Episode 73: The Southern and Northern Dynasties

October 1, 2022 Joshua Badgley

Man v. Tiger. Era of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. From the Art Gallery of New South Whales.

This episode looks at the period generally known as the Southern and Northern Dynasties on the continent, focusing mostly on the Yangzi and Yellow River regions. It is an extremely confusing period if you try to keep track of everything, particularly among the northern kingdoms of the Yellow River Basin region.

By the way, if you look elsewhere you will often see this translated as the Northern and Southern dynasties. This is usually because “North-South” is how we tend to organize in English, but in Asia it is often reversed. This goes hand in hand with the maps, which tended, before the modern period, to place South at the top—assuming there was a “top”. This, in turn, comes from the idea that the ruler sits in the north, looking south, so many maps are made with the idea of the ruler sitting in the north and looking out towards the south to read them. That tends to flip the script and put South above or before North.

Now, for a brief outline: The period starts with downfall of the Western Jin dynasty. Not to be confused with a later Jin (金) dynasty, this was really the continuation of that Cao Wei under the new Sima sovereigns, who had overthrown the descendants of Cao Cao and briefly unified the Yellow River and Yangzi River regions. They couldn't keep it together for long, however, and in 317 CE Luoyang was sacked, and the Sima court fled south to JIankang--modern Nanjing. Quick note here: Nanjing (南京) literally means “Southern Capital”, and while it would go through many different hands, Jiankang would largely remain the southern capital on the Yangzi until the late 6th century.

Meanwhile, in the north, we have the era known as the Sixteen Kingdoms—or at least that’s one name for it., and it pretty adequately captures the level of chaos from the 3rd to 6th century. Sixteen kingdoms—I hesitate to say dynasties, as many fell apart pretty much as soon s the founder died—all in the span of three centuries. Even more confusing, many of them either took the name of existing dynasties—so we get the Han, the Qin, the Zhou, the Wei, etc. all showing up again and again in the histories. Later historians have broken them out into either “Former” and “Later” or else “Northern”, “Eastern”, or “Western” depending on the site of their capital city.

In the south, we see the continued development of Han culture, in both material culture and in speech. Generally speaking, the South is going to be considered the more culturally elegant exemplar, for some time to come. That said, they were also more political and less connected to family. Also, they tended to be more patriarchal.

In the north, we see a mix of Han culture with the surrounding nomadic groups. From the Xiongnu, or Hongna—possibly Huna—people to the Xianbei tribes and others. They brought in different values, often built on the practical realities of living through times when family was often more important than the state, which could change at any moment. That didn’t mean people didn’t vie for control and didn’t dream of being the next great dynasty, but those not on the very top often remained braced for something to happen at any moment.

So let’s hit some of the basic dates, first, in the South:

Jin dynasty warrior, from the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Photo by author.

Jin dynasty warrior, from the Tokyo National Museum. Photo by author.

318 - Eastern Jin retreats to Jiankang (modern Nanjing) on the Yangzi river.
383 - Eastern Jin successfully repels an attack by the northern state of the Former Qin.
402 - General Huan Xuan leads an army against Jiankang and purges the officials, but he is overthrown by a general, Liu Yu, who restores the Eastern Jin, but at the same time he takes power for himself.
417 - An expedition by Liu Yu of the Eastern Jin briefly retakes Chang’an and Luoyang.
420 - Liu Yu officially overthrows the Eastern Jin and the Liu Song dynasty takes over at Jiankang. Over the course of their history they’ll be visited by envoys from at least five different Japanese sovereigns—or at least people claiming that title.
479 - Southern Qi takes over at Jiangkang
502 - Liang dynasty comes to power in Jiankang. There are paintings of individuals said to be envoys from various countries to the Liang, but it is unclear to me if all of these were actually envoys, and how accurate their portrayal is. On top of that, it looks like the original has been lost and what we have are painted copies, which may or may not accurately reflect the original.
557 - Chen dynasty takes charge at Jiangkang. Meanwhile, the Liang dynasty court continues to operate, sometimes called the Western Liang, out of Jianling, in a very small, reduced area along the Yangzi between the Chen and the Northern Zhou.
589 - Chen dynasty—and the remnants of the Western Liang—fell to the Sui.

