10. For comments on Liu Ni’s title, see Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 678.
11. This would be the same office, though assigned a different translated name here, as that described in Chapter 7 as given by Shegui to Zhangsun Song (which in BS 22.805 [WS 25.643] is called Nan bu da ren); for the name change, see Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 46 (and for evolution of these administrative units in general, see the table on p. 49). The office oversaw administration of the farmlands of the royal domain.
12. ZZTJ 126.3981. The (more) original variant given in Liu Ni’s biography (WS 30.721) is interesting in adding that if the imperial grandson is not enthroned, “so as to accord with the hopes of the people” 以顺民望, then the dynasty’s altars will be endangered. This is, of course, a claim that the guo ren expected this to be done. If true, this is not necessarily a borrowing from the Chinese world; many societies have developed primogeniture. And the argument being asserted here is that it was the first son of the first son who should take the throne. There is at least one clear point that we can take from these stories: these guardsmen wished to forestall further struggle within the court by establishing what they seem to have viewed as regular succession.
13. Zhangsun Kehou is without a biography of his own. On his title, see WS 4A.106. It is interesting to note in the annals that it is Zhangsun and Lu who are cited (WS 4B.106) as having put Wencheng on the throne, with no reference to Liu or Yuan; apparently they were at the time at least the most prominent of the group. It should also be noted that in some passages, Zhangsun is listed as palace steward 殿中尚书 and Yuan He simply as “steward” (or “minister” 尚书; WS 40.907); in others vice versa (WS 30.721).
14. These changes were imposed by Xiaowen in the year 496: ZZTJ 140.4393.
15. On the Dugu and their alternative use of the surname “Liu,” see Hu, Bei chao Hu xing kao, 43; Chen, Xing shi yan jiu, 52. For Dugu Hounixu’s appearance on the “Nanxun bei,” see Matsushita, Hokugi Kozoku taiseiron, 78.
16. WS 30.721.
17. WS 41.919. The way in which the statement is framed implies, of course, that it was not true.
18. For Yuan He’s biography, see WS 41.919–23; and regarding the kinship group of which he claimed to be a part, see Yao, Bei Wei Hu xing kao, 238–41; and Chen, Zhongguo gu dai shao shu min zu xing shi yan jiu, 79–80. Boodberg, “Language of the T’o-Pa Wei,” 229–30, points out apparent reference to Yuan He in SoS 95.2356, where he is referred to as a tigin (zhi qin, a member of the royal clan, though this fellow is not described as a descendant of Liwei). Boodberg also suggests that the name “He,” bestowed upon Yuan by Taiwu, replacing his earlier name, Po-Qiang, “Smasher of the Qiang,” is part for the whole of a Serbi name meaning something like “Name and Omen.” Note also the interesting resemblance of the bestowed surname, “Yuan” 源, “origin,” to the name later adopted by Xiaowen for the imperial clan, “Yuan” 元, “paramount,” or “primal.”
19. WS 41.919–20.
20. See his biography, WS 40.907–9; and discussion of the Buliugu clan in Yao, Bei chao Hu xing kao, 28–31; Chen, Zhongguo gu dai shao shu min zu xing shi yan jiu, 99. The name as it appeared on the Nanxun bei—步六孤 伊[丽]—is given in Matsushita, Hokugi Kozoku taiseiron, 75; we will discuss this in more detail just below. For reconstruction of Buliugu as *B·luwkk·, see Shimunek, Languages of Ancient Southern Mongolia and North China, 144. Though Shimunek states that there are no known cognates, Peter Boodberg has hypothesized that the name Buliugu is one of a number of different transcriptions of the Xiongnu name “Bulgar,” which later appeared in Russia and Eastern Europe; see his “Two Notes on the History of the Chinese Frontier,” 257–59. For a history of this clan, see Jennifer Holmgren, “The Lu Clan of Tai Commandery and Their Contribution to the T’o-pa State of Northern Wei in the Fifth Century,” TP 69.4–5 (1983): 272–312; in the piece (290), Holmgren suggests that Lu Li was less a military man than a part of the emerging civil bureaucracy.
