East Asian History - ANU

EditorAssociate EditorEditorial BoardDesign and ProductionBusiness ManagerPrinted byGeremie R. BarmeHelen LoMark Elvin (Convenor)John ClarkAndrew FraserHelen HardacreColin JeffcottW.]. F. JennerLo Hui-minGavan McCormackDavid MarrTessa Morris-SuzukiMichael UnderdownHelen LoMarion WeeksGoanna Print, Fyshwick, ACTThis is the twenty-fourth issue of East Asian History, printed August 2003 ,in the series previously entitled Papers on Far Eastern History.This externally refereed journal is published twice a year.jContributions toThe Editor, East Asian HistoryDivision of Pacific and Asian HistoryResearch School of Pacific and Asian StudiesAustralian National UniversityCanberra ACT 0200, AustraliaPhone +61 26125 3 140 Fax + 61 26125 5525email geremie@coombs.anu.edu.auSubscription Enquiries toAnnual SubscriptionSubscriptions, East Asian History, at the above address, or tomarion@coombs.anu.edu.auAustralia A$50 (including GST) Overseas US$45 (GST free) (for two issues)ISSN 103 6- 6008

iii.Jt CONTENTS1 Birds and the Hand of Power: a Political Geography of Avian Life in theGansu Corridor, Ninth to Tenth CenturiesLewis Mayo67 A Tempestuous Tea-Port: Socio-Political Commentary in Yokahama-e,1859-62Todd S. Munson93 Taiwan's Search for National History: a Trend in HistoriographyQ. Edward Wang117 Rai San'yo's Philosophy of History and the Ideal of Imperial RestorationBarry D. Steben

ivCov er calligrap hyYan Zhen qin g Ji:n, Tan g calligrap her an d statesm anCover illu stration Av ian sign atu re from the tim e of Cao Yan lu liE!J - see p .52CS.24741,rep ro du ced by perm ission of the British Library)

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER: A POLITICALGEOGRAPHY OF AVIAN LIFE IN THE GANSUCORRIDOR, NINTH TO TENTH CENTURIES LewisMayoIn the su mm er of 866 fou r "green-shinned" goshawks! arrived at the Tang Jl!fcourt in Chang'an (m odern Xi'an jffi).2 The geo-political order ofNotes on document reJerencing system andromanisation: Dunhuang documents held inthe British Library carry the prefix 'S' (todenote the Stein collection) before the serialnumber. Dunhuang documents held in theBibliotheque Nationale carry the prefix 'P' (todenote the Chinese-language materials in theFonds Pelliot). 'Or' denotes materials in theBritish Library which are not identified by aStein number. Documents in the NationalLibrary in Beijing have the prefix 'Beitu'.Uyghur romanisation for the most part followsthe romanised and vocalised transcriptionsused in James Hamilton's editions of the OldUyghur texts from Dunhuang. For items thatare discussed frequently, I generally substitutestandard English alphabet letters for Greekletters and other symbols that do not appear inthe standard Latin alphabetic sequence. Thusinstead of qayan and Uyyur I write qaghan andUyghur, Yaghlaqar instead ofYaylaqar, and soon. Chinese romanisation is in pinyin, Tibetanromanisation is in Wylie (except where Iquote from scholars who have used othersystems), and Khotanese follows the transcriptionsused by Harold Bailey. Mongolianromanisation follows the system in Nicholas/P oppe, A grammar oj written Mongolian(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1974) except forwell-known names like Chinggis khan, whileromanisations for Manchu essentially accordwith the system used by Jerry Norman. Asmuch as possible I have kept titles of booksand articles and names of authors that areoriginally written in simplified characters intheir original form (this applies even where abook has its title in simplified and articlescontained in it are in complex characters.)Everything else, including words fromDunhuang documents that are published insimplified charcters, has been written usingcomplex characters.1 Modern scholars concur that the birdsreferred to as ying 11 in Chinese texts fromthe medieval era are goshawks. The mostwidely respected English-language study ofhawks and hawking terminology in medievalChina, Edward H. Schafer's "Falconry in Tangtimes," T'oung Pao 46 (1958): 293-338,provides a systematic account of the variousnames for hunting birds in the period, and isconfident that references to ying are togoshawks and not to eagles or other raptors.Schafer's discussion of goshawks is on pp.310-11.1Profound and sincere thanks are due toMiriam Lang for her help with this paper inits various versions. It is only available to beread because of her labours and encouragement.Similar thanks are due to MarionWeeks, Helen Lo and Geremie Barme fortheir support for and patience with perhapsthe most troublesome contributor to EastAsian History. It is a privilege to be able topublish in such a wonderful journal. I offerthanks and apologies to Craig Benjamin,David Christian and Beth Lewis who bentover backwards to help me get my work intovolumes which they were editing, andretained no resentment when I could not doso. I am very much indebted to DilberThwaites for teaching me modern Uyghur,which has been of decisive importance forthis paper. I also wish to acknowledge RuthBarraclough for reading through an earlierdraft of this work. Paul Kroll provided ameticulous and supportive review for EastAsian History in which he was kind enoughto disclose his identity. I also thank the otherreviewer for very nice words about thepaper. I am grateful to James Hamilton foranswering a query, to Igor de Rachewiltz forconsultation about Mongolian matters, toBrian McKnight for bird-related assistance,and to both of the latter for their long-termfriendly concern for my progress.

2LEWIS MAYOFigure 1The Ganjun shan goshawks in theannals of imperial power: entry in theCefu yuangui recording their arrivalin the Ta ng court in Chang'an2 The reference is in theJiu Tang shu li m[Old Tang History], juan :§ 19a (Beijing:Zhonghua Shuju, 1975), p.660. The goshawksalso appear in the Cefu yuangui -fffi Jff:lC[Lessons from the past from the Palace ofBooksl,juan 169 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju,1960), p.2034. The birds are mentioned byRong Xinjiang ;wrrr in Guiyi jun shiyanjiu [Studies in Guiyi jun history] (Shanghai:Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1996), p.162. (Iwish to thank Rong Xinjiang for sending mea copy of this excellent book which has beenninth-century Central Asia structured the lives of these hawks, an order whichthe birds themselves helped to constitute. The goshawks were subjects andemanations of the authority of Zhang Yichao 51H,3 the Han 1l Chinesewarlord who had taken control of the string of oases between the YellowRiver and the Tarim basin after the collapse of Tibetan imperial rule in the840s. They came to Chang'an as a gift from Zhang to the Tang emperorYizong Jfl;*, his formal suzerain, in honour of Yizong's birthday.4The origin of these birds was specifically recorded: they came fromGanjun shan ttLlJ, the Ganjun mountains near Ganzhou ttj'l'l (presentlofinvaluable help in my work.) E. H. Schafermakes reference to these goshawks in "Falconryin T'ang times," p.311, and in The goldenpeaches of Samarkand (Berkeley, Calif.:University of California Press, 1963), p.94. Inthe earlier work Schafer translates the name as"blue shins," and in the latter "green shanks."In "Falconry in T'ang times," Schafer quotesJ. J. L. Duvyendak in T'oung Pao 35 (1940) that"blue-shinned" was a hunters' metaphor ofmagical import. Qingqiao W1t or "greenshinned"appears as an epithet or metonymfor goshawks in a number of pre-Tang literaryworks. It is found in the paean to the goshawk("Yong ying shi" UJ*) by the Sui emperor Yangdi * that is included in theTang encyclopedia for the instruction ofprinces, the Chuxue ji *)] [Record ofprimary learning]-see juan 30 (Beijing:Zhonghua Shuju, 1980), p.732-and also inZhang Pingzi's 5.!P¥-=J- Xijing fu jffi;ji:J!jtt[Western metropolis rhapsody], which appearsin the literary anthology Wenxuan )(JI[Literary selections], juan 2 (Shanghai: GuijiChubanshe, 1986), voU, p.70. DavidKnechtges's translation of the Wenxuan has"Blue-necked" for qingqiao. See Xiao Tong,Wen xuan, or Selections of Refined Literature,Volume 1, Rhapsodies on Metropolises andCapitals, translated, with annotations andintroduction by David R. Knechtges (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), p.22I.3 In "Falconry in T'ang times" Schafer describesZhang Yichao as "a legate stationed at Shachou(Tun-huang)"-see p.311, n.l.4 The entries in the Jiu Tang shu and Cefuyuangui state that the goshawks werepresented along with two yanqingjie E£ liJhorses. Yanqing jie was the festival for thecelebration of Yizong's birthday, the 4th dayof the 7th lunar month-see Zhuang Chuo!lfMi,]ileibianWJ [The chicken rib col-Ilectionl,juanxia -r (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju,1983), p.l24. Schafer refers to the festival inThe golden peaches of Sam ark and, p.292, n.5(quoted in footnote 7 below)' Rong Xinjiangsuggests that Yanqingjie refers to the area ofYanzhou E£1'1'[ and Qingzhou m (the areaof modern Yan'an E£*' and Qingyang in Shaanxi jffi province) and that thesewere horses from this region (presumablytaking jie to be an appreviation for jiedushiliJ J.!t 1JI!, denoting in this case the territorialjurisdiction of a Military Commissioner, theprovincial military governors who were thedominant figures in the territorial administrationof the Tang empire after the An Lushanrebellion. See Charles O. Hucker, A dictionaryof official titles in imperial China (Stanford,Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985) p.l44.On these grounds Rong suggests that ZhangYichao's power extended west of the YellowRiver into the area of modern Shaanxi. SeeRong Xinjiang, Guiyi jun shi yanjiu, p.162).However, it seems likely that the imperialbirthday is meant, as Schafer suggests. Theeditors of the Zhonghua Shuju edition of theJiu Tang shu do not underline the words (as istheir usual practice with proper names).Moreover, the entry for the following year(867) in the Xin Tang shu;wr m [New TangHistory], juan 9 (Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju,1975), p.260, records that the hunting birds,horses and women from the royal householdwere to be ritually released because of thesickness of the emperor, and that gifts ofwomen for the duanwu Jiffilq: (5th day of the5th lunar month-by Tang times the principalmidsummer festival (see Derk Bodde Festivalsin classical China [Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1975], pp.289-316) andyanqing festivals were to be banned. Thismakes it likely that yanqingjie in the entriesin Jiu Tang shu and Cefu yuangui refers toYizong's birthday.

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER3day Zhangye *-1ro, the major centre in the middle of the Gansu if'*'"corridor. 5 In this precise identification of their place of origin, the goshawksmarked Zhang Yichao's annexations of territory in the areas east ofDunhuang 1i (usually referred to at that time as Shazhou 1Y1+[) from the840s to the 860s 6 These goshawks were fruits and pleasures of conquest.Like all territorial conquests, this was a conquest of rival lives, the lives thatobstruct or permit dominion over space-those of enemies like the remnantforces of the Tibetan empire, those of potentially disloyal allies and thoseof subjects and subordinates: soldiers, lieutenants, scribes, goshawk masters,and also oxen, camels, wolves, pine trees and flowers. The subjection ofthese birds to political power was an outcome of the subjection of thecorridor itself to the military authority of Zhang Yichao; the historicalcondition for the possession of violent birds by political forces was a historyof political violence. Their relationship to the transformation of the territorialorder since the 840s was registered by juxtaposition: the goshawks arrivedat the Tang court along with two Tibetan women, Ganjun shan's formerrulers now made slaves 7 These ornamental bodies presented before theemperor the history of the collapse of Tibetan empire and the history ofZhang's conquest, a history which the Tang court attempted to definethrough the title "The Army which Returns to Righteousness" (Guiyi junM.),8 a term of complex resonances marking both a restoration of orderand something other than full integration into the systems of empire.9The goshawks were themselves part of the stratagems that this conquestordained, a component in the political engagement between Zhang Yichaoand the Tang dynasty. Ganjun shan lay on the border with Liangzhou r* 1'1'1,conquered by Zhang Yichao at the head of a mixed Han and non-Han forcein 861, 1 0 having hitherto been ruled by former subjects of the Tibetanempire. The Tang state refused to ratify Zhang's authority over Liangzhou 11(which had been one of the great centres of Tang power in the Gansucorridor prior to the An Lushan t U-! rebellion of 755-63). 1 2 In 863 (threeThe prefecture of Ganzhou was named afterthese mountains, located to the east of theprefectural capital. See Jiu Tang shu, juan 40,Dili zhi :!::FJI!;E; [Monograph on geographyJ,juan 3, p.l641.6 According to the Zhang Huaishen bei11E1i!If! Ganzhou was taken in 849 (see ChiHexi jiedu bingbu shangshu Zhang gongdezheng zhi bei fPJjffiifrJtt,€flH;!,j01!i&jjlljl [Monument to the virtuousgovernance of his lordship Zhang, imperiallyappointed Minister of the Board of War andMilitary Commissioner of Hexil, P.2762, S.3329,5.6161, 5.6973 and S.11564, transcribed byRong Xinjiang, Guiyi jun shi yanjiu, p.400).Liangzhou was taken in 861 (Rong Xinjiang,IGuiyi jun shi yanjiu, p.5; see footnote 15below on the capture of Liangzhou forreferences).7 See references to Jiu Tang shu and CeJuyuangui in footnotes 2 and 4 above. Thesewomen are also mentioned in The goldenpeaches oj Samarkand, where Schaferdescribes them as "appropriate tokens ofcongratulation on a national holiday" (p.50).In a footnote he states that "Chang I-ch'ao,imperial legate at Sha-chou (Tun-huang)sent them along with four goshawks andtwo horses for the Yen-ch'ing Festival. Thefollowing year an edict put an end to thesubmission of women as gifts on theoccasion of this festival and the Tuan-wuIFestival." See The golden peaches ojSamarkand, p.292.8 For sources on the granting of the name'Guiyi jun', see Rong Xinjiang, Guiyi jun shiyanjiu, p.3; see also Yang Jidong, "ZhangYichao and Dunhuang in the 9th century,"Journal oj Asian History 32.2 (998): 116-18.Yang Jidong argues that in the Han dynasty"Returning to Righteousness" was a titlebestowed on foreign chieftains who hadsurrendered, and that in 842 the title had beengiven by the Tang to a Uyghur clan which hadsurrendered to the Tang after the collapse ofthe Uyghur empire Cid., pp.116-17).9 Yang Jidong contends that the associationsof the name 'Guiyi jun' with the surrender offoreigners meant that "when in the 850s theenvoys from Dunhuang arrived at Chang'anthey were considered by the Tang as aliensrather than subjects of the empire whounfortunately fell under foreign rule for aboutseventy years, a sense predominant in laterwritings. Thus the fact that the Returning toRighteousness Army itself seemed not willingto use this name also becomes understandable"("Zhang Yichao and Dunhuang in the9th century," pp.117-18). Rong Xinjiang haspointed out that documents produced atDunhuang itself in the era of Zhang Yichaoand his successor Zhang Huaishen do not usethe term 'Guiyi jun' (although they did use thistitle in communications with the Tang centre).See Rong Xinjiang, "Guiyi jun ji qi yu zhoubianminzu de guanxi chutan" [The Guiyi jun andits relations with neighbouring ethnic groups:a preliminary studyl, Dunhuangxue jikan 100986.2): 29, and 41, n.49 for examples.10Xin Tang shu, juan 9, p.257, and Sima---Guang 'R]}.l§;IC, Zizhi tongjian m[Comprehensive mirror for aid in government],juan 250 (Beijing: Guji Chubanshe,1956), p.8104. The former source gives thedate of the taking of Liangzhou as the 3rdlunar month of the 2nd year of the XiantongJI3t era (861), while the latter puts it in the4th year of the Xiantong era (863).11 5.6342 contains the text of the memorial inwhich Zhang Yichao requested official appointmentas governor of Liangzhou, together withthe imperial denial of the request. See RongXinjiang, Guiyi jun shi yanjiu, p.158, for atranscription of this document.12 "Liang-chou had more than a hundredthousand residents, reputed to be of hard andunyielding temperament, since they lOVER

4LEWIS MAYOllived under the influence of the White Tigerand Sign of Metal. Some of these citizenswere Chinese, but many were of Indianextraction, surnamed in the Chinese fashion,according to their ethnic origin, Shindu, andmany could trace their origin to the nationsbordering the Oxus andJaxartes. Here wereprime grazing lands for horses, especiallyalong a river which still retained its archaicMongolian name ofTUmigen, meaning 'bonemarrow' in the Hsien-pi language. It was sonamed for the fertility of the lands thereabout.Here also were produced fine damasks,mats and wild horse-hides, not to mentionan excellent headache remedy. This Liangchouwas a true melting pot, a kind ofhomely symbol of the exotic to the Chinese,as Hawaii is to the American of the twentiethcentury. The hybrid music of Liang-chou, atonce foreign and familiar, since it was notentirely either, was in fashion in the earlyMiddle Ages of the Far East." Schafer, Thegolden peaches oj Samarkand, p.22.13 See Xin \Vudai shi :mli 1-\:;E [NewHistory of the Five Dynasties], juan 74(Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1974), p.914, foran account of the history of the Liangzhougarrison troops given by some of itsdescendants during a visit to the emperorMingzong * of the Latter Tang (HouTang 1£) dynasty in 933.14 Yang Jidong, "Zhang Yichao andDunhuang in the 9th century," p.l27.15 For an exhaustively documented andpenetrating analysis of the events surroundingZhang Yichao's capture of Liangzhouand subsequent power struggles, see RongXinjiang, Guiyi jun shi yanjiu, pp.155-61;see also Yang Jidong's excellent account ofthe issues in "Zhang Yichao and Dunhuangin the 9th century," pp.l26-7.16 See Xin Tang shu, juan 217b, p.6133.The CeJu yuangui reports that this informationwas communicated to the Tang courtby Zhang Yichao (see juan 973, p.11436).17 See Jiu Tang shu, juan 19a, p.660.18 SeeJiu \Vudaishifi.li 1-\:;E[OldHistoryof the Five Dynasties], juan 138 (\Vaiguoliezhuan 7f. WU if [Monograph on foreigncountriesD, 2 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju,1976), p.l842, which states that a whitefalcon (baihu B) was sent by theGanzhou Uyghurs to the emperor Mingzongof the Latter Tang dynasty in 933 (on 12August, according to James Hamilton).years prior to the goshawks' arrival in Chang'an) Yizong sent a detachmentof troops from central China to garrison the townl3 and rebuild its walls.Liangzhou was garrisoned jointly by Tang forces and those of Zhang Yichao,and became "the border city between the two sides." 14 The Tang institutedstrict border controls on those travelling eastward to Liangzhou, which thusbecame the site of an assertion of Tang authority against the conquests ofZhang Yichao.15 The birds, avatars of the overall strategic situation, originatedin mountains that directly adjoined this zone of contest.The appearance of the goshawks in Chang'an thus occurred within amatrix of tense and subtle political confrontations between Zhang and theTang court, a politiCS of gesture and ambiguity, in which relations of authoritywent unc1arified. Their passing from the ruling hand of Zhang Yichao to thatof the emperor Yizong was itself an ambiguous act. The transfer of authorityover the birds was at one level an act of deference and loyalty: the commandof distinguished birds was voluntarily given up to a superior power. But italso marked the limits ofYizong's powers of command in the Gansu corridor.The hawks were a gift, and Zhang enjoyed the honour and privilege of beingtheir donor, choosing to surrender the distinguished avian lives that were athis disposal, lives whose presence in his power was a direct sign and productof his command of armed force in the region.But the web of events and strategies acting on and through the goshawkswas not confined to the marking of military strength in the eastern Gansucorridor through a subtle manipulation of the protocols of fealty. Zhang'spowers of capture were under challenge by other capturing forces. At thebeginning of the year in which the goshawks reached Chang'an, Uyghurforces had taken the Turfan area from the Tibetans, establishing a newpolitical presence to the west of Dunhuang.16 Later in the same year, theUyghurs also killed the most powerful surviving Tibetan leader in theregion.17 The goshawks inhabited a world of continuous geo-politicalrealignment. The strategic balances which affected them and which theirjourney to Chang' an helped to effect shifted constantly. Indeed, their arrivalat the Tang court presaged that of Zhang himself: in the following year hewent to the capital as a hostage, replacing his older brother who had diedshortly before. In the ensuing period the Ganjun mountains and the wild livesthey contained fell out of the control of the successors of Zhang Yichao, andGansu corridor birds were subjected to new political forces. The next raptorfrom the region whose journey to a central Chinese capital survives ininstitutional memory was a white falcon sent by the Uyghurs of Ganzhou tothe court of emperor Mingzong of the Latter Tang.lsThe conquest of birds and the conquest of lands and lives by which it iseffected is subject to endless revision by later conquering acts. Theinvolvement of Gansu falcons and goshawks in political life thus forms anhistorical continuum, part of a wider engagement of hunting birds withpolitics in China and Inner Asia (and indeed Eurasia more generally) lastingup into the present century. But this is also an episodic history, constituted

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER5as a succession of events rather than a structure of continuously reproducedauthority. The relationship of goshawks to political forces was characterisedby the irregular rhythms of seizure. The capture of prey, the capture of birdsthemselves and the strategies of diplomacy and warfare all involved formsof power defined by discontinuity and ceaseless readjustment to circumstances.The presence of the Ganjun shan goshawks in the records of the history ofthe Tang empire, which makes them some of the most exalted livesoriginating in the Gansu corridor during this period (and has ensured theirtransmission over time and across space so that they are written about inAustralia more than a thousand years after their deaths), marks the durabilityand intensity of their connections with imperial politics and its institutionalmemories. But this exalted individuality is a function of the sporadic andfragile nature of the power relations between hawks and human authority.It was also directly related to the specificities of an historical moment and thestrategic alignments which constituted it. The goshawks obtained their placein history from the uncertainties of conquest./Significantly, the emperor ordered that thebird be set free (see Mingzong's decree onhunting birds in the Cefu yuangui, juan168, p.2029, translated in note 62 below)'James Hamilton gives a French translationof the passage in Les Ouighours a !'epoquedes Cinq Dynasties (Paris: Presses Universitairesde France, 1955), p.76, stating that apair of falcons was given, evidentlyinterpreting the word !ian Mi as "pair." Lianhas been glossed by Schafer as a measureword for hawks sent as tribute, derivingfrom the bindings with which they werelashed to their perch (see "Falconry in T'angtimes," p.312, n.4).The Politics of Hawk ControlThe prominence of hawks, falcons and eagles in Eurasian political lifeover the past two millennia or so might be explained as a matter of politicalculture. Aristocracies, royal families and imperial dynasties (or their imitators,such as the rulers of Nazi Germany) practised hawking and falconry, it couldbe said, because hunting with birds functioned as a demonstration of martialstrength, a political theatre in which power could be organised anddisplayed. In this framework, hawks and falcons are part of a politics ofspectacles and signs, in which power "shows itself" through hunting birds.This analysis of falconry interlocks with a conception of birds of prey assymbols of power. The emblem of the eagle encapsulates the might of Rome;the Uyghurs have "Whirling Falcons" (Huihu @JU) as the official renderingof their name in Chinese.19 The capture and use of fierce birds in the huntis thought of as an attempt to deploy these symbols in the flesh, to mark morefully and perfectly the link between political power and the majesty of wingsand talons. Political involvement with birds is, according to this approach, anattempt by ruling forces to find and articulate an image of themselves.But a sociology of hunting can also be advanced to account for thisinterest in birds of prey. Hawking was shared pleasure in the violence ofpredatory birds, socially controlled and directed. Hawks helped to constituteelites, as elites possessed the power to acquire hunting birds and to use them,and gained an experience of their own cohesion by participating in thecollective joys of the hunt. The Ganjun shan goshawks would thus appearas part of a long-distance establishment of social solidarities, effected by acommon love of fine birds and their use. Hunting with birds crossed borders:Korean kings, Khitan chieftains, Uyghur qaghans, Tang emperors and19 See n.20 below for references to thegranting of the name "Whirling Falcons."

6LEWIS MAYO20See Xin Tang shu, juan 217a, p.6134;also Jiu Tang shu, juan 195, p.5210. Thechange of name resulted from a requestfrom the Uyghur qaghan for a change fromthe old way of transcribing the name Uyghur,the new characters @I "taking the meaningthat they were swooping, light and swift likefalcons" (Old Tang History) or "swift andfiercely predatory in the manner of falcons"(New Tang History). See Colin Mackerras,The Uighur empire according to the T'angdynastic histories (Canberra: AustralianNational University Press, 1972), pp.97 and108 for a translation from these sources.There are different dates for the granting ofthis title in various sources (discussed byMackerras, pp.l58-9). If it did not occur in789, when DelOng's daughter was marriedto the Khan Tun Baya of the clan of theYaylaqar, it would have been in 809 at thebeginning of the reign ofBaoyi f* Qaghan(Ai ta I]rida qut bulniis alp bilga qayan). Seealso the remarks by James Hamilton inManuscrits Oui"gours du IXe--Xe siecle deTouen-houang, voU (Paris: Peeters-France,1986), p.8S.independent regional military leaders like Zhang Yichao were all interestedin hawks and falcons, and through this common interest, they could establisha foundation for diplomatic exchange. The common enjoyment of birdviolence established a mutually intelligible code, a lingua franca understoodby princes, nobles and emperors from Normandy to the Bohai gulf.A more sceptical sociology of interest and power might see this pervasiveconcern with birds as a function of the basic commonalities of interestbetween these ruling elites. A common interest in hawks, it might be argued,translates shared interests and investments in hierarchies of authority whichare common to politically dominant groups across state boundaries. Hawksare thus a medium for mutual recognition for those occupying the commandingheights of the social and political landscape. To analyse hawks simply assymbols for power or vehicles for social interests, however, would meanoverlooking many aspects of the relationships of hawks and power. Such ananalysis would not, for example, focus on the political arts and techniquesto which hawks were subjected in the process of their capture and use, whichare thereby relegated to the status of technical instruments. Neither would itconsider the political relationships involved in acquiring, transporting andkeeping birds, nor those generated by bird control. In short, the specificitiesof hawk politics, and of hawking as a specific political domain, would beignored.In the engagements between hawks and political forces and intere _sts, thetotal ensemble of political relations and the specific technologies of hawkcontrol operate in tandem. Without the relations of conquest (the historiesof war, the machinery of administration and the protocols of diplomacy), theproject of capturing and using hawks either does not occur or occupies alowly place in the order of social power. Without the techniques of catchinghawks and acquiring their abilities, the relations of power that hawksengender (and the political problems and possibilities that arise in relationto hawks and to hawks alone) do not exist.The grand politics that unfolded around and upon hunting birds was preeminentlya politics of territorial authority. That is to say that the politics ofterritorial authority was also, at some level, a politics of birds of prey. Evenin cases where the relationship of birds to power seems to be most clearlyanalogical-as in the use of "Whirling Falcons" to refer to the Uyghurs-whatis occurring is a placement of hunting birds in political relations structuredin terms of territorial power (and the people it involves), and a definition ofthose political relations in terms of hunting birds. Falcons and Uyghursbecome explicitly identified in the Chinese language20 at a specific point inthe history of empire in Central Asia: the name was granted in 789 by the courtof the emperor Dezong 1* (reigned 779-805), shortly after Dunhuang'sfinal annexation by the Tibetans. In other words, the incorporation of falconsinto the Chinese definition of the Uyghurs was a political act, arising out ofgeo-political imperatives, and a response to a specific problem of protocol:what name should be granted another imperial regime by its respectful peer

8LEWIS MAYO22 What distinguishes a technology from apractice is the presence of articulated systemsof knowledge, and of agents who embodyand monopolise that knowledge.23 See Wei Yanshen's g '''Rhapsodyon the goshawk" lYing fu Ml: "Tie thelong skin on the two feet. Flying, it does notchase by its original nature; eating, it doesnot fulfil its own desires," Chuxue ji, juan 30,p.731.24 Soldiers, however, must be taught violenceby their masters, as part of their training. Theviolence of hawks is appropriated, a violencethat is practised outside of social power,taught by adult hawks to chicks as part of life.The hawk that cannot kill will die; it willstarve if it fails to provide itself with themeans of life. The soldier who cannot killrisks death at the hands of others-by his(rarely her) enemies in war, or by his superiorsor peers for failing in his duty. When a hawkis tamed it is brought within the same structureof authority as the soldier. It will die if it failsto kill-when it fails to fulfil the role thatauthority has assigned to it and its superiorsare displeased with it.2S The hawk is an adjunct to the majesty ofgoverning power, its own body held close tothe magnificent body of the ruler, amplifyingand marking that magnificence. "On hisright, his goshawk on his arm; on his left, hishound on a leash," Schafer, "Falconry inTang times," p.316. The quotation is fromthe biography of Zhang Chong iJ.R3'E in theNan shi l¥J 51:. [Southern History], juan 31(Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1975), p.811. Thesesubdued, vigorous and violent bodies, thisrestrained power to kill rendered obedientby the process of training, were part of royalbearing. Literally bound to the kingly body,they are constituents of its social presence, aconcrete sign of its powers and its wealth,the very things that brought dog and hawkwithin its grasp.service) of the goshawks, themselves a manifestation of the extractive anddominating capacities of the political machine.This overall spatial power was indivisible from the problems of therecognition of authority, and of entitlement, which surrounded Zhang's rulein the Gansu corridor, problems which framed the presentation of goshawksto Yizong. But these relations and forms of power were not simply a contextfor the goshawks' lives; rather, they informed the whole project of hawkgovernance, and were themselves constituted and informed by the modes ofpower involved in the governance of hawks.A technology of sovereignty was enacted on and through the bodies ofthe goshawks 22 The power exerted on these birds was first of all a physicalpower. For hawks caught in the Gansu corridor and transported overland tothe Tang capital, the primary power relation was one of handling, the actionof holding and restraining, but also of keeping alive and carrying acrossspace. The goshawks were literally held in the hand. To possess and controlhawks is to subject them to the action of the hands. Power must take holdof these fierce bodies to bring them within its grasp.Authority over goshawks was exercised through objects (jesses, leashes,perches, gloves), tools of constraint that allowed people under Zhang'scommand and later at the Tang court to take possession of the powers oftalons and beaks and to insulate themselves against those powers. 23 As withother disciplines, these physical instruments are deployed in conjunctionwith an ensemble of disciplining practices, calculated actions performed andrepeated to subject the birds to an ordering regime. Through this applicationof tools and techniques the violent energies of goshawks are brought withinthe orbit of social power, constrained and directed for social ends. The powerof disciplining is both the method for establishing authority over hawks andthe domain in which that authority is exerted.Such power can only be exercised after a programme of training,concerted attention and effort directed at the birds' bodies. It is not simplya matter of subduing the goshawks but of managing them, deploying thecapacities which make them desirable-their sense of sight, their wings andfeathers, their talons. Social power needs to make hawk bodies docile inorder to take hold of them, but it must keep this docility within limits. Thebird must retain its ferocity, its capacity to strike and kill; thus it has the samesubstance as the discipline of soldiers, who must also retain their violentpowers while being amenable to the commands of those who direct them.24The life of tamed hunting birds involves a dynamic of constraint and release.If grasping in the hand constitutes the fundamental form of the authorityexerted on hawks, that authority finds its fulfilment and its raison d'etre onlywhen the bird is unleashed to kill, and when it returns voluntarily to the handwhich rules it.The relations that surrounded the goshawks (and other tamed huntingbirds) were thus of a political character. They constituted an art of control,poised between subjection and licence. Here power partakes of the form of

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER9mastery. It is mastery in the three senses of the word: ownership, control andinstruction. The mastering interest is simultaneously owner, ruler andteacher, and the mastered life is owned, ruled and taught.25 But the politicalidentity of the relationship was not merely that of disciplining force anddisciplined body. Once brought under human control, the goshawk ceasesto perform its activities of catching and killing for itself or its kin; it acts underthe auspices of an authority and on behalf of that authority. The goshawk isplaced in a position of service. Its actions of watching, pursuing and strikingbecome duties, performed for others: for Zhang Yichao, the emperor Yizongor his delegates.The goshawks, if properly directed, would do the bidding of theirmasters without hesitation; they would kill for them, or delight themthrough the exhibition of their powers of flight and pursuit or through theperfection and elegance of their physical appearance, a token of theirpowers. But they could also refuse to obey,26 or perform their dutiespoorly.27 The history of hunting with birds was haunted by the spectacleof the timid hawk or the frightened falcon, the bird that did not return whencalled or caught the wrong quarry. An elaborate body of techniques wasdeployed to avoid these disappointments, these failures of birds to conformto the expectations and dreams of power. Hawks could be soothed,distracted, caressed, educated with lures and, if their resistance to cooptationproved too great, discarded.To rule hawks properly involves an understanding of the governed lifeto secure mastery of it. In practice this was achieved by a governance of thebird's appetites and senses. In the main this involved a strategic inhibition ofthe bodily needs and attributes of hawks through practices like the denial offood28 or the sewing up of the eyelids.29 Like all discipline, it was directedat producing a state of bodily conformity to authority. But the hawk's owndelicacy prescribed a limit to this disciplinary project: the very faculties thatmade it desirable (its sight and its feathers) could easily be damaged duringtraining. 30 Authority over goshawks presumed knowledge, judgment, scrutinyand restraint.The "essence" of the tamed hawk is that it should move on its own, thatit should leave the controlling hand and return to it. The relation of humanauthority to hawks was that of co-optation. Authority co-opted the hawk'sautonomy of action, prescribing its limits and ordaining the occasions onwhich it would be exercised. Wildness-the freedom to fly and kill-was tobe retained but regulated, confined to specific times and places (therehearsals of training and "exercise" or the theatre of the hunt, their "proper"domain). In other words, the power relation of master to hawk is one ofauthorisation. Domination of ha wks took the form of licensed independence,of birds being set free to pursue what they would pursue in the wild.The management and manipulation of the desires and capacities ofsubordinated lives to make them serve a mastering interest applied equallyto the Ganjun shan goshawks and to the emissaries who carried them to26 "It will stop and not be called." WeiYanshen, "Rhapsody on the goshawk," p.731.27 Hawks are divided by quality: some arebrave and some are timid, or they may belazy and easily shocked (see Wei Yanshen,"Rhapsody on the goshawk," p.731).28 Balance is required in starving the bird tobring it under control: "just enough reductionin flesh is sought to produce sufficienthunger to stimulate the bird's desire to eatfrom the falconer'S hand and to return tohim when called. There are falconers whoattempt, through emaciation and extremehunger, to reduce their birds to obediencein a very short time ... . The rapidly andmuch-starved bird learns to hate her keeper,and should she escape she is more difficultto recapture ... . A slow method of trainingis better in every respect, for the falcondevelops settled habits (which becomesecond nature) and she grows to love hermaster. This system is also better for thefalcon's physical condition, for a suddenalteration is against avian nature but agradual change may be beneficiaL" Casey A.Wood and F. Marjorie Fyfe, trans., The art offalconry by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,1943), p.160. I thank Mark and Dian Elvinfor lending me a copy of this book.29 On seeling, sewing up eyelids to preventthe bird from becoming frantic, see FrederickII (trans. Wood and Fyfe), Theartojfalconry,p.137. The point of seeling is explained aspreventing the falcon from seeing people(whom she hates by nature) until she has"grown to enjoy being with them and beingfed by them," p.149. The extreme sensitivityof raptorial sight is a central problem ofmanagement: "Entirely blinded falcons maywithout distinction rest satisfactorily on anyform of perch or block; since they cannotsee anything at all they are not likely to beaffected by visual irritants that usually leadto restlessness and a desire to fly off theroost," p.163. Seeling was used as a techniquein Chinese handling; see Wei Yanshen,"Rhapsody on the goshawk," p.731, andSchafer's "Falconry in Tang times," p.315.30 Questions of proper handling are central;the bird's plumage must not be damaged asa result of mishandling. See Frederick II(trans. Wood and Fyfe), The art of falconry,p.149.