Up in the NORTH, however, things are more chaotic, as I said. It is even more chaotic when you realize that these dynasties often changed their names, and used classical names to try to add further legitimacy to what were basically the states of strongmen warlords:

Northern Wei Official, from the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Photo by author.

Western Wei soldiers, from the Shaanxi History Museum. Photo by author.

Western Wei official (? - Dark lord of the Sith?) from the Shaanxi History Museum. Photo by author.

Northern Qi hunter, from the British Museum. Photo by author.

N. Zhou cavalryman, from the Shaanxi History Museum. Photo by author.

317 - The Xiongnu state of “Han”, officially founded as of 304, destroys Luoyang and sends the Jin court south. They set up their capital in Chang’an.
319 - Around 319 the Xiongnu Hanchange their name to “Zhao”, generally known to history as the “Former Zhao”, as a bandit-turned-general named Shi Le sets up his own Zhao dynasty, known as the Late Zhao.
320 - Without the Jin, the western areas of Gansu come under the sway of the Liang (or Former Liang) dynasty
328 - Shi Le and his “Later Zhao” brutally unified much of the north, but in 333, only five years later, Shi Le dies. His son and heir are killed by a cousin, Shi Hu, who rules through violence. Shi Hu even kills his own heir, his heir’s wife, and twenty-six of his children.
337 - While the Later Zhao rules over the yellow River, the Murong tribe of the Xianbei set up the state of Yan—known to us as “Former Yan”—around the Liaoning area.
342 - Former Yan destroys the capital of Goguryeo and then, in 346, devastates Buyeo, freeing itself up to concentrate on the Yellow River Basin
349 - Shi Hu dies and—surprise, surprise—his state falls apart. Three of his heirs were killed and replaced within a year, and then an adopted, ethnic Han son (Shi Le and Shi Hu were still from the Xiongnu tribe), Ran Min, seized power and established the Ran Wei, using the name of the old Wei kingdom.
351 - In the chaos after fall of the Zhao, general Fu Jian creates his own state, naming it the Qin (aka Former Qin) and setting up the capital at Chang’an, near the original Qin capital.
352 - The state of the Murong tribe of the northeast defeats Ran Min and takes control of the Yellow River Floodplain. Their capital by this time is at Jicheng (or just Ji City)—modern Beijing, or Northern Capital.
357 - Former Yan relocated to the city of Ye, the ancient capital of Cao Cao and the Later Zhao.
376 - The Former Qin defeats its rivals and once again unifies the North
383 - The sourthern Eastern Jin repels an attack by the Former Qin, who lost. That loss led to various uprisings against the Former Qin
384 - The Murong Xianbei once again instituted the Yan dynasty. In fact, the found two “Yan” states, known as the Western Yan and the Later Yan. The Western Yan take Chang’an from the Former Qin in 385. At the same time, a member of the Qiang people sets himself up as emperor of the Qin—what we call the Later Qin.
386 - The Liang dynasty is re-established under an ethnic Di sovereign in much of the territory of the Former Liang. Meanwhile the Tuoba, or Tagbatch, tribe of the Xianbei set up their own state, taking the name “Wei”, or more commonly the “Northern Wei”.
387 - Another Xianbei dynasty sets itself up west of Chang’an. It had a variety of names, but mostly it is known as the Western Qin, and it was often a vassal state of more powerful dynasties. There is even an interregnum from 400-409, but then it returns.
394 - The Former Qin is finally defeated, as is the Western Yan
397 - Two states break off from the Later Liang, creating the Northern and Southern Liang. The Northern Liang had a dynasty descended from the Xiongnu while the Southern Liang had a dynasty from a Xianbei tribe.
403- Fall of the Later Liang
407 - Rise of the Xia, who ruled out of the Ordos desert, in the north, and eventually included Chang’an in its territory
414 - The Southern Liang falls to the Western Qin.
417 - The Later Qin falls, and the Eastern Jin briefly recapture Chang’an and Luoyang. The general who does this, Liu Yu, goes back south to take over and found the Liu Song dynasty a few years later.
431 - Western Qin falls, as does the Xia.
439 - The Tuoba kingdom of Northern Wei re-unifies northern China; the Northern Liang moves to Gaochang, in the west, which eventually becomes its own Gaochang kingdom.
493 - The kingdom of Northern Wei moves from Pingcheng to Luoyang and adopts ethnic Han dress and language for the court, distancing itself from its semi-nomadic roots and alienating many of the Tuoba tribesmen serving in border regions.
524 - Mutinies along the frontier of Northern Wei due to lack of provisions—especially food. The garrisons are moved further south, where food is more plentiful, but they continue to destabilize the government.
534 - Northern Wei disintegrates, ending by 535. From that, rises the Eastern Wei, ruling out of Luoyang and controlling the lower reaches of the Yellow River, and the Western Wei, ruling out of Chang’an and over points to the West.
550 - The Eastern Wei falls to the newly founded Northern Qi, ruling out of the city of Ye
557 - Fall of the Western Wei, who were replaced in Chang’an by the Northern Zhou.
577 - Northern Zhou conquers the Northern Qi.
581 - Sui dynasty established, overthrowing the Northern Zhou dynasty.
589 - Sui dynasty had conquered the Chen dynasty and reunited the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers.