21. WS 40.907.
22. WS 41.920; ZZTJ 126.3981.
23. WS 30.721. Note that in Lu’s biography (WS 40.907) it is said that it was he who insisted that primogeniture must be honored and Wencheng brought to court, and that this was the reason why he became a peerless figure at the court.
24. For a description of the Deer Park, see Li Ping 李凭, “Bei Wei Wenchengdi chu nian de san hou zhi zheng” 北魏文成帝初年的三后之争, in his Bei chao yan jiu cun gao (Beijing: Shang wu yin shu guan, 2006), 151–53, in which he tentatively suggests that the place that Wencheng hid might have been the same place his son, Xianwen, later set up his retired emperor’s headquarters.
25. WS 30.721; ZZTJ 126.3981.
26. WS 30.721; ZZTJ 126.3981. This was the same hall in which Taiwu had been killed: WS 4B.106.
27. WS 94.2013.
28. WS 40.907.
29. For the following purges, see WS 5.111–12; ZZTJ 126.3982ff.
30. For the Prince of Eternal Joy, see BS 15.544 (WS 14.346).
31. For the Prince of Linhuai, see BS 16.605 (WS 18.418–19). For the Prince of Guangyang, see BS 16.615 (WS 18.428).
32. In a rather speculative manner, Song Qirui in her Bei Wei nü zhu lun, 104–12, suggests that this was engineered by Taiwu’s formal empress, Madam Helian; Holmgren, “The Lu Clan of Tai Commandery,” 191–92, offers a similar possibility. Li Ping, “Bei Wei Wenchengdi chu nian de san hou zhi zheng,” 156, suggests that while Madam Helian had the authority to do this, it was Wencheng’s wet nurse Madam Chang who induced her to do so, and then despatched her as well in the next year.
33. WS 5.111–12. And see Pearce, “Nurses, Nurslings and New Shapes of Power,” 301–2; Li, “Bei Wei Wenchengdi chu nian de san hou zhi zheng,” 149–53; Song, Bei Wei nü zhu lun, 107–8.
34. NQS 57.985. This book, “Documents of Southern Qi,” is based on materials compiled under Southern Qi (479–502), and so is likely referring back to the most eminent of the dowager empresses of this period, Wenming (d. 490). And see discussion in Cheng Ya-ju, “Han zhi yu Hu feng,” 20–23, of the broad range of authority of dowager empresses from the time of Taiwudi, if not before, both within the inner palace and in policy decisions in the court.
35. See the comments of Gao Yun, looking back from the Xiaowen reign: WS 48.1081.
36. This progress is described in WS 5.119; ZZTJ 129.4053. The Shui jing zhu shu (1: 11.1048–49) mentions the tableland where archery was practiced and the inscription—there called “Imperial Archery Stele” 御射碑—raised for Wencheng.
37. On the front of the stele there is mention of “several hundred people”; Zhang Qingjie 张庆捷, “Bei Wei Wenchengdi ‘Nan xun bei’ bei wen kao zheng” 北魏文成帝《南巡碑》碑文考证, Kao gu (1998.4): 83, cites other Wei progresses with a similar number, inferring that this might have been the norm.
38. WS 40.907.
39. “Yifubu” was also sometimes abbreviated into Chinese in the less radical abbreviation “Yifu” 乙弗: Yao, Bei chao Hu xing kao, 175–80.
40. For identification of both of these figures with their different names on the stele, see Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 714.
41. Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 716.
42. See Matsushita, Hokugi Kozoku taiseiron, 77.
43. Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 735–40. On p. 745 of the same text, Zhang mentions that on the stele we see almost all the Inner Asian groups attached to the Taghbach.
44. Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 735–37, 691. Regarding Han ren, Zhang (739) reprimands the archaeologist Zhang Qingjie for in his reports on the “Nanxun bei” too uncritically taking those with Chinese-style monosyllabic names as being ethnic Chinese; and see also Klein, “Contributions of the Fourth Century Xianbei States,” 107ff..
45. Holmgren, “Northern Wei as a Conquest Dynasty,” 13–15, points out that even under the Sinicizing emperor Xiaowen, Chinese occupied only about a third of government offices.