10LEWIS MAYO31 A letter accompanying the gift of a whitegoshawk offered to the emperor XuanzongW'* (012-56) by the eighth-century officialZhang Wei 5.R\ll states that when unleashedin the imperial parks the hawk would "pursuethe foxes and hares in the royal gardens;following the order of the seasonal periodsit will chase the birds and sparrows of theForbidden Forest [the imperial parklandsl."As much as catching game for the emperor'stable and providing entertainment, thegoshawk is charged with keeping order inthe royal parks, preventing the unconstrainedgrowth of wild lives (such as foxes) whichthreaten, when vigilance is relaxed, to runout of control, producing wild disorder at theheart of the governed space of the imperialcapital. The goshawk is thus an agent in thepreservation of control within the palace.See Zhang Wei, "Jin bai ying zhuan" B 111!l* [Formal petition accompanying a whitegoshawk submitted as tributel, Quan Tangwen I&:::X: [Complete Tang prose], juan375 (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe,1990), p.1684. This bird was procured inCentral Asia, where Zhang Wei was servingas an official. See also the three letters thataccompanied the presentation of sparrowhawksto the Tang emperor, which state thatthe sparrowhawk patrols the Forbidden Forestof the imperial palace chasing small birds,hastening back and forth to serve the emperor,hitting its target every time, and desiring todisplay its powers in the imperial presence.The three letters are contained in the Gantangji tti: (P.4093)' a collection of prosewritings originating in central China of whicha copy was preserved at Dunhuang. Aphotographic reproduction of the relevantsection of Gantangji (leaves 15 and 16 of themanuscript) can be found in Chen Zuolong,Dunhuang guchao wenxian huizui [Acollection of the finest documents amongstancient copies from Dunhuangl (Taipei: Hsinwen-feng,1982), p.478. For a correctedtranscription, see Zhao Heping, Dunhuangbiaozhuang jianqi shuyi jijiao [Dunhuangpetitions, letters, missives and etiquetteguides, edited and correctedl (Nanjing:Jiangsu Guji Chubanshe, 1997). I thank ZhaoHeping MHO.IjL for allowing me to copy thiswork when it was still in manuscript. Modernscholars have attributed the Gantang ji tothe ninth-century Tang scholar-official LiuYe ;Ij . Liu Ye was active in the reignof Xuanzong W* (r. 846-59), and so hisChang'an at Zhang Yichao's behest. Authority over those who act (andespecially travel) on their own, but are expected to return to the controllinghand, is a fundamental constituent of political practice, connected with theproblem of exercising dominance at a distance. Neither hawking norcommand over delegates involves a complete and unrelenting constraint ofthe governed body, as is the case with the control of slaves or oxen; rather,these consist in adroit and skilful authorisation, the granting of powers to act(to move, and especially to kill) in the name of the ruler/governor. Theapparatus of rules which prescribe and limit the powers of delegates may beregarded as one of a variety of strategic instruments through which the rulermanages those who do his bidding.The capture of the goshawks and their deployment in hunting thusinvolved an art of seizure. The qualities of birds, like the qualities of generalsor taxation commissioners, were historically variable, depending also on thespeed and cunning of the pheasants or hares pursued-which, like thequalities of hawks, was a matter of fortune.By capturing fierce birds, political power was able to capture wild livesthat otherwise eluded its grasp, the small, fast-moving creatures likepheasants and hares that outran or flew away from it. 31 No less than governedhumans, these lives were targets for political authority. But the goshawks alsobrought into the orbit of political power a whole range of human lives (allof those, from the catchers and trainers of hawks, to ambassadors, courtiersand poets) who were in some way tied to the networks of relations thatsurrounded the capture and use of hunting birds. The network was inherentlya structure of authority relations; possession of hawks involved the possessionof a full complement of subordinates who were mobilised to sustain andperform the activity of hunting with birds, not to mention the retinue ofassociates and deputies who participated in the ceremonies of the hunt.At a foundational level the acquisition of the capturing powers of hawksby these networks was the product of work with a net.32 The net itself is a"work" (in the old sense of work as an object created out of woven or knotted/writing about the submission of sparrowhawksto the emperor is approximatelycontemporary with the arrival of the Ganjunshan goshawks in Chang'an. Liu seems tohave served in Shaanxi near Huazhou .1'1'1which, as Schafer notes, had compulsorytribute of falcons and sparrowhawks to theTang court (see The golden peaches ofSamarkand, p.94); this may be connectedwith his sparrowhawk letters. On the careerof Liu Ye and the Gantang ji, see ZhangXihou, Dunhuang ben Tangji yanjiu [Studieson the Dunhuang copies of Tang collectedliterary worksl (Taipei: Hsin-wen-feng, 1995),pp.275-316.32 In modern social and political theory,networks are thoroughly detached from networks. This is in part because the capture ofwild lives is now placed at an enormousdistance from the practice of high-level politics.The net is wielded in strictly economic domains,such as industrial fishing or the unloading andloading of ships. The net functions in politics asan image of lattices and encompassment: thesafety net of social welfare (the term borrowedfrom the marginalised entertainment practicesof the circus), the economic net, or-in its mostideological and most abstracted form-the netof global electronic communications (which isstill, however, brought into being by a physicalnet of cables crossing space).

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER11threads). The most prized birds were the passage hawks, caught in a net, forthese already possessed killing and flying powers.33 The Tang falconrymanual of Duan Chengshi .tItgX;A describes the net used for the taking ofgoshawks with great specificity, setting down the size of its holes, theirnumber and arrangement, how it should be kept (including protection frominsect attack), what poles should be used for it, how to detect hawks comingnear, the use of decoys and the time for its deployment.34The lives caught in these nets may be distinguished or undistinguished.What offers historical distinction to the hawks entangled in these nets is thenetworks in which they are embedded. These networks include those ofpolitical figures (rulers and governors), of institutions (diplomatic receptionoffices, the royal mews), of practices (hunting and hawking, poetry writing,banqueting), of systems of knowledge and language (falconry treatises,medicinal systems, poems and essays), of ethical structures (moral andpolitical critiques of falconry, doctrines of rulership), and the networks ofhistories (the memories of birds that have gone before, and thus the ensembleof practices and words which organise hawk lives). The plethora anddiversity of writings about hunting birds in circulation in Tang times marksthe density of these networks and the interests involved in them. The physicalact of disentangling the hawk from the lines of the net is followed by anetwork of social procedures which bring its life into line with the ordersprescribed by this mesh of people, institutions, knowledge and practice.The exercise of power on the goshawks is thus effected in an order of linesand spaces. The defining character of net works and networks is the strategicmanagement and deployment of "power lines." Yet these power lines areconstructed by, and draw their logic from, the spaces which come betweenthem. The well-made net consists of a matrix of lines which organises itsspaces. It is not a flat, dense obstructive surface; if it were, it could notaccomplish its capturing work. This order of lines and spaces is produced toapprehend mobility: the net is made to secure power in the empty space ofthe air, to take possession of the lives which move through it. It does this byexploiting space, a space which renders the net invisible to the flying birdor which allows the net to pass swiftly through the air as it is thrown. Thework of the net (in the sense of the use of the net) involves a properpositioning of the lines, a secure placement in the appropriate space or askilful holding of the lines which guide and form it.In this way the logic of nets, work and networks is constituted by theinterplay of line, space and mobility. The net's lines and spaces exist tocapture moving things, above all birds and fish, moving lives whichcommand space through their command of movement. But work with the netinvolves its own mobility: the net is a structure that is moved around, itsstructure of flexible lines making it detachable and transportable. The human,political network which apprehends the net and its work (or more precisely,apprehends what the net and its work have apprehended) must be mobiletoo. It must extend itself across space to bring within its web the lives that33 See Schafer, "Falconry in T'ang times,"p.299, n.2. Netting would seem to havebeen a means for catching goshawks in theGuiyi jun. An inventory of expenditures ofcloth and paper from the Guiyi jungovernment refers to the "goshawk netter(wangying ren N Cheng Xiaoqianflf /J\." See lines 88 of p.4640v. in LuXiangqian, "Guanyu Guiyi jun shiqi yi fenbuzhi poyong li de yanjiu-shishi p.4640beimian wenshu" [Studies on an inventoryof cloth and paper expenditures from theGuiyi jun period-an attempted analysis ofthe document p.4640 versol, in Lu'sDunhuang Tulufan wenshu lungao [Paperson Dunhuang and Turfan manuscripts](Nanchang: Jiangxi Renmin Chubanshe,1992), p.103.34 Duan Chengshi, Youyang zazu @ Il.im [Youyang miscellany], qianji1W,juan20: Roujue bu ff5 (Beijing: ZhonghuaShuju, 1981), p.193. Schafer, "Falconry inT'ang times," pp.319-21. See also the poemof Sui Yangdi: "Moving through Shuo 'ifiJl ,wishing to go to Heng iT [both are in ShanxiLlJ itS, on the route of hawk migrations], itsuddenly falls into the nets, then is boundornamentally with a leash and taken as apresent to the ruler," "Y ong ying shi," Chuxueji, juan 30, p.732.

12LEWIS MAYO35 This is the succession traced in WeiYanshen's "Rhapsody on the goshawk,"which outlines the progress from capture inthe net to being tied with jesses andperforming the work of hunting. See Chuxueji, juan 30, p.731.36 Net work is something mobilised: a workthat is made mobile. At the same time themobility of the bird, passing from hand tohand (from the hawk catcher to the forces oflocal government to the emissaries to thereception agencies at the capital to theimperial hawk masters and to the emperorhimselD, mobilises a network of relationsbetween people, places, institutions andknowledge, things that otherwise remaindormant. The skills of goshawk handlers,understanding of diplomatic protocol,familiarity with overland routes (managingthe difficult journey through the Gansucorridor across the Yellow River and throughthe territories of Eastern Gansu and Shaanxi),and a grasp of the nuances of geo-politicalalignments and of the desires and intentionsof ruling forces-all of these things arebrought into play, and brought into contactwith each other, by a network of connections.are not found at its heart, just as Zhang Yichao's network of authority spreaditself outwards into the Ganjun shan, ordaining the capture of birds there.Once caught in these nets and networks, the goshawk is subjected toother power lines.35 In training the hawk and hunting with it, the most basicform of handling is the manipulation of the lines that tie the bird, its jesses,the lines whose tying (to the legs of the hawk) is one of the crucial marks andinstruments of its incorporation by human power, distinguishing it from wildhawks and from other captive birds which were not tied to people in this way(that is, birds whose ties to power were of a different, less visible character).While the skilful tying of these lines provides the foundation for the exerciseof power, the lines are only important because of their dialectical relationshipto the release of the bird into empty space.The movement of the birds overland from the Gansu corridor activatesthe network of relations between political centres and political forces(between Zhang Yichao and his headquarters at Dunhuang and Yizong in theTang capital) by creating a link across space, by joining what is separated bythe weakness of power and the strength of distance. Under these conditions,political authority is not a dense, even fabric as it is in areas of concentratedsettlement (as in centres of plant cultivation or cities, where governed livesexist in close proximity), but a fine and stretched mesh, something we seein the objectified diagrammatic form of historical maps of the communicationnetworks of medieval Central Asia, on which single lines join the points ofsettlement into a lattice, but the vast majority is blank space. At this abstractmacro-level, settlements appear as knots of power. The movement of thebird, its mobility, makes it an instrument for the creation of ties between thoseseparated by vast spaces, between ruler and governor who had never seeneach other in person-in other words, the tying of power knots into anetwork. 36The biological reproduction of the goshawks was not socially controlledor determined. As lives captured in the wilds, it was only through thereproduction of net works and networks that power over hawks could beexercised and reproduced. The birds marked capturing capacities-capacitiesthat were at the heart of politics, as the honour and ability of political powerwas registered in what it could catch. This is not merely because of theanalogy between politics (visible particularly in militarised contexts) andphysical strength, but because the capture of lives involved political skills ofdiverse kinds. Strategic competence played itself out in a network, and themanagement of a network required strategy. This extended from the captureand training of the birds to their transmission in a web of diplomatic relationsand their use in hunting-or their ceremonial release. Ties were formed andput into action: the strings knotted to constitute the net, the tying of jesses,the linking of hawk catcher and trainer to superiors, the joining betweencentres of power and their peripheries, and between one centre and another,the ties of ruler and subject. In all these links, bonds and knots of power, forceand thing joined indivisibly together.

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER13But hawk control is political not simply because of the relationshipsbetween people which it makes possible. As a disciplining practice, hawkingdiffers from that of other prominent forms of animal 'domestication' in thatit involves techniques and relationships which are political in character. Thehawk life that it produces is an ennobled one, granted powers denied tomany other "domestic" animals, in particular the power to go where itchooses and to kill (which it does "aggressively," rather than "defensively"like a guard dog). This freedom of movement places the hunting bird in aposition of social privilege relative to other birds: it is nobler than its prey,and nobler than birds confined to cages. It is placed above the birds itcatches, and the training to which it has been subjected marks it off from birdswhich have been imprisoned because their loyalty to their masters is suspect.Not only is it the object of noble attention, and thus positioned in the moreelevated regions of human social space; its position in the avian hierarchyis superior because it is given rights which other birds do not enjoy.Hawking is also an ennobling discipline for the humans who perform it.Medieval Chinese writing about hunting with birds constitutes it as a practiceof those in elevated positions in the social hierarchy just as clearly as doesthe falconry writing of western Europe. Like all things upon which writingis unfolded, it is situated in a web of elegant phrasing that links it to a widerpractice of cultivated domination. If the process of bringing the bird withinthe grasp of power embeds it in political relations, placing it amongst thosewho issue commands, it also disciplines the master, who must acquire thediscipline of the art of mastelY over birds, accompanied by other disciplinessuch as bodily comportment, horsemanship, and the ability to commandsubordinates and to create goodwill amongst peers and inferiors. 37It is often observed that hunting was a rehearsal for politics, in particulara training ground for war.38 But hunting was politics,39 a part of politicalprocesses. It required political techniques of control, licensing and diScipline;it was not just a symbol of them. It was also an activity constituted by politicalrelations between hawks and people, as well as political relations of peopleto each other and to other forms of life (including the horses, dogs andleopards which accompanied the hawks on the hunt, the trees, shrubs andgrasses of the open ground where the hunt took place, and the animals andbirds killed as game). The practices of the hunt were embedded in the overallensemble of activities which constituted royal life. The playing out ofpolitical relations extends to all spheres in which the bodies of kings,emperors, khans and nobles are in one sense or other in action 4037 Through this those in charge can learn themanagement of the SOcially competitivestructures of hunting and the mastery of thebody and the paSSions, and thus acquire themastery in relations with the self and withothers that is essential to the business ofcommand. For a subordinate, involvementwith hawks taught how to negotiate the struc-/tures of hierarchy, to work out one's place inthe order of power, to earn affection throughjudicious compliments, and to discover therisks to oneself through attention to the quirksof those above (obselving their likes anddislikes, which are most clearly on show inthe field of enjoyment where those in chargemay lose themselves in the game).38 See for instance K. A. Wittfogel and FengChia-Sheng, History oj Chinese society: Liao(907-1125) (New York: American PhilosophicalSOCiety, 1949): "From earliest times huntingwas an integral part of nomadic life; pastoralists,fearful of killing off their milk-producinganimals, looked to game to augment theirmeat supply. However, the hunt also providedvaluable military training. This was recognizedby Chingis Khan who included rules of thecommunal hunt in his 'Laws.' In anotherconnection he refers to the duties of soldiersin wars and in hunts in the same sentence.These two aspects of the hunt also characterizedthe Liao period; even though the economicfunction shrank in Significance, hunting stillremained part of the life of the Ch'i-tanhorsemen 'in order to provide for their dailyneeds' ... . At the same time the hunt offeredan opportunity for maneuvers which were ofvalue in military training," p.119. Wittfogeland Feng construe Khitan ft devotion tohunting as part of a fundamental commitmentto cultural and political traditions: "Thecontinued requests for tribute falcons andeagles must be taken as an index of thepassion with which the Ch'i-tan rulers clung totheir traditional tribal habits" (p.l20).39 See the previous note regarding the lack ofdistinction between hunting and war in thecodes of Chinggis Khan.40 This is most obvious in the states withstrong links to Northeast and Inner Asia, suchas the Khitan Liao JI, in which the politicaland administrative domination of agriculturallands and the extraction of grain, cloth andlabour from them can be conceived assomething which supported the wholeapparatus of the annual royal hunts in whichthe Khitan emperors engaged. See Fu Lehuan,"Liaodai sishi nabo kao wu pian" [Five studieson the 'Nabo' hunts of the four seasons in theLiao period], Liaoshi congkao [Collected studieson Liao history] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju,1984), pp.36-172. The pursuit of war itself canbe constructed as a mechanism for securingthe territory (and more broadly speaking,political conditions) for hunting. The constructionof activities like hunting as pastimesor amusements, ancillary to 'real' politics, isitself the product of a political processassociated with bureaucratic types of dominationwhich understand politics as work or avocation. This conception has as its opposite'leisure' or 'private' pursuits, which must bestrictly separated from the public work ofthose holding 'political' positions.

14 LEWIS MAYOSovereigntyThe conjunction of hawks with ruling power in so much of continentalEurasia over the last two millennia is thus a matter of the interconnectionbetween the political nature of the techniques of authority exerted on birdsand the arts and disciplines of personal conduct that are found in the hunt,and also their shared relations with a form of politics organised around thedifferences between ruling and ruled bodies (the technologies of preeminenceand subordination with which they were invested, which ruler andruled strove to master), as well as the system of titles, appointments,exactions, gifts and ceremonies and the structures of territorial authority towhich they were related. The "technology of sovereignty" enacted on andthrough the goshawks was precisely this ensemble of relations, arts andforms of knowledge, a bodily and spatial politics which had practices ofseizure as one of its primary and defining constituents.The body of the emperor had a direct structuring effect on the lives of theGanjun shan goshawks. Their removal from their home region, and thus theirseparation from their peers through the involvement with political networksand strategies that made them historically significant, was impelled by thecalculation that they would be objects of royal favour. The splendour of theirbodies and powers, it was hoped, would contribute to the adornment of theemperor and add to his majesty, and thereby command his attention andaffection. In other words the circumstances of their lives were structured bya sovereignty of ornamentation, and by the ornamentation of sovereignty. Ofcourse, this adornment was effected in part by the specific character of theauthority relations exerted upon hawks, which simultaneously conferredpowers of command and superiority--complete mastery over subordinatedlives-and offered the charisma of a life whose autonomy was licensed,whose return to the ruling hand was a matter of its own choice. Moreover,the flexibility of the strategies and timetables of gift-giving within which theywere transmitted, and the relations of honour and respect that theirpresentation evinced (both the honour to the recipient and the honour to thedonor, who was distinguished and set apart by having such distinguishedlives at his disposal), constituted relations of sovereignty in the sense of aterritorial rapprochement structured by deference and loyalty. The goshawkswere thus part of the arts and politics of pre-eminence by which thesovereign-the pre-eminent body-was constituted.This pre-eminence, it must be stressed, was not a simple assertion ofsuperiority unilaterally claimed by the ruler. Rather it was a strategicengagement between subject/donor and ruler/recipient. Sovereignty is arelationship and, like all relationships, it is a matter of practice andmanoeuvre. Its model is not the contract, characterised by fixed and definedobligation (as it is in the theories of Hobbes and Rousseau), but rather thefield of organised contest, like the hunting ground, in which mobile bodiesact together largely without direct command or direct reference to the rules,

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER15through an incorporated grasp of the overall terrain and the distribution offorces within it. Under these conditions, the acknowledgment of preeminenceis less a matter of rigorously maintained postures of deference thanan unspoken enactment of authority relations, in which there is a constantstruggle to maintain order. Sovereignty, even in its most codified andrigorously restricted definitions in juridical and political theory, depends onthis overall order of power, and on the technologies of comportment,recognition and judgment together with the awareness of space and timewhich constitute it 41The European formulation of sovereignty as a doctrine, an abstract anduniversal principle of legitimate governance, a problem of the sovereign willand its limits, was itself a manoeuvre in the field of sovereignty struggles. Thenotion of a permanent principle of government produces a more profoundand complete co-ordination of the conduct of those engaged in authoritystruggles, whose strategies henceforth cohere around a single stake: that ofpolitical power explicitly defined as sovereignty. The theory of sovereigntyis but one (historically specific) element of the practices of sovereignty. Theexercise of sovereignty, even in the narrow sense assigned to it in constitutionallaw and political philosophy, is a matter of sovereignty events and sovereigntyrelationships, political happenings and engagements that go far beyond thesphere of prohibitions and rights.Thus the ceremonies of the court, the details of the imperial diet andclothing, royal entertainments and pastimes, the animals in the emperor'sstables, parks, aviaries, kennels, mews and pasturelands, the perfumesscenting his chambers, and the brushes, ink, pictures and books in his studyare not a "superstructure" or a "representation" of sovereignty (and thus asource of legitimacy, i.e. an ideological device deSigned to generateacceptance of "power" through "belief")' Rather they are part of a practiceof sovereignty; they are inseparable from other domains of governance,which relate to the command of subordinates and of territory. Moreover, itis a domain of strategic relations in which the emperor is not simply a bodyamongst things, but a life politically engaged with other lives, and with thethings that sustain them. This engagement is not restricted to humans(ministers, eunuchs, palace women, servants, military men, tax collectorsetc.) but also includes other animate beings and inanimate objects.Alternatively, goshawks could be thought to have a profound kinshipwith a politics founded on seizure and death as principal modalities of power.Their co-optation by political interests might be interpreted as part of atheatrical and violent mode of governance, in which the vengeance of thewrathful king was a central theme:The sovereign exercised his right of life only by exercising his right to kill,or by refraining from killing; he evidenced his power over life through thedeath he was capable of requiring. The right which was formulated as the'power of life and death' was in reality the right to take life or let live. Itssymbol, after all, was the sword. Perhaps this juridical form must be referred41 These definitional struggles were indivisiblefrom a series of physical powers andtechniques of command and punishmentthat enacted themselves directly on bodies,those of the king and those of his subjects.Without these powers, which ranged fromthe art of royal comportment to the practicesof judicial interrogation, sovereignty had noreality.

16LEWIS MAYO42 Michel Foucault, The history of sexuality3 vols. (Harmondsworth, Middx.: PenguinBooks, 1978): 1, p .l36.43 Michel Foucault, Discipline and punish(New York: Vintage Books, 1979), pp.48--9.to a historical type of society in which power was exercised mainly as ameans of deduction ... a subtraction mechanism, a right to appropriate aportion of the wealth, a tax of products, goods and services, labor and blood,levied on the subjects. Power in this instance was essentially a right ofseizure: of things, time, bodies, and ultimately life itself; it culminated in theprivilege to seize hold of life in order to suppress it. 42On the surface, the power enacted on the goshawk might seem to beprecisely this power of deduction: the emperor or the legate co-opting thepower to take life, enacting its supremacy in the capture of hunting birds,harnessing their powers to kill, and deducting hares, pheasants, quail, wildgeese and swans from the store of living things. In such a reading, the transferof sovereignty over the goshawks from Zhang Yichao to Yizong would beconceived as an act of offering to the sovereign the most distinguished andexalted powers of seizure and death available, thereby establishing theemperor's pre-eminence in the empire-world. The interest of the rulingpower in the deathly energies of birds, by this account, would be part of itsconstant assertion of might through displays of overweening power. Hawks,it then follows, would be part of a more general politics of ceremonial death,which is intrinsic to the constitution of sovereign authority. The classicaccount runs as follows:The public execution ... has a juridico-political function. It is a ceremonialby which a momentarily insulted sovereignty is reconstituted. It restores thatsovereignty by manifesting it at its most spectacular. The public execution,however hasty and everyday, belongs to a whole series of great rituals inwhich power is eclipsed and restored (coronation, entry of the king into aconquered city, the submission of rebellious subjects); over and above thecrime that has placed the sovereign in contempt, it deploys before all eyesan invisible force. Its aim is not so much to re-establish a balance as to bringinto play, as its extreme pOint, the dissymmetry between the subject who hasdared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays hisstrength. Although redress of the private injury occasioned by the offencemust be proportionate, although the sentence must be equitable, thepunishment is carried out in such a way as to give a spectacle not of measurebut of imbalance and excess; in this liturgy of punishment, there must be anemphatic affirmation of power and of its intrinsic superiority. And thissuperiority is not simply that of right, but that of the physical strength of thesovereign beating down upon the body of his adversary and mastering it: bybreaking the law the offender has touched the very person of the prince; andit is the prince-Dr at least those to whom he has delegated his force-whoseizes upon the body of the condemned man and displays it marked, beaten,broken. The ceremony of punishment, then, is an exercise of 'terror'. 43In the terms set up by this conceptualisation and pracice of sovereignty,goshawks would appear above all as a force of awe: their seizing and killingof birds and animals establishes an inequality between those in possessionof violent powers and those who must bow before them. Their pursuit of preyresembles the ferocity of the ruler against all who defy him. Those who rule

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER17possess powers of destruction that are complete and unrelenting: thesupremacy that their hawks have over rabbits or pheasants equates with theirown superiority to all possible opponents.Such an account of hawks and hawking hinges on a formulation of powerunderstood as operating through signs and levies.44 According to such aformulation, the hunting bird functions as a mark of power, a symbol ofviolence that is also a deduction and an incarnation of the power to deduct,to take away; the bird is procured through requisitions and taxes, and offersthe power to seize game. These powers and signs are articulated in codesingame laws, heraldry, and sumptuary regulations that aim to clarify andmaintain boundaries of rank. Moreover, the problems of the rights of onepower in relation to another (particularly in competing claims to land and thelives in it) are of course central to the "feudal" order from which most modernjuridical conceptions of sovereignty derive. As a practice carried out in spacedefined by property divisions, hunting with birds would seem inevitablybound up with the whole question of jurisdiction, and thus with rights andprohibitions, that is with the problem of "justice. ,, 45 Falconry, in thisformulation, is defined by the game park and the heraldic crest, in which thebird's violence is integrated with a whole system of signs and deductions thatuphold and create it. Moreover it is directly involved in the rapport betweenautonomous military power and the claims of royal supremacy that aresupposedly a defining feature of "feudalism." Hunting birds would seem tofuse the two aspects of the sovereign-that of regalia and ceremony (signsof power like the crown or the falcon on the fist) and that of the law, theensemble of rights and prohibitions through which the powers of seizure arecodified and enforced. These divisions, moreover, would be seen to equatewith the two bodies of the king: the physical body (the bearer of signs) andthe body politic (the ensemble of laws), both of which exert themselves uponthe bodies of hawks and falcons.Seen through these frameworks, the history of the Ganjun shan goshawkswould seem to be part of the problem of the sovereign as a juridical beingon the model of European monarchy. Such an approach would stress that thebirds were the gift of a regional military leader, possessed of exclusivepowers in his own domain but competing with his monarch for jurisdictionover a particular piece of land, Liangzhou. Moreover, they would be seen aspart of a struggle over the power to deduct, the fundamental element insovereignty in this formulation: Zhang Yichao denied Yizong the right to levytaxes or raise troops directly in the areas under his command, but sent thegoshawks and other gifts instead, structuring the relationship as one ofallegiance and loyalty rather than direct administrative subordination. In sucha formulation, sovereignty has the character it has in Hobbes or Rousseausomethingthat is taken away or kept, like territory, which the empire maylose, as was the case with the loss of Gansu to the Tibetans or theestablishment of autonomous provinces in Hebei r'iiJ t in the wake of the AnLushan rebellion. Yizong's acquisition of full and complete sovereignty over44 "In feuda I societies power functionedessentially through signs and levies. Signs ofloyalty to the feudal lords, rituals, ceremoniesand so forth, and levies in the form of taxes,pillage, hunting, war and so on. In theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries a formof power comes into being that begins toexercise itself through social productionand social service. It becomes a matter ofobtaining productive service from individualsin their concrete lives. And in consequence,a real and effective 'incorporation' of powerwas necessary, in the sense that power hadto be able to gain access to the bodies ofindividuals, to their acts, attitudes and modesof everyday behaviour." Foucault, Power/knowledge: selected interviews and otherwritings, 1977-1984 (London: Routledge,1988), p.125.45 "Justice was the central modality ofpolitical power-specified as such by thevery nature of the feudal polity. For the purefeudal hierarchy ... excluded any 'executive'at all, in the modern sense of a permanentadministrative apparatus of the State for theenforcement of the law: the parcellization ofsovereignty rendered one unnecessary andimpossible ... . Thus political power camefor a period to be virtually identified withthe single 'judiciary' function of interpretingand applying the existing laws. Moreover inthe absence of any public bureaucracy,local coercion and administration-policing,fining, tolling, and enforCing powersinevitablyaccrued to it. It is thus necessaryalways to remember that medieval 'justice'factually included a much wider range ofactivities than modern justice, because itstructurally occupied a far more pivotalposition within the total political system. Itwas the ordinary name of power." PerryAnderson, Passages from antiquity tofeudalism (London: NLB, 1974), pp.152-3.