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is episode 73: The Southern and Northern Dynasties
Thanks for coming back. We only have a little more time that we are going to spend on the continent before we get back to the archipelago, so please bear with me and we’ll soon get back to Japan and the rise of the imperial family with the latest dynasty, in the 6th century.
This episode, we are going to look at capital cities, gardens, hermits, and finish up with a very brief account of the political changes in the South and in the North. Like the past couple of episodes, this is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a comprehensive history of this period—I’m mainly just hoping to get enough of an outline that we can refer to it as we head back to our main topics. I’d like to say that I’m going to make this period make more sense, but honestly, it is extremely chaotic, so that is not likely. But we will try to hit the major highlights.
Given all of that, why are we even talking about it? Well, as we’ve seen in the Chronicles, there is plenty of contact with the continent at this time, and understanding some of the things that go on here might help us later on as we see things coming to the archipelago. There is also a tendency, in my opinion, to take a look at the continent—and especially the area of modern China—and make assumptions that the Middle Kingdom is the pinnacle of civilization in the Asia at the time. Certainly, at this point, groups around the Yellow River and Yangzi region are utilizing complex instruments of statecraft that far outstrip what we currently see in the archipelago—even on the Korean peninsula. But until the 6th and really the 7th centuries this area is in flux. While dynasties continued to make grandiose claims, which Yamato rulers would piggyback off of—like the Five Kings of Wa and their request for titles from the Liu Song court—their control was tenuous, and fraught.
In addition, when Japan does start to adopt more continental culture, it may be helpful to understand just where the roots of that culture came from, even as it sees a particularly insular twist.
Finally, this will give us context as we start to see the archipelago ingest other things from outside, particularly as we examine the influx of Buddhism, which arrives in about the 6th century, and other connections to the larger trading routes, generally known as the Silk Road.
So, last episode we covered up through the fall of the Han dynasty in the 3rd century and the rise of the three Kingdoms of Shu Han, near modern Chengdu; Cao Wei, up around the Yellow River, and Eastern Wu along the central and lower reaches of the Yangzi. The Cao Wei eventually changed to the Jin dynasty, started with the Sima family, who replaced the Cao family of Cao Wei and then went on to conquer most of the Yangzi as well as the Yellow River region. However, their northern capital at Luoyang was sacked in 317 by a state calling itself the Han. Founded by Liu Yan, this so-called “Han” state claimed the name of the previously highly successful imperial dynasty, despite the fact that they were actually ethnic Xiongnu, one of the main nomadic people who challenged Han hegemony in the north.
We’ll hear more about Liu Yan and his Han dynasty later. For now I’ll just note an interesting tidbit about the Xiongnu—or perhaps something more like the Hong-na or even the Huna, based on the pronunciation of the time. You see, they were a major nomadic empire across the Eurasian steppes from at least the 3rd century BCE, and they appear to be connected to—if not the same group—as the Huns who traveled west in the 5th century to the Volga and eventually invading the Roman Empire. That’s right, the same group that was giving the Han dynasty and its successor states so many problems may have been the ancestors to the people that eventually went on to threaten Rome and its allies.
With the destruction of Luoyang in 317, the Sima emperors moved the court down to the city of Jiankang on the Yangzi river. With them came much of the ethnic Han northern aristocracy—those who did not or could not stay and find a place in the new Hongna, or Xiongnu, Han kingdom. All told there were probably more than a million people who fled south with the destruction of Luoyang.
Now as we’ve seen throughout history humans have always been accommodating when a large in flux of newcomers shows up and suddenly puts down roots, right? Well, maybe not quite so much. There is plenty of evidence of tension between the northern and southern families, but the newly displaced Northern court found ways to woo the Southerners over—pun intended, as all puns should be—and some of the Northern families even intermarried with the Southerners.
The Southern Elites—those who had established themselves in the area of Wu for generations—mostly had their country estates southeast of the capital city, Jiankang, around Lake Tai, near the site of the capital of the old state of Wu, around Suzhou. The northern emigres, on the other hand, settled east of the city, in an area known as Guiji, since the land around Lake Tai had largely been taken generations back.
