolian Rule (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1990), 41–42.
74. Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 50.
75. Yu, Bei Wei zhi guan zhi du kao, 34–46; Kawamoto, Gi Shin Nanbokuchō jidai no minzoku mondai, 192; Chen, Multicultural China in the Early Middle Ages, 61–65; Shimunek, Languages of Ancient Southern Mongolia and North China, 326. On the equivalent Mongol term, see Rachewiltz, Secret History of the Mongols, 1: 237, note 2, where he tells us that aqa meant “elder brother (or cousin)” and was “used also as a term of respect.” Note that there are frequently variants for translations such as nei xing: see Zhang Jinlong 张金龙, Wei Jin Nan bei chao jin wei wu guan zhi du yan jiu 魏晋南北朝禁卫武官制度硏究, 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju, 2004), 2: 692. For attempted reconstruction of a number of titles in Serbi language, taken from the Jiankang history Nan Qi shu, see Shimunek, Languages of Ancient Southern Mongolia and North China, 148–62.
76. Kawamoto, Gi Shin Nanbokuchō jidai no minzoku mondai, 190, citing the late Wei case involving Yuan Cha, WS 16.406. And see also Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 59.
77. See Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 135–42; and Yu, Bei Wei zhi guan zhi du kao, 28–34. This system of judgeship was called in Chinese the San du, translation of a guo yu term for “the three metropolitan (judges),” one each for outer, central, and inner, with two prestigious figures chosen for each. Brief mention is made in WS 111.2874, where we are told that the “leader of the unit makes a full report, the grievance office investigates the accusation, and the san du decide it.” This was apparently for guo ren; special pardons were regularly given them (Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 132). See also Matsunaga Masao 松永雅生, “Hokugi no San to 北魏の三都,” Tōyōshi kenkyū 29.2–3 & 29.4 (1970, 1971): 129–59 & 297–325, who suggests (323) that this was an institution inherited from the Xiongnu. For the possible guo yu name of these posts, see Shimunek, Languages of Ancient Southern Mongolia and North China, 330, drawing on NQS 57.985. For discussion of the collegial nature of Taghbach government in early Wei, see Eisenberg, Kingship in Early Medieval China, Chapter 3; and for discussion of the collegial nature of Mongol rule in Persia, Michael Hope, Power, Politics, and Tradition in the Mongol Empire and the I·lkha·nate of Iran (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
78. WS 21A.546. Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 145, suggests that while this reflected general tendencies toward centralization of power, a part of the reason may have been the growth of an enormous backlog of cases under the San du system: 狱讼留滞 (WS 48.1089). Xiaowen’s concern for the system is seen in the visits he made to prisons: WS 7A.148.
79. WS 26.654. For the role of Deer Park as government ranch, see Sagawa, “You mu yu nong geng zhi jian.”
80. Zheng, Bei Wei guan liao ji gou yan jiu, 169–209, with useful tables showing inheritance of the post by members of the Baba (“Zhangsun”) cadet clan and others, on 207–9. For inspection tours by zhong san, see Zheng, Bei Wei guan liao ji gou yan jiu, 180–81, citing WS 24.954, 41.937; and see also Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 66–67. This term also has variant forms, including on Wencheng’s “Southern Progress” inscription nei xing nei xiao 内行内小, “junior [official] for palace business,” perhaps a more literal translation of the guo yu title (to be discussed more below): Matsushita, Hokugi Kozoku teiseiron, 76.
81. Zheng, Bei Wei guan liao ji gou yan jiu, 178.
82. Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 73.
83. WS 113.2973. It is not recorded when this ended, but perhaps under Taiwu’s reign. In early Wei, each province also had three Inspectors (ci shi); Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 78–80, points out a difference, in that this consisted of a man of Dai, a Chinese from court, and a local man, who served as intermediary. This arrangement had disappeared by the 470s.
84. Kawamoto, Gi Shin Nanbokuchō jidai no minzoku mondai, 189, citing WS 108A.2736.
85. NQS 57.990.
86. Wang, Zhuang xing qi de Bei Wei cai zheng yan jiu, 3–4.
87. See discussion of the complexity of such “multiethnic empires” in terms of later conquest dynasties in Francesca Fiaschetti and Julia Schneider, “Introduction,” in their edited volume Political Strategies of Identity Building in Non-Han Empires in China (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014), 1–5, where the authors say (1) that “[t]he multiculturalism of these empires is the result of the negotiation between the ethnic identity of the conquerors and the different ethnic awareness of the conquered peoples,” and that “the ruling elites were very conscious of their traditions and used them for the construction of their political identities,” though (2) “these dynasties undoubtedly integrated certain parts of Chinese culture, especially political and institutional, when shaping their own political identity.”
88. WS 21B.582–83.
89. WS 2.19.
90. The quote, of course, from the St. Crispin’s day speech in Henry V. See also Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996–1998), 1: 1; and the work of Anthony Cohen, who in his Symbolic Construction of Community has powerfully described loyalties to this place, this set of experiences and symbols, noting (99) that “people emphasize local identity in times of intensive encounter with others, but paradoxically often choose to do so by choosing things, symbols and ideas that come from outsiders.”