18LEWIS MAYO46 See Zizhi tongjian, juan 251, pp.8120-52. See also Robert M. Somers, "The end ofthe T'ang," in The Cambridge history ojChina, vol.3, Sui and Tang China 589-906, ed. Denis Twitchett and Arthur Wright(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1979), pt 1, pp.695-700.47 See Zizhi tongjian, juan 244-50, pp.8077-90, and Somers, "The end of theT'ang," pp.688-92.48 Such as the apparatus of imperial ritualand official titles and ranks which were themonopoly of the emperor (see Howard ].Wechsler, Offerings ofjade and silk: ritualand symbol in the legitimation oj the Tangdynasty [New Haven, Conn.: Yale UniversityPress, 1985]). Stephen Owen speaks of theinflation of ranks after the rebellion as adevaluation of the empire's symboliccurrency, which encouraged the kind ofcounterfeiting strategies that included thebestowal of titles in the Guiyi jun which hadnot been formally granted by the court. SeeOwen, The end oj the Chinese 'middle ages':essays in mid-Tang literary culture (Stanford,Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), p.10.49 To some extent this argument concurswith the pOSition of Naba ToshisadaJjYBVfIJ (and perhaps with that of NaitoKonan j1;JlfimJ1¥i before him) that, in thelate Tang, social relations were characterisedby a wider diffusion of techniques andknowledge of ceremonial behaviour, seenin such things as the increasing use ofetiquette handbooks. He correlates this withthe dissolution of earlier aristocratic divisions.See Naba, Ti5dai shakai bunka shi kenkyil,[Studies of Tang-dynasty social and culturalhistory] (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1974), ch.I.50 See E. H. Schafer and B. E. Wallacker,"Local tribute products of the T'ang dynasty,"Journal oJOriental Studies 4.1-2 (1957-58),pp.213-48.the hawks-a loss to Zhang Yichao-would be the product of a lack ofsubstantive powers of sovereignty over the Gansu corridor. Moreover, thegoshawks could be construed as part of the insignia of the emperor, aconstituent of imperial magnificence, exhibited in excursions and huntswhich are the mark of the emperor's sovereignty, demonstrating hiscommand of allegiances as far away as the Ganjun mountains. They wouldbe seen as a sign that procures recognition of his pre-eminence. At the sametime, for an emperor engaged in the suppression of revolts amongst theprovincial armies under his control (Yizong put down the uprising of theforces of Pang Xun JftIfJ 46 and, before that, had crushed the rebellion of QiuFu HID,47 the violence of birds could be understood as an analogue for theruthless pursuit and destruction of those petty beings who resist the imperialwill, whose inferiority is demonstrated in their deaths. These deaths wouldserve as a warning to their peers, who, like pheasants seeing a hawk in thesky, will not dare to congregate openly in defiance of its powers.But the above accounts of hunting birds as "symbols" all rest on adecipherment of what it is that goshawks "represent"-which means that,like any sign, they must be "decoded." This decoding requires a caste ofinterpreters to explicate the correspondences between birds and a certainorder of power. If such an exegesis was ever carried out in relation to theGanjun shan birds, it was not a matter of public record: there is no guaranteethat any such "message" was understood by those who received it. Thesovereignty technologies enacted on the goshawks were more than asovereignty of signs and deductions codified and explained. They consistedof "protocols of seizure," and of ceremonies of ornament and rivalries overimperial bodies. The technology of handling and the disciplines of space andbodies which are common to both hawking and ceremonies like gift-givinginvolve not political images but political practices. These practices are thebasis for the goshawks' incorporation into an historical and political situation,and thus into a matrix of sovereignty relations.In the late eighth and ninth centuries the relationship of ruling bodies toterritory in the lands that made up the Tang empire prior to the An Lushanrebellion was structured not so much by mandatory exactions and allpowerfulsystems of signs48 (as it perhaps had been in the early years of Tangrule) as by a strategic engagement over protocol.49 Goshawks are secured bythe hand of power not through mandated exactions on subordinates(although compulsory tribute in hunting birds was levied on some of theprefectures under Tang control)50 but through the networks of gift transmission.In this way, the goshawks are simultaneously marks of the reach ofYizong's authority (which could draw forth distinguished birds from areasthat he did not rule) and marks of its limits. Yet they are also part of thecomplex sovereignty of gifts. They underline the fact that any power ofimperial seizure is dependent on the management of relations of authoritybetween ruler and ruled, and thus with systems of protocol and deference:technologies of the body, of words, and of ornament. These relations and

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER19technologies involve a skilled deployment of historical knowledge, a historythat is incorporated in the movements of donor and recipient (who actwithout acknowledging their agendas largely because those agendas are notexplicitly formulated as 'plans, or 'goals,' but are embodied). The majorstruggles in Tang politics between the 750s and 860s revolved around therelations of "court and province" (whether or not local military leaders couldappoint themselves and their successors to positions of power, whether ornot they could keep their income and their soldiers in their own locality undertheir own command, or whether the imperial centre could appoint anddismiss officials and claim levies of grain, silk, labour and other "revenues"),around powers and systems of taxation (how revenues should be extractedand calculated) and between the inner and outer court (relations betweeneunuchs and officials, between rival factions in the bureaucracy and betweenthose forces competing over the succession). This is often presented as asituation of diminished imperial sovereignty, in which the central governmenthad less comprehensive authority over those whom it ruled, permitting thedevelopment of loci of autonomous power 51But this was also an environment of increased complexity in the strategiesof governance, in which seizure became much less a matter of formal orderthan of manouevre, in which the parties involved struggled to articulate anorder of precedence in an ever-changing field. In particular the emperor'sbody became the focus of competing interests, competing ethical andpolitical projects and competing systems of ornament, pedagogy andceremony. Hunting with birds, and the forces and interests which wereengaged with it, was one constituent of this field. Hawks were very much anobject of military power, and were thus connected with the relationshipsbetween the Tang centre and the provinces of the north, east and west.Following the An Lushan rebellion, these latter were often under independentmilitary rule, and had close proximities to the rival political projects beyondthe formal borders of the Tang state (those in Korea, those on the Manchurianor Mongolian periphery, those of the Uyghurs, those of the Khitan, and thoseof others whose polities were involved in processes of dissolution orconstitution). The most distinguished hawks in Tang China originated inplaces that were either adjacent to or within these spheres of independentmilitary action. 52 In other words, goshawks were a medium through whichthe world of the northern borders was brought directly into the life of thehinterland. This relationship was ruled by ceremonial exchange rather thanby administrative compulsion (or, at a lower level, by market transactions). 53In this way, the goshawks constituted one interest that inserted itself into theintimate life of the sovereign and into the competition that surrounded hisleisure and pleasures, a competition that is above all a competition betweenrival forms of pedagogy. Hawking is a system of training for the royal bodythat competes with others: those of Daoism, with its regimes of diet and ofdrugs designed to procure immortality; those ofBuddhism, with its meditationalsystems and its programmes for the control of desire; those of eunuchs with51 See the chapter by Charles Peterson,"Court and province in mid- and late Tang,"in Twitchett and Wright, The Cambridgehistory of China, vol.3, Sui and T'ang China58906, pt 1, pp.464-560.52 In his "Paean to two white goshawks," SuTing notes that the goshawks in questionhad been trained by generals and that thesetrainers were brave and fierce. See SlI Tingil*mi, "Shllang baiying zan" E! lIW,Quan Tang wen, juan 256, p.1l46.

20LEWIS MAYO53 The great variety of names for differentkinds of hawks and the different provenancesand attributes of these laid out in DuanChengshi's text on hunting birds suggests ahighly differentiated market for the birds inTang times. See Youyang zazu, qianji,juan20, pp.194-7. See also Schafer, "Falconry inT'ang times," pp.324-35. Diplomaticexchange brought more exalted birds frommore distant places, and conferred uponthem the charisma of the political (ratherthan commercial) forces with which theywere associated.54 The position of the royal mews in theformal structure of the Tang government isset out in the Xin Tang shu, juan 47, Baiguan zhiB 13' it- 2 [Monograph on governmentfunctionaries, part 2], p.1218. On theroyal mews in the Tang, see Schafer,"Falconry in T'ang times," p.305.55 Arthur Waley, The life and times of PoChu-i, 772-846 A.D. (London: George Allen& Unwin, 1949), pp.36--7.56 Some index of this line of argument is thecritique of royal hunting and meat consumptionin a Buddhist poem preserved atDunhuang. "Shang huang quanshan duanjiu rou wen" LIfJ;g.lIVTmi)( [A textof the emperor superior exhorting good andgiving up meat and wine], Beitu 8412, Haino.51. See Wang Fanzhou, Dunhuang sengshi jiao ji [Buddhist monastic poetry fromDunhuang, annotated and edited] (Lanzhou:Gansu Renmin Chubanshe, 1994), p.66.their strategies for the augmentation of imperial distinctiveness; those ofscholar-bureaucrats and their injunctions to austerity and duty to family andstate; those of palace women with their mastery of arts of instruction andentertainment; and those of ritual specialists and their knowledge ofdeportment, sequence, and standards of measure and balance in the use ofobjects and of words in the structures of everyday life and ceremonial.The power struggles between these pedagogic interests and projects wasfundamental to sovereignty: the emperor's body was situated between themand they competed to take it over. Protocol was a central method fornavigating between them, as well as a stake in and an instrument of thesestruggles. The goshawks, as one element in this field of attraction andrepulsion, were affected directly by the trajectory of these rivalries, trajectoriesthat were constituted in the shifting interests of the emperor. Moreover,hunting birds had a precise institution into which they were incorporated: theroyal mews. 54 As a result, they had a specific location in the overall field ofinstitutional struggles that were played out on and through this pedagogiccompetition for the imperial interest. Earlier in the Tang, the mews had beenpolitically controversial: they were under eunuch control and were thus anobject of attack by those who arranged themselves against eunuch interests.The abuses of the eunuchs who procured food for the royal hawks and dogswere extensively highlighted by scholar-bureaucrat critics. At the end of thereign of Dezong, who had become closely involved both with eunuchs andwith the Hanlin @# academicians who made up the inner court after therevolt of the independent military governors of Hebei in the early 780s, oneof the prime actions of the clique of Wang Pi::E {E and Wang Shuwen ::E*j((associated with the emperor Shunzong 1I&t*, who briefly followed Dezong,ruling only for the year 805) was to attack the privileges of the eunuchs whowere associated with falconry:Another scandal was that of the Imperial Falconers, who had been in thehabit of going round extorting money from the people of Ch'ang-an byspreading bird nets over the doors or wells, and refusing to let them beremoved till paid to do so. They also crowded into taverns, ate and drankheavily and went away without paying. This type of palace racket was nowsuppressed. 55Rhetorically and institutionally, hunting birds were situated in a war overthe emperor's private life and those who administered it, which wasidentified with the overall sovereignty order of the empire.The presentation of the Ganjun shan goshawks, in company with Tibetanwomen and horses for the imperial birthday, situates them firmly in thisdomain of private imperial leisure, and the proclivities of the emperor's body.They are therefore exposed to all of the rival projects with their alternativeprotocols, alternative calendars (for the day and for the months and years),and histories of struggle against hawks and the institutional interests withwhich they are affiliated. For Buddhism they appear as a life-taking force,karmically injurious, a sign of the emperor's slavery to his passions. 56 For

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER21imperial scholars they are a product of the skilful manipulations of themilitary officials at the periphery and of the wiles of the inner court, as wellas being a drain on fiscal resources, a waste of state necessities. The rivalrybetween hawks and these ministers of grain led to the death of TangTaizong's ** (r. 626-49) favourite sparrowhawk, which he suffocated byhiding inside his robe rather than reveal to his remonstrating minister WeiZheng 1lE that he was spending his time on hunting with birds 57Through their relationship with the calendar of celebrations for theemperor (private birthday celebrations rather than those of official dynasticritual) and with women sent as entertainers, goshawks become part of thesystem of imperial adornment and its polities. The augmentation of theimperial body through these contributions of ornamental pleasure producedsubordinated bodies.57 See Wang Dang I, Tang yulinjiaozheng m§M*fx§ [The forest ofsayings from the Tang, edited and verifiedl,juan 3 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1987),p.217. See also Schafer, "Falconry in T'angtimes," p.303, which seems to suggest thatthe anecdote can be found in the biographyof Wei Zheng in the Xin Tang shu. (l couldnot, however, locate it in that source).Release of the GoshawksIn the 5th month of 867, because of imperial illness (buyu /fJID,prisoners and criminals were liberated, 500 women from the palace werereleased, and "flying dragons" (fine horses in the imperial stables),58goshawks and sparrowhawks of the Army of Inspired Strategy (shence junt$Jr!J)59 and the imperial mews were set free.6o At the same time, it wasforbidden for women to be submitted to the emperor as gifts on thecelebration of the yanqing J1f!l and duanwu festivals.61The release of the goshawks helps to remake the emperor as a ceremonialbeing (cures him of his sickness, if the ceremony of setting free the bodiesin his command was indeed efficacious), atoning for his excesses in a publicact of renunciation 62When the imperial body is threatened by illness, the ornaments of theemperor's private leisure-women, fine horses, and hawks-are set free. Theeffects of power on hawks ebb and flow with the health of the emperor'sbody and of the realm. Their constraint by jesses and their exercise in the huntoccurs when the country is at peace, and when the ruler is well. At such times,he may give himself over to the pleasures of entertainment. Women, hawks58 So named because they hadfei m [flyinglbranded on their right front leg, and long fm[dragon] branded on their necks. Bai Juyi'sB m poem "Celebrating the rain" runs:"Palace women are sent forth from the Courtfor the Proclamation of Excellence. Amongstthe stabled horses, the flying dragons aremade fewer." BaiJuyi, "He yu" m, in QuanTang shi :i;ng'iR¥ [Complete Tang versel,juan 424 (Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju, 1960),p.4653. The Court For the Proclamation ofExcellence (Xuanhui yuan '§' 117'G) was anloffice set up after the reign of Suzong IHj (r.756-62) under eunuch supervision, responsiblefor keeping the registers of all palace personneland keeping the accounts for the expenditureon banquets, court receptions, and suburbansacrifices. See Hucker, A dictionary of officialtitles in imperial China, p.250. Wittfogel andFeng hold that in the Liao 'flying dragon' wasa figurative way of referring to the best horses,separated from the rest of the imperial stables.See History qf Chinese society: Liao, p.482,n98.59 The eunuch-controlled forces which hadbecome the major military group at theimperial court in the late Tang. See Hucker,A dictionary qf o fiCial titles in imperial China,p.419.60 Xin Tang shu, juan 9, p.260.6 1 See Schafer, The golden peaches ofSamarkand, p.292, n.83.62 A stress on the display of restraint expressedin the release of the hawks in the royal mewswas a feature of Tang political rhetoric,usually constructed as a presentation of theemperor's virtue. See Zhang Ju's 1§;rhapsody on the release of the imperialhawks by the emperor DelOng in the late780s, "Fang long ying fu " 1tdillJ!if\[Rhapsody on releasing the caged hawks],Quan Tang wen, juan 446, p.2013. This canbe compared with the assertions of probityand resistance to extravagance of the LatterTang emperors, ZhuanglOng !l±* andMinglOng, who refused gifts out of a statedintention to keep government modest (seeCefuyuangui,juan 168, p.2028). Of particularsignificance is MinglOng's prohibition on theimportation of hawks and dogs (pp.2028-9).See also his specifically anti-hunting decreeof 931, two years before the submission ofthe white falcon by the Ganzhou Uyghurs."In galloping and chaSing, the sagely manalways represses his mind. Strange beastsand precious birds, these brilliant kings donot store in their realms. We wish to diminish[our wants] and serve the auspicious lOVER

22LEWIS MAYOIsigns of the ancestors. In perusing the riseand fall of previous ages, and in thinking onwhat people of the past took anddiscarded ... and promoting the humanenessof loving life and hating killing, We commandthat the tribute of eagles, ospreys, goshawksand merlins shall cease. On the one hand,let us halt the increase of excursions, and onthe other let us promote the sentiment ofthose that fly and run. In recent days peopleof all colours have not held to the provisionsof the decree, and have frequently offeredtribute of goshawks and falcons. This cannotbe maintained. How can the recent decreesbe shown to them? Later people will say thatwe have transgressed and violated theprohibitions. The goshawks and falconspresently in the royal mews should be takento the mountains and forests and released.Henceforth, people of all colours must notsend in offerings of this kind. If they meetthis kind of tribute, officials at the gatesshould not accept it," p.2029.63 At the same time prisoner, woman, horseand hawk only earn good treatment if theycan learn to judge the commands and wishesof their masters. The satisfactions of masteryrely on compliance, and this can never beguaranteed. The prisoner may not berecondite, the singing girl may not smile, thehorse may not gallop, and the hawk may flyslowly, or miss its target.64 Schafer continues, "Moreover, the imperialpharmacists had to take account of thetastes of these reagents, as related to theFive Organs of the body, and other complexmatters, such as the rule which determinedthat in maladies of the stomach anddiaphragm, the royal patient should eat firstand then take the medicine, while in diseasesof the heart and belly, he should take themedicine first and eat afterwards. Thecompounding took place in the watchfulpresence of the highest councillors of stateand the commander of the guard, and thefinished product was tasted by the chiefpharmacists, by the great Chamberlain (thepharmacists' superior), and by the crownprince (presumably lest he be too anxiousto succeed) before going on to thesovereign's bedside." The golden peaches ofSamarkand, p.179. Schafer's account isbased on the sections on imperial physiciansin the Da Tang Liudian :k$f;Tql*!· [SixInstitutes of the Tang]. See Song ben DaTang Liudian **:k$ft\ [The Songand horses are in this respect constituted as a force of danger: they aredispensable, and acceptable in moderation, but their attractions mayovetwhelm the emperor and imperil the realm. Prisoners, women, horses andhawks share lives of confinement and restraint: they are the products ofseizure. All are to be tamed, reduced to submission by techniques ofsubservience: in this way punishment and entertainment belong on acontinuum.63 At the same time hawks, criminals, women entertainers andhorses are united in being objects of imperial mercy. He releases them,refusing to reproduce their subordination and the techniques of restraintwhich maintain it. These lives have all given themselves over to the ruler,placed themselves in the confined world of his household-his palace or hisjails-unwillingly. Moreover, they are all received from the hands of others,sent up by delegates and subordinates. Yet each has a hold on the emperor;he is prisoner of their strange enticements. Perhaps in releasing them frombondage he expresses a wish to be liberated from the fetters of desire, fetterswhich these constrained and confined lives produce for him.The illness of the sovereign is a central issue for the political system.Medicine produces and reproduces the order of the state and the world."Each medicine should contain one 'superior' drug, monarchical andheavenly, to lengthen life, three 'middle' drugs, vassal and human, tostrengthen the organism, and nine 'inferior' drugs, ministerial and earthly, tocure the disease."64 Medicine is hierarchically structured, in a succession ofpositions and functions. The monarch, or heaven, serves to prolong life. Thesubordinate human, located in the centre, is engaged in a strengtheningaction, while the work of curing, ruling and punishing the disease (and thusof governance as a punitive cure) is the job of the delegated minister/servantlocated at the earthly level. Hawks traverse this structure-they are locateddirectly with the monarch, and with heaven, the area of flight. Yet they arealso vassals, secured from the periphery, from those who acknowledge theemperor's superiority. These vassals are local authorities, in a position ofmediation between imperial heaven and the functionaries who work on theground-where functions of security and tax collection are performedIcopy of the Six Institutes of the Great Tang],juan 10 and juan 14 (Beijing: ZhonghuaShuju, 1991), pp.221-3 and 329-31.Governmental order and cure are both thesame thing (zhi ¥i§l). But the emperor andofficialdom are not involved in a ceaseless waragainst political disease, through theestablishment of a state of somatic equipoisein the territory of the empire. Governance wasmore than triumph over irregularity anddisorder (rebellion or disease). Yet the healthof the emperor was, especially in the ninthcentury, a central target of political action, anda focus of political struggles. The imperialIquest for longevity set systems of knowledgeand ethics and the institutions which producedthem against each other. The death of the rulerwas, moreover, a structuring force in thepolitics ofthe middle and late Tang. Xuanzong,who ascended the throne at the time of theoverthrow of the Tibetans by Zhang Yichao,had the rectification of government in revengefor the murder of his father Xianzong *(who reigned from 805-20) as one of hiscentral pre-occupations. See Michael T. Dalby,"Court politics in late Tang times," in Twitchettand Wright, Cambridge history of China, vol. 3,Sui and T'ang China, pt 1, p.670.

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER23through recruitment from amongst the common people. The exercise of thelowest level of government functions is literally part of the life of the soil.Hawks perform the work of seizure on the ground, capturing the humblelives of hares and pheasants as a delegated ministerial servant, procuringmeat which may, through the virtue of its qualities, aid the health of theimperial body, defined by the expanse of heaven and empire. Meat too wasgoverned by these medical regularities. It was something through whichdirectional and temporal virtues could be ingested, incorporating the thingsof the world into the orderly, governed body of the monarch.65White Birds and Post-Imperial Histories, 884-911Deep in the winter of 884, Suo Hanjun %'¥, the Guiyi jun's DefenceGarrison Chief66 in the town of Suzhou Jffif 1+[,67 reported to his superiors68-undoubtedly the Guiyi jun leaders in Dunhuang-that a white goshawk hadbeen taken east by a party of twenty people led by Suo Ren'an %'1=, thedeputy Defence Commissioner69 of Suzhou. The goshawk made its journeyin company with a chestnut stallion. Both were intended as gifts for thekhan70 of the Uyghurs. The report of the goshawk's journey is embedded in65 The claims that this health made on theplants and animals of the empire wereenormous: it generated and relied uponpractical relations of command over territory.Medicines included "aconite from Chekiangand Szechwan, cassia bark and buds fromnorthern Kwangsi and southern Kiangsi,rhubarb from the northwest, ginseng fromthe north and Manchuria, lotus root from themouth of the Yangtze, fritillary from Hupehand Szechwan, sweet flag from southernSzechwan, liquorice from the north andMongolia ... , goral horns from the mountainsof Szechwan and the Tibetan foothills intonorth China, Mongolia and Manchuria, oxbezoars from Szechwan and Shantung,rhinoceros horn from southern Hunan,python bile from Lingnan, wild boar bezoarsfrom the Ordos, arsenic from T'ai-yiian inShansi ... " Schafer, The golden peaches ofSamarkand, p.180.66 Fangshu du }jJl0(;:W, chief of a unit of 500soldiers. See Feng Peihong, "Wan Tang-Wudai­Song chu Guiyi jun wuzhi junjiang yanjiu" [Astudy of the military officers of the Guiy jun inthe Late Tang, Five Dynasties and Early Song],in Dunhuang Guiyi jun shi zhuanti yanjiu[Specialised studies in the history of the Guiyijun in Dunhuangl, ed. Zheng Binglin (Lanzhou:Lanzhou Daxue Chubanshe, 1997), p.l46. Ithank both Colin Jeffcott and Paul Clark forgiving me copies of this book.67 Modern Jiuquan , located in the desertbetween Dunhuang and modern Zhangye(Ganzhou). Jiuquan is close to JiayuguanJ{; m 1m, the western terminus of the Ming fj}3dynastyGreat Wall.68 The report is the document now held in theBritish Museum as S.389. The transcriptionsused here come from Rong Xinjiang, Guiyi junshi yanjiu, pp.304-5. Only the title of DefenceGarrison Chief is given in this report: the nameof Suo Hanjun appears in a report sent amonth earlier by the same office. This is nownumbered S.2589. The connection betweenthe two documents has been made by RongXinjiang (who transcribes S.2589 in Guiyijunshi yanjiu on pp.303-4)' The report has cometo have a key place in modern scholarlyreconstructions of the history of the Gansu!corridor. The first major study was in TangChangru, "Guanyu Guiyi jun de jizhong ziliaoba" [Notes on several materials relating to theGuiyi jun], originally in Zhonghua wenshiluncong 1 (1962) reprinted in Lanzhou Daxuelishixi Dunhuang xue yanjiu shi and LanzhouDaxue Tushuguan, eds, Dunhuangxuewenxuan [Selected writings on Dunhuangstudiesl (Lanzhou: Lanzhou Daxue, 1983),pp.185-6. It is mentioned by Nicholas Sims­Williams and James Hamilton in their discussionof the Turco-Sogdian letter from Tamar Qus toa priest called George in Dunhuang. TheTurco-Sogidan document is Or. 8212 (89); aphotographic reproduction of the Chinesetext of Suo Hanjun's report is found in theappendix to their volume, Documents turcosogdiensdu IXe--Xe siecle de Touen-houang(London: School of Oriental and AfricanStudies, 1990). A Chinese transcription andEnglish translation of part of the text appearson pp.283-4 of Rong Xinjiang's article"mThong-khyab or Tongjia: a tribe in the Sino­Tibetan frontiers in the seventh to tenthcenturies" (translated by Wilhelm K. Miiller),Monumenta Serica 39 (1990-91): 247-99.69 Fangyushi WJ fJ!!. See Hucker, A dictionaryof offiCial titles in imperial China, p.210:"Defense Commissioner: A delegate from thecentral government on ad hoc duty assignmentIsupervising a Prefecture (chou), or a designationconferred on certain Prefects (tz'ushih);after 762 displaced by the moreprestigious title Military Commissioner (chiehtushih)." The Defence Comissioner post inSuzhou is not of course a central appointment,but part of the defense administrationof the Guiyi jun. The presence of this rank inSuzhou coheres with the logic that Huckeridentifies: it is granted in a prefecture wheredefence is a special priority. The first use ofthis rank is said to be in 698 in Xiazhou I 1+1(see Feng Peihong, "Wan Tang-Wudai-Songchu Guiyi jun wuzhi junjiang yanjiu," p.156).(Xiazhou is located in what is now uninhabitedland in the Ordos desert on theborder between Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia.)Significantly, the business of defence istargeted at specific peoples: for instance, aSenior Defence Commissioner was appointedin 714 in Youzhou jHj'I'.(modern Beijing) toresist the Khitan and the Xi , and aLongyou 1liIi:i Defence Commissioner wasappointed in the area of Eastern Gansu toresist the Tibetans (see Feng Peihong, id.,pp.156-7). The post was generally in placeswhere a risk of military rebellion was held toexist. Following the An Lushan rebellion thepost spread throughout the country; everymajor prefecture and important lOVER

24LEWIS MAYOFigure 35uo Hanjun 's report detailing thejourney of the white goshawk to theUyghur khan. 538911 . By permissionof the British LibraryIpost, pass and ford had one. At the first stageof Zhang Yichao's rebellion against theTibetans, the Tang appointed him as DefenceCommissioner for Shazhou and GuazhouJJl1+1 (modern Dunhuang and Anxi jffirespectively), but after the conquest of therest of the Gansu corridor he was promotedto the rank of Military Commissioner. Therewas henceforth no Shazhou Defense Commissioner,but the post was established inLiangzhou and Guazhou, and of courseSuzhou (Feng Peihong, id., p.157).an account of recent events in Suzhou; its appearance in writing is part of theenterprise of border defence. The long-distance operations of the hand ofpower require a regular submission of intelligence from those charged withmilitary control at the periphery: the report-and the journey of the goshawkitself-is part of the mechanics of delegated power, the licensing to actautonomously and strategically in response to a fluid and moving political70 The word used in Chinese is wang .:£,"king." Khan (xan or qan) seems anappropriate translation here since it appearsin numerous old Uyghur documents fromDunhuang. See for example tal)ri uyyur xan"heavenly Uyghur khan" in P.2988 (transcribedin Hamilton, Manuscrits Oui"gours du/Xe-Xe siecie de Touen-houang, p.84). Themore elevated term qaghan, approximatelylequivalent to "emperor," is often used insecondary scholarship for the ruler of theGanzhou Uyghurs, but as this has a preciseChinese equivalent, kehan I:iJ l'f, whichappears at another point in Suo Hanjun'sreport, the term khan is preferred, except inthe period when Uyghur power has beenfirmly established in Ganzhou, when qaghanseems more appropriate.