These villas and country estates were often expansive affairs, with various orchards, animals, etc. This can be attributed, in part, to the fact that the landscape of the south, as we’ve already discussed, was a little different than that of the north. For one thing the city, Jiangkang, was not a walled city, like those in the north—at least not at this time. As I mentioned some time back, the city didn’t initially have walls—or, well, not the giant city walls common elsewhere as a necessary security requirement. There were walls around the segregated palace area, a common feature of most capital cities, but the city otherwise relied on the river and surrounding mountains as their main defenses. And so the city, unlike most up to that point, had a natural flow from an urban to rural environment.
And this is a pretty big change from cities in the north. While we have limited information on most of these cities—after all, they were built up time and again, usually destroying traces of what came before—we have some idea of their evolution. Early on, the capital was the place where the elite sovereigns conducted their rites—it was basically the site of the sovereign’s ancestral temple. Later, it was distinguished as the site of the royal palace, with walls and towers. In the Han dynasty, it became a ritual center conforming—or at least attempting to conform—to a Confucian ideal as laid out in the Zhou-li, the Rites of Zhou, the classic that Confucius lauded and which is said to have been penned by the Duke of Zhou himself, though many things attributed to it may have been later innovations.
According to the Zhou-li, the ideal capital city was a square or rectangle, with a walled palace in the center, and three gates on each side. Nine roads would run east to west, and nine roads would run north to south, creating a classic grid pattern. There were other ritual requirements, but this basic pattern was held up as the ideal for an imperial city.
More often then not, however, capital cities merely aspired to these dimensions. The palace compound—a walled “inner city” itself, where the sovereign and the courts conducted their business—was typically set not in the center, but in the northern districts, as the throne was expected to face southward. This also had the side effect that maps—at least those where directionality was important—typically placed south at the top, rather than the bottom, as it was assumed that the ruler would view them from a southward facing position.
These cities were places for the business of government and for housing the people who made that government run, and were decidedly urban in their characteristics. Rural areas and farmland only existed outside, beyond the walls of the city.
In some ways this ideal city plan also matches up with the characteristics of communities along the Yellow River floodplain. While low, flat land made for good farming, villages and communities would often cluster together on higher ground to avoid the inevitable floods that would eventually come when the Yellow River broke through the banks containing it, creating a distinction between the rural fields and living spaces. As violent clashes broke out in the north, many people would seek shelter in walled communities—cities or fortresses—to defend themselves from the raids.
And so imagine what it must have been like for the northerners who made their way down to the new capital of Jiankang. Along the Yangzi, farmers were much more likely to live in amongst their fields, not huddled together, and even the city transitioned smoothly from urban to rural in a natural flow. It is little wonder that there was a greater emphasis on the natural environment in the south.
Those serving in government offices would have had property in the city. After all, nobody wants a longer commute than necessary. But the Great Families would also have their rural estates, and so people would go back and forth between the rural and urban environment.
This led to people incorporating the rural into their own lives. Descriptions of Jiankang suggest that there was a lot more nature in the city than in the northern capitals, often in the form of gardens. There was a preserve for the sovereign and his chosen guests, like a private Central Park, but elites also cultivated their own gardens, sometimes stealing the view beyond the urban environment and incorporating the far mountains. These gardens were carefully crafted and designed, meant to provide myriad views.
In the archipelago, we see a similar incorporation by the Japanese aristocracy of gardens into their estates. The Shinden-zukuri style often incorporated a lake and a pond, complete with a fishing pavilion, and “stolen views”, where features beyond the owner’s own property were incorporated as part of the overall experience.
In addition, there were the mountains, right there. Han culture had long attributed to the mountains spiritual significance. They were places of great power, and the idea of immortals or others going off to live in the mountains was already a trope in Han society. With the renewed interest in hermitism, which we talked about last episode, it seems that some people took that quite literally. One example is Guo Wen, who lived in the early 4th century. Guo Wen is really the archtype of the southern mountain hermit. It is said that he went up into the hills and wore clothing made only from animals that had died of natural causes, and he ate only things he found or grew himself. The stories even claim that he had tamed a tiger!