91. BS 15.554 (WS 14.358).
92. In his biography, one prince of the house was praised for his ability to serve as translator for “the languages of the many regions”: WS 15.372. And several languages must have been used at court, since when Xiaowen in 495 banned use of Inner Asian languages at the new Luoyang court, he forbade use not just of the “national language” (guo yu 国语), but of “the various northern languages” (zhu bei yu 诸北语): WS 21A.536. There are several other references in Wei shu and histories of the successor regimes to “languages of the northerners” 北人语: WS 91.1944; BQS 41.539; BS 48.1760, 50.1838, 53.1926, 89.2923, these examples generally divided between Chinese who knew the language of the northerners and so won office (see note 94), and explaining the garbled nature of transcriptions from the northern languages into Chinese.
93. As a very rough comparison, it should be noted that for entry to the US Army: “Non-citizens must speak, read, and write English fluently”: https://www.usa.gov/join-military, accessed 28 June 2018. One can’t help wonder if similarly strict requirements are imposed upon citizens.
94. WS 91.1944. See also the well-known rejection by Yan Zhitui, much later, of the boast of an acquaintance at the Northern Qi court who had taught his son how to play the lute (pi pa) and speak the Serbi language that the boy was thereby on a path to success: Yan shi jia xun ji jie 2.21; Teng, tr., Family Instructions for the Yen Clan, 7.
95. See discussion, Chapter 2 note 28.
96. Boodberg, an advocate for Turkic origins, in fact more or less makes this suggestion in his “Language of the T’o-pa Wei,” 239; a similar insight on the distinctive nature of the guo yu is also made by Liu, Xianbei shi lun, 83–86. For the incorporation of Chinese into the guo yu, see Zhu, Wei Jin Nan bei chao she hui sheng huo shi, Kindle ed., Chapter 12, Section 3.
97. E.g., WS 113.2973; or the example given in WS 15.372, of a Taghbach kinsman who was noted not only for his skill at mounted archer but could also “interpret the languages of all the lands” 通解诸方之语. For more on the office of interpreter, see Chapter 2 note 24.
98. András Róna-Tas, “On the Development and Origin of the East Turkic ‘Runic’ Script,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 41.1 (1987): 7–14; Findley, The Turks, 48. Other examples would be the use of Chinese characters as phonetics to convey the Mongols’ Secret History; and a similar alternative used by some Uyghurs: Shōgaito Masahiro, “A Chinese āgama Text Written in Uighur Script and the Use of Chinese,” in Trans-Turkic Studies: Festschrift in Honour of Marcel Erdal (Istanbul: Mehmet ·lmez, 2010), 67–77.
99. This “Sino-Xenic” pronunciation of Chinese characters in Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese is discussed in Zev Handel’s Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), 13.
100. See Marc Hideo Miyake, Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003).
101. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road, 180–81.
102. Handel, Sinography, 273.
103. WS 4A.70.
104. SS 32, with the entry on p. 934 and the explanatory comments on p. 935; and see also Zheng, Bei Wei guan liao ji gou yan jiu xu pian, 229, where he points out that later Inner Asian rulers of Chinese territory also translated Xiao jing into the native language. The name of the Northern Wei translator was transcribed as Houfuhou Kexiling 侯伏侯可悉陵. Yao Weiyuan, Bei chao Hu xing kao, 81–87, examines the group name, which may have derived from the Jie people. It is a shame that we don’t have more information on him. For the continued use of Chinese characters to transcribe the Dai guo yu, rather than development out of the Chinese system of a new phonetic system (as the Khitans and Japanese, did, each in their own way), see He Dezhang 何徳章, “‘Xianbei wen zi’ shuo bian zheng” 鲜卑文字”说辨正, rpt. in his Wei Jin Nan Bei chao shi cong gao (Beijing: Shang wu yin shu guan, 2010), 371–72. The received version of the Mongols’ Secret History was, of course, created in the same way.
105. SS 32.945. The second of these was done by the same fellow who translated the Guo yu Xiao jing, Houfuhou Kexiling. Several texts, entitled “The Xianbei language,” may date from the successor dynasties, when self-consciousness of ethnicity seems to have reappeared among the men of the garrisons who had come south and with it use of the term Xianbei yu 鲜卑语, which does not appear in Wei shu, but is seen repeatedly in Bei Qi shu (21.295, 34.341, 39.515) and Zhou shu (26.428).
106. See Chapter 2, note 11.
107. SS 32.947, 945.
108. Use of Serbi among the officers of the northern armies continued in the late Wei: an exile sent to one of the northern garrisons is said to have used “the old speech,” that is, guo yu, to translate imperial edicts to the soldiers there: WS 30.732. This persisted after Luoyang’s fall. In a story about Gao Huan, the power behind the Eastern Wei (534–550) throne, we are told when giving orders to his army he “regularly [used the] Serbi language” 常鲜卑语, with the exception of times when an important Chinese leader was in the ranks, when he used “Hua yan” 华言: BQS 21.295.