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER25field. The defence garrison chief informs his superiors about an intricateseries of politically charged comings and goings from Suzhou, of which thebird's journey is but one. Suo Hanjun recounts to his superior that the dayafter the bird left Suzhou, a party came from Ganzhou (the homeland of theGanjun shan goshawks). This party reported that a group of several hundredTibetans and Tuyuhun U± :e-7ll! (one of the major ethno-political groups ofthe Gansu corridor and the Qinghai W& plateau from before the period ofTang domination, and, like the Chinese-speaking peoples of the Guiyi jun,former subjects of the Tibetan empire, in which they were known as 'A-zha) 71had left Ganzhou to return to their own country 72 The Tuyuhun king andqueen, along with their retainers, travelled in miserable circumstances, andleft their slaves and other commoners behind in Ganzhou. These journeys arepart of a complex set of political manoeuvres: an earlier reporr73 sent by SuoHanjun from Suzhou told of the obstruction of the movements of Guiyi junemissaries to the east by disorders in Liangzhou (the oasis for which ZhangYichao had been seeking formal ratification of his defacto powers of control,providing the background for the journey of the Ganjun shan goshawks toChang'an).Suo Hanjun's report also informed its recipient of ongoing raids by a partyof two hundred Uyghurs in the area around Ganzhou. In the communicationof late 884 recounting the journey of the white goshawk, Suo told hissuperiors that the departure of the Tibetans and Tuyuhun from Ganzhouoccurred after the failure of peace negotiations with the Uyghurs. At the timethe Tibetans and Tuyuhun left the oasis, the Longjia ll* or DOrp (Indo­European speakers originally from the Tarim basin, known in Tibetan as'Brug),74 the dominant force in Ganzhou, were engaged in ongoing discussionswith the Uyghurs. Demands from the Uyghurs that the DOrp/Longjia sendtheir king's younger brother and fourteen others to the Uyghur court ashostages were vehemently refused. The king's younger brother said hewould rather die than submit to the Uyghurs as a hostage. The DOrp/Longjiahad to demur by telling the Uyghurs that the younger brother was mad, andother hostages were offered in his stead. While the Uyghur khan was left todeliberate on these terms, the DOrp/Longjia ruler of Ganzhou surreptitiouslysent an emissary to the Womo DEil.* or 'Od-bar/gYog-po (a post-colonialcreole population of former slaves of the Tibetans)75 who now controlledLiangzhou. The DOrp/Longjia ruler's emissary offered the Womo the chance71 See Gabriella Mole, The T'u-yu-hun fromthe Northern Wei to the time 0/ the FiveDynasties (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medioed Estreme Oriente, 1970). See also thematerials on the 'A-zha in F. W. Thomas,"The !::Ia-h," in Tibetan literary texts anddocuments concerning Chinese Turkestan,Part II: Documents (Royal Asiatic Society,London, 1951), pp.1-38, and Geza Uray,"Annals of the 'A-za principality," in Proceedlings0/ the Csoma de Koras MemorialSymposium, held at Matra/ured, Hungary,24-30 September 1976, ed. Louis Ligeti (Budapest:Akademiai Kiad6, 1978), pp.541-78.72 This section of Suo Hanjun's report (S.389)is reprinted in Chinese and translated intoEnglish in Rong Xinjiang's "mThong-khyab orTongjia: a tribe in the Sino-Tibetan frontiers inthe seventh to tenth centuries," MonumentaSelica 39 (1990-91): 283--4. The white goshawklis not mentioned in Rong's mThong-khyabarticle, which is concerned chiefly with issuesrelating to ethnicity and politics.73 S.2589, transcribed in RongXinjiang, Guiyijun shi yanjiu, pp.303--4.74 The statement that the Longjia originatedin the Tarim basin is found in the gazetteerof Yizhou W1'1'1 (modern Qumul-HamiIl€lW) produced in the Guiyi jun in 887.S.367; for a reasonably accessible transcriptionsee Zheng Binglin, Dunhuang dili wenshuhuiji jiaozhu [Dunhuang geographical documents,collected and annotated] (Lanzhou:Gansu ]iaoyu Chubanshe, 1989), p.68. Theidentification of the Longjia with the DU!)1 ofKhotanese writings was made by HaroldBailey. See Rong Xinjiang, "Longjia kao" [Astudy of the Longjia], Zhongya xuekan 4(1987): 144-60. Other recent discussionsinclude Lu Qingfu, "Cong Yanqi Long wangdao Hexi Longjia" [From the Long (Dragon)king of Yanqi (Karashahr) to the Longjia ofHexi], in Zheng Binglin, Dunhuang Guiyijun shi zhuanti yanjiu, pp.486--503, and LuQingfu, "Llielun Sute ren yu Longjia deguanxi" [A brief discussion of the relationshipbetween the Sogdians and the Longjia], inZheng Binglin, id., pp.504-13.75 See the description of the Womo missionto the court of Yizong (which arrived threeyears before the Ganjun shan goshawks) inthe Zizhi tongjian entry for 863. It states thatwhenever the Tibetans sent out troops, therich families were often accompanied byslaves, as many as a dozen or so per family,and as a result of this the Tibetan masseswere many in number. After the rebellion ofLun Kongre (whose name is reconstructed asblon Khong-bzher by Rolf Stein in Les tlibusanciennes des marches Sino-Tibetaines:!egendes, classifications et histoire [Paris:Presses universitaires de France, 1961], p.67),a Tibetan official in the Gansu-Qinghai regionat around the time of the uprising of ZhangYichao, these slaves had no masters. Theyunited into tribes, and were scattered throughthe Gansu corridor and Eastern Gansu. Weakgroups amongst the Tibetans gave theirallegiance to them. Zizbi tongjian,juan 250,pp.8101-2. There are also sources on theWomo in the Wudai huiyao E. {-fr[Collected essentials of the Five Dynasties],juan 30 (Shanghai: Guji Chubanshe, 1978),p.468. See the translation and notes inHamilton, Les Oui'gbours a !'epoque des CinqDynasties d'apres les documents lOVER

26Ichinois, pp.30-1. Discussion of the Womofrom a Tibetan perspective is found in Stein,Les tribus anciennes des marches Sino­Tibetaines, pp.67---8. The name 'Od-bar isgiven as the Tibetan equivalent of the nameWomo in Hamilton and Sims-Williams,Documents turco-sogdiens du IXe-Xe sieclede Touen-houang, p.63. A modern Chineselanguagestudy collecting together thevarious Chinese sources is Zhou Weizhou,"Womo kao" [A study of the Womo], Xibeilishi ziliao 0980.2): 1---8. Zhou gives varioussuggestions about the Tibetan original ofthe name, suggesting that it is related togYog-po for a slave (see p.l). Note thatZhou's article uses 0Eit5f:: for Womo,presumably for typographical reasons. Inthe notes on the name Womo in his 1955book, Hamilton rejects the suggestion of F.W. Thomas that Womo is linked to theTibetan word Mun-dmag found in medievalTibetan documents, on the grounds thatmun is merely a Tibetan transcription of theChinese wen )( ('civil' or 'literary") so thatMun-dmag means the civil officials attachedto military units mentioned in the Xin Tangshu. See Hamilton, Les Oui'gours a l'epoquedes Cinq Dynasties, p.31.76 A grou ping which had emerged as part ofthe military apparatus of the Tibetan empire.See Rong Xinjiang's article in MonumentaSerica cited above for a detailed treatmentof the su bject.77 See Rong Xinjiang, Guiyi jun shi yanjiu,pp.306-7.78 Huang Chao, whose rebellion was themost serious challenge to Tang authoritysince the An Lushan revolt, had committedsuicide earlier in 884. The emperor did notreturn to his capital until the following year.Zizhi tongjian,juan 256, p.8320. See Somers,"The end of the T'ang," in Twitchett andWright, Cambridge History oj China, vo1.3,Sui and T'ang times, pt 1, pp.756-66.LEWIS MAYOto form an anti-Uyghur alliance with Ganzhou; with the threat that if they didnot assent, they would face the danger of a coalition between Uyghurs andthe Durp./Longjia. But after the departure of the Tibetans from Ganzhou andseveral more days of internal discussions amongst the Durp./Longjia, thelatter, seeing their grain exhausted, abandoned the oasis. They retreated incompany with their dependants and retainers (and several other ethnicgroups including the Qiang % and Tongjia or mThong-khyab)76 toSuzhou. They arrived hungry in Suzhou-three days after the white goshawk,the chestnut stallion and the party of Suo Ren'an had departed on theirmission to the Uyghur khan. The report ends with the fate of Ganzhouuncertain, but not long after it other official communications indicate that aUyghur qaghanate had been established at Ganzhou 77The white goshawk's journey is part and parcel of the constitution of anew order of territorial power. The political forces involved in the life of thisbird were radically different from those that had affected the Ganjun shanbirds almost twenty years before. Like Zhang Yichao, the Tang emperorYizong was dead. At the time when the white goshawk left Suzhou on itsjourney, his successor Xizong 1-1 * was in exile from the Tang capital, whichwas in the process of being retaken from the troops of the rebel Huang ChaoJi .78 Imperial sovereignty claims in the old territory of the Tang werecorroded, as the emperor and the eunuch-dominated court had now becomea minor regional player amongst an array of rival warlords who had emergedin the course of the rebellion. The gravitational force which the Tang imperialcentre exerted on the Gansu corridor was radically diminished: its actions anddesires had little direct bearing on the movements and struggles of Tuyuhun,Longjia, Womo and Uyghurs, even though it continued to hold the Guiyi junin its field of symbolic force, remaining the fount of its systems of culture andprestige.In the Guiyi jun the continued evocation of the Tang order in the localsystems of rank and rhetoric was juxtaposed with a severely curtailedterritorial reach. As the report recounting the white goshawk's departure fromSuzhou makes clear, the powers over the lives and spaces of the Gansucorridor that Zhang Yichao had seemed to exercise with the gift of the Ganjunshan goshawks were no longer in effect. The Guiyi jun was not a coordinatingor dominant force: its political projects and acts of seizure andcontrol co-existed and competed with those of the Longjia, the Uyghurs, theTibetans, the Tuyuhun and the Womo. It had no effective authority inGanzhou, and little in Liangzhou. Ganjun shan, the source of the goshawkssent to Yizong, was no longer a fault line between Tang imperial claims toLiangzhou and the de/acto powers of control exercised by Zhang Yichao. Itwas now the area through which furtive exchanges between the Durp.!Longjia rulers of Ganzhou and the Womo/'Od-bar/gYog-po of Liangzhouover responses to the incoming Uyghurs were carried on. Henceforth, theGanzhou area and its birds of prey would be dominated by the Uyghurqaghan.

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER27Yet the leader of the Guiyi jun, Zhang Huaishen 5:&$, the nephew ofthe now deceased Zhang Yichao,devoted much effort to extolling the moralforce and political achievements of the polity which his uncle had established.Within the Guiyi jun, Zhang Huaishen continued to assert an overall powerin the Gansu corridor and a supremacy over its peoples, invoking theconquering legacies of his uncle, and presenting a consistent affiliation to theauthority of the Tang dynasty. Two years prior to the goshawk's journey hehad commissioned a memorial which recalled the history of Zhang Yichao'slife and conquests and his own achievements, inscribing in the medium ofstone (relatively immune to the forces of organic decay and thus able tosurvive corporeal dissolution and the destruction of the plant and animalorder which was the order of the state) a record of the greatness of the Zhangfamily, annotated to explicate all the references and allusionsJ9 Thispanegyric asserted that Zhang Huaishen, following the legacy of this uncle,had taken the mixed Tibetans and Tuyuhun of the Gansu corridor, the Qiang,Longjia and Womo and "frightened them into submission with thunderousawe, instructing them with the Florissant Wind of Chinese Civilization, so thatthey all became tame and good, bringing their customs on to the correct trackwith a single transformation."so Huaishen had continued Yichao's achievements:once ruling in his own right, it was said he had brought peacethroughout the region. "The four quarters have harsh and fierce people, butthey came to connect in accord and to seek peace. The lupine Uyghurs ofthe North brought the swift hooves of young steeds and the Tibetans andTuyuhun of the south brought the white jades of Kunlun ."Sl Thepeoples of the region are shown thus in humble submission to his authority,something that radiates in all directions, replicating the victories at all pointsof the compass achieved by both Zhang Yichao and his successor at the headof the Guiyi jun. In the wording of the monument, the moral force of ZhangHuaishen's governance secures order both within the Guiyi jun and outsideit. The energies of his rule meant that "the common people did not desist fromwinter ploughing. The seven domains of governance were all harmoniouslyregulated and the autumn reaping had richness and abundance in the year'scrop."S2 But this depiction of a magnificent stability stands in profoundcontrast to the billiard-ball movements of peoples and the complex diplomaticmanoeuvres which the Suzhou garrison commander reported in hiscommunique about the journey of the white goshawk.The goshawk's journey was one element in a geo-political reorderingwrought by the emergence of a strong Uyghur presence in the environs ofGanzhou 83 The establishment of a Uyghur political claim on the middle ofthe Gansu corridor involves a claim on distinguished lives from the regionwhich are brought to it in a state of submission. The white goshawk is anoffering made in company with a chestnut stallion that is given in the contextof a Uyghur demand that Longjia princes be sent as hostages. The newUyghur state establishes its presence by drawing into its own orbit beings ofnoble pedigree that will in some sense join its retinue-hawks, stallions and79 Zhang Huaishen hei (P.2762, 5.3329,5.6161, 5.6973 and 5.11564); transcription inRong Xinjiang, Guiyi jun shi yanjiu, p.403.80See text of Zhang Huaishen bei in RongXinjiang, Guiyi jun shi yanjiu, p.403.81 Zhang Huaishen bei, in ibid., p.404.82 Ibid.83 For an overall account of this process seeRong Xinjiang, "Ganzhou Huihu chengli shilun" [A discussion of the history of theestablishment of the Ganzhou Uyghurqaghanatel, Lishi yanjiu 225 0993.5): 32-9.

2884 The Turco-Sogdian letter from Tamar Qusto the priest George in Shazhou appears torefer to this agreement between the Longjiaand the Uyghurs; see the annotated translationby Hamilton and Sims-Williams in theirDocuments turco-sogdiens du /Xe-Xe sii!clede Touen-houang, pp.63-77. Theidentification of Tamar QUs as the king of theLongjia is made in note G5-6, p.69. As a signof the close relationship between politicalpower and birds, it is notable that the Qus inTamar Qus's name is the Turkic word for"bird." A derogatolY drawing of a man withan erection appears next to the letter.Hamilton and Sims-Williams suggest that thisis meant to be an insulting depiction ofTamar Qus. They note the pervasiveconnection between phallic references andbirds in many Eurasian languages. It issignificant the English falconry term "yarak,"a young hawk in its prime (a loanword fromTurkish), means "penis" and "weapon" inmodern Uyghur and Turkish. I thank DilberThwaites for explaining to me that yarak hadthis non-falconry connotation. The argumentsof this paper make the general politicalcorrespondences between male power-ofwhich kings and generals are pre-eminentincarnations-and avian life quite apparent.85 See the Khotanese account of the tensionsin the Gansu corridor between the Uyghurand the Longjia/Dulp (P.2741), translated byHarold Bailey. H. W. Bailey, "A Khotanesetext concerning the Turks in Kan\ou," AsiaMajor New Series 1.1 (1949): 35. See also thecomments on the dating of the events inquestion in Zhang Guangda and RongXinjiang, Yutian shi congkao [Collectedstudies on the history of Khotanl (Shanghai:Shanghai Shudian, 1993), pp.128-9 .LEWIS MAYOprinces. It seems that the negotiations which demanded hostages from theLongjia were ultimately successful84 and the latter became a constitutent,albeit a fractious one, of the Ganzhou Uyghur qaghanate.85If the establishment of the Uyghur qaghanate in Ganzhou provides theultimate resolution of the conflicts which the report of Suo Hanjun recounts,the goshawk's passage into the hands of the khan occurs in the midst of warand rumours of war. It is a peace offering. The tamed violence of huntingbirds was enlisted in the production of order where this order was mostradically in question. Like the Ganjun shan goshawks the white goshawk ismoved by diplomatic forces. Like the birds of two decades before, it passesout of Guiyi jun control along with a horse as a gift to a neighbouring rulertheUyghur khan. But it is not the product of a stable and formalisedsovereignty constituted by established protocols. The complex networks ofrelations that structured the white goshawk's fate were not those of formaldeference to an imperial suzerain, organised in a chain of command withclearly structured hierarchies. Instead there is a bewildering simultaneity ofcriss-crossing trajectories: the advances and retreats of Tibetans and Tuyuhun,the arrival and departure of emissaries and officials, all of whom arenegotiating this landscape of ceaseless political realignment. There is noimperial gravitational centre drawing the bird forth, but a constantly shiftingconstellation of nodes of attraction and repulsion.The white goshawk is thus an element in the consolidation of a newtopography of power-one in which Uyghur khan and Guiyi jun borderofficials, as well as the Longjia, Womo, Tuyuhun and Tibetans, were allstruggling to take positions. The cession of powers over the hawk occurs aspart of an ensemble of transactions and agreements which seek to establisha permanent structure in the midst of geo-political flux, negotiations carriedout simultaneously on different fronts, in which the gift of the bird is astrategic intervention.The political imperatives affecting the bird were in a real sense postimperial.The rivalry between those who were inheritors of the earlierempires (Uyghurs, Tibetans, Chinese, Tuyuhun) and those who, in the wakeof imperial collapse, had discovered an opportunity for independent action(such as the Longjia and the Womo) meant that there was no single structureof political authority under which birds were subsumed. At the same time,imperial legacies exerted a powerful effect on the political environmentwhich the white goshawk inhabited. The recipients of the bird identifiedthemselves as inheritors of the Uyghur imperial mantle. The goshawk was adevice which mediated the relationship between those who had emergedfrom the collapse of the Central Asian imperial order in the 840s. Thetransfigured rivalries of eighth-century empire projected themselves in themovement of a bird between ruling hands, now the leaders of local polities.But the white goshawk had a Tang history:White goshawks, like white falcons, were particularly valued, but there is no

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER29species of goshawk whose ordinary color is white, as is the case with thegerfalcon. But a white color variation does occur in northeast Asia; this whitephase of the common goshawk has been styled Accipiter gentilis albidus 8 6The Manchurian nations were known to the Tang Chinese as the best sourceof white goshawks, especially the country of the Mo-ho which abounded inthem.87The height of early Tang power under Taizong saw special privilege grantedto the emperor's gyrfalcon "Army Commander" (jiangjun lJ) whichentered the history of political anecdote. 88 Manchurian and Korean gyrfalconsand white goshawks were a major element in the diplomatic exchangebetween their home regions and their neighbours 89 White hunting birdsinvolved with the political process became an object of poetic paeans byTang court panegyrists: the distinction of their bodies and talents overlappedwith the distinction of the sovereign who possessed them.90If this Tang history invests the life of the Suzhou white goshawk and helpsto create its distinction, in moving out of Guiyi jun hands it is translated (carriedacross) from a Chinese to a Turkic history and language of avian power. Thecrossing of boundaries is one of the essential characteristics of the political lifeof white goshawks in Central and East Asian polities in the medieval era. Thebirds are pre-eminently translatable, in the sense of being easy to move fromone political-linguistic structure to another. Nonetheless, in each context white86 A recent ornithological list gives NortheastSiberia (near to Manchuria) as the modernarea in which Accipitergentilis albidus (knownto some as the Russian Goshawk) occurs. SeeRichard Howard and Alick Moore, A completechecklist oj the birds oj the world, 2nd ed.(London: Academic Press, 1991), p.32. ACCipitergenti/is albidus is the largest and whitest of thevarious races of the Northern Goshawk.Another race of Northern Goshawkdistinguished for whiteness is Accipitergentilisbuteoides, which is the principal type of whitegoshawk used in hawking in central Asia. Itshomeland is in Western Siberia, but it migratessouthwards towards Central Asia in winter,although it is not common there. It is esteemedby modern Khirgiz and Kazakh hawkers, forwhom the bird has three distinguished features:it is rare, it is white, and it is the best. Whitegoshawks were either captured in Central Asiaduring their winter migrations, or else procuredfrom peoples (such as, in more recent times,the Bashkirs) living closer to the birds' mainhabitat in Western Siberia. Accipiter Mentilisbuteoides has been recorded in the modernPeople's Republic of China, in Xinjiang Wfilwhere it winters in the Tianshan 'F.:. LiJ range.I(See MacKinnon and Phillipps, AJield guideto the birds oj China, p.213.) It is probablethat the white goshawks in the Guiyi jun werewhat would now be classified as Accipitergentilis buteo ides, obtained in Central Asia.For information about white goshawks incentral Asian hunting, see the marvellouswork by Svetlana ]acquesson, "La chasse auvol en Asie Centrale: des oiseaux et deshommes" (unpublished doctoral dissertation,Institut National des Langues et CivilisationsOrientales, France, 2000). Ornithologicalinformation on Accipiter gentilis buteoidesand Accipiter gentilis albidus (drawn fromthe 1966 work by G. P. Dement'ev et a!.,Birds oj the Soviet Union) is found in section1Y. 1. and section IV.5.4 of this thesis, whilethe attitudes of modern Khirgiz and Kazakhpractitioners of hawking to white goshawksare discussed in section IV.5.4.1. Referencesto the export of these birds by the Bashkirs totheir southern neighbours appear in sectionIV.5.4.2. I am deeply grateful to the author forsending me the relevant sections of her study,which explicates a great many complex issuesrelating to white goshawks in Central Asia.87 Schafer, "Falconry in Tang times," p.311.88 It appears in juan 5 of Zhang Zhuo's gcollection Chaoye qianzai !I!f:ft [Acomplete record of the court and the wilds ofdemotion], in Liu SU IJ su and Zhang Zllllo,Sui Tang jia hua )jiRi [Splendiddiscourses of the Sui and Tang], Chaoyeqianzai (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1979),p.123.89 Schafer, The golden peaches oj Samarkant!,p.94. See the following note on whitegoshawks from Manchuria. The qualities of awhite goshawk sent from the Korean kingdomof Silla is lauded in a poem of Dou Gong., "Xinluo jin baiying" JT M 8 11[The white goshawk sent by Silla] in QuanTangshi,juan 271 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju,1960), p.3051. See the translation by Schaferin The golden peaches oj Samal'kand, p.94.White goshawks sent to the emperor werenot all from foreign powers or from northeastof Tang territory. As mentioned, the eighthcenturywriter Zhang Wei sent a whitegoshawk to the capital when serving as anofficial in the Tarim basin. See Zhang Wei,'Jin bai ying zhuang," Quan Ta ng wen, juan375, p.1684. The text refers to "si zhen"Il9m, the four garrisons of Anxi (the Tangestablishedprotectorate in the Tarim basinand Tianshan '3

30 LEWIS MAYOFigure 4Old Uyghur text fro m Dunhuang containing the proverb aboutthe tuyghunlwhite goshawk. Or.S212 (1 16). By permission of theBritish Librarygoshawks are subject to different systems of powerand sense.The white goshawk had the following linguisticand political organisation in Uyghur:Moreover amongst proverbs there is: the bird ofprey (falcon) (toyan or toqan).Its offspring (oyli" ) are nine in number;of these nine, one is the white goshawk (tuyun).Because it is a bird of prey it is rapacious;because it is fierce it is predatory 91The white goshawk92-tuyun or tuyyun93 (orin more convenient romanised form, tuyghun)-91 There are two instances of the proverb amongst the oldUyghur documents from Dunhuang, 0r.8212 (116) and1'.2969. These are probably repetitions on the same piece ofpaper which has subsequently been divided. A transcriptionand French translation is found in Hamilton, ManuscritsOui'gours du IXe-Xe sii!cle de Touen-houang, voLl, Ms.no.17, pp.98-9. A translation also appears with slightamendments in L. Bazin and J. Hamilton, "L'Origine du nomTibet," in Tibetan history and language: studies dedicated toUray Giza on his seventieth birthday, ed. Ernst Steinkellner(Vienna: Arbeitskreis fur tibetische und buddhistische StudienUniversitat Wien, 1991), p.24. I thank Igor de Rachewiltz forbringing the work of Hamilton and Bazin to my attention, andfor kindly lending me a copy of the Hamilton volumes ofUyghur documents. A transcription and Chinese translation ofthe texts appears in Yang Fuxue and Niu Ruji, ShazhouHuihuji qi wenxian [The Shazhou Uyghurs and their documents](Lanzhou: Gansu Wenhua Chubanshe, 1995), pp.108-10 andpp.126--7, also pp.57-8. My thanks to Yang Fuxuef(tlforpresenting me with a copy of this book.92 In Khirgiz and kazakh cognates of the word tuyghundenote white goshawks (see Svetlana Jacquesson, "La chasseau vol en Asie Centrale," IV.5.4.2). In the 1986 transcription,Hamilton translates the name of the bird as "white falcon," butp.21 of the Hamilton and Bazin article gives various reasonsin support of the suggestion that the bird in question is thewhite goshawk. Their identification of the bird with a whitegoshawk comes from Von Le Coq in "Bemerkungen uberturkische Falkenrei," Baessler-Archiv, vol.4, fasc.1 (1913),citing D. C. Phillot's translation of the Persian falconry classicBaznama as their source for identifying it as a goshawk,pp.10--11. The tuyyun is identified as a white falcon inWilhelm Radloff, Versuch eines W6rterbuches der TUrk-dialecte('s-Gravenhage: Mouton, 1960), vol.3, p.1423. An accompanyingentry states that the word tuyyun means "hero" aswell as "white falcon." On the presence of the word in NewPersian, see the entry in Gerhard Doerfer, TUrkische undmongolische Elemente im Neupersische Band II, TUrkischeElemente im Neupersische, alif bis ta (Wiesbaden: FranzI

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER31is a bird of distinction. This distinction is the result of a causal chain: it israpacious because it is a bird of prey, a descendant of the progenitor falcon,and because it is rapacious-fierce-it is predatory. Its distinguishingfeatures, the qualities it derives from the lineage in which it belongs, arerapacity and predatoriness-tutyan and qapyan, nouns formed from verbalroots which denote taking and seizing. But it is also a subordinate. It is oneof the nine offspring of the falcon progenitor: it is given a position in astructure of genealogy which situates its distinction in relation to an ancestor.The status of offspring is a political one: it is that of son/child (oyul), a statusthat is not simply or necessarily the position of a literal descendant, but thatof one who acknowledges the suzerainty of a father-progenitor, the positionoccupied by the qaghan. Political relations are ordered in familial terms(which means that familial relations are also political relations). In the Turkicpolitical rhetoric from the days of steppe empire, the construction of theimperial state, the el, is deeply bound up with the construction of clanaffiliation. This is narrated constantly in the monuments erected by Turk andUyghur powerholders in the great imperial age of the seventh and eighthcenturies to commemorate their achievements and to admonish theirdescendants and people.94 To position the white goshawk as one of the nineoffspring of the progenitor bird of prey is to structure its life using the centralmodels of Uyghur politics-the lineage of the nine clans which were thepolitical core of the eighth- and ninth-century Uyghur empire.95The capturing power of the tuyghun and all its heroic attributes aretransferred to the khan through the constitution of relations of son-likesubordination and affiliation. With the demand that Longjia princes sendthemselves as hostages to the khan that was made at the same time as thewhite goshawk was sent as a gift, the linkage between power over distinguishedfierce birds ' and power over princes, who would henceforth beestablished as subordinate clients within the Uyghur political order, is direct.The establishment of Uyghur power in the Gansu corridor was simultaneouslythe constitution of a political ordering of hunting-bird hostages and a politicalordering of princely hostages. The articulation of the tuyghun proverbiallyas a fierce and predatory descendant-prince in a ninefold order of othersubordinate-descendants is not simply a legendary or "totemic" set ofcorrespondences with the ordering of the clans in the Uyghur imperial state.96By taking princely hostages from the Longjia and in receiving the fiercecapturing talents of the tuyghun/white goshawk, the khan could potentiallyISteiner Verlag,1965), p.657-8. Notes on theword tuyghun, its cognates and its relationshipto other categories of hunting bird in modernKirghiz and Kazakh are found in G. N. Simakov,SokoLinaya okhota i kuL't khishchykh ptits vsrednei azii [Falconry and the cult of birds ofprey in Central Asia] (St Petersburg: EthnographicaPetropolitana, 1998), pp.207-8. IIthank Andrei Lan'kov for generously givingme a copy of this book. Svetlana Jacquessonpoints out that in Bashkir tuyghun is used asa modifier in the name for a variety ofgyrfalcon, a usage analogous to, (and probablyderived from), its presence in Mongolian inthe word toyiyon Songqor, which is the whitegyrfalcon, also called eayan songqor(Singqorlis an alternative spelling). (I thank Igor deRachewiltz for additional advice on this.)Jacquesson notes that in Kalmyk Mongolian,however, tuyghun refers not to a gyrfalconbut to a white goshawk. She suggests thatthese examples show that tuyghun is notstrictly linked to a family of birds, eithergoshawks or falcons, but was rather asyntagm originally denoting a white bird(presumably a white raptor). (SeeJacquesson, "La chasse au vol en AsieCentrale," IV.5.4.2.)93 In both the manuscripts 0r.8212 (116)and P.2969 the bird name is tuyun (twyywn).Hamilton argues that this is a scribal mistakefor tuyyun (twyywn)-the first syllableshould be written twy---which would betuy, rather than tw for tu. One effect of thisis to make the "kinship" between tuyyun(white goshawk) and toyan (falcon-theword for the ancestral bird in the text) moreemphatic, because it increases the graphicsimilarity (the words appear as twywn andtwyan respectively).94 For the runic inscriptions of the Turkempire in the eighth century, see thetranscriptions and English translations inTalat Tekin, A grammar oj Orkhon Turkic(Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press,1968). For inscriptions of the Uyghur empire,see G. J. Ramstedt, "Zwei uigurischeRuneninschriften in der Nord Mongolei,"Journal de La Societe Finno-ougrienne 300913} 1--{i3; S. G. Klyashtorny, "The TerkhinInscription," Acta Orientalia AcademiaeScientiarum Hungaricae 36 0982} 335-6;and S. G. Klyashtorny, "The Tes Inscriptionof the Uyghur BagO Qaghan," Acta OrientaliaAcademiae Scientiarum Hungaricae39 (1985) 137-5695 On the clan/tribal structures of the Uyghurempire, see James Hamilton, "Toquz-ayuzet on-uyyur," JournaL Asiatique 250 (1962)22--{i3, and Denis Sinor, "The Uyghur empireof Mongolia," in Denis Sinor, Studies inmedieval Inner ASia, Variorum CollectedStudies Series (Aldershor, Hants: Ashgate,1997), pp.1-29.96 Hamilton has suggested that the ninedescendants of the bird of prey refer to thenine clans of the Uyghurs dominated by theruling clan, which is here the progenitorancestor-falcon. See Hamilton and Bazin,"L'Origine du nom Tibet," p.24.