Guo Wen’s style of hermiting was certainly the extreme end of the scale. It was the Survivorman version, and hard core. Most people were content with more of a Bear Grylls or perhaps even just a David Attenborough approach. A century after Guo Wen, during end of the Eastern Jin and the early Liu Song dynasty, a man named Xie Lingyun, known as the father of poetry on mountain scenery, broke down the different ways people chose to “Dwell in nature”, coming up with four different categories.
First off there was what he called “cliff-resting”, where you went out, hard core, Guo Wen style, and lived off the land, using caves and whatever shelter you could find. It puts me in mind of the later mountain ascetics in Japan, like the yamabushi, although I’m not sure even they went to such lengths.
Then there was “dwelling in the mountains”, which is what Lingyun himself did. He built himself a house, and not exactly a hut either—it was a full on villa with a garden, orchards, and groves of bamboo. He even had workers landscape the surrounding hillsides to give him a more picturesque view.
If that was still a bit much for you, then there was the idea of Hills and Gardens—a country villa, like those around lake Tai and in the Guiji region. Large estates with carefully managed so-called natural surroundings meant to impress and to be a place where the well-off literati could “retire” from government service, but not necessarily from society at large. These were places where powerful families could host scholars, poets, artists, and others, and through their connections and their relatives still influence the workings of the imperial court.
Finally there was living “Beside the City Wall”—basically an urban or suburban location, usually referring to gardens that individuals would build within their urban properties. Thus even government officials could spend their time off in a constructed natural setting.
One such garden was constructed by one Wang Dao. He was a powerful man in the Sima court of the Eastern Jin dynasty, and one of the forces behind the relocation to Jiankang. He was the one who helped overcome the Southern families’ initial objections, plying them with gifts in terms of court honors and appointments, and he maintained a powerful position in the court. In fact, the Sima emperor by this point was, himself, largely a puppet figure, and it was powerful court nobles like Wang Dao who were, in fact, the true power behind the dynasty.
Wang Dao’s political position meant that he largely would have resided in the capital city, in the city of Jiankang. Whereas many of the elites could retire to their country villas and estates, Wang Dao decided that he would simply build his country villa in the capital, thus cutting his commute drastically. Given his political capital, he apparently had an ability to build quite the garden, one that would start a trend. In so doing, he knew just what his garden needed if he really wanted to impress. It wasn’t enough to replicate the orchards and bamboo groves. The rocks of the mountains and the gentle streams and water. No, he needed his own hermit. And not just any hermit would do—you couldn’t expect to just hire someone off the street to come and live in your garden, as the English often did for their garden follies in the 18th and 19th centuries. No, Wang Dao needed a real hermit. Someone with experience. And fortunately for him, there was a rather famous one right there.
You see, despite warnings by Confucius, who advised against the idea of retiring from life to go live in the mountains, lest you were forgotten by society, the eccentric hermit Guo Wen was apparently something of a celebrity. Word of his extreme hermitism reached Jiankang, and while some of it—such as taming a tiger—was probably a bit of hyperbole, he was exactly the kind of hermit that Wang Dao was looking for. And so Wang Dao enticed Guo Wen to come down from the mountains and to live in his garden, where he could partake of the natural fruits and all that was available there. Wang Dao even attempted to replicate some of Guo Wen’s own mountain habitat, to make him feel at home.
And this arrangement seems to have worked for a while. Guo Wen continued to do his thing, but now within the confines of Wang Dao’s garden, and Wang Dao now had an actual, been-there-done-that hermit that he could show off to his guests during gatherings at his house.
However, it wasn’t too long before Guo Wen tired of the garden. No doubt it was small, and for all that it had what he might need to live, it was still an urban garden and nowhere near as expansive as the mountains themselves. Guo Wen requested permission to leave, but Wang Dao, not accustomed to having people refuse him, would not let him go. And so Guo Wen eventually went on a hunger strike, insisting that he would rather die than continue to live in this city garden. Wang Dao refused to give him, however, and eventually Guo Wen, true to his word, passed away in 334.