46. WS 5.119; Zhang, “Bei Wei Wenchengdi ‘Nan xun bei’ bei wen kao zheng,” 83.
47. WS 5.119. It is, of course, quite likely that the stele was made later, in Pingcheng, the stele then transported back to Lingqiu and raised up there. The figures given here are “more than 30 zhang,” a Wei zhang being about 3 meters; and “220 bu 步,” a bu being about half a zhang. Though they may be for other dynasties, measures for Northern Wei are not necessarily consistent and variants are regularly seen in reference works.
48. See brief mention in WS 5.113.
49. See the recto inscription in Zhang and Li, “Shanxi Lingqiu Bei Wei Wenchengdi ‘Nanxun bei,’ ” 72.
50. Zhang, “Bei Wei Wenchengdi ‘Nan xun bei’ bei wen kao zheng,” 83.
51. For a broader view of the archery contest, or hunting, as “A Measure of Man,” see the chapter by that name in Allsen, The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History.
52. WS 48.1075–76.
53. Ad hoc assistance was given, when the emperor so willed: for another example, see the story of aid to a salary-less Li Biao in WS 62.1397. And note that in early Wei, local officials did at least receive land and supplies: Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 113–16.
54. Song, Bei Wei nü zhu lun, 203; Stephanie Balkwill, “When Renunciation Is Good Politics,” Nan Nü 18.2 (2016): 235–37. Unfortunately, we have little clear sense of the functions of these posts.
55. WS 4A.70, 80; and Pearce, “Nurses, Nurslings and New Shapes of Power.” For a more general view of the wet nurse in the Chinese world, see Jender Lee, “Wet Nurses in Early Imperial China,” Nan Nü 2.1 (2000): 1–39; and beyond East Asia, Ruby Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 188–94, on the power of foster-community in the Mughal court, where “the ties formed by the bountiful milk were crucial,” pushing “the boundaries of what would normally be recognized as blood-relations and relationships of marriage and birth” (194).
56. Li, Bei Wei Pingcheng shi dai, 149–53; Song, Bei Wei nü zhu lun, 107–8; Pearce, “Nurses, Nurslings and New Shapes of Power,” 301, 303–4.
57. Pearce, “Nurses, Nurslings and New Shapes of Power,” 296–97; and for the close ties between Madam Chang and the Fengs, Li Ping, Bei Wei Pingcheng shi dai, 177ff. More generally for the Fengs, see Jennifer Holmgren, “Social Mobility in the Northern Dynasties: A Case Study of the Feng of Northern Yen.”
58. See the comments of Jennifer Holmgren, “Women and Political Power in the Traditional T’o-pa Elite,” 33–34. Different but comparable sets of constraints were, of course, placed on women in other urbanizing societies in Eurasia.
59. WS 5.112, 114.3035–36; Hurvitz, Treatise on Buddhism and Taoism, 69–71.
60. WS 114.3037; Hurvitz, Treatise on Buddhism and Taoism, 72; Tsukamoto Zenryū, “The ·ramana Superintendent T’an-yao and His Time,” Monumenta Serica 16.1–2 (1957): 374–75.
61. Hansen, The Silk Road, Chapter 6; Michael Sullivan, The Cave Temples of Maichishan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).
62. Yi, Yungang, 38–39. Okamura Hidenori suggests, however, that tile work at the Yungang grottos seems to have been done by tile-makers transported to Pingcheng from the city of Ye, down on the plains: see his Unkō sekkutsu no kōkogaku, 14.
63. See an interesting discussion of these practices in Yi, Yungang, Chapter 5.
64. Su Bai 宿白, “Yungang shi ku fen qi shi lun” 云冈石窟分期试论, rpt. in his Zhong guo shi ku si yan jiu (Beijing: Wen wu chu ban she, 1996), 84–88 (originally in Kao gu xue bao 1978.1).
65. Charles Orzech, “The Scripture on Perfect Wisdom for Humane Kings Who Wish to Protect Their States,” in The Religions of China in Practice, ed. Donald Lopez (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 372–73. It needs noted that the apparently Northern Wei text discussed by Orzech is just one of several different versions with similar titles.
66. Tsukamoto, “T’an-yao,” 383; and see also Dorothy C. Wong, Chinese Steles: Pre-Buddhist and Buddhist Use of a Symbolic Form (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004), esp. Chapter 3.
