A History of China

by Wolfram Eberhard

The Indian, Sogdian, and Turkestani monks were readily allowed to settle by the alien rulers of China, who had no national prejudice against other aliens. The monks were educated men and brought some useful knowledge from abroad. Educated Chinese were scarcely to be found, for the gentry retired to their estates, which they protected as well as they could from their alien ruler. So long as the gentry had no prospect of regaining control of the threads of political life that extended throughout China, they were not prepared to provide a class of officials and scholars for the anti-Confucian foreigners, who showed interest only in fighting and trading. Thus educated persons were needed at the courts of the alien rulers, and Buddhists were therefore engaged. These foreign Buddhists had all the important Buddhist writings translated into Chinese, and so made use of their influence at court for religious propaganda. This does not mean that every text was translated from Indian languages; especially in the later period many works appeared which came not from India but from Sogdia or Turkestan, or had even been written in China by Sogdians or other natives of Turkestan, and were then translated into Chinese. In Turkestan, Khotan in particular became a centre of Buddhist culture. Buddhism was influenced by vestiges of indigenous cults, so that Khotan developed a special religious atmosphere of its own; deities were honoured there (for instance, the king of Heaven of the northerners) to whom little regard was paid elsewhere. This "Khotan Buddhism" had special influence on the Buddhist Turkish peoples.

Big translation bureaux were set up for the preparation of these translations into Chinese, in which many copyists simultaneously took down from dictation a translation made by a "master" with the aid of a few native helpers. The translations were not literal, but were paraphrases, most of them greatly reduced in length, glosses were introduced when the translator thought fit for political or doctrinal reasons, or when he thought that in this way he could better adapt the texts to Chinese feeling.

Buddhism, quite apart from the special case of "Khotan Buddhism", underwent extensive modification on its way across Central Asia. Its main Indian form (Hinayana) was a purely individualistic religion of salvation without a God—related in this respect to genuine Taoism—and based on a concept of two classes of people: the monks who could achieve salvation and, secondly, the masses who fed the monks but could not achieve salvation. This religion did not gain a footing in China; only traces of it can be found in some Buddhistic sects in China. Mahayana Buddhism, on the other hand, developed into a true popular religion of salvation. It did not interfere with the indigenous deities and did not discountenance life in human society; it did not recommend Nirvana at once, but placed before it a here-after with all the joys worth striving for. In this form Buddhism was certain of success in Asia. On its way from India to China it divided into countless separate streams, each characterized by a particular book. Every nuance, from profound philosophical treatises to the most superficial little tracts written for the simplest of souls, and even a good deal of Turkestan shamanism and Tibetan belief in magic, found their way into Buddhist writings, so that some Buddhist monks practiced Central Asian Shamanism.

In spite of Buddhism, the old religion of the peasants retained its vitality. Local diviners, Chinese shamans (wu), sorcerers, continued their practices, although from now on they sometimes used Buddhist phraseology. Often, this popular religion is called "Taoism ", because a systematization of the popular pantheon was attempted, and Lao Tz[)u] and other Taoists played a role in this pantheon. Philosophic Taoism continued in this time, aside from the church-Taoism of Chang Ling and, naturally, all kinds of contacts between these three currents occurred. The Chinese state cult, the cult of Heaven saturated with Confucianism, was another living form of religion. The alien rulers, in turn, had brought their own mixture of worship of Heaven and shamanism. Their worship of Heaven was their official "representative" religion; their shamanism the private religion of the individual in his daily life. The alien rulers, accordingly, showed interest in the Chinese shamans as well as in the shamanistic aspects of Mahayana Buddhism. Not infrequently competitions were arranged by the rulers between priests of the different religious systems, and the rulers often competed for the possession of monks who were particularly skilled in magic or soothsaying.

But what was the position of the "official" religion? Were the aliens to hold to their own worship of heaven, or were they to take over the official Chinese cult, or what else? This problem posed itself already in the fourth century, but it was left unsolved.

(D) The Toba empire in North China (A.D. 385-550)

1 The rise of the Toba State

On the collapse of Fu Chien's empire one more state made its appearance; it has not yet been dealt with, although it was the most important one. This was the empire of the Toba, in the north of the present province of Shansi. Fu Chien had brought down the small old Toba state in 376, but had not entirely destroyed it. Its territory was partitioned, and part was placed under the administration of a Hun: in view of the old rivalry between Toba and Huns, this seemed to Fu Chien to be the best way of preventing any revival of the Toba. However, a descendant of the old ruling family of the Toba succeeded, with the aid of related families, in regaining power and forming a small new kingdom. Very soon many tribes which still lived in north China and which had not been broken up into military units, joined him. Of these there were ultimately 119, including many Hun tribes from Shansi and also many Hsien-pi tribes. Thus the question who the Toba were is not easy to answer. The leading tribe itself had migrated southward in the third century from the frontier territory between northern Mongolia and northern Manchuria. After this migration the first Toba state, the so-called Tai state, was formed (338-376); not much is known about it. The tribes that, from 385 after the break-up of the Tibetan empire, grouped themselves round this ruling tribe, were both Turkish and Mongol; but from the culture and language of the Toba we think it must be inferred that the ruling tribe itself as well as the majority of the other tribes were Turkish; in any case, the Turkish element seems to have been stronger than the Mongolian.

Thus the new Toba kingdom was a tribal state, not a military state. But the tribes were no longer the same as in the time of Liu Yüan a hundred years earlier. Their total population must have been quite small; we must assume that they were but the remains of 119 tribes rather than 119 full-sized tribes. Only part of them were still living the old nomad life; others had become used to living alongside Chinese peasants and had assumed leadership among the peasants. These Toba now faced a difficult situation. The country was arid and mountainous and did not yield much agricultural produce. For the many people who had come into the Toba state from all parts of the former empire of Fu Chien, to say nothing of the needs of a capital and a court which since the time of Liu Yüan had been regarded as the indispensable entourage of a ruler who claimed imperial rank, the local production of the Chinese peasants was not enough. All the government officials, who were Chinese, and all the slaves and eunuchs needed grain to eat. Attempts were made to settle more Chinese peasants round the new capital, but without success; something had to be done. It appeared necessary to embark on a campaign to conquer the fertile plain of eastern China. In the course of a number of battles the Hsien-pi of the "Later Yen" were annihilated and eastern China conquered (409).

Now a new question arose: what should be done with all those people? Nomads used to enslave their prisoners and use them for watching their flocks. Some tribal chieftains had adopted the practice of establishing captives on their tribal territory as peasants. There was an opportunity now to subject the millions of Chinese captives to servitude to the various tribal chieftains in the usual way. But those captives who were peasants could not be taken away from their fields without robbing the country of its food; therefore it would have been necessary to spread the tribes over the whole of eastern China, and this would have added immensely to the strength of the various tribes and would have greatly weakened the central power. Furthermore almost all Chinese officials at the court had come originally from the territories just conquered. They had come from there about a hundred years earlier and still had all their relatives in the east. If the eastern territories had been placed under the rule of separate tribes, and the tribes had been distributed in this way, the gentry in those territories would have been destroyed and reduced to the position of enslaved peasants. The Chinese officials accordingly persuaded the Toba emperor not to place the new territories under the tribes, but to leave them to be administered by officials of the central administration. These officials must have a firm footing in their territory, for only they could extract from the peasants the grain required for the support of the capital. Consequently the Toba government did not enslave the Chinese in the eastern territory, but made the local gentry into government officials, instructing them to collect as much grain as possible for the capital. This Chinese local gentry worked in close collaboration with the Chinese officials at court, a fact which determined the whole fate of the Toba empire.