While this tale may have a dark end, it does describe the lengths that people would go for their gardens, and gardening and garden criticism—that is, judging other people’s gardens—became a major cultural activity in the South. Whether it was the expansive scenery surrounding a country villa, or an urban garden retreat, having a sophisticated garden was a huge get for anyone with pretentions to nobility.
In Japan, gardens would be a key part of many estates in the capital cities. The Chronicles talk about gardens in some of the stories, including koi ponds and the like, but the clearest example of early gardens shows up in the 8th century in the purpose-built capital of Heijo-kyo, in Nara, and they would be a standard feature of any cultured residence. The ideas behind gardens would certainly evolve and take on a decidedly Japanese aesthetic, but some of the concepts have their roots all the way back on the continent.
The Eastern Jin lasted from 317 until it fell and the Liu Song arose around 420. The Liu Song continued to rule out of Jiankang, however, and so in many ways it seems it was more simply a matter of a change in management. They did eventually build up walls around Jiankang, as the capital would regularly come under threat time and again. Some of this was internal strife. Wang Dao’s cousin, Wang Dun, was a general posted to the Central Yangzi, and in 322 he marched his army to Jiangkang to purge those he saw as a threat. He took control of the Jin, but died two years later in 324 from illness.
Still, it was not uncommon for those posted out in Central Yangzi and on the frontier borders with the north to be just as likely a threat as they were to protect the court.
When the Hongna state fell, many pushed to try to retake the north. That’s the Han state that had destroyed Luoyang, though they had later changed their own name to “Zhao”. There was certainly a desire to retake the Yellow River region, the traditional ethnic Han heartland, but doing so was fraught. First off, there was simply the logistical challenges involved. Second there were the internal politics. After all, anyone who was sufficiently successful would have the popularity and power to challenge the power of the court, themselves.
The South did manage to briefly retake Luoyang and Chang’an several times over the following centuries, but nothing really held. In 479, the Liu Song gave way to the Southern Qi. In 502, they yielded to the Liang dynasty—sometimes called the Southern Liang. The Liang dynasty lost the upper reaches of the Yangzi—the area of Shu—to the northern state of the Western Wei. In 557, the Chen dynasty overthrew the Liang dynasty, and they would rule until submitting to the rule of the Sui in 589, marking the end of the Southern and Northern dynasties period.
Throughout all of this, Jiankang remained the capital of the south, and it seems to have stayed largely in the hands of ethnic Han rulers. The Japanese sent envoys to the Eastern Jin and the Liu Song, and possibly to others—we’ll discuss this as we get back into the Chronicles. But this does seem to have been their main contact until the reunification under the Sui and then, in 618, the Tang dynasty. This was the dynasty that had perhaps the greatest influence on Japanese culture, which we will discuss in time.
Meanwhile, let’s briefly look at the north. We talked about the Hongna state, which itself fell in the early 4th century. There were a series of different states that rose and fell. Many of them were founded by members of the various nomadic or semi-nomadic people of the northern regions. The distinct cultural differences with these groups was apparent in various ways in how they ruled. Often they would reserve high positions for members of their particular tribal or ethnic group, employing Han administrators to assist with running the state and overseeing the farming communities.
One of the more successful states was that of the Murong of the Xianbei tribes. They emerged in the Northeast and eventually took over as the Yan, using the name of the old Han state in the northeast area. They pushed up against groups like the Buyeo and Goguryeo, which had ripples down the Korean peninsula. They also pushed into the Yellow River Floodplain.
Because the Murong were Xianbei, or possibly pronounced “Sa:rbi”—one of the frontier people that the Han had often contested with and even brought in as mercenaries to provide scouts and cavalry for their armies—they understood a different type of fighting. This is perhaps why they had success where the Han and others had not—combining their cavalry with ethnic Han foot soldiers, the Murong Xianbei were the first dynasty to rule over the Yellow River Basin and yet have actual military success against other nomadic groups. This was both because they understood their tactics and because they understood their politics. They knew how to keep tribes divided and fighting each other to prevent them from banding together to rise up.