67. WS 114.3039, 3048; Hurvitz, Treatise on Buddhism and Taoism, 79, 103.
68. Yi, Yungang, 117. This passage comes from a chapter on monks who “lead by singing” (chang dao 唱导) in Huijiao’s Gao seng zhuan (T2059:50:418a), which was compiled shortly after the fall of Luoyang.
69. Tsukamoto, “T’an-yao,” 370.
70. WS 5.123.
71. Eisenberg, Kingship in Early Medieval China, 64; Zhang, Bei Wei zheng zhi shi, 5: 174–81.
72. WS 5.120; ZZTJ 130.4073. Li Ping, Bei Wei Pingcheng shi dai, 189–91, suggests he was also closely tied to Madam Chang.
73. For Mu Duohou, see WS 27.674. Mu Shou (d. 447) was the cocky fellow seen in Chapter 13, who had sat dining with his wife, leaving only the scraps for his own uncles. Serving in the time of Taiwu, during Cui Hao’s heyday, he was also one of the few who dared treat Cui with contempt: see WS 27.665. For a sense of the widespread involvement of the Mu clan in the Wei regime, see Yao, Bei chao Hu xing kao, 29–32; and Wei shu 27, which is devoted entirely to this descent group, containing biographies of dozens of its members. It will also be noted that thirty years later, it was a Mu who led rebellion up at Pingcheng against Xiaowen’s relocation of the capital to Luoyang.
74. WS 27.674.
75. WS 40.908. These two dialogues are fused in ZZTJ 130.4073.
76. WS 6.125.
77. ZZTJ 131.4104; WS 33.793; Eisenberg, Kingship in Early Medieval China, 67–68.
78. This is from Yu’s biography in WS 14.347. Though Wei shu 14 is one of the reconstructed chapters, the account of this man’s life in BS 15.544 is much less detailed; perhaps this is part of the Wei shu chapter that survived.
79. In the reconstruction of Duan and Zhao, Tian xia da tong, 60, this led through government offices up to the actual palaces.
80. The eunuch to whom Yi Hun had shifted the blame was soon put to death; incidentally, he was the uncle of a Madam Lin who later became an empress of Xiaowen, and gave birth to the heir who died for resisting his father’s move to Luoyang: BS 13.498 (WS 13.332); WS 44.993. For Muchen’s biography, see BS 15.544–45 (WS 14.348). Muchen began his career in the Yulin guard, then rose to Palace Attendant and Vice Director of State Affairs (shangshu zuo puye). After these events, he was involved in arranging transfer of the throne in 471 from Xianwen to Xiaowen; and later under Xiaowen was stripped of his titles, apparently on the basis of corruption charges.
81. WS 6.125–26. See Eisenberg, Kingship in Medieval China, 69ff., for a theory that Yi Hun’s power was based on support from key figures in the imperial clan.
82. WS 6.126; ZZTJ 130.2074.
83. See the biography of Jia Xiu, WS 33.792–93, and the editors’ comments in note 13, pp. 797–98, pointing out although juan 33 is not one of the chapters known to have been reconstructed in the Song, that it does have discrepancies with a slightly fuller version given in BS 27.981, presumably on the basis of materials available in Tang when Bei shi was compiled. Though originally from the Gansu Corridor region, Jia’s father had entered Wei service as one among the few selected out of the Murong army after the defeat at Shenhe Slope, before the rest were slaughtered. Although ZZTJ 131.4104 text says explicitly that it was Yi Hun who raised the issue to Jia Xiu, Wei shu (33.793) does not specify the requester: 浑妻庶姓而求公主之号, 屡言于秀, 秀默然. In the slightly fuller version given in Bei shi (27.981), we are told that after Jia Xiu’s stony silence he went on official business to the mansion of Yi Hun and his wife, where the couple sat together, and that one of them (it is not really clearly stated which one), “with a face contorted with anger” then demanded to know why the wife’s wishes had not been accorded with. It does seem possible that Sima Guang has viewed this from an early modern, Song perspective, and simply assumed that the man had raised the point; and so, perhaps, we see here another example of the active role of women in Pingcheng’s politics and government. More clearly, we also see that Yi Hun (or his wife) would need to go through a particular official to have their way.