3297 The account of the wedding ceremoniesof the Tang princess Taihe *;J'O to theUyghur qaghan in theXin Tangshu describeshow the nine ministers of the qaghan's courtcarried the sedan chair nine times to theright: these ministers represented the nineclans. See Xin Ta ngshu,juan 217b, p.6130,and the English translation by ColinMackerras, The Uighur empire according tothe T'ang dynastic histories, p.121.98 See the reference to the "Yaylaqarel" or"Yaghlaqar state," identifying what ispresumably the Ganzhou qaghanate withthe ruling clan of the Uighur steppe empirein the Dunhuang Uyghur text P.29SSv. Thistext refers to a grey falcon replacing a blackfalcon in allusion to one political unitdisplacing another. Hamilton discusseswhether or not the black and grey falcons inthe document (which deals with the journeyof a party of Uyghurs through the territoryof Shazhou, and speaks of Uyghur and"Chinese" (Tayac) relations, presumably areference to the Guiyi jun) might correspondto the male ancestor of the Chinese emperorand the Uyghur khan respectively. Heconcludes that there are few grounds forreading the text as saying that the Chineseemperor was descended from the blackfalcon. Drawing attention to the Uyghurrequest for the Tang court to change therendering of the name of the Uyghurs to thecharacter hu for falcon (which occurredwhen a Chinese princess was married intothe ruling clan of the Yaylaqar), Hamiltonsuggests that the black Chinese falcon refersto the Yaylaqar and the grey one to the Edizclan which replaced them. He notes: "Onethus has the very distinct impression that thefalcon was considered by the Uyghurs astheir totem. I therefore wonder if it was notonly to the Uyghurs that the two falcons ofdifferent pedigree would be relevant; thefirst, the blackish one, would represent thefirst royal clan of the Yaylaqar and thesecond, the greyish one, the second dynastyof the clan of the Ediz." Hamilton, ManuscritsOufgours du IX(f-Xe sif!Cle de Touen-houang,voU, p.SS. [n 795, Alp Uluy Qutluy BilgaQayan ascended the throne and the Edizclan replaced the Yaghlaqar. With thecollapse ofthe Uyghurempire the Yaghlaqarwas established in Ganzhou, while the Edizwere based in Turpan. The claim that theYaghlaqar were the ruling family of theGanzhou Uyghurs is based on Chinese trans-LEWIS MAYOrecreate the numerically structured system of descent relations that hisancestors the steppe qaghans had insisted upon in their rhetoric and in theirceremonies: when a Tang princess went to marry the Uyghur ruler in the earlyninth century, the wedding ritual involved participation from representativesof each of the nine families of the Uyghur state.97 The reproduction of thedescent line of the Uyghur ruling family through the acquisition of the fertilityof a member of the Tang royal lineage thus directly involved the participationof the nine clans. Politics had a genealogical order and symmetry. Thiscontinued to be invoked in Uyghur rhetoric produced in the Gansucorridor98: In bringing hostages and white goshawks to this ruling hand, theforces of conquest reproduced a form of politics in which capturing work wasintegrated into the numerical organization of affiliated descent lines (and viceversa). The central activity of a qaghan was the production and reproductionof a state formed by conquest of groups and alliance between them, a historyof conquest and alliance recalled in the structure of the nine or ten clans thatmade up the state.Something more than analogy is thus involved in the rhetorical constructionof the white goshawk in Uyghur politics and writing. The proverb records andreproduces a history. The Uyghur political project which impelled the whitegoshawk's journey from Suzhou in 884 was one founded on the productionof political order through the articulation (in the sense of conjoining and inthe sense of speaking about) of relationships between subordinated groupsunited in real or fictive relations of descent. The proverb about the tuyghunand its relationship to the progenitor falcon is not simply a metaphor orriddle: the incorporation of a white goshawk into Uyghur political structureswas quite literally about the establishment of the bird within a framework ofsubordination in which lines of princely sons undertook the distinguishedwork of capturing on behalf of an illustrious sovereign, scion of distinguishedancestors. The tuyghun is a hero, marked not simply by extraordinary powersof predation, ferocity and rapacity but by the strength of perception: the wordtuyghun is affiliated with the verb tuy, to see or perceive. 99 What distinguishesa heroic, noble prince is the power to see and seize, to be gifted with powersof sight and foresight and to be predatory and rapacious-qapyan andtutyan. The record of politics-carved in runes on stone in the days of thesteppe qaghans-is a record of these qualities, an endless recounting of actsof seeing and seizing. But they are qualities which must be articulated: seizure/criptions of the titles of the qaghans ofGanzhou in the late tenth century that appearin the Song shi *51:: [History of the Songdynastyl. See Song shi, juan 490 (Shanghai:Zhonghua Shuju, 1977), p.14114. See alsoHamilton, Les Ouighours a l'epoque des CinqDynasties, p.160.99 See Hamilton and Bazin, "L'Origine dunom Tibet," p.21. SvetlanaJacquesson quotes/a different etymology for the word, given bya scholar named Biyaliev, which derivestuyghun from the reconstructed words 'toryanand 'tor-yil, with the meaning "chestnutcolouredbird," with yan being a synonym foryil, an old Turkic word meaning "bird," andtor being the word for "chestnut-coloured."See Jacquesson, "La chasse au vol en AsieCentrale," IY.l.

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER33is not a matter of some primeval predatory force. It is something which hasto be speJt out in words and which must obey the formal order of the lineagestructure and its hierarchies of subordination. Heroic, rapacious princes mustremain as hostages. These hostages are not slaves; by affiliation as a clan theybecome part of the descent structure of the Uyghur family-state, the el. Thetechniques which the hand of power must use to control exceptional birdsand distinguished princes consist in a constant mediation between licenseand constraint; hawking and the management of alliances with clans arelinked political acts. When this power over hostage-subordinates-theprinces whose capturing powers are secured by the khan through the properordering of lineages-has been correctly exercised, then distinguished birdswill come forth, offered as gifts. The political rhetoric about the capturingskills of tuyghun princes is necessary to the reproduction of political order.Without the constant extolling of distinguished qualities, the charisma ofrulers, and thus their claims to pre-eminence, would dissolve.The white goshawk is situated within the opaque structure of proverbialwisdom. Like the hunting bird itself, the proverb is mobile, capable ofmultiple applications. It is not fixed with precision in any period-it belongsto the category of general statements about the order of things, and can thusbe deployed in whatever strategic context is appropriate. The bird is thusinfused with the timeless and ubiquitous powers of the proverb, and with itsambiguity: the seizing and rapacious quality of the tuyghun might be a threatto those who wish to apprehend it. Moreover, the qualities of the whitegoshawk map onto the proverbial attributes of political leaders.lOo Thisconstruction of the bird makes it capable of augmenting and classifying thepolitical forces which control it. The gift of the bird is thus an acquisition ofpowers of predation, ferocity and rapacity by the khan-his own strength,fortune and luck are registered in being able to handle such a fierce being.The white goshawk has literally come into Uyghur hands because of raiding.It is the booty of raids, secured from those who wish to placate the khan,frightened by his might. The transfer of avian ferocity, predation and rapacityis aimed at reducing these qualities in the Uyghur ruler. This politicallyinflected articulation of bird violence contributes in this context to stemmingpolitical violence against humans: the Guiyi jun's representatives seek topacify the Uyghurs by offering the bird as a gift. Paradoxically, the rapaciousbird is an instrument of pacification.As noted above, the white goshawk leaving Suzhou in 884 was embeddedin a history of the displacement and subordination of groups. Among thosewhom the report of Suo Hanjun recounts as leaving Ganzhou were theTuyuhun, one of the major rivals to the power of the Guiyi jun and a groupwith a long history of subordination and affiliation to imperial projects in theChinese-Inner Asian border lands. Turkic,101 Tibetan and various dynasticstates from the Chinese hinterland from the post-Han era through to the Tanghad all been engaged with the Tuyuhun. Zhang Yichao had risen to powerboth in co-operation with the Tuyuhun and in rivalry to them: the Tuyuhun100 In particularthe word qapyan (qapghan),"predatory," which appears in the nameQapghan qaghan on the East face of theTurkic inscription of the minister Tonyukukfrom the Orkhon in Mongolia. "Qap(a)ghan"was "qaghan" between 691 and 716. Qapyanhas become an object of contest in themodern scholarly struggles of philologists,especially over its affiliations with thecontroversial word "qapqan." See D. Sinor,"Qapqan," Journal of the RoyalAsiatic Societyof Great Britain and Ireland (1954), pp.174-85, and Gerard Clauson, "A note on Qapqan"Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of GreatBritain and Ireland (956): 73-7. Sinorargues that qapyan is a verbal adjectivemeaning to attack (181), unrelated to qapqanor qaghan, which he takes as an intensifierfor qan or "king" (p.183). Clauson rejectsthe idea that qapqan and qaghan are related,stressing that the Qapghan in the runicinscriptions is the personal name of theqaghan. Talat Tekin provides sources onqapyan in the Tonyukuk inscription in Agrammar of Orkhon Turkic, pp.112-13.James Hamilton advised me that the Qapyanqayan in the Tonyukuk monument mightmean "the qaghan who seized power"(personal communication, August 2002).This carries the interesting implication thatthe quality of qapyan entails usurpation, orthe seizure of control.101 Hamilton and Bazin, "L'Origine du nomTibet," p.21. See the transcription of theinscription on the northeastern face of theKul Tegin monument dating from 731, inTalat Tekin, A grammar of Orkhon Turkic:"The Governor Tuyyut brought all of thesesculptors and painters" lel-taMr is taken tomean "governor," "leader of the people"].Tekin gives an English translation on p.272;the original text is transcribed on p.237.Hamilton and Bazin explicate this passageas meaning that the leader of the Tuyyut (apluralised form of Tuyyun), that is, theTuyuhun, who were then residing in theOrdos desert, led the sculptors and paintersfrom China to the court of the Turkic qaghanon the Orkhon (p.20). The Tuyuhun, theysuggest, were responsible for transmittingthe word for 'Tibet' into both Chinese (Tufan)and into Turkic, from whence it comes intoEnglish and other European languages. Theword, they suggest, is a Turkic-Mongolplural, meaning "the high ones" (p.17).

34LEWIS MAYO102 See the Zhang Yichao hianwen 5i() iI)( [The transformation text ofZhang Yichao] (P.2962), the most recentauthoritative transcription of which is inZhou Shaoliang, Zhang Yongquan andHuang Zheng, Dunhang bianwen jiangjingwenyinyuan jijiao [Collected collations ofthe Transformation Texts, Slitra Lecture Textsand Nidanas from Dunhuang] (Nanjing:Jiangsu Guji Chubanshe, 1999), pp.134-8. Atranslation of this text is found in VictorMair, Tun-huang popular narratives (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1983)pp.l61-71. A foundational study of the textis Sun Kaidi, "Dunhuang xieben 'ZhangYichao bianwen' ba" [Notes on the Dunhuangmanuscript 'The Transformation Text ofZhang Yichao'], originally in Tushu jikan3.3 (936) and reprinted in Zhou Shaoliangand Bai Huawen, eds, Dunhuang bianwenlunwen lu [Reproductions of articles onDunhuang transformation texts], vol.2(Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1982),pp.713-22.103 See the above discussion of the 882monument erected by Zhang Huaishen,where the Tuyuhun of the south are shownbringing jade from the Kunlun mountains(referring to the areas to the south ofDunhuang which had long been Tuyuhunterritory).104 See the mention of the Tuyyut going toserve the Turk qaghan in the Kul Tegininscription cited above. Tibetan writingsfrom Dunhuang show the 'A-zha (Tuyuhun)as subordinates of other groups within theTibetan empire in the eighth and ninthcenturies, including the 'Brug, who can beidentified with the Longjia. See the materialon the 'A-zha as subjects of the 'Brug!Longjia in F. W. Thomas, Tibetan literarytexts and documents from Chinese Turkestan,vol. 2, pp.17-19.lOS Hamilton and Bazin, "L'Origine du nomTibet," pp.23-4.106 For foundational information aboutTuyuhun and his descendants, see the sectionon the Tuyuhun in thejinshutfW [Historyof the Jin] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1974),juan 97, pp.2537-42. See also Mole, TheT'u-yu-hun hun from the Northern Wei tothe time of the Five Dynasties, pp.l-3 andthe notes on pp.66--75.107 The two white goshawks given toXuanzong in 714 that were the subject of thepaean cited above came from this area.were among the mosaic of peoples living under the authority of the Tibetanemperors in the Northern periphery of their empire-indeed they shared anintimate relationship with the Tibetan imperial house. But they too were ina subordinated position in the Tibetan empire, and used the collapse of itsauthority to assert their independence once again, competing with the otherbeneficiaries of the post-Tibetan reordering of power. An epic which extolsthe deeds of Zhang Yichao recounts his defeat of an attack by the Tuyuhunking in the lands to the south of Dunhuang.102 Other rhetoric cites thesubmission of the Tuyuhun to the Guiyi jun as a mark of the stable orderproduced in the Gansu corridor by Zhang Yichao and his nephew. 103 Inhistorical writing (Turkic, Tibetan or Chinese), which is overwhelminglywritten by their rivals, the Tuyuhun are invariably positioned as autonomousactors who are at some level subordinated or tamed. 104 They have the powerto capture and to move, but this power is repeatedly co-opted by andaffiliated to the political projects of others. They are distinguished for theirferocity, and are known for bravery and intelligence, offering these talentsto extend the reach of the hand of power. But where they can evade thispower, as in times of weakness, they will depart to lead a life servingthemselves. The forces that act on them are the same ones that act on the livesof captured hunting birds brought within the field of political power. Uyghurincursions at Ganzhou produce a flight of the Tuyuhun from the oasis at thesame time that they produce control over the white goshawk (control overits powers of flight). This linkage of histories unfolding at the same time,histories of birds and histories of peoples, involves journeys in oppositedirections. The white goshawk goes as hostage to the khan while theTuyuhun escape him. But there is perhaps a deeper kinship between thesehistories and journeys. The word Tuyuhun resonates with tuyghun: whitegoshawk and hero. 105 The original name 'Tuyuhun' was that of a fourthcenturyleader106 (and thus a man whose claim to found a group or lineagethat would bear his name rested on distinguishing himself through heroism,perspicacity and rapacity, the qualities proverbially condensed in theattributes and names of the white goshawk in Uyghur) who led hissubordinates from their homeland in Manchuria famed for their productionof white goshawks and falcons.107 The migration of this name through thepeople who bore it into the Gansu corridor and the Qinghai plateau in theIHamiiton and Bazin quote a ninth-centuryArabic text which stresses the abundance ofwhite falcons in this region, and the Mohezhuan iU{$ [Monograph on the Mohe"tartars"] of the Xin Tang shu states that theterritory of the Mohe (in what we would nowcall Manchuria) was noted for its whitegoshawks (Xin Tang shu, juan 219, p.6178).Significantly, the source ofthe white goshawkswas the territory of the White Mountain Mohe[BaishanMohe 8 1i*Wll], defined by con-Itrast with the Black Water Mohe [HeishuiMohe J.I,*1i*] found to its west. Thestructural opposition between an easternwhite mountain and western black waterresonates with directional and colour contraststhat will be discussed later in the paper. TheMohe were Tungusic people who were theprogenitors of the Jurchen :9;';i.. See jin shi5iZ:.'5E [History of the Jin], juan 1 (Beijing:Zhonghua Shuju, 1975), p.l, who were inturn the supposed progenitors of the Manchus.

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER35centuries up to the founding of the great Central Asian imperial projectswhose collapse would herald the foundation of the Guiyi jun is a migrationthat parallels the migrating reputation of white goshawks as hunting birds ofexceptional distinction.As noted, the documentary record of Tuyuhun histOlY is the work of theirrivals: they are made historically visible (and thus are remembered) throughprocesses of subordination and conquest. The Tuyuhun had in the 730s goneas subordinates to the Turkic mlers of the Oti.ikan mountains, to whosemantle the Uyghurs would lay claim. 108 The process through which Uyghurssecured control of a tuyghun (white goshawk) sent by the border outpost ofthe Guiyi jun was one in which a claim on the peoples of Ganzhou wasasserted and enacted. The Tuyuhun may have resisted this in the beginning,but in the Ganzhou region at least, they, like the white birds whose name theyappear to share, would be positioned within the noble lineage of subordinateswhich was the rhetorical, if not the real, foundation of Uyghur politicalorder.109 Heroism, independence and powers of predation were what thispolitical stmcture sought to appropriate from these subordinate lineages,whether they were lines of supplicant princes ready to fight and seize for theqaghan or lineages of noble white birds who would capture game for him.To constitute this order there had to be constant rhetorical attention toasserting the permanence of the affiliation between lineages and the ancestralstructure which laid claim to predatory powers. Hunting birds, proverbialrhetoric and subordinated clans formed an interlocking and self-reproducingstmcture. The Tuyuhun and the white goshawk are both thus subjected tothe effects of the Uyghur hand of power, but that hand of power is itselfconstituted by the subordination of those it had conquered and the whitebirds it controlled. no The imagistic opposition between white goshawk andblack falcon-and Tuyuhun and ruling Uyghur Yaghlaqar clan-is not justthe product of a totemistic ordering of the world which positioned groupsand birds in numerically stmctured lineages expressed through proverbs andmetaphors. Rather, the protocols of seizure and the political institutions andrelations which governed them governed the order of captured and capturingbirds and peoples. These protocols and institutions were historical structuresarticulated through writing and speech which marked the presence of thehand of power.108 Invocations of the Gtubn state, whosesacredness was central to the political rhetoricof the runic inscriptions of the eighth century,are found in the Uyghur letter preserved atDunhuang which refers to the black and greyfalcons. See P . 2988v , transcribed and translatedby James Hamilton in Manuscrits Ouigours du/Xe-Xe siecle de Touen-houang, vol.l, p.88.109 His argument is made most strongly byJames Hamilton and Louis Bazin, who suggestthat the Tuyuhun could have become theninth clan of the Uyghurs in Ganzhou. See"L'Origine du nom Tibet," p.24.110 At least part of the Tuyuhun populationwas administratively affiliated to the Guiyijun into the tenth century. It seems that theTuyuhun had their own administrative unitequivalent to the hamlets (xiang) in whichIthe regular subjects of the Guiyi jun resided.A formal memorial sent in the 920s from theGuiyi jun to the emperor is presented asbeing on behalf of the ten thousand peoplefrom the Guiyi jun's "monks and laity, clerksand officials of the prefectures and counties,the elders of the six garrisons and twoprefectures, the ten tribes of the TongjiaCmThong-khyab) and Tuyuhun, the threearmies and the common people of the Hanand the Fan ¥ (barbarians). (The memorialis 5.4276.) Thus the Tuyuhun are includedas one of the constituents of the Guiyi jun,classified as a tribe (buluo tffl) (For atranscription of this memorial, see TangGeng'ou and Lu Hongji, Dunhuang shehuijingji wenxian zhenji shilu [Annotatedtranscriptions of original examples of thesocial and economic documents fromDunhuangl, vol.4 [Beijing: Quanguo TushuguanWenxian Suowei Fuwu Zhongxin,1990], p.386.) The memorial is dated to theLatter Tang by Tang Changru in "GuanyuGuiyi jun de jizhong ziliao ba" (reprinted byLanzhou University Library in Dunhuangxue wenxuan, pp.l77-8). Rong Xinjiangcomments on the continued use of the tribestructure, originally developed by theTibetans, for administering the Guiyi jun'snon-Han subjects; see Guiyi jun shi yanjiu,p.lSl, and "Guiyi jun ji qi yu zhoubianminzu de guanxi chutan," p.27. A number ofthe points made in the latter source referspecifically to the Tuyuhun tribal group inthe Guiyi jun, arguing that the fundamentalpurpose of the tribal system was military.Later writings of the Guiyi jun from the tenthcentury include people specifically identifiedas Tuyuhun, such as the two people whoseidentity is given as Tuyuhun (Tuihun ,the commonest name for Tuyuhun in Guiyijun writings) in the grain loan register of964-S (P.2932). For a transcription, seeTang Geng'ou, Dunhuang shehui jingjiwenxian zhenji shilu, vol. 2 , p.232. In thetenth century, Tuyuhun populations werespread through the territory of the NorthChina regimes of the Five Dynasties, andwere also affiliated to the Khitan. SeeGabriella Mole, The T'u-yu-hun Jrom theNorthern Wei to the time oJthe Five Dynasties,pp.63-6S, and notes pp.190-220. They thusretained an independent political identitythrough this period, even though their fatewas structured by the polities to which theywere affiliated.

36LEWIS MAYO111 Baiquege B '&=!if, P.2594vandP.2864v.There are several transcriptions, but thetranslation given here is based on that by LuXiangqian in his Dunhuang Tulufa n wenshulungao, pp.l72--4. There is some controversyabout the dating of the text. I accept thearguments put forward by Rong Xinjiang inGuiyi jun shi yanjiu, p.219, which put it at910. The date of 905 has been advanced byLi Zhengyu in "Guanyu Jinshan guo heDunhuangguo jianguo de jige wenti" [Severalquestions regarding the establishment ofthe Jinshan kingdom and the Dunhuangkingdom] in Li Zhengyu, Dunhuang shidixinlun [New discussions on Dunhuanghistorical geography] (Taipei: Hsin-wenfeng,1996), pp.193-222. Li's date is endorsedin Zheng Binglin, "Tang Wudai DunhuangJinshan guo zhengfa Loulan shikao" [Anexamination of the campaign against Loulanby the Jinshan kingdom of Dunhuang in theTang and Five Dynasties], in Zheng Binglin,ed., Dunhuang Guiyi jun shi zhuanli yanjiu,pp.I-24.112 The word jin means primarily 'metal' inmany of the contexts discussed here.However, because of the strong non-Chinese(especially Turkic) rhetoric around goldenmountains (discussed below), gold seemsnot inappropriate as a translation.113 The Jinshan Guo was established inAutumn Oth/8th month) of 910, to takegreatest advantage of the signs of autumn:the gold or metal element, the colour white,the direction west (which all correspondwith each other in Five Elements theory),and the killing energies of an approachingwinter, capable of striking down enemies(Rong Xinjiang, Guiyijunshiyanjiu, p.219).Rong regards Five Elements divinatoryscience as the foundational ideology of theJinshan Guo. See Guiyi jun shi yanjiu,p.274.114 Zhang Yichao's successor, ZhangHuaishen, was murdered in 890. In the early890s, power passed briefly out of the handsof the Zhang family, and was only restoredby the actions of Zhang Yichao's daughterand her husband's family, after which ZhangChengfeng became head of the Guiyi jun.On these events see Rong Xinjiang, Guiyijun shi yanjiu, pp.197-213. For atranscription of Zhang Huaishen's epitaph(P.2913), see Zheng Binglin, Dunhuangbeimingzan jishi [Dunhuang inscriptionsand epitaphs, edited and annotated] (Lan-The White SparrowMore than a quarter of a century after the white goshawk passed into thehands of the new Uyghur ruler of Ganzhou, a song about the auspiciousomen of a white sparrow announced that a new order of sovereignty hadcome to pass in the former territory of the Guiyi jun. 1 11 This song marks thefounding of the Xi Han Jinshan Guo iZ:91liiw, "The Kingdom of theGoldenll2 Mountains of the Western Han,"113 of which Zhang ChengfengiJllUjk, the grandson of Zhang Yichao, 114 was an imperial sovereign-"theWhite-Robed Son of Heaven" (Baiyi tianzi Er:&r). 115 This break in thehistory of Dunhuang was registered poetically in a blinding field ofwhiteness, The "Song of the White Sparrow":The white sparrow comes flying, passing the White Pagoda [Bai tingB -'r] 116;With beating wings and turning body it enters the Imperial City [Dichengw:lpX],Deep towards the Rear Palace to make manifest jewelled auspiciousness.From a high place in the jade hall 1 1 7 it sends forth a sound of praise.White robes, white leather, a scarf of white gauze,A white horse and a silver saddle bedecked with white tassels.Since ancient times it has never been heard, and books record it not,That one sword can wipe out a million troops 1l8The Queen Mother's original residence was in the Kunlun;To give a white bracelet as tribute she entered into Qin .Han Wu ¥l pointed far off and said to Dongfang Shuo *1J)j,/zhou: Gansu Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 1992), p.301.I am indebted to Zheng Binglin *,Sm1* forgiving me a copy of this work, which hasbeen of enormous help to me. There is a vastquantity of writing on the circumstances ofZhang Huaishen's death, much of which islisted in Zheng, id., p.302.115 According to records of presages associatedwith the foundation of the Tang, popularsongs foretold the appearance of a White­Robed Son of Heaven at the time when thefounding emperor of the Tang was beginninghis rise to power in Taiyuan. See Wechsler,Offerings of jade and silk, p.62. Evidentlymuch of the imagery of this tradition was incirculation at Dunhuang in the early tenthcentury. The author of the song, ZhangYongjin jJfb:k, signs himself as "the fishermanof the three divisions of Chu" (San Chuyu ren '::'A), so it is not impossiblethat he had strong links to central China.116 In all likelihood the place that was knownas White Pagoda [Postal] Relay Station (Bailing/yi B¥,t.l), located to the northeast ofDunhuang. See the eighth-century Dunhanggazetteer P.2005, transcription in ZhengBinglin, Dunhuang dili wenshu hUiji jiaozhu,p.l0.117 The "imperial City," "rear palace" and"jade hall" all refer to the buildings that hadhitherto been the house and offices of thehead of the Guiyi jun. Lu Xiangqian connectsthem with "up in the hall" (loushang ;jIJ:),a term used in many Guiyi jun documents torefer to the governor's residence. See Lu,"Guanyu Guiyi jun shiqi yi fen buzhi poyongIi de yanjiu," p.l52.118 This refers to the "dragon spring" (longquan*, a conunon metaphor for a sword)whose powers are celebrated in anotherpoetic paean to the "White-Robed Emperor,"the Longquan shenjian ge *tE\Iiif\[Song of the divine sword of the dragonspring], P.3633v. See the transcription in LuXiangqian, Dunhuang Tu/ufa n wenshulungao, pp.189-91.

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER37"We sense a person from the white cloud heaven above.,, 119In the peaks south of the Purple Pagoda [Ziting 112o a white wolfroams;To offer omens of auspicious fortune it comes to this prefecture.In past days the King of Zhou [Zhou wang ffl].:EJ brought forth the Nine­Tailed Fox fjiuwei J1JfJ 121How can this compare with the present radiance of the Dipper and theHerdboy Star [Dou niu 44-1 ? 122A white flag, white sashes, a white yak-tail pennant,A white jade carved saddle and a white auspicious dove.After building an altar to perform the Suburban Sacrifices fjiao 1123 toheaven,The Golden Star was spontaneously there, to assist the royal regalia ... . "This sparrow initiates a new phase in the histolY of independentDunhuang: the ultimately short-lived Kingdom of the Golden Mountains ofthe Western Han 124 A radical transformation is effected in the structure ofsovereignty, which is also a new order of colour. A new state is consecrated,and the white sparrow has pride of place in establishing that newness. Butrecognising the sign is not enough. There must be publicity. The "Song of the119 A reference to the famous encounterbetween the Emperor Han Wudi :Lt\ffl,Emperor Wu of the Han, and the goddess XiWang Mu j§.:E a, the Queen Mother of theWest, where the minister (and later Daoistsaint) Dongfang Shuo is seen spying on thecouple. See Suzanne E. Cahill, Transcendenceand divine passion-the Queen Mother of theWest in medieval China (Stanford, Calif.:Stanford University Press, 1993), pp.54-7.See Zhang Hua '** , Bowu zhi jiaozhengt!no/)iiS;fXm [The Monograph on BroadLearning, corrected and verified], juan 8(Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1980), p.97.120 A key site located to the southwest ofDunhuang, generally thought to be in themodern Su'nan Mongol Autonomous County.l¥i El m. It is mentioned inseveral geographical manuscripts fromDunhuang, including Shazhou dizhi iY'1+1:l:fu [Geographical monograph on Shazhou](P 5034), Shazhou tUjing iY'1'1'1 1Il[Scripture with maps on Shazhoul (S.788),and the Shouchang xian dijing I§ :l:fu:I:l[ [Gazetteer of Shouchang county]. This lastdocument was copied by Xiang Da rOJii inDunhuang in the 1940s and is not held in anyof the major collections. See 'Ji Dunhuangshishi chu Jin Tianfu shi nian xiebenShouchang xian dijing" [A record of the manuscriptof the gazetteer of Shouchang countyIfrom the 10th year of the Tianfu reign of the[Latter] Jin (Houjin 1&ff) (945) found in theDunhuang stone chamber], in Xiang Da,Tangdai Chang 'an yu Xiyu wenming [Tangdynasty Chang'an and the civilization of theWestern Regions] (Beijing: Sanlian Shudian,1957), pp.429-42. A useful collection of thesetexts (with some errors in transcription due topoor microfilms) is found in Zheng Binglin,Dunhuang dili wenshu huiji jiaozhu, whichhas references to Ziting from the three textsmentioned above on pages 44, 57, and 60,respectively. See also the discussion of Zitingin Chen Guocan, "Tang Wudai Gua-Sha Guiyijun junzhen de yanbian" [The evolution of themilitary garrisions of the Guiyi jun in Guazhouand Shazhou in the Tang and the FiveDynastiesl, in Dunhuang Tulufa n wenshuchulan-er hian [Preliminary explorations inthe Dunhuang and Turfan documents-pt 2],ed. Wuhan Daxue Lishixi Wei Jin Nan-BeiChao Sui-Tang Shi Yanjiu Shi (Wuhan: WuhanDaxue Chubanshe, 1990), pp.559-{i0. ChenGuocan discusses the modern location ofZiting on p.559 of this work.1 21 Refers to the transformative powers ofKing Wen of the Zhou dynasty, whose virtuewas able to tame the mythic nine-tailed fox:this is often meant to connote the power tobring foreign peoples to heel. As the followingline shows, it also has stellar associations.122 Stellar auspices were associated with therise of the Tang as well. The Dipper inparticular is stressed as a star with stronglinks to the position of emperor. SeeWechsler, Offerings ofjade and silk, p.62.The statement that the Dipper is the star ofthe emperor is made explicitly in theTianguan shu 7('§ [Book of theAstronomy Official] section in the Shiji ;e a[Records of the Grand Historian]. SeeXinjiaoShiji sanjia zhu bing fubian erzhong [Thenewly corrected Records of the Historian,with notes by three commentators and twoappended sectionsl,juan 27, Tianguan shu(Taipei: Dingwen Shuju, 1980), p.1330.123 These sacrifices to heaven were themost important annual imperial rituals inthe Tang era, the key part of the expandingimperial cult of heaven in the period. Theywere performed at sites outside the formalwalled perimeters of the capital, hence thetranslated term "suburban sacrifices." SeeWechsler, Oferings of jade and silk, ch.5.By building an altar to perform thesesacrifices, the Kingdom of the GoldenMountains of the Western Han was makinga bold claim to the dynastic legacy.124 There are numerous studies of the JinshanGuo, beginning with that of Wang Zhongmin.3:..m.§';, "Jinshan guo zhuishi lingshi"[Various matters relating to the Jinshankingdom], originally in The Bulletin of theNational Library of Peiping 96 (1935),reprinted in Wang Zhongmin, Dunhuangyishu lunwen ji [Collected articles onDunhuang documents] (Beijing: ZhonghuaShuju, 1984), pp.85-ll5. Other studiesinclude Tang Changru, "Baiyi tianzi shishi"[An attempted explication of the White­Robed Son of Heaven], in Yanjing xuebao35 (Dec. 1937): 227-38; Lu Xiangqian,"Jinshan guo liguo zhi wojian" [My view onthe establishment of the Jinshan kingdom],in Lu Xiangqian, Dunhuang Tulu/an wenshulungao, pp.171-200; WangJiqing, "YouguanJinshan guo de jige wenti" [Several issuesrelated to theJinshan kingdoml, Dunhuangxue jikan 3 (982): 44-50; and Li Zhengyu,"Guanyu Jinshan guo he Dunhuang guojianguo de jige wenti," pp.193-222. RongXinjiang has given a good summary of therelevant materials in Guiyi jun shi yanjiu,pp.361-4.