Even the Murong would only last so long, however. During this period, often known as the sixteen kingdoms because of all of the different dynasties that rose and quickly fell in the north, being on top of the heap often meant that you had painted a large target on your back. Strong rulers, particularly those with military victories, could reward their followers and keep on top, but politics were literally cutthroat. Many of the ethnic Han families that had remained since the time of the Jin stopped involving themselves in politics, instead focusing on their roles as local magnates and defending what was there as the dynasties came and went. Men who went to serve at the court might have hopes of temporary power, but that could easily be taken away as one dynasty fell to the next.
This constant fighting led to several developments.
First, it often meant that rulers had very little direct authority, beyond their direct military might. Defeated generals and their followers might be incorporated into the victor’s government, but as soon as they showed any weakness it was just as likely that those generals would change sides. Loyalty to the state, rather than to a strongman warlord, was rare.
This meant that the rulers were effectively little more than primus inter pares, first among equals. The state itself often only really controlled the area directly around the capital, acting as the largest landlord amongst a sea of landlords. Each new dynasty set up a new capital, and then to supply that capital with the food and goods needed to run it they often resettled captive populations—dependent farmers and the like—onto the land around it. War and chaos meant that many of the people of the Yellow River Floodplain had died or fled south or else into the mountains. And so when armies fought, it was more likely that they were fighting over people, rather than land.
Also, there was greater and greater mixing of cultures and cultural values. Hong-na and Sa:rbi tribes attempted to apply Han style administration, leaning on Han scholars and literati to help them run their states, much as Baekje, Silla, and Goguryeo picked up the scribes and scholars after the fall of the Han commandries in the peninsula. And so there seems to have been a greater role for women, for instance—women playing a greater public role in the nomadic tribes—and food more based on a pastoral diet—mutton and yoghurt feature heavily in descriptions of the cuisine. And yet Han culture was often incorporated in terms of dress, language—especially writing, and more.
This wasn’t always the case. In some instances, Han or non-Han groups would be isolated from government positions. Such was the case early on with the Tuoba or Tagbatch, another Xianbei tribe that rose to power after the Murong and who actively excluded ethnic Han from positions of authority in the government, at least on the outset. Their dynasty is often referred to as the Northern Wei, taking the same name as the earlier Cao Wei kingdom.
About a century into the Tuoba’s reign, in 493, emperor Xiaowen attempted to make the Northern Wei into a more Sinified state. He moved the capital from the northern city of Pingcheng down to Luoyang, and required that Han language and dress be adopted for members of the court. He even merged the Han and Tuoba elite, rotating ethnic Han into military positions.
This ended up being disastrous for the dynasty, as the Sinified government looked inward, while the frontier military garrisons—maintained by Tuoba tribal members who retained closer links to their indigenous lifestyle—were often left neglected. In 524, a governor refused to issue grain to a starving garrison, leading to revolt. In response, the government moved the garrisons southward, into the more fertile regions of the Yellow River, but this just brought more conflict as the garrisons continued to rebel against the increasingly Sinicized court.
The Northern Wei broke into the Eastern and Western Wei, and then there was the rise of the Northern Qi, and finally the Northern Zhou, whose name hearkened all the way back to the era before the Summer and Autumn period itself. The Northern Zhou reunited the northern territories—as well as down into the area of Shu and the Min River basin—but it was eventually overthrown by one of its own generals who then, in 581, set up the Sui dynasty, which, only 8 years later, conquered the southern Chen dynasty and reunited the Yellow River and Yangzi river regions under a single ruler.
The Sui itself was short-lived, but they had quite the impact. For one thing, they got rid of the appointment system of the Nine Ranks—the ranking of positions continued, but no longer could local judges or administrators appoint people to government service. Instead, all potential candidates—or at least those who did not inherit a position through their father--would need to come to the capital city and partake in a civil service exam, testing their knowledge and skills.
In addition, the Sui connected the Yellow River and the Yangzi through the famous Grand Canal. Much like the Great Wall was created by connecting previously extant local walls and geographic features to help guard the borders, the Grand Canal was an ambitious project that connected previously existing canals and waterways such that travel was actually possible from one river system to the other. In an era before cars and trains and other mechanized forms of travel, this played a huge part in connecting the north and south through trade. Travel and communication between the two regions became much easier.