38125 "Song of the White Sparrow," lines 15-16. See translation in the main text.126 "Song of the White Sparrow," lines 20-21: "On top of the Gold Saddle Mountains isa white yak; it shakes its frosty hair andraises its head."127 Han shu rlC: [History of the Handynasty], juan 28, xia (Beijing: ZhonghuaShuju, 1975), p.1614.128 "Song of the White Sparrow," lines 18-19: "After the altar was built to prepare forthe suburban rites for Heaven, of its ownvolition the Gold Star came to assist thecrown and its beaded adornments." TheGolden Star is the same as "taibai" or Venus.For discussion of "taibai" see the followingfootnote.129 "Song of the White Sparrow," line 57:"On the white silver spear hung the flag ofthe Great White." The Great White was theplanet Venus. In the Han it was held thatstates under its force would be able toconquer the empire-world by military force.See Shiji,juan 27, p.1325. As is exemplifiedwith the statement that the Gold Star assiststhe regalia of the emperor, Venus is said tobe a great minister. See Shiji, juan 27,p.l327.130 "Song of the White Sparrow," line 57:"The twin pennants of the White Tiger andthree halberd staves." The White Tigerconstellation was associated with militaryaction, and in the Han was worshipped inthe autumn at the altar in the southernoutskirts of the city. See Shiji, juan 27,p.1306.131 "Song of the White Sparrow," line 38: "Inthe thousand ages since the White Emperorwas transformed on high." The WhiteEmperor was one of the stellar deities of theZhou period, who presided over the westernquarter. See the commentary in the Zhoulizhushu !1!illl i:ti5it [The Rites of Zhou withnotes and commentaries]juan 2, tianguan:JCtl, zhongzai *, dazai **[Officials for heaven-tomb minister-greatministerl, Shisan jing zhushu [The Thirteenclassics with notes and commentaries](Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1980), p.649.LEWIS MAYOWhite Sparrow" disseminates knowledge of this auspIcIous bird. Theauthoritative effect of the bird is registered in and produced by the songwritten in its name.In other words, the entire apparatus of a state goes into generating thissparrow's distinctiveness. The new epoch produces the exalted status of thebird, infusing it with the political energies of foundation, of power beginninganew. The bird is set apart, made special, by the ruler whose specialness itconveys: Zhang Chengfeng's transformation into an emperor is the force thatrenders the sparrow distinctive and memorable, and situates it in history. Theargument of the song is of course the opposite: it is the white sparrow whichmarks the specialness of Zhang, and is a sign of his transformation into a newbeing, the White-Robed Emperor of the Kingdom of the Golden Mountainsof the Western Han. The moment of its flight, a temporary arc in themovement of political time, is poetically frozen in the song. The most elusiveof things, flight itself, is thus politically (and poetically) appropriated. Thehand of power does not grasp the white bird; it is the autonomy of its flight,by which it actually eludes the control of the emperor, that gives it its politicalforce. Not only is it not a predator (it is thus removed from all suggestion ofviolence and force, and thus separated from any wilful act of coercion), it isnot actually physically possessed. The assemblage of white creatures, thewolves125 and yaks126 that wander in the mountains, and the torrents of riversand clouds, all partake of this unforced movement, this spontaneousconvergence of which the white sparrow is the most perfect manifestation.The ferocity of wolves and yaks puts these creatures on a lesser plain: theyare violent beings becoming submissive, threatening forces brought to heel.The white sparrow is beyond the normal order of power because it is beyondconflict. The powers that are brought to hand with the possession of huntingbirds are thus surpassed by this being which is outside of control andviolence.The white sparrow constitutes a point of convergence for multiplehistories and multiple geographies. The name of the Western Han kingdomand the reference to the story of the encounter between Emperor Wu of theHan and the goddess Xi Wang Mu (the Queen Mother of the West) summonsup not only some of the most renowned mythic and dynastic figures from thecentral Chinese tradition, but also the location of Dunhuang, physically andhistorically. It was in the reign of Emperor Wu that the first formal Chineseimperial colonies were established at Dunhuang127 and the allusion to thefabled mountains of Kunlun and the Queen Mother goddess who dwelt inthese holy places of the far west gave the seat of the new Kingdom of theGolden Mountains a special distinction by identifying it with spaces, forcesand people to which the central tradition granted privilege. The same is trueof the Golden Metallic Star128 (Venus or taibai "Great White," "* 8)129 andof the stellar constellation of the White Tiger (baihu 8 dfJ130 and of the stardeity "the White Emperor" (baidi EHff), 131 one of the five directional godsin the Zhou-dynasty system, who presided over the ascendancy of themetallic or gold phase and over the direction west in the Five Elements

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER39(wuxing .lilT) system. All of these appear in the song. This combination ofpowers presides over the movement of history: in the theory of the FiveElements, the transition from one sovereign force to another-that is fromone dynastic ruling house to another-is governed by the succession ofelements in the fivefold order. It is a transition registered ceremonially in theadoption of new banners and robes which mark the new colour now incontrol. 132 The white metallic principle associated with autumn and the westwould displace the power which had ruled before it: metallic/golden andwhite autumn succeeded both the red fiery energies of summer133 and thesouth and the yellow earth power of the centre, the sign under which theTang dynasty had ruled.Thus the white sparrow flies into Dunhuang from the north-east (thelocation of the White Pagoda postal relay station), the direction of the oldsource of sovereign power, the Tang dynasty. It marks the geographical andhistorical movement of the principle of legitimate governance from the olddynasty, the Tang (ruling at the centre-east of Dunhuang-and identifiedwith the colour yellow and the earth) to the Gold Mountain found in adirection southwest of Dunhuang.134 This geographical realignment is joinedwith other elements: the song celebrates the conquest of Loulan ;j:JJIj,135which was one of the sources and signs of the new authority and legitimacyof the rule of Zhang Chengfeng, justifying his ascent to the status of White­Robed Emperor. The newly-conquered Loulan territory is located to thesouth and west of Dunhuang, which was also the location of the GoldenMountains, and of Khotan, the land of jade and gold, relations with whichhad been of central importance to Dunhuang for a long time (and apparentlybecame even more so in the tenth century, perhaps because of the strongdemand for Khotanese jade in central China, witnessed in the references tojade being given as a tribute product to the rulers of central dynasties byemissaries from the Dunhuang region in the early tenth century).136 Thesouthwest is also the direction from which the life force of Dunhuangoriginates: the water which provides for the irrigation of the oasis comes fromthe river which enters the town from that direction. It is water, moreover,which derives from the white snows of the mountains. The song's referencesto the powers of dragons, white life-giving clouds, and snow-capped peaks,as well as to springs and jade maidens which are found in the heart of theseGolden Mountains, thus draw together forces associated with the waters onwhich the locality depended.137 (The forces of numinous mountains andwatercourses are significantly related to the imperial cult of the Queen132 "Song of the White Sparrow," line 17. Seetranslation in the main text for description ofcostumes and banners.133 This echoes lines in Wei Yanshen'srhapsody on the goshawk about how thegoshawk "assists the fierce energies of themetallic direction to shake the heat of the fireelement." See Chuxue ji, juan 30, p.731.134 See the reference to the White Yak of theGold Saddle Moutains given in footnote 126above. For discussion of these mountains seeZheng Binglin, "Tang Wudai DunhuangJin'anshan yiming kao" [An examination of thedivergent names for the Jin'an (Gold saddle)mountains in Tang and Five DynastiesDunhuang], in Zheng Binglin, ed., DunhuangTulu/an wenxian yanjiu [Research on Dun-Ihuang and Turfan documents] (Lanzhou:Lanzhou Daxue Chubanshe, 1995), pp.595-60S. There are strong grounds for connectingthem to the present-day Altun tagh ('GoldenMountains' in Uyghur), located to thesouthwest of Dunhuang. The deity in thesemountains was considered especially potent,with people not daring to approach its shrine.This deity was said to be the object of anannual sacrifice of a horse in pre-Guiyi juntimes. It had power over hail and thunder.See the Dunhuang lu 1 [Record ofDunhuang] (S.544S), transcription in ZhengBinglin, Dunhuang dili wenshu huiji jiaozhu,p.S7. Sacrifice to this mountain deity was stillgoing on in the period just prior to theestablishment of the Jinshan guo, evidencedby the coarse paper distributed for use inrituals to this god in the inventory of paperand cloth outgOings from the time of ZhangChengfeng-P.4640v, line S1. A transcriptioncan be found in Lu Xiangqian, "GuanyuGuiyi jun shiqi yi fen buzhi poyong Ii deyanjiu," in Lu, Dunhuang Tulu/an wenshulungao, p.l02.135 See Zheng Binglin, "Tang Wudai DunhuangJinshan guo zhengfa Loulan shikao,"pp.2-3.136 See the listing of jade in the productssubmitted to the Latter Liang (Hou Liang:f3t) by Cao Rengui lH=it (Cao Yijinlf)-P.463S 0); for a transcription,see Li Zhengyu, "Cao Rengui ming shi lun­Cao shi Guiyi jun chuangshi ji guifeng HouLiang shi tan" [A discussion of the name andreality of Cao Rengui-an exploration of thehistory of the founding of the Cao familyGuiyi jun and their giving of allegiance to theLatter Liang], Dunhuang shidi xinlun, p.30S.Li Zhengyu dates this text to 91S (id. p.322).Jade products, including a jade bracelet likethe one given by the Queen Mother of theWest to Emperor Wu of the Han in the "Songofthe White Sparrow," are also listed amongstthe products given by a mission from theGuiyi jun to the Latter Tang (the successor ofthe Latter Liang) in 926. See Ce/u yuangui,juan 169, p.2036. The record of the missionof Gao Juhui j\§ij mlifiJ sent by the Latter Jinto Khotan in the late 930s details theproduction of jade in the area. In the wake ofGao's mission the Khotanese ruler ViSa'SaI]1bhava (Li Shengtian * sent 1000jin IT of jade to the Latter Jin. See Xin Wudaishi, juan 74, p.91S.137 "Song of the White Sparrow," lines 19-20:"The Jade Maiden sends down her lOVER

40/numinous spirit and calms the five lakes. Onthe summit of the broad white mountains,clouds swirl and encircle." The Jade Maiden(Yunu .3i:tZ:) was a key deity of theDunhuang region with power over the localwaters. Her shrine was located to the westof the city at the Jade Maiden Spring CYu nuquan .3i3z:: ,*), the site of the legendaryconfrontation between the local deity andthe prefect Zhang Xiaosong $': whohad cut out the tongue of the dragon spiritwhich was demanding an annual sacrificeof a local boy and a local girl. The tonguewas sent to the emperor Xuanzong, so thestory went, and the name Dragon TongueZhang (Longshe Zhang %) wasbestowed in commemoration. See S.5448,Dunhuang lu, reproduced in Zheng Binglin,Dunhuang dili wenshu huijijiaozhu, p.87.See also "Song of the White Sparrow," lines27-31: "Towering for 10,000 Ii the massedGolden Moutains. White clouds congeal thefrost on the ancient holy altar; on theGolden Saddle the south-of-the-tarn treehangs long. The deity-communing White­Robed One assists the king's pleasure. Themountain comes forth in the southwest,alone in its beauty and height; white cloudsas a cover circle round and again. In thebelly of the mountain is a spring 10,000yards deep. The White Dragon frequentlyquakes, bringing forth waves and billows."1 38 See Cahill, Transcendence and divinepassion, p.54.139 It was also the time when hawkers letout their birds for hunting (following closelyon the time when hawks from Mongoliamigrated south through Hebei and Shanxi).See Duan Chengshi, Youyang zazu, qianji,juan 20, p.193 (translation in Schafer,"Falconry in T'ang times," p.323).140 "Song of the White Sparrow," lines 22-3:"Beneath the White Mountain Dyke, theWhite Ford is clear / A single long river issqueezed between banks of spring."141 "Song of the White Sparrow," lines 37-9:"The white-robed ministers and white-hairedofficials abundantly send forth plans andadvice to aid the One Man ... . The whiterobedgentlemen in retirement write goldenscriptures / They swear to serve the king ofthe people and not go out from the court."142 Lines 51 and 52 of "Song of the WhiteSparrow" refer to these conquests.LEWIS MAYOMother of the West and her relationship with Emperor Wu of the Han).138Autumn, in addition to being the golden time of harvest, the fulfilment ofriches, marks at Dunhuang the period when the snows on which thefollowing year's crops depend begin to accumulate in the mountains. Inaddition to being a force of death, associated with the metallic westerlywinds-so often linked to the hawk-like force of barbarian attack in centralChinese rhetoricl39-autumn and snow are thus associated in the Dunhuangarea with future growth and with the stability of the agricultural cycle basedon irrigation from the melting of snow. The "Song of the White Sparrow" isfull of references to the cooling moisture of snow-fed irrigation canals.14oThese resemble jade, another product of the mountains to the south, whichis pure and durable like the ideal political authority, but also smooth, cooland moist, a product of the feminine earth. As with the white hair of the oldhermits whom the song cites as serving the White-Robed Emperor,141 thecolour white is not here a force of killing and death, but a sign of longevityand growth. The killing powers of golden autumn are used against enemies,and to slay the scorching fiery red heat of summer with the cooling moistureof snowy whiteness, subduing opponents in the crucial lands to the southwest.142The Golden Mountains (joined with the Kunlun mountains, whichwere as noted the abode of the goddess Queen Mother of the West-andfrom which, according to the 882 monument erected by Zhang Huaishen,docile Tuyuhun brought jade as a sign of obeisance) and the season ofautumn (time of growth and of the collecting of wealth, as well as of thedefeat of enemies) therefore have a distinctive significance in terms of thegeography of power in the Dunhuang region. Through them this region isidentified not as a periphery of an empire located to the east, but as a site ofpower in its own right, a legitimate place for heavenly forces to confer thedivine registers granted to a new emperor.143The white sparrow, in addition to summoning up and drawing togetherall of these elements in the local geography, and linking other religiouslychargedelements in the surrounding region, replays a history of auspiciousevents from which new sovereignties-new hands of power-have beenconstituted at Dunhuang. White sparrows had been seen in the area duringthe Tang; more significantly, they had appeared in 403, the last time that adynasty had been founded at Dunhuang (the Western Liang (Xi Liang gsy)jOstate, set up by Li Song *) I44 The "Song of the White Sparrow" states inits preamble that the rule of the White-Robed Emperor is succeeding to theglories of the Five Liang (Wu Liang ll.r)jO, the states which had ruled in theGansu region prior to the expansion of central Chinese regimes beginning143 See preamble to the "Song of the WhiteSparrow." These are the registers offered bydivine beings as signs of legitimate investiture,especially with political office.144 See P.2005, Shazhou dudufu lujingY9>1'1f1iG'i" Iff [i [Illustrated scripture forthe Shazhou Area Command]. Transcriptionin Zheng Binglin, Dunhuang dili wenshuhuijijiaozhu, p.l7.

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER41with the Northern Wei and ending with the Tang.145 It is thus part of therestoration of a local dynastic tradition. White sparrows had also been presentin central China when the first emperor of the Tang had set up his newdynastyl46 and, like the white sparrow visiting the palace of the White-RobedEmperor, they pointed to a political and geographical axis that ran fromNorth-east to South-west (from the Taiyuan ::t:J1¥-: homeland of the Tangdynasty's founder to the Sui imperial capital of Daxing cheng *, laterto become the Tang capital Chang'an). There was a long history of whitesparrow auspices in central China from the pre-Tang era,147 and Daoistaffiliatedmaterial collected in the mid-9th century by Duan Chengshi (whosefalconry treatise was compiled shortly before the arrival of the Ganjun shanbirds in Chang'an) granted the bird a distinguished place in the shiftingcelestial hierarchy of the Daoist pantheon, where it was again associated withthe change of dynastic fortune, albeit in the divine realm.148White birds were ruled by-and were emanations of-historical andgeographical forces. They marked the movement of history through theoscillation of powers (directions, colours, elements, seasons) in which oneorder of sovereignty, one hand of power, displaced another. History, as asuccession of legitimate imperial bodies produced by the descent lines ofdynastic families, was ruled by these elements. Geography, as a structure ofnuminous spaces organised by directional principles (which involved themovements of the seasons and stars and the shifting signs of auspiciousfavour) was both the object of sovereign control and the source of it. Thegeographical gazetteers from Dunhuang recorded auspices and miraculousappearances of animals manifesting themselves around the oases at varioushistorical periods. The lives of birds, like the lives of other beings in this area,from people to wolves, were historically and geographically ordered-whichmeans that they were politically ordered. If white sparrows had the capacityto constitute a new sovereign order, a new moment in history and a newpolitical geography, it was because they were themselves constituted bypolitical forces. Birds existed not outside the movements of history andpolitical force but within them. There was a political order of birds in whichwhite sparrows had a privileged position. 149 They were associated with theradical transformation of status: amongst the everyday mob of ordinary duncolouredsparrows, the albino bird is a miraculous inversion of expectation.When a person moves from subordinate or delegate to the status of emperor,a similar inversion of the everyday takes place.For such powers to transform the order of sovereignty, to be able toremake history, geography, ceremonies and politics, in short to operate,there must be a linguistic apparatus: these signs have their meaning becausethey are already recorded. As noted, the accounts of Dunhuang geographyfound in the treatises that were compiled to show the region's place in theoverall system of Tang imperial territory list the previous appearances ofwhite sparrows. The white sparrow in the song thus fulfils a destiny whichthe written record affirms to have been previously present in the local145 See "Song of the White Sparrow," line 3.For a study of the history of the Five Liangdynasties see Qi Chenjun , Wu Liang shi We[A brief history of the Five Liang] (Lanzhou:Gansu Renmin Chubanshe, 1988). I thankQi Chenjun if ri* for giving me a copy ofhis book.146 See Wechsler, Offerings ojjade and silk,pp.64 and 67. Wechsler notes that whitebirds were symbols of the west (p.64).147 Some indication of the centrality of thecataloguing of these auspices at this periodis given by the large number of referencesto sightings of white sparrows collected inthe official history of the Liu Song (I£U 7R)dynasty, extending back as far as the Han.See Song shu *iI [Song History], juan 29(Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1974), pp.843-8.148 See Duan Chengshi, Youyang zazu,qianji, juan 12, p.128.149 See Schafer, "The auspices of T'ang,"Journal of the American Oriental Society 83(1963): 198-9

42LEWIS MAYOISO See Shazhou dudu fu tujing, (P,2005,transcribed in Zheng Binglin, Dunhuangdili wenshu huiji jiaozhu, p.19), whichdetails the auspicious songs and theauspicious white wolf appearing inDunhuang at the time ofWu Zetian:fEtU.As noted, popular songs full of auspiciousomens were also said to have been incirculation in central China at the time of theTang founder's revolt against the Sui. SeeWechsler, Offerings of jade and silk, p.62.lSI "Song of the White Sparrow," lines 59-60. "Ever since the emperor Tang ascendedto the clouds, there has been no cause for awhite sparrow to lodge in an imperial palace."Emperor Tang was the sagely founder of theShang j';16 dynasty.152 Most notable were the struggles of ZhangHuaishen to secure formal investiture fromthe Tang as military governor of the Shazhouregion in the period just after the whitegoshawk was given to the Uyghur khan. SeeS.1156, which is the report of his emissaries'failures to secure a positive outcome on amission to Chang'an. There is a transcriptionof this document in Rong, Guiyi jun shiyanjiu, pp.167-9. See also Rong Xinjiang'sbroader discussion of this issue, id., pp.163-92.153 See Tang Changru, "Baiyi tianzi shishi,"pp.227-38.154 Baifu tujue S ijJX. They arepresent in association with Qarluqs in thestruggle between the Uyghurs and theTibetans over Beiting (Beshbaliq) in the790s, mentioned Jiu Tang shu, juan 195,p.5209. For a translation see Mackerras, TheUighur empire, p.102.ISSFor example the White Orchid Qiang(Bailan qiang s1Mi%) and White DogQiang (Baigou qiang S J{iJm. Referencesto the former appear in Du You t.±ffi, Tongdian [Comprehensive Institutesl,juan190 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1984), p.1022,and to the latter in Xin Tang shu, juan 201a,p.6216. I thank the anonymous reviewer ofthis article for drawing my attention to theimportance of whiteness in Qiang culturaland political traditions.geography. The song itself constitutes an auspicious sign: official gazetteersrecord the songs being sung spontaneously by the people when a new orderis constituted. The songs are listed along with the presence of white sparrowsand white wolves as auspicious or miraculous events.150 Like the sparrowitself, the song has this quality because it seems to come from outside, as theproduct of forces bigger than itself. The song is fuelled by the ethers of thetime and place in which it is produced. Its author may deprecate his owntalents, but he is shown as moved by greater forces, the energies of historyand landscape, governed by the prinCiples of whiteness, gold/metal, thewest, autumn, and the powers of sacred mountains. The song preserves onthe page the arc of the sparrow in flight: it has never been known since thedays of the sage emperor Tang (who ruled under the metal element) fora white sparrow to come and reside i n the palace of an emperor. 151 TheWhite-Robed Emperor, whom Zhang Chengfeng has become, is constitutedas a new hand of power by this bird sign from outside. For symbolic forceto operate, it cannot be seen to be self-consecrating: the tremendous strugglethat Zhang Chengfeng's predecessors had undertaken to be officiallyinvested with ranks that they held de/acto through force of armsl52 comesfrom the fact that the local order of rank in the Guiyi jun Cof which they wereat the top) could not appear to be self-constituted. Their stated reverence forthe Tang state was a reverence for the legitimacy that its seals of approvalgave to an arbitrary order of power. With the Tang dynasty gone, there wasno source to grant this. The white sparrow, by bringing a new order ofsovereignty from the very direction from which legitimacy had previouslyentered the oasis, allowed the system of legitimate rank to be constitutedanew. The force of words literally created the bird in song. It was a sign thatfulfilled a pre-existing textual logic, playing out what was known from thewritten record. But it did this because it played out a political logic in whichbirds and writing helped to constitute the hand of power at the apex of asystem of rank, a hand of power in relation to which the order of writing andof birds was constituted.The rhetoric of the "Song of the White Sparrow" places the White-RobedEmperor and the Golden Mountains unquestionably in the field of politicalresonances associated with imperial divinatory cosmologies, Five Elementstheory and the Chinese literary tradition. But the white robes, the goldmountains and the west and south would also resonate with political andmoral symbolism from other sources. The white robes have associations withboth Manicheanism and Maitreya worship,153 and white-clad Turks wereactive at the time of the great steppe empires of the eighth century.154Amongst the Qiang peoples ofthe Tibet-Qinghai plateau (the areas inhabitedby the Tuyuhun), whiteness had a key function in the classificatory practiceswhich distinguished one ethno-political unit from another. 155 Whiteness thushad strong resonances with the political cultures of a great many of thepeoples surrounding the territory of the Guiyi jun. Similarly, Goldenmountains, and mountains more broadly, were of key importance in the

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER43Turkic tradition. They appear in Turkish in the Orkhon runic inscription 156(where they probably designated the Altai),157 and, as noted, the sacredmountains of the Otukan were the pre-eminent example of the associationbetween imperial fortune and the power of mountains in the Turkic politicaltradition. In both Khotanese and Old Uyghur, the land of gold refers variouslyto the area of Dunhuang itself and to Khotan.158 The field of associationswhich the consecrating signs of the Realm of the Golden Mountains conveyedthus had the capacity to span linguistic and political boundaries, much as theshared interest in white goshawks made them an object of strong symbolicinvestments across cultural/political borders.With the "Song of the White Sparrow," altered political circumstancescreated a new political formation of bird power in the "territories inheritedfrom the conquering acts of Zhang Yichao, that of the consecrating flyingomen, outside the reach of the hand of power but authorising its acts. Butthe spectacular reordering wrought by the white sparrow was short lived: warwith the Ganzhou Uyghurs brought the Jinshan Guo to an end, 159 and the oldpolitical nomenclature of the Guiyi jun was restored. In the subsequent erathe relationship of birds to the hand of power was more modest, but alsomore continuous and pervasive.Ode to the Wh ite GoshawkIn the wake of the collapse of the Kingdom of the Golden Mountains, awhite goshawk was given to the Chamberlain160 head of the Guiyi jun, anda poem161 to commemorate this was submitted to him by an official who usesthe given name of Taichu :::tM. With the failure of Zhang Chengfeng to156 For example the Tonyukuk Inscription,East, line 3 (see the translation in Talat Tekin,A grammar oj Orkhon Turkic, pp.250, 285).157 See ibid, p.301.158 See the various references to the land ofgold in Khotanese texts quoted in ZhangGuangda and Rong Xinjiang, Yutian shicongkao, pp.33-7.159 See the famous petition from the peopleof Shazhou acknowledging the su periority ofthe Uyghur qaghan of Ganzhou, bringing theJinshan Guo to a close (P.3633), See WangZhongmin, "Jinshan guo zhuishi lingshi,"pp.99-102, for one of many transcriptions ofthis petition.160 Shangshu j>iij. The standard translationof shangshu given by Charles Hucker is"Minister" (See Hucker,A dictionaryojojJicialtitles in imperial China, p.410-H). Because"Minister" is potentially misleading for readerslin this context, where it is not so much afunction as an honour, I have used the morehonorific-sounding term "Chamberlain,"despite any confusion it may produce. Pleasenote that shangshu has been translated asMinister elsewhere in this paper where itsmeaning is less ambiguous.161 The poem is s.1655v. I am aware of sixtranscriptions: by Kanaoka Shoko :!iZ: Iti'd 7\:;, in Tonka shu/sudo bungaku bunkenbunrui mokuroku [A catalogue of literarysources unearthed from Dunhuang] (Tokyo:Toyo Bunko, 1971, p.168); by Ba Zhou E:l m,in Dunhuang yunwen ji [Collected texts inrhyme from Dunhuang] (Kaohsiung: FojiaoWenhua Fuwuchu, 1965), pp.30-1; by ZhengBinglin, in Dunhuang beimingzan jishi, p.296;and a partial transcription by Rong Xijiang, inGuiyi jun shi yanjiu, p.98, which is drawnfrom Lin Congming #WEJI3, Dunhuang suIwenxue yanjiu [Research on Dunhuangvernacular literature] (Taipei: Dongwu DaxueZhongguo Xueshu Zhuzuo JiangzhuWeiyuanhui, 1984), p.242. Paul Kroll kindlydrew my attention to the most recent anddoubtless most authoritative transcription,that of Xu Jun f in Dunhuang shijicanjuan jikao [Edited studies of thefragments of poetic collections fromDunhuang] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2000),p.860. As I only became aware of the lasttwo transcriptions in the final stages ofpreparing this paper for publication, I haverelied on comparing a photographic reproductionof the manuscript with the othertranscriptions.The poem is undated. It refers to theleader who received the goshawk as theshangshu ("Chamberlain"). The rank ofshangshu was held by five different headsof the Guiyi jun: Zhang Yichao, ZhangHuaishen, Zhang Huaiding 5i$$, SuoXun mtJ, Zhang Chengfeng and Cao Yijin(Cao Rengui). With the exception of Cao, allof these were in the period of the Zhangfamily'S dominance of the Guiyi jun. RongXinjiang argues that the poem originatesfrom the period when Cao Yijin held therank of shangshu. See Guiyi jun shi yanjiu,p.98. The author of the poem gives his nameas Taichu, and is undoubtedly the Guiyi junwriter Du Taichu tl:*tJJ (as RongXinjiangargues). Du Taichu wrote a number ofepitaphs in the Guiyi jun in the 910s and920s-see for instance the epitaph for ZhangXishou 5i:g§" which Rong Xinjiang datesat 919, and the epitaph to Zhang Qingtong5im, which are both on the manuscriptP.3718. Another epitaph by Du Taichu,dated by Rong to 926, is that for Chen Fayani!*(P.3556). All of these are transcribedand dated by Rong Xinjiang in Rao Zongyi,ed., Dunhuang miaozhenzan jiaolu bingyanjiu [Dunhuang epitaph texts edited andtranscribed with analysis] (Taipei: Hsinwen-feng,1994) Transcriptions are onpp.233-5, 241-2; and 247-9. Dates are onpp.362-3. Zheng Binglin considers the odeto the white goshawk to be from the time ofZhang Yichao and Zhang Huaishen,assuming that its author is Zhang Qiu 5iRlt(ZhangJingqiu 5iRIt) active in Dunhuangin the ninth century, but this contention isbased on a faulty transcription of part of themanuscript. One of the numerous embarrassingerrors in my PhD thesis ("A lOVER

44LEWIS MAYOFigure 5Du Taichu 's poemon the whitegoshawk. 5. 1655v.By permission ojthe British LibraryIpolitical history of birds in independentDunhuang, 848-1000," Australian NationalUniversity, 1999) is the statement that thepoem is from the time of Zhang Chengfeng;I had overlooked the section in RongXinjiang's book which dates it to 919 duringthe rule of Cao Yijin.162 This occurred in 914. See Rong Xinjiang,Guiyi jun shi yanjiu, p.1S.163 See P.2945(3), transcribed and discussedin ibid., p.239. For surrounding issues seeRong, "Guanyu Cao shi Guiyi jun shourenjiedushi de jige wenti" [Several questionsrelated to the first appointed MilitaryCommissioner in the Cao clan Guiyi junl,Dunhuang yanjiu 35 (1993 2): 46-53.164 See the votive text produced for thecommencement of construction on the largecommemorative grotto at Mogao jl11j (no.98), P.3262. A transcription can be found inMa De, "Cao shi san da ku yingjian deshehui beijing" [The social background tothe building of the three great grottoes ofthe Cao family], Dunhuangyanjiu 26 0991.establish himself as an emperor, control of the Guiyi jun passed to CaoRengui, more widely known as Cao Yijin.162 He sought ratification for hisposition from the Latter Liang dynasty, which had replaced the Tang as themain claimant to the imperial mantle in central China, and he received officialinvestiture as Military Commissioner (fiedu shi fip J}[ue) of Shazhou in 918,being granted the official 'staff of command' (fie fiiJ) from the centraldynasty.163 The title of "Chamberlain" was one he ceased to use in 920.Therefore, the poem in honour of the goshawk, which refers to his receptionof the staff of command from the Latter Liang, comes from the autumn of919.The ode of praise to the white goshawk coincides with a powerful attemptto consolidate the Guiyi jun symbolically through representations of thesolidarity and unity of its members, stressing the foundational importance ofthe ratification of Cao's authority by the Latter Liang: Cao's local politicalposition had been consolidated by his marriage to the daughter of the qaghanof Ganzhou 164 Great stress was laid on the symbolic sanction provided bythe formal connection with the Latter Lang in the proclamations made tocelebrate the building of a large commemorative grotto.165 This grotto laid outthe network of social linkages on which Cao Yijin's mlership was founded,depicting as donor-worshippers not only Cao and his wives, but also ZhangYichao, women from the various key Dunhuang families with whom the Cao

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER45clan had familial relationships, the Buddhist clergy and the men whoundertook the tasks of defence and of civil administration in the Guiyi jun,who were also by definition the personal retinue of the Cao family. 166As the object of a verse tribute, the bird is located in the field of poeticpower as well as in the political field. The rarity of the white goshawk makesits discovery an event, something to be recorded. In this regard its status isto be distinguished from the position of other hawks in the structures ofpolitical life. The white goshawk pointed to the specificity of the rule of CaoYijin, by showing the miraculous responsiveness of the world to his virtuousgovernment, an order ratified by the central dynasty. The actual politicalrelationships that have caused the white goshawk to be transmitted as a giftto Dunhuang are obscured in the poem; no account is given of how the birdwas found or of who brought it to the Guiyi jun government. It is rather shownas the product of cosmological forces, much like those which impelled theflight of the white sparrow. Furthermore it is again connected with themagical power of mountains, spaces where the birds presumably bred(although goshawks normally nest in trees rather than on cliffs). The physicalacquisition of the bird does of course involve the exertion of politicalauthority over the no-man's land of the mountains: it is only throughconnections with humans who had contact with the areas where goshawksbred that such a bird could be acquired.167IT has heen heaRa ThaT when The way of RuLeRS ana mIn[STfRS [S In haRmony, maRveLsana wonaeRs ThaT aRe movea hy [T show FORTh ausp[c!Ousness.The appearance of auspicious things is a direct correlate of political orderthatis, the order of subordination, the rightful relationship between ruler andminister, which here invokes the harmonious relationship with the centreII): 19-20. The text mentions the CelestialPrincess (the Uyghur princess), who is alsolisted in the celebratory text produced for theconstruction of the roof of the same grotto,P.3781 (transcription in Ma De, id., p.20).Rong Xinjiang deduces that the marriage ofCao Yijin to the princess should have takenplace in 916, two years before work on thegrotto started in 918. See Rong Xinjiang, Guiyijun shi yanjiu, pp.l5-16 (Rong explains onp.239 why he concludes 918 to be the datewhen work on the grotto began). The Uyghurprincess was one of Cao's total of three wives,the others being a Dunhuang woman of theSong ,* family (which affiliated itself to thedistinguished Song family of Guangping!a'3fin central China), and a woman of the powerfulSuo *' family (which claimed a connection toJulu 1m in central China). See the inscriptionslin Grotto 98 giving their names and titles,reproduced in Dunhuang Yanjiu Yuan, ed.,Dunhuang Mogao ku gongyang ren fiji[Inscriptions of donors for the Mogao grottoesat Dunhuangl (Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe,1986), p.32. It seems that in 918 Cao had onlytwo wives (one being the Ganzhou Uyghurprincess); P.3781 refers only to the princessand one other Juren x.A., who is probablyMadame Suo (marked 'deceased' in theinscriptions of Grotto 98; see previousreference). On Madame Song of Guangping,see the epitaph text for her, P.4638(5),transcribed in Rao Zongyi, ed., Dunhuangmiaozhenzan jiaoji bing yanjiu, pp.292-3. Adiscussion of the status of the Song family ofGuangping and the Suo family of Julu amongthe distinguished lineages of Dunhuang isfound inJiang Boqin, "Dunhuang miaozhenzanlyu Dunhuang ming zu" [Dunhuang epitaphsand the renowned families of Dunhuangl, inRao Zongyi, id., pp.30-2. Powerful marriagealliances with leading local families allowedCao to strengthen his relationships with thedominant groups in Dunhuang. MadameSuo was the daughter of Suo Xun who hadruled the Guiyi jun from 892-94 in theinterregnum after the death of ZhangHuaishen. Suo is referred to as Cao Yijin'sfather-in-law in the inscriptions in Grotto 98;see Rong Xinjiang, id., p.242. Mme Songdied in 936; see Zheng Binglin, Dunhuangbeimingzan jishi, p.227, n.2. From the text ofMme Song's epitaph, it is clear that theUyghur princess outlived her; the epitaphstates that on her death-bed she entrustedthe care of her child to the princess.165 See references to the texts for the foundingof the new grotto noted in the previousfootnote. P.3262 states: "The Ruler, the GreatLiang Emperor, will forever rule heaven andearth. We desire that he will shine his lightupon the border peripheries, and that he willadd his grace without impediment" (Ma De,"Cao shi san da ku yingjian de shehui beijing,"p.19). P.3781 also declares: "The Ruler, theGreat Liang Emperor: May he dwell for everin Penglai [the paradise land of Daoistimmortals found across the seal' the TenProvinces compete in hastening to renderservice, swearing oaths in their hearts andoffering gifts" (Ma De, id., p.20).166 See Dunhuang Yanjiuyuan, DunhuangMogao ku gongyang ren fiji, pp.32-49. Seethe discussion in Rong Xinjiang, Guiyi junshi yanjiu, pp.242-3. Alliances with thevarious groups listed would have beenconsolidated in the seven years that it tookfor the grotto to be completed (see Rong'scomment on p.17 of his book relating to thecompletion of the grotto in 925).167 The Guiyi jun had its own falconers, andseemingly its own mews, evidently part ofthe apparatus of the official government.The inventory of paper distributions fromthe Guiyi jun government from the time ofZhang Chengfeng (P. 4640v) lists the "hawker"(ba ying ren rel.l!)") Cheng Xiaoqian. Seeline 40 of the transcription in Lu Xiangqian,"Guanyu Guiyi jun shiqi yi fen buzhi poyongIi de yanjiu," p.100; also see the explanatorynote on p.32. As pointed out above, ChengXiaoqian is referred to a "goshawk netter" inline 89 of the same text.

46LEWIS MAYO168 The source for this is P.2954 (see RongXinjiang, Cuiyi jun shi yanjiu, p.l6).169 See the references in the Shiji section onthe pitch pipes, which state that the 9thmonth is wuyi in the pitch pipe sequence, andthat the yin ether is strongly dominant, withnothing left of the yang ether. Shiji,juan 25,p.l248.marked in Cao Yijin's investiture by the Latter Liang. This echoes thepresentation of political relationships in the rhetoric surrounding theconsecration of the new grotto in the previous year. The goshawk is set apartfrom ordinary things, just as the harmonisation of the relationship of rulersand ministers (or rulers and subjects) is a special phase in history, and nota regularity that can be taken for granted. The distinctive historical momentconstitutes the goshawk, and the goshawk constitutes the distinctive moment.The powers of seizure which have produced control of the hawk and broughtit within the Chamberlain's grasp are thus rendered as a magical manifestationof auspiciousness (xiang ), wrought by things of an exceptional nature.They are also auspicious tokens (rui JIffl), marks of virtue and authoritybestowed by external power. The goshawk is invested with a technology oftokens of command which, like birds, are seen to come from the worldoutside the oasis.fi;j*1'i1Y. mfl; ,:g,fJ"IJ!I:LA.3(iI fJJ, $:fm§.The ChamBeRLam hoLos The STaFF of goveRnoRship In The DRagon Sanos [Dunhuangl.Hlooefl enoowmenTs aRe RepeaTeDLy mafllFeSTeo, consTanTLy exhllllTmg The aRT ofRuLmg The peopLe anD keepmg The BORoeR aT peace. Even WITh 10,000 Reams of papeR,ThiS cannOT Be FuLLy oescRIBeo.The goshawk's appearance is a direct result of Cao Yijin's investiture by theLatter Liang with staff of office of Dunhuang military governor. 168 His skill isboth that of ruling those under his command and of pacifying the periphery.The goshawk is thus directly engaged in the business of border control. Thenetworks of power into which the goshawk has been implanted are theproduct of other relations of dominance, such as diplomacy or military might,systems of authority of which it is an instrument of recognition. The brillianceof this achievement is constructed as a challenge to the skills of thepanegyrist, and the rhetorical and physical resources at his disposal.MOReoveR, IT IS salo ThaT The STaTe OF conneCTIOn WITh SpiRIT poweR now BqoRe OUReyes has fleveR Been heaRo OF sqoRe, evefl smce The mOST anCienT Times.The goshawk is thus moved by a remarkable age and a remarkable set ofpolitical circumstances: possession of it is a matter of the convergence ofproper moral forces. It is brought to the hand of power by the inexorablegravity of the Chamberlain's virtue. A special history produces it and it ismarked by the specificity of a privileged historical moment.'j§!}t B, f*BI.I .AT The enD of aUTumn an ImmacuLaTe anD pURe whITe goshawk was o/nameo ThRoughThe FORce of ResponSiveness.The time is wuyi !lt in the temporal sequence of the 12 pitch pipes, thatis the last month of autumn, also the last phase of the retreat of the masculineprinCiple of yang .169 It also correlates with the west-north-westerly

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER47direction.17o The auspiciousness of the goshawk in the temporal order restsin its association with the residual powers of yang in the killing season ofautumn. (As noted, this association is not arbitrary; hawkers commencedtheir season when summer was drawing to a close, and wild hawk migrationsalso took place at this time.) The bird is not a yin force, but it can surviveand prosper on the cusp of winter, unthreatened by its dangerous energies.Through its purity the authority of the calendrical sequence is affirmed, andthose who claim to rule in the name of temporal order are confirmed in theirposition. The bird is also a claim to synchronicity with the most profoundforces in the world: ruling power is coterminous with the very order of things.What seems beyond its control, the rarest and most distinguished of huntingbirds, arrives in precise accord with the times. The goshawk thus renders thissequence (produced institutionally by the authorities in charge of time)visible. The bird affirms its logic and the logic of the political project whichclaims to produce the order of the world through the order of politicalrelations.1tt{ft cpW , Jft$ .A banQUeT FOR monks ana LatTY was heLa, UnITIng In vOlCtS OF accLatm FOR ThIS TRueausp'CIOusness. 171170 See Feng Yu·lan, A history oj Chinesephilosophy, vol.2: The period oj classicallearning, trans. Derk Bodde (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 1953), pp.27-30.171 Kanaoka's transcription is "monk andlayman praised it like Qi and Chu." Basedon the photograph of the text, I have followedthe usage of Ba Zhou, with reference to thetext of Rong Xinjiang.172 Wuxia Ii. {?t?:. No explanation for thisterm is found in standard reference works.Kanaoka gives wushi 1i 1J!!, "five legates," aterm for which I have not found anyexplanations. Based on the reproduction ofthe original manuscript, I have followed BaZhou's transcription. I suspect it could berelated to the "Five dragons of Dunhuang"(Dunhuang wu long ;tj!1i ), heroes ofthe oasis from the Western lin period. Seethe biography of Suo ling %'!tl!f injin shu,juan 60, p.1648.The goshawk establishes a unified constituency of support, one whichbridges both sides of the great division in society, that of clergy and laity. Thisis the unity which the government itself claims to constitute, being responsiblefor protecting both. It is the same unity which is projected in the pictures ofdonor-worshippers in the great grotto which Cao Yijin had begun buildingthe year before, where monks, officials and the women of the key familiesare depicted together. Despite the obligation to preserve life (the taboo onkilling which makes hunting with birds morally reprehensible), the goshawkis still an object of veneration by the clergy as an auspicious mark. The wholepolitical and social structure has thus been invested in the goshawk. A birdof prey is venerated as a sign of ordered relations being at their zenith:governed subjects, a pacified border, and a unity of ruler and minister. Thebird commands all these things, of which it is the summation. Thecomplexities, discords and struggles of political life are conjured away in themiraculous event of its appearance. The bird is the vehicle of a powerfulhegemony, one which places the peace of the world in the hands of theChamberlain.Srnce The Days OF The FIve knIghTS, 172 STORIes have CIRCULaTeD rn The wORLa, bUT IT hasonLy been someThrng ThaT we have heaRD abOUT; OUR ChambeRLain IS seconD onLy TO TheWORTh,es OF eaRLIeR TImes, anD has maDe manLFI!ST a whITe goshawk bqoRe OUR veRYeyes.The goshawk is a (mythic) past made present; like political harmony, it isextolled in books but seldom witnessed in the here-and-now. The bird can

48LEWIS MAYO1 73 The line echoes one in the letters for thesubmission of a sparrowhawk to the emperorin Gantang ji, which may have been amodel for Du Taichu's own poem: "Itsembroidered plumes are in their earlieststrength; its flowered feathers are alreadycomplete; its martial bearing is not shamedbefore goshawks and merlins," P.4093, leaf15. The text is reproduced in Chen Zuolong,Dunhuang guchao wenxian huizui, p.478A similar reference is found in Zhang Wei'sletter about the white goshawk sent fromthe Tarim basin garrisons to Xuanzong inthe eighth century: "its flowery plumes arejust complete." See Zhang Wei, "Jin baiyingzhuang," Quan Ta ng wen,juan 375, p.1684.174 The "sly hares" also appear in a poem byDu Fu tim about a painted goshawk. DuFu, "Hua ying" m!.\! [Painted goshawk], Dushi xiang zhu [Du Fu's poems, with detailednotes], juan 1 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju,1979), p.19. Paul Kroll kindly brought thispoem to my attention while correcting errorsin translation, which made clear the kinshipbetween Du Fu's poem and many parts ofDu Taichu's white goshawk ode.1 7; I thank Paul Kroll for providing guidanceon this. Kanaoka has 'zheng long' *H"contesting dragons," whereas other transcriptions say 'zheng neng' * fm "contendingin talent," that is, exhibiting skills. As PaulKroll helpfully explained in his review ofthis paper, this line echoes a poem of Du Fuin praise of a white goshawk, found in "JianWang jian bing mas hi shuo jin shan you baiheier ying shi" JiI..:Emm:Ll.J1'i B =!.\!'iiiJ [Two poems written onseeing the Infantry-and-Cavalry SupervisoryLegate Wang, who said that there were ablack and a white goshawk in the nearbymountains], in Du shi xiang zhu, juan 18,p.1587. The Gantang ji records that thesparrowhawk "manifests skills of strikingand attacking" (see Gantang ji in ChenZuolong, Dunhuang guchao wenxianhuizui, p.479) The stress on talent as competitivedisplay tallies with the presentationof skills forged in contest as the key qualitiesof the bird. The Gantang ji letters on thepresentation of sparrowhawks also stressthe element of exhibition in the enumerationof the bird's talents: "it displays the pleasureof whirling and soaring," id.verify what has hitherto been only hearsay: its transforms language into atangible presence, and thus its presence is structured by the legacies ofhearsay, by all those things that have been said about such birds before, allthe historical knowledge and all of the distinguished writing that has hithertodescribed the exceptional qualities of such beings. Relations of transmission,of memory, the things passed down through the ages, are thus engaged inthe production of the bird's historical and political distinction.I, The peTTy cLeRk TaLchu, am VULljaR ana UnTaLenTeO, BUT ReWVlI11j oRoeRs I seRve, ana,WITh TRemllLlI11j ana peRsp'RaTIOn, I slI1ceReLy OFFER up an "Ooe TO The Wh,Te Goshawk."The bird induces a posture of submission on the part of the poet who, seekingto master the system of rank and distinction, here deploys the arts of flatteryand rhetoric to extol the talents of the bird (that is, the political energiesinfused in it as well as the political energies it is capable of reproducing). Thebird commands the trembling body of the poet, whose rhetoric of selfdeprecationand stated fear of his inability to fulfil his duties articulates thecorrect order of deference owed to Chamberlain and to white raptor.The poetic part of the paean to the goshawk then commences:mGB S , PJTt$t!t/f[OJ .?4 /.c'DJ;!;!:= :'$l """IPJ 1"d: ;; uffl-:lZi Pl'JI , /\-t:: rm:3:l:":;;t/.J.J..Jj j!iJ.lliLi

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER49body of the hawk, a perfect pairing to the magnificence of the Chamberlain.The distinction created in it by history (that is by the investment of historicalattention) separates the bird in its prime from its peers, recognising itsexceptional qualities. The goshawk is peerless.ZP:ffi!:r* , ff...ttB;ttlEf)£ .On The pLaIns The sLy haRes174 hzoe ThezR shaoows oeep.Exhzhmng TaLenT, 175 ZTS TRacks come FORTh aLong The paThs. 176The bird has mastery over open space. Hares cower in its presence. Thissupremacy is offered to the Chamberlain, who thus becomes master of haresand of plains. Small lives flee or hide in the face of this command of air andland. Goshawk talent is a matter of competitive exhibition, manifested in itscapacity to project its own traces on invisible pathways through the sky (thecapacity to grasp the paths along which geese flew, and to make its own roadthrough the sky being one of the bird's special powers), and in its capacityto detect the traces of its quarry on earthly routes. Avian skill, like that of theruling hand who possesses it, is something observed and watched in displaysof energy and movement. 177 It is admired above all for its capacity to outrunthose beneath it, and to follow paths that others cannot detect. The rhetoricalconstruction of the skills of the goshawk stresses not only the strength of itsown vision, able to pick out the traces of hares on the ground far below, butits visibility. The ornamental power of the bird is something which helps torender visible the skills, talents and foreSight of the ruler who possesses it.The Jaoe cLaws178 of The whm goshawk hoLo SpZRZT poweR'S sacReo FORce.The distinction of the goshawk rests in this remarkable body, which is partof the force of ling g, the force of spiritual responsiveness and magicalefficacy. The instruments of killing, the claws, acquire the transcendentpermanence of jade. But the energies of the bird mark a more profoundenergy which simultaneously brings the sacred force of ling to the Chamberlain,and themselves constitute an emanation of that force.176 The literal translation for the section is"on the road (path) its tracks/traces comeforth." The line may invoke bringing forth thehare from its burrow, which is a sign of theskill of the goshawk. Because Du Fu's whitegoshawk poem, which includes the lines"exhibiting talent," also speaks of hares hidingin their burrows, this might be a way tointerpret the line. The reference to paths orroads seems to mean either to roads on theground or aerial pathways. A parallel may befound in one of the sparrowhawk letters inthe Ganlang ji: "on its own it knows thepaths/roads of the skies and clouds."(Reproduced in Chen Zuolong, Dunhuangguchao wenxian huizui, p.478.) In this caseit is the skill of the goshawk in knowing aerialroutes which will be brought forth as "traces."177 This is very much the case in the Guiyijun. Zhang Yichao and his wife Mme Song*.B:; are depicted in Mogao Grotto 156 onexcursion, accompanied by a large retinue offollowers, including hunters chaSing theirquarry on horseback. There are similar picturesof Cao Yijin and the Uyghur princess inGrotto 100. See Dunhuang Wenwu Yanjiusuo,ed., Dunhuang Mogaoku [The Mogao grottoesat DunhuangJ (Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe,1987), vol.4, plates 131-8, and vo!.S, plates30-3.178 This term is found in Du Fu's poem aboutthe white goshawk: "Jian Wang jian bingmashishuo jin shan you bai-hei er ying," in Du shixiang zhu, juan 18, p.l587.Even hy exhaUSTIng The pen IT zs zmposszhLe TO hRzng IT TO compLeTIOn-The SaInTS ThInk Thzs RaRe!The powers of description are challenged by this goshawk. Even the saints,the holy sages, consider the bird to be rare, accenting the uniqueness of thehistorical moment with reference to those of distinguished judgment. Thegoshawk is an object of veneration by elevated beings, amplifying thequalities of magic that surround it. It is exalted above the ordinary domainof a fine hunting animal, and placed into a religious setting. The politicaldistinction that is produced here moves the goshawk beyond the position ofa gift. It is to be venerated, drawing on all the symbolic capital associated withreligious power.

50LEWIS MAYO1 79 One can point to a parallel with theGantang ji's sparrowhawk letter: "its gazegoes to the limit of the clouds and skies"(Gantang ji, Chen Zuolong, Dunhuangguchao wenxian huizui, p.479).180 See Herbert A. Giles, trans., Chuang Tzu(London: Mandala/Unwin Paperbacks,1980), p.27.181 These are Paul Kroll's suggestions forthe meaning of the these words, based ontheir resemblance to lines by Ou Fu in thepoem about the painted goshawk.182 Paul Kroll has suggested that the wordshere, nuoluo g, are an echoic binome,because luo is commonly found in suchwords, and that the words mean somethinglike "unhindered and free." I am grateful forthis advice, especially as I had not dealt withthese words effectively in my original version.On reflection, however, there seems to be acase for treating the words here as twotransitive verbs, because nuo can mean toseize or grasp, and luo can mean to fell, orbring down. It therefore seems to me thatthe words in question refer to the taking offlying prey.18 3 Paul Kroll helpfully suggested that "Flyinglike a snowflake" would be appropriatehere. Also see the line in Schafer's translationof Dou Gong's poem about the whitegoshawk sent in by Silla (cited above): "Likea flurry of snow she strives to fly to thegauntlet on his brocaded arm," The goldenpeaches of Samarkand, p.94. Su Ting'spreface to his paean to the white goshawk,describing the bird's plumage, states: "thegathered snows are fully reflective fleckslike flying flowers" (that is, snowflakes)' DuFu's white goshawk poem in the pairedblack and white goshawk poems beginswith the words "Snow flies," which seemsvery similar to the lines here.18 4 This is articulated particularly clearly inZhang Wei's letter for the presentation ofthe white goshawk: "now the cold wind isfrozen and brittle, the killing ethers arecondensed in sternness." See Zhang Wei,"Jin bai ying zhuang," Quan Tang wen,juan 375, p.1684.185 As noted, this is a constant in hawkingreferences. One of the Gantangji sparrowhawkletters states: "the golden wind shakesthe plain" (Chen Zuolong, Dunhuangguchao wenxian huizui, p.478).Gazmq aFaR mTO The BLue heavensI79 The Roc STIRS.The skies are critical to its positioning: this bird has the surveying commandof space that is the dream of power. The goshawk is the great bird, the Roc,above all else and beyond constraint. The Roc is the archetypal bird of awe,appearing in the first verse of the Zhuangzi ltt.:r.180 Its size and might areof mythic scale, constituting a force which is beyond the comprehension ofordinary mortals. The goshawk is thus affiliated with avian powers ofincomprehensible scale. It offers to its owner a soaring grandeur, a masterywhich so completely transcends the lives of the humble ordinary birds (wrensand sparrows) that it does not even attempt to catch them, even though suchbeings are driven into submission by its shadow above. In this way, theaspirations of governing power for an unlimited expansion of its reach arerhetorically projected onto the goshawk. The bird in turn ornaments andmakes visible the presence and abilities of governing power.fjg§:1EmSTll.fTchmq FORTh ITS wmqs, 1 8 1 IT selUS, sTRlkmq oownl82-snowFLakes m FLlqhT. 183Its body, an emanation of seasonal correspondences, and its killing energies,are both part of the movement of autumn. Possession of the goshawk ispossession of the bleak white energies of the cold.184 The bird is thus enlistedinto a command of seasonal time and of those forces like snow whichchallenge political power and which are the hawk's likeness. The politicalfield blankets all, covering the world with its authority: it is a power thatdescends from the sky because it overarches, like falling snow. Theinvestment of interest in the white goshawk articulates the ambitions of thosein the political field for territorial dominance: of course the ruling hand isliterally given command of the sky through the bird. The Chamberlain'spoliCing of the border, his compelling authority over all the peoples in thefour directions and the eight sectors, is manifested in the command of the skythat the unique bird gives him: the bird is set apart from other goshawks bythe project of individual exaltation in which the Chamberlain is engaged. Itsdistinction, in socio-political terms, comes from him and from the commandhe is able to exert over his clerk and rhapsodist. The killing winds of barbarianinvasion, the deathly western force of autumnal attack (finjeng :I€)j1J, havenot defeated him.185 Rather the goshawk, token of the submission of subjectpeoples, brings those powers within his grasp. The hand of power grasps thebird's political and ornamental distinction, something that the poetic labourof the clerk Taichu has recorded and produced.The white goshawk is thus subject to the technologies and polities of theomen and its observation, to those of falconry and local tribute, and to thoseof ornamental writing. The bird is a subject of the Chamberlain, a product ofhis political energies, but the thrust of the poem is to present it as anautonomous entity, moved not by the application of political force and thepower of the state but a manifestation of auspiciousness, part of the operation

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER51of gan (responsiveness).The bird is structured by the process of marking off a new political preeminencefor Dunhuang. The achievements of the Chamberlain go beyondthe proper fulfilment of duties to the imperial state of which he is an investeddelegate. His investiture by the Latter Liang with the staff of commandcontributes to his local magnificence rather than to subordinating Dunhuangand the Guiyi jun to the imperial centre; the Guiyi jun's leader is himself nowa recipient and sponsor of auspicious happenings and their commemoration.The ornamental and political structures deployed on the goshawk are stillprofoundly imperial in origin, but more and more of their authority is beingco-opted into the locality, with its mountains of spiritual authority andefficacy. The bird is invested with all of the attributes of a magical distinction:it is no longer within the sovereignty structures of imperial transmissionwhere it will be a faithful servant to the monarch. Instead it is consecratedby the powers of the Chamberlain, who can command it on his own, havingbeen formally invested with the insignia of governance by the Tang'ssuccessor at the centre. The bird is not to be surrendered; it is not to be sentoutside as a gift to emperor or khan. Historical and political transformationsare registered in the fact of its having come in to the control of the head ofthe Guiyi jun. The direction of hawk transmission has changed. The networkis unfolded in other configurations, and Guiyi jun birds are positioned in anew politiCS which involves neither attempts to found a new imperial stateor struggles to negotiate a provincial identity within a larger empire.SignaturesCao Yijin's descendants dominated the Guiyi jun until its eventual demisein the eleventh century. They presided over political relations of a much lessdramatic character than did Zhang Yichao, Zhang Huaishen and the White­Robed Emperor of the Golden Mountains of the Western Han, or even Caohimself.186 Cao Yijin's progeny did not engage in spectacular acts ofconquest, or seek to restructure the order of sovereignty through Signs,wonders and tokens. Guiyi jun authority was concentrated in the oases ofShazhou and Guazhou )1\.1'1'[ (modern Dunhuang and Anxi iZ§). Borderskirmishes occurred,187 but political energies were largely devoted to theregular exchange of missions with neighbouring polities, the GanzhouUyghurs188 and Khotan 189 (to whom the Cao family were related by blood andmarriage),190 and the Uyghurs of Qoco (Turpan/Turfan),191 as well as withother peoples in the surrounding area, the dynasties of central China and theKhitan Liao .192 If ambitions to conquer were nourished, they have notcome to the surface in any legible, documentary form. Internally, the businessof government was a matter of the exercise of administrative control carriedon within the regular cycles of calendar time: the consistency of thisreproduction of authority relations amounts to what historians call 'political186 Cao was involved in a campaign againstthe Ganzhou Uyghurs in 925. Rong Xinjianggives a detailed and carefully documentedsurvey of these events in Guiyi jun sbiyanjiu, pp.313-27.187 Cao's immediate successor sent out anexpedition against the Ganhou Uyghurs in937 (see Rong Xinjiang, Guiyi junsbi yanjiu,p.21). A raid by Ganzhou Uyghurs onlivestock occurred in 962, an issue theqaghan swore to resolve in the followingyear Od., pp.27-8). Bandits were said tohave entered Guiyi jun territory afterdisturbances at Turpan in 967 Od., p.29). Araid by Uyghurs occurred in 992 (id., p.33).188 On relations between the GanzhouUyghurs and the Guiyi jun in the tenthcentUly, see Rong Xinjiang, Guiyi jun sbiyanjiu, pp.309-27, and Hamilton, LesOufgbours if l'epoque des Cinq Dynasties,pp.1l5-26 and 128--38.189 On the exchange of emissaries betweenthe two areas and emissaries passing throughbetween Central China and Khotan, seeZhang Guangda and Rong Xinjiang, Yutiansbi congkao, pp.1l1-29.190 As noted, Cao Yijin married a daughterof the Ganzhou qaghan in 916, soon aftertaking over as head of the Guiyi jun (seeP.3262 and P.3781, transcribed by Ma De,"Cao shi san da ku yingjian de shehuibeijing," pp.19-20).191 On relations with the Turpan or Xizhoujffi 1'1'1 Uyghurs, see Rong Xinjiang, Guiyijun sbi yanjiu, pp.364-379.192 See Fujieda Akira .tt, "Shashukigigun setsudoshi shimatsu-(4)" [Thecircumstances of the Guiyi jun MilitaryCommissionership in Shazhoul, Ti5bOgakubO(Kyoto) 13, pt 2 (943): 46-58. This is one ofseveral works to build on the cataloguing ofdiplomatic missions from the Cao family tocentral dynasties by Luo Zhenyu Ki:j:.3S. inGua-Sba Cao sbi nian biao [Annals of theCao family of Guazhou and Shazhoul.

52LEWIS MAYO193 See Danielle Eliasberg, "Les signatures enforme d'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinoisde Touen-houang," in Michel Soymie, ed.,Contributions aux etudes sur Touen-houang(Geneva and Paris: Libraire Droz, 1979),pp.29-44.194 See ibid., p.30.195 Radical no.l62 in the traditional sequenceof 214 radicals for classifying Chinesecharacters. Eliasberg, "Les signatures en formed'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinois de Touenhouang,"p.33.196 Yaya ("Officer") was one of the key ranksin the Guiyi jun administration. See FengPeihong, "Wan Tang Wudai Song cllU Guiyijun wuzhi junjiang yanjiu," in Zheng Binglin,Dunhuang Guiyi jun shi zhuanti yanjiu,pp.100-9. The post of yaya was associatedwith the administration of the officialresidences of the provincial military governorsof the Tang era. See Yan Gengwang, "Tangdaifangzhen shifu liaozuo kao"[A study of theassistant officials in the offices of the provincialmilitary governors of the Tang], in YanGengwang, Ta ng shi yanjiu conggao[Collected papers on the study ofTang histolY](Hong Kong: Xinya Yanjiusuo, 1969), pp.228--32. In addition to being the personal guardfor the residence (and thus the family withinit), the office of yaya expanded to deal withthe various domains relevant to the militarygovernor's administration, combining thefunctions of personal retinue with precisedivisions of administrative responsibilitiesfor separate domains relevant to the office ofthe military governor. According to theexplanation of Lu Xiangqian, in addition tothe yaya officers responsible for guardingthe governor and his residence, there was awhole network of "Departments" (si )headed by people of yaya rank which dealtwith various key spheres of activity relevantto the work of government, such as irrigation,banquets and granaries. All yaya came underthe jurisdiction of four Superior Officers (duyaya WWf!i). Taken together, this groupconstituted the administrative stream of themilitary governor's bureaucracy, one of thethree basic streams making up the centralgovernment of the Guiyi jun, the other twobeing the supervisory or investigative streamand the military stream (distinguished fromthe personal guard for the military governor)respectively. See Lu Xiangqian, "GuanyuGuiyi jun shiqi yi fen buzhi poyong Ii destability'. It is registered in and produced by a constant output of documentsof all kinds-from texts for the annual exorcism, to contracts for the sale ofland, to circulars for meetings, to letters of thanks with accompanying giftsto local monks. The foundational violence of Zhang Yichao's conquest wasthus converted into the 'common sense' of 'legitimate rule', immune fromobvious challenge. The micro-conflicts of everyday life become the primaryform of politics: moments of extra-ordinary reinvention of the political andgeographical order, like the avian historical 'events' of the ninth and earlytenth centuries narrated above, were rare.In this environment birds became literally one of the Guiyi jun's signaturesof power.193 During the rule of the longest-serving of Cao Yijin's successors,his son, Cao Yuanzhong lf7CJ' (head of the Guiyi jun from 944-74), and hisgrandson, Cao Yanlu lft (Guiyi jun head from 976-1002), bird-shapedsignatures appear as marks of endorsement on a range of official documents.In the 950s and 960s, during Cao Yuanzhong's tenure as head of the Guiyi jun,the signature has the form of a slender, upright bird with a long beak. 194 Fromthe 970s to the 990s, when Cao Yanlu was in charge, the authorising avian signis a more rounded bird, nestled in the 'foot radical' 195 Two different birdsdenote two different ruling hands, each exerting the same power of authorization.These bird signatures conferred efficacy upon documents, endowing themwith the power of recognised authority.Administrative domination required such recognised and recognisablesigns. These authoriZing marks appear on official writings stretching overmore than 40 years, the span of two governing lives. They cover a range ofcontrol relations between the central authority of the Guiyi jun and agentsempowered to carry out tasks on its behalf: for the most part they areverificatory signatures placed on lists of expenditure submitted by functionariescharged with supervising the storage, collection or reproduction of thingsand lives of use to the government, which constitute 'sources' of itsdomination over the oasis and the beings inhabiting it.In the summer of 951, during the rule of Cao Yuanzhong, the slenderupright bird was appended to statements of account recording distributionsof firewood submitted by the Officer (yaya t(jl ffij) 196 Song Qiansi *m, ofthe Department of the Inner Household197 of the Guiyi jun.198 These/yanjiu," in Lu's Dunhuang Tulu/a n wenshulungao, pp.156-8. Comments on the Englishtranslation of yaya can be found in my article"The order of birds in Guiyi ]un Dunhuang,"EastAsianHistory 20 (Dec. 2000): 1-60, pp.l1-12, n.21.197 Neizhai si p.gEt. This was the departmentresponsible for the household affairs ofthe Guiyi jun's ruling family. On the neizhaisi,see the discussion by Lu Xiangqian, "GuanyuGuiyi jun shiqi yi fen buzhi poyong Ii deyanjiu," pp.120-1, n.44, and p.126, n.n. In/Lu's analysis of the structure of the Guiyi jungovernment, the neizhai si is under thejurisdiction of the household guards for themilitary governor, rather than being one of the"Departments" with jurisdiction for variousclassified sectors (see Lu, id., p.157).198 P.3160. Eliasberg, "Les Signatures en formed'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinois de Touenhouang,"p.31. A transcription of the manuscriptis found in Tang Geng'ou and Lu Hongji,Dunhuang shehui jingji wenxian zhenji shilu,vol.3, pp.614-15.