Unfortunately, this grand work—considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site, today—largely bankrupted the government, and is often considered one of the reasons for the Sui dynasty’s downfall. The canal may only have been partially responsible, however. The Sui also exhausted a large number of troops and resources trying to subjugate or destroy Goguryeo, at the head of the Korean peninsula. Goguryeo resisted, however, and their resistance no doubt also cost the Sui dearly. Internal rebellions eventually caused its downfall.
One of these rebels was Li Yuan. The Li family is a perfect example of the kind of intermixing that had been going on in the north for the past several centuries. Though they claimed descent from ethnic Han ancestors—in fact, they claimed a rather dubious connection all the way back to the founder of Daoism, Laozi himself—they had served in the Northern Wei and even taken the Xianbei surname of Daye. Li Yuan, then, was steeped in both the cultures of the nomadic people of the north as well as the ethnic Han. When he rose to power as Emperor Gaozu of the Tang dynasty in 618, he created a blended administration. Not only did he rule as an ethnic Han emperor, but his son, Li Shimin, aka Emperor Taizong, also took the title of the “Khan of Heaven”, representing his rule over the various tribes, including the Turkic people who lived in the deserts to the west, and who controlled large portions of the northern Silk road. Some have attributed the Li family’s success to the fact that they understood both worlds, and certainly the Tang dynasty would be one of the most diverse and cosmopolitan periods in Chinese history.
With all of these centuries of fighting in the north, it is unlikely that there was much contact with the Japanese archipelago directly—or at least nothing that amounted to much for very long. However, the constant fighting put pressure on Buyeo and Goguryeo—and by extension spurred some of the conflict on the continent. This was also one route by which Han culture filtered into the peninsula, as well as through the direct contacts between the peninsular states and the Southern dynasties. During this period, Sinitic language—particularly the writing—as well as government, religion, and even burial practices would find their way to the peninsula, and, from there, over to the archipelago. Some links were direct, but much of what Japan experienced was based on what filtered into and through the peninsula to the archipelago, particularly through the states of Kara and Baekje.
This is probably where we’ll stop for now. There is a lot more information for those who are truly interested in this period. It was significant enough that when the Japanese court split into a northern and southern branches in the 14th century, that they would also hearken back to the phrase “Southern and Northern Dynasties” to describe the period, though of course, their own fracturing was on a much smaller scale, relatively speaking.
I’ve left off discussion of a few other things that came through this period. For instance, religious ideas, from the Queen Mother of the West to Daoist concepts, and even Buddhism, came to the archipelago during this period. Then there is the silk road—at some point we will look more in depth at the connections between the archipelago and the greater trade routes that saw things like Roman and Sassanian glassware making their way into 5th century tombs, not to mention all of the treasures in the 8th century Shosoin collection itself. We’ll get to all of that in time.
For now, we’ll go back to the archipelago and concentrate again on what was happening over there. We’ll take another look at the progress made so far and deal with the fall out of the end of Ohosazaki’s line and the rise of a new dynasty that would come and take the throne and which would continue, as far as we can tell, down to the modern day.
Until then, thank you for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode.
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And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.

References

Lewis, Mark Edward. (2009). China Between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties. ISBN 978-0-674-02605-6

Kohn, Livia (ed.) (2004). Daoism Handbook: Volume I. ISBN 0-391-04237-8.
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley (ed.) (1993). Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook. ISBN s0-02-908752-X.

Episode 72: The Three Kingdoms Period

September 16, 2022 Joshua Badgley

Ming dynasty painting of the Seven Worthies of the Bamboo grove, from the Cleveland Museum of Art

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References

Lewis, Mark Edward. (2009). China Between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties. ISBN 978-0-674-02605-6
Kohn, Livia (ed.) (2004). Daoism Handbook: Volume I. ISBN 0-391-04237-8.
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley (ed.) (1993). Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook. ISBN s0-02-908752-X.

Rough Transcript

References

Rough Transcript

References