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER53statements of account take the form of petitions to the head of the Guiyi jun,for which the petitioner requests a judgement. The avian signature isappended with words that indicate approval: the formulae used in thisdocumentary form have a quasi-legal character. In the petition, Song lists therecipients of the distribution by name, and details the quantity of firewoodthey have received. The ornamental mark of the bird thus attaches itself tothe interchange between a steward and his superior, in which the formermust give precise account of how the things in his command that have beengiven to others have been deployed. The approving sign affirms that thesedeployments of wood have not been wasteful, but constitute legitimateoutgoings, necessary for the smooth conduct of both government and theaffairs of the ruling household. The ratification of expenditure is a necessityfor the reproduction of domination. But so too is expenditure itself: the birdmark gives assent to the use of fuel for the entertainment of guests such asan emissary from Khotan who is a beneficiary of the hospitality of the Guiyijun government, which is part of the household administration of the Caofamily.199 Such things are too important to be left to chance: statements ofaccount are submitted for approval by the avian sign in orderly successionevery few days, detailing what wood has been given to whom and for whatpurpose. If the signature suggests the transcendent ornamental power ofbirds-above mundane transactions like collecting and distributing firewood,or burning it to cook someone's food-it cannot detach itself from managingthe material demands that underlie the symbolic work of providing diplomatichospitality or supplying servants with what they need. Rather the bird mustexert a constant surveillance over these things to keep its own house in order.The collection and distribution of firewood in an ordered and consistentfashion is one of the central concerns of government in the oasis. In 955 themark of the bird appears in like fashion on the accounts submitted by theOfficer An Youcheng {;t:; RIG, the person in charge of the Department of theCourt of Firewood (Chaichang si ;l:qj), a department of the Guiyi jungovernment with special responsibility for the collection of wood for fuel(which was supplied to the government by compulsory levy) and for itsjustified disbursement 200 The long, upright bird confers its authority on acomplex range of contributions and distributions, involving a large numberof different individuals: a diverse group of people are tied into this networkof firewood exchange, extending to troops stationed at the Guiyi jun'sdefensive outposts. In a context where the maintenance of border securityinvolves signal fires, the accumulation and maintenance of combustiblematerial is clearly a central political and military task, and subordinates mustbe delegated to carry out this work. But the interest of government infirewood is not limited to this dimension. The list of purposes for whichfirewood was given by the office in question extends from the smelting oftin to the cooking of food for sacrifice to local deities. Processing by fire isfundamental to symbolic relations: food must be cooked, and, as thebounded community formed around the shared hearth makes clear, physicalFigure 6Avian signature from the era of CaoYuanzhong. 5. 5571 . By permission ofthe British Library199 Emissaries from foreign places were thusconsidered to be recipients of the hospitalityof the military governor and kept under theprotection of his household, and thusprotected by his own guard. See LuXiangqian, "Guanyu Guiyi jun shiqi yi fenbuzhi poyong Ii de yanjiu," for analysis ofthe divisions of responsibility within thegovernment.200 S.3728. Eliasberg, "Les signatures enforme d'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinoisde Touen-houang," p.31; also Tang and Lu,Dunhuang shehui jingji wenxian zhenjishilu, vol.3, pp.618-20.

54201 A document permitting safe and freepassage through the territory of the Guiyijun,202 P.3975. See Eliasberg, "Les signatures enforme d'oiseau dans les manuscrits chino isde Touen-houang," p.32; a photographicreproduction of the document appears onp1.13 in the appendices to her article. Significantly,this "passport" system coincided withthe strengthening of the defensive system ofthe Guiyi jun, particularly in the east in theearly 950s, by the founding of two newgarrisons, forming the system of the eightgarrisons Cbazhen )\j{). See Rong Xinjiang,Guiyi jun shi yanjiu, p.25. On the formationof the eight garrisons, see Chen Guocan,"Tang Wudai Gua-Sha Guiyi jun junzhen deyanbian," pp.568-73. Chen argues that thisphenomenon was the result of militarynecessity, caused by pressure from theGanzhou Uyghurs.203 See for example the two modelmanumission documents in S.343(10)v,which speak of the person released frombondage being like a bird released from thecage, flying high and free and at ease, or abird that pierces through the cage, soaringand turning its wings. A transcription can befound in Tang Geng'ou and Lu Hongji,Dunhuang shehui jingji wenxian zhenjishilu, vol.4, p.160.204 P.311l. Eliasberg, "Les signatures enforme d'oiseau dans les manusHits chinoisde Touen-houang," p.32. The princess inquestion is undoubtedly the daughter of theKhotan emperor ViSa' Sambhava LiShengtian. For the dates of Visa' Sambhava,see Zhang Guangda and Rong Xinjiang,Yutian shi congkao, p.5l. The empress ofKhotan was a sister of Cao Yuan zhong, andshe was the donor of the large Dunhuanggrotto no. 98, which contains an image ofherself and of Visa' Sambhava. See ZhangGuangda and Rong Xinjiang, Yutian shicongkao, p.48. The princess who was thedonor of the artificial trees was tlms theniece of Cao Yuanzhong, and the daughterof Cao Yijin.20 5 P.3272. See Eliasberg, "Les signatures enforme d'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinoisde Touen-houang," pp.31-2. Transcriptionin Tang and Lu, Dunhuang shehui jingjiwenxian zhenji shilu, vol.3, pp.598-9.LEWIS MAYOwarmth is integral to the constitution of the most elemental social solidarities.Burning, moreover, is one of major methods by which ritual transformationof matter is effected. The production and reproduction of social energy thusrequires the constant replenishment of the supply of wood. An adequatebalance has to be struck between hoarding and waste and the deputisedofficial must acknowledge the boundaries of his office. The monitoring ofwhat happens to firewood through the avian sign, as well as the force whichensures its continued replenishment by requisition or gift, thus constituteswork of considerable import for the regular re-creation of relations of orderin the Guiyi jun.The slender bird performs other licensing tasks. In the late summer of 959it is affixed to the passport201 of a monk, giving him unimpeded passagethrough all areas garrisoned by Guiyi jun forces (garrisons which, as noted,needed supplies of firewood for beacon fires) 202 The bird mark permits thecrossing of Guiyi jun space without administrative obstacle. A signatureimagewhich evokes powers of flight wields the power to determine whoshall come and go freely within the territory under its command. Through itsauthorising signature, governing power affirms its dominion over space.Unlike its human subordinates, but like wild birds, the head of the Guiyi junenjoys freedom of legitimate movement in the lands in which he hasjurisdiction. The signed passport grants to a person, through the symboliceffect of authorised writing, the capacities to cross space that birds exercise'by nature'. Writing confers powers analogous to those enjoyed by birds. Itis an analogy made directly in model manumission contracts which state thatthe person released from bondage by the effect of an authorized documentis like a bird released from a cage.203One year after the signature was affixed to the monk's passport, the aviansign appears on an inventory of ornamental objects belonging to a Khotaneseprincess 204 Including both vases and artificial trees, the listing of such items,and the Signed verification of the list, doubtless indicates their value. Theirpreciousness merits the exalted signature of the bird, affirming that all itemsare present and correct. As the princess in question is related to the rulingCao family, the items in the inventory are gifts to the Guiyi jun: they form partof the transmissions of goods essential to the conduct of a familial diplomacybetween Khotan and Dunhuang. In such matters, care must be taken: aninventory requires official ratification, and the ornamental mark of the birdbestows its authority on this list of things of ornament.In 966 the bird signed memoranda submitted by those with responsibilityfor sheep in the Guiyi jun flocks, detailing the granting of sheep andsheepskins to various people and agencies. 205 As with the firewood accounts,the signature comes after a formula which states that approval is being soughtfor distributions already made. As with firewood, sheep were of Signalimportance in the reproduction of symbolic power in the Guiyi jun. Inaddition to the social solidarities produced by the shared enjoyment of meat,the deaths of sheep have an important value in the ceremonial marking of

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER55boundaries, particularly through rituals of sacrifice.206 The death of sheep,and the disposal of skins, is thus a transaction of some social import. Theauthorising mark of the bird, a living being whose elevated status as a free,wild life contrasts with domestic animals whose reproduction and death isordained by human power, stands in structural opposition to these lowliercreatures over whose fate it presides. Through this relationship a socialdivision between birds and sheep is symbolically affirmed.In the mid-tenth century Guiyi jun government power was derived in nosmall measure from its authority over objects which were vital to social!material processes: without timber for burning, or wethers that could bekilled at symbolically charged times in the calendrical cycle, the relationshipsof symbolic authority which give an exalted position to the ruling handcannot be reproduced. Another product embedded in the symbolic order ofritual relationships and essential for the ceremonial production of solidaritiesand hierarchies was wine. Wine was supplied by brewing households (jiuhu P). Brewers, like shepherds, have specialised abilities in the managementof processes of organic change (fermentation is like the births, lives anddeaths of sheep in this regard). Brewing, like sheep-raising, is set apart fromthe process of growing and harvesting plant foods, and wine, like meat andwool, is contrasted with the stuff of everyday sustenance. Its production,therefore, is something to be tightly controlled, in part because the rituals inwhich it is used (we can include casual drunkenness as a ritual) render itdesirable, and thus a source of power. Like any delegated authority, theproduction of wine must be monitored; thus in the same way as theircontemporaries the shepherds, the brewers of the 960s had to submit anaccount of those to whom they had given their produce for verification bythe bird sign.207Brewing households and shepherds were administratively classified bytheir work, which defined them as a distinct social categOlY. Both werecharged with responsibility for a particular living thing (something which isnot stored and dispersed, and replenished by compulsory exaction, likefirewood)-and these were thus a strategically significant element in theoverall structure of social power in the Guiyi jun. They were probablydependent households, in some sense bound to the organizations thatowned the animals or the brewing apparatus, of which the most prominentin the Guiyi jun were the government and the Buddhist temples. Economisticreasoning might see this in terms of monopolies. The mark of the bird, thiskind of analysis would suggest, is like that of a company director, verifyingthe accounts of those under his authority, whose independence as economicactors is presumably constrained by the dominance of large institutions overthe local economy.20S The social elevation of the avian signature is securedby the domination of strategic resources. But it can just as well be argued thatthe co-ordination of wine supply and of sheep production is part of the coordinationof and monopoly on symbolic activity by the ruling family of theGuiyi jun. In this regard the administration of religious affairs, the performance206 In addition to the specific mention ofone of the sheep being used for the sacrificein the 1st month of the new year, and itbeing winter (a season of slaughter), thesheep given are mostly wethers (in oneinstance a black ewe), and thus have novalue for reproduction or milk; they aretherefore the best candidates for slaughterfor meat. One distribution of sheep to theHousehold Official Song (Song zhaiguan*'§') refers to a "divine white lamb"(shen bai yang gao 1$ B $); see Tangand Lu, Dunhuang shehui jingji wenxianzhenji shilu, vo1.3, p.586. Here again thecolour is significant: Guiyi jun sheep registersoften note whether specific sheep in a flockare white or black. In the same documentthat lists the "divine white lamb" there is ablack wether to be ritually killed by beingshot with arrows. This is likely to beconnected with exorcisms conducted at theNew Year.207 S.5571 and 5.5590. See Eliasberg, "Lessignatures en forme d'oiseau dans lesmanuscrits chinois de Touen-houang," p.31.A transcription is found in Tang and Lu,Dunhuang shehui jingji wenxian zhenjishilu, vol. 3, p.625.20S In addition to wine produced for thegovernment under the Guiyi jun, the othermajor group with control of brewing intenth-century Dunhuang was, as noted, theBuddhist church. See the discussion inJiangBoqin, Tang Wudai Dunhuang sihu zhidu[The system of temple households inDunhuang in the Tang and Five Dynasties](Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1987), pp.298-309

56LEWIS MAYO209 P.3B35. Eliasberg, "Les signatures enforme d'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinoisde Touen-houang," p.33210 According to Feng Peihong and ZhengBinglin, the Troop Commandant (dutou)was a rank which had different functionsthrough the course of the Guiyi jun, coveringcivil and military functions. It could also behonorific. The rank was always held inconjunction with other positions, and it wasgiven to people who were especially closeto the Guiyi jun military governors andpersonally trusted by them. It was used forposts and responsibilities within thegovernment (including the militarygovernor's household guard), for districtmilitary posts, for diplomatic missions, andas an honorific title for people in Dunhuang'svoluntary associations. It evolved from themilitary system. See "Wan-Tang WudaiSongchu Guiyi jun zhengquan zhong dutouyi zhi kaobian" [An examination and analysisof the rank of dutou (Troop Commandant)in the Guiyi jun regime in the Late Tang,Five Dynasties and Early Song], in ZhengBinglin, ed., Dunhuang Guiyi jun shizhuantiyanjiu, pp.71-93. In the case of theorders in question, the recipient wouldappearto have been a trusted deputy servingat a key defensive point. Troop Commandantis the translation for dutou given by Huckerin A dictionary of official titles in imperialChina, p.543.211 A dependent county of Shazhou(Dunhuang) in Guiyijun times, situated atpresent-day Nanhu 1¥l$lj to the southwestof Dunhuang. See the gazetteer ofShouchang xian dijing, Xiang Da, "JiDunhuang shishi chu Jin tianfu shi nianxieben Shouchang xian dijing," in TangdaiChang 'an yu Xiyu wenming, pp.429-42.212 S.4453. See Eliasberg, "Les signatures enforme d'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinoisde Touen-houang," p.32, and the transcriptionin Tang and Lu, Dunhuang shehuijingji wenxian zhenji shiLu, vol.4, p.306.of hospitality, the production and reproduction of ornamental systems, thegranting of rank and the conducting of exorcism are fused with spheres thatcurrent social categories would assign to the material or economic domains.The mark of the bird, which can be transferred from passport to account toregister, connotes the transcendent and ubiquitous character ofthis authority,an authority which, consciously or unconsciously, joins itself to the ubiquityof birds in the cultural, physical and political landscapes of the Guiyi jun.From the 970s to the 990s, as noted, a different bird signature was affixedto the documents. Rounder and perhaps more raptorial, it rests in the footradical. It is coeval with the authority of Cao Yanlu. In the early summer of978, this bird signature was appended to the bottom of an order to soldiersregarding the strengthening of security at Ziting after a theft of sheep 209Rather than checking the work of others (and thus maintaining control overdelegates and the objects and lives they were delegated to manage) orverifying and guaranteeing registers of valuable items or granting freedom ofmovement through a mark of license, the signature here takes the direct formof command to subordinates. The sign of the bird affixes its authority to thetasks of securing the perimeter, and thus enacts the relationship betweenFigure 7Avian Signature from the timeof Cao Ya nlu (5.4453,reproduced by permission of theBritish Library)

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER 57birds and the defense of boundaries that was manifested in thepolitical struggles of the ninth and early tenth centuries. It is anassociation reinforced in orders to the Troop Commandant (dutou1lfl3mD210 of Shouchang • 2l1 more than a decade later, where thesupply and training of troops is enjoined.212 In a written depiction ofbirds as an avian government led by an Emperor-phoenix circulatingin the Guiyi jun in the late tenth century,213 goshawks andsparrowhawks performed a military function; the latter in particularheld the rank of General of the Roving Scouts, in charge of mobileforces at the borderlands (in contrast to the placement of thegoshawk among the armies at the palace). Significantly, the post ofLegate of the Roving Scouts (Youyishi W{® was held by militaryofficers located at Ziting, where the aforementioned raid on Guiyi junflocks took place. 214 A linkage between the army, raiding, seizure andthe actions of predatory birds would thus seem part of an ensembleof interlocking relationships.215 The structural contrast between thephoenix emperor and his sparrowhawk roving scout general in thebird government is present in the contrast between the hand ofpower marked with the avian signature and the border officials whoreceive orders and do his bidding in relation to the fast-moving livesstealing into the territory of the Guiyi jun, against whom there mustbe vigilance. Built into the avian signature affixed to orders aboutborder defence and the training of troops to guard against thepredations of others, therefore, is this repertoire of associations andresemblances in which the structures of human political relationshipsand avian lives provide structuring templates for one another.Guiyi jun power was founded in the first place on the milita1Y, andthe business of war and the army remained central to its institutions,just as the defensive network was a central part of the structuring ofpolitical geography through the lines of connection between borderposts, relay stations and forts (and the need to maintaincommunications between these-one of the pre-eminent factors inthe production and circulation of government orders and otherofficial documents). The army was one of the key sources of rank,and the power to requisition and to store was at a basic level anextension of the rationalities of defensive need. In the autumn andwinter of 979-80, Zhang Fugao . of the Department of theStorehouse of Military Resources (junzi kusi 1![ Ji J$ j§J)216 submittedits accounts for distributions of hemp (used for fibre, fuel and oilproduction) for official approval. 217 Petitions which detailed outgoingswere submitted only a few days apart, and were signed with the birdmark. These distributions of hemp were often for non-militarypurposes, ranging from the use of hemp in the temples located withinthe Guiyi jun government offices to rope-making to-significantlyusein some type of hawking apparatus.218 The concern with213 This is the "The Names of the Hundred Birds" (Bainiao ming s,i;) (S.3835 et al). Transcription inXiang Chu, Dunhuang bianwen xuanzhu lDunhuangtransformation texts selected and annotatedl (Chengdu:Bashu Shushe, 1990), pp.776-87. For an analysis of thisdocument and the sections on sparrowhawks andgoshawks, see my article "The order of birds in Guiyijun Dunhuang," pp.26-8.214 The Roving Scout Legate of Ziting is mentioned inChen Guocan, "Tang Wudai Gua Sha Guiyi jun junzhende yanbian," p.560. Discussion of the rank of RovingScout legate appears on p.27, n.63 of my article citedin footnote 196. Ziting was a key site for the flocks ofthe Guiyi jun; see the discussion of the pastoralconditions at Ziting in Zheng Binglin, "Tang WudaiDunhuang xumu quyu yanjiu" [Studies of the animalhusbandry regions in Dunhuang in the Tang and FiveDynasties!, in Zheng Binglin, Guiyi jun shi zhuantiyanjiu, pp.206-12. The area is still a grazing region.The frequency of raids, along with the association ofthe region with wolves in the "Song of the WhiteSparrow," suggests many elements characteristic ofwhat is now called the 'nomadic pastoral zone'.2] 5 Danielle Eliasberg notes that this particular birdsignature seems to be a raptor: "Les signatures enforme d'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinois de Touenhouang,"p.33.216 Like the Department of the Court of Firewood, thistoo was part of the administrative stream under thecontrol of yaya officers in the Guiyi jun militarygovernor's office. See diagram and comments in LuXiangqian, "Guanyu Guiyi jun shiqi yi fen buzhipoyong Ii de yanjiu," p.157 and p.135 respectively. Itis significant that Zhang Fugao has the rank of TroopCommandant (dutou) which, as has been noted, is anadditional rank given to those in government servicewho were personally trusted by the head of the Guiyijun. The presence of the avian Signature on documentsexchanged between the head of the Guiyi jun andTroop Commandants thus associates the use of the birdmark with the officials thought to have a particularlyclose relationships with those at the apex of government.The sign is fixed to household accounts (related to thepersonal sphere of the government) and to writingsassociated with other departments closely connectedto it and to its most highly regarded delegates.217P.3878. See Eliasberg, "Les signatures en formed'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinois de Touen-houang,"p.33. Transcription in Tang and Lu, Dunhuang shehuijingji wenxian zhenji shilu, voL3, pp.605-8.218The word used is transcribed by Tang Geng'ou asying ze M:, which normally means to choose orselect. It is possible that the hemp fibre was to be usedfor making a net, with ze having connotations of'selection' in the sense of capturing.

58LEWIS MAYOFigure 8White goshawk painted by GiuseppeCastiglione (Lang Shining t!t.) fo r theQing emperor Qianlong Iii, now held inthe Palace Museum in Ta ipei. This picture istaken from p.81 ofZhou Zhen J1!fJ, Niao yushiliao {Birds and historical sources](Nantou: Ta iwan Shengli Fenghuang GuNiaoyuan, 1992) and is reproduced with thekind permission of the author and thepublishers. (I am gratefu l to Zhou Zhen andto Liou Chuen-Tyan !ilJ ffi of the NationalNiao-Feng-Ku Bird Park in Nan Touforpresenting me with a copy of this wonderfu lbook, which has been of enormous help inmy research.) According to the inscriptionon the painting, the bird depicted was a giftsent to Qianlong by the Khorchin MongolDarma-datu 1l'm1l1m), who held therank of beise r. (I thank Igor deRachewiltz for advice ahout the Mongolianspelling of Darma-datu 's name.) Darmadatu,who had served as a general in theQing campaigns against the Oyirod khanGaldantseren, was given the rank of beise inhonour of his service in 1 743 . (Forinformation about Darma-datu 's ranks seeQing shigao m 5I:.ff,1j, juan 209, biao * 49(Beijing:Zhonghua Shuju, 1977), PP .8324-5.) (It is significant that the territories of theKhorchin Mongols were close to the landswhere the Khitan emperors used to hunt withhaidong qing, although the bird here is awhite goshawk, not a gyrfalcon.) Qianlongwrote a poem to accompany the painting,which appears in his collected poetic works.Seepp.131 (I Chen Wannai, ''LangShining huihua niandai zhiyi {Questionsabout the dating of Castiglione 's paintings],in Lang Shining zhi yishu-zongjiao yuyishu yantao hlli wenji {The art ofCastiglione-collected essays from theconference on religion and art], ed. Fu-jenCatholic University (Taipei: Youshi WenhuaShiye Gongsi, 1991), pp .1250. Thepainting was one of numerous works byCastiglione which depict white hunting birdsfrom Qianlong 's aviary. The bird on thepainting is referred to as yuhlla (jadeflower), which Chen Wannai suggests is thename of a type ofgoshawk: other pictures ofhunting birds in the collection include whitegoshawks, a white fa lcon and a bai haiqinggyrfalcon. See id., p.126.#, r ;;:ritIl\i.;t;i'f:it.

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER59monitoring these distributions and the regularity of the submissions indicatesa control mechanism of great efficiency and consistency. Through hemp, aproduct of diverse uses made available to several constituencies, the militarysupply apparatus is tied into a diverse fabric of relations. The surveillance ofthese distributions by the bird signature secures knowledge of people'sdoings through this lattice of ties and exchanges. The bird-leader occupiesa position of observing superiority, commanding the social landscapebeneath it. Through control and knowledge of the circulation of firewood,wine, sheep and hemp, a comprehensive inventory of what was done (andwho had done it) in the Guiyi jun could be prepared. Thus as much as amechanism for controlling 'profitable resources', the process of signingexpenditure lists is a device for the centralisation of information, and a wayfor authority to insert itself into relationships between people. The record ofthe dispersal provides a kind of social map. The tiresome obligation to reporton the fate of governed objects and lives, and the need to sign these reports,affords a practical command of the territory under control. Petitions from theGuiyi jun Camel Officials219 made in 979-80220 and 99Y21 that report loansof camels for long distance journeys and the fate of their skins after their death(approved with the avian signature, like all the other documents discussedabove) confer on the su pervisory power a control oflong-distance movements.Camels were significant lives, crucial to the maintenance of communicativenetworks across the spaces of desert that separated the Guiyi jun fromKhotan, Qumul, Turpan and Ganzhou. As such, the careful recording of theirfates was, again, not simply a matter of keeping track of governmentproperty. Camel herds, like firewood, were part of the overall apparatus ofdomination. Through the study of where camels had gone, it was possibleto have inSight into those leaving the oasis: by this documentary exchange,action in the spaces beyond Guiyi jun territory could be made at least partlyknowable. Power over camels was an intrinsic part of a broader spatialcommand.Thus the network of inventories extends the reach of control from theinner spheres of household accounts to the open spaces of the desert, fromthe celebration of personal pleasures to the greatest public ceremonies, fromthe entertainment of visiting dignitaries to the protection of sheep from theft.At the apex of this pyramid of transmitted knowledge, signing and observing,hovers the ruling figure, aware, like the white goshawk soaring above theplain where frightened rabbits cower in holes, of the lives beneath it, awareof the small transactions and events carried on below, yet itself above them.In this sense the bird signature occupies the same elevated position in thecontrol structures of the Guiyi jun that living birds have in physical space.Moreover, the control of all of these networks, the mastery of theseasymmetric power relations between authority and delegate, and theensemble of symbolic and material structures which elevate the hand ofpower and endow it with mastery, are the forces and networks which arebrought to bear on all of the birds targeted by power in Guiyi jun history.219 The word used is tuoguan '§'. Thejurisdiction under which these officials fellis not clear, but it seems that they had directresponsibility for the camels in thegovernment herds. A register of the herdsand flocks of the Guiyi jun from 968 lists twocamel officials and the beasts under theircontrol. They appear in conjunction withthe herds of horses and the flocks of sheepunder Guiyi jun control and the officialsresponsible for them. This register is P.2484,transcribed in Ikeda On, Chugoku kodaisekicho kenkyu [Research on ancient registersand accounts from China] (Tokyo: TokyoDaigakll Toyo Bllnka Kenkyujo, 1979),pp.660-2.220 5.2474. Eliasberg, "Les signatures enforme d'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinoisde Touen-houang," p.34. Transcription inTang and Lu, Dunhuang shehui jingjiwenxian zhenji shilu, vo1.3, pp.600-1.221 P.2737. Eliasberg, "Les signatures enforme d'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinoisde TOllen-houang." Transcription in Tangand Lu, Dunhuang shehui jingji wenxianzhenji shilu, vo1.3, p.602.

60222 "By definition, a written signature impliesthe actual or empirical non-presence of thesigner. But, it will be said, it also marks andretains his having-been present in a pastnow, which will remain a future now, andtherefore in a now in general, in thetranscendental form of nowness (maintenance).This general maintenance issomehow inscribed, stapled to presentpunctuality, always evident and alwayssingular, in the form of the signature."Jacques Derrida "Signature event context,"Margins of philosophy (Chicago, Ill.:Universiry of Chicago Press, 1982), p.328.223 Eliasberg, "Les signatures en formed'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinois deTouen-houang," p.39.LEWIS MAYOAs a 'pure' mark of power-as opposed to a 'living' bird which in somesense exists outside the political field and must be brought within it-the birdsignature seems completely obedient to the demands of authority. But it ispart of a continuum of relationships between birds and the ceremonial andornamental practices which are part and parcel of the relations of control overobjects, lives and spaces which constitute a political geography. Theconstruction of that political geography is inseparable from a transmission ofauthorized writing; signing acts are fundamental to the constitution ofgoverned space.Signature is an act which asserts its own presence, its own "nowness"(maintenance in French) 222 This attempt to create a permanent presence,and an acknowledgement of the absence of the signing power from the dayto-daygoverning acts which it supervises, is essential to the maintenance ofpower. It is a sign that authority is maintained-held in the hand (main tenirin French)-like the pen with which it makes the sign of the bird, or the hawkgrasped in the ruling fist. The supervisory power is a detached presence: itwas not present when the act of disbursement of the firewood was made, andit will not be present when the monk is travelling outside the oasis. Like allsignatures, it implicitly acknowledges its own absence (whether from the actof parcelling out bundles of tamarisk branches recorded in the reportsubmitted for approval-performed in the past-or from the journey acrossland which will occur in the future). But by signing, the authorising powerasserts that it is present, that it has been present and will be present.The right to use an abbreviated sign such as this is a privilege of power,which no longer needs a name, but can display itself with the depiction ofa bird, instantly recognizable.223 The ornamental ceremonial mark of the birdsignature denotes the intersection of symbolic and material power, not onlyin the construction of avian lives by social structures, but in the productionof the forms of spatial domination that constitute political geography. Birdsare historically embedded in the relations that exist between ruling hands andthe territories and lives they rule, especially through the ceremonial relationswhich join spaces and people together. An avian signature may seem to bea bird only in the most abstract and symbolic way. But this mark is not simplyarbitrary: it belongs to a continuum of spatial and political relationshipswhich, taken together, map out a history of Guiyi jun birds and theirengagement with the hand of power.Birds and Imperial Rule in Medieval EurasiaIn the lands surrounding the Guiyi jun, political conflicts continued tounfold around the bodies of birds through the tenth century and beyond. Asnoted, a white falcon was presented in 933 by the Ganzhou Uyghurs to theemperor Mingzong of the Latter Tang, a dynasty founded by Shatuo 19>Wt;Turks. The bird was set free, an action designated with one of the most potent

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER61political verbs in modern Chinese discourse: Jiefang fIifftx, to liberate. Ratherthan serving as a permanent representative of the Uyghurs at Mingzong'scourt, a living bridge between two polities of Turkic background, the falconis the object of a strategy of sovereignty which stresses the emperor'sdisengagement from the world of hunting and from the claims made by thepeoples to the west of Latter Tang territory. The release of the falcon conformswith earlier public renunciations of hunting by Mingzong and officialdecrees against the submission of gifts of falcons and hawks that simultaneouslyinvoked a rhetoric of care for the moral foundations of the state224 and soughtto erect and maintain boundaries between the Latter Tang and those on itswestern and northern frontiers. Four years earlier, the Tanguts of the Ordoshad also defied the ban on the submission of hunting birds and had sent awhite goshawk (a tuyghun) to Mingzong. His senior minister, An Zhonghui.m, known for his rivalries with those who displayed affinities with theInner Asian cultural and political realm,225 informed the sovereign that thebird had been sent back. Mingzong formally assented to this, but is reportedto have surreptitiously ordered his retainers to fetch the bird and to have goneout to sport with it, instructing his officials not to let An find out. 226As the object of this furtive pleasure, the white goshawk is at the centreof a charged political field, infused with the energies of competing projectsand agendas. The bird is not something to which Mingzong is indifferent. Hispublic rejection of the goshawk and falcon is part of the broader attempt toregulate parties of Uyghur, Tangut and Tuyuhun who brought their sheepand horses into Latter Tang territory with complete indifference to governmentattempts to dictate the terms of their entry.227 The struggle over these whitebirds involves competition between the Latter Tang, Uyghurs and Tanguts toorganise the field of political exchange. This is not reducible to a clashbetween "Chinese" and "Central Asian" politics, in which Mingzong can beportrayed as caught between public adherence to the world of grain andbureaucrats and the private temptations of an ancestral Turkic huntingculture. Rather, Mingzong's public refusal of these gifts of distinguished birds,gifts which had the potential to augment his own political distinction, assertsauthority over the political field as a whole by decreeing what will and willnot be the domain of engagement. Such an act conforms with a situation inwhich sovereignties are far from unequivocal, something registered in theintensity of violent and non-violent exchanges between the various centresof power in North China, the Ordos and the Gansu corridor at this time. Itis far from coincidental that the Uyghur falcon arrived in Mingzong's capitalin the same year as a delegation from Liangzhou made up of the descendantsof the troops sent by Yizong from central China to block the eastwardadvance of Zhang Yichao in the 860s, 228 or that it was given in the wake of224 Mingzong is reported as explaining thebanning of tribute in hunting birds as theresult of watching hunters trample cropsIstanding in the field in pursuit of theirquarrywhen he was young. See Zizhi tongjian,juan 277, pp.9061-2.225 An was said to dislike Kang Fu m, theprefect of Cizhou CliZHI'1. modern Cixianl!!.g. in Hebei province), for speaking in anInner Asian language to Mingzong in privateaudiences. See Zizhi tongjian, juan 276,p.9033. James Hamilton discusses Kang Fuin footnote 2 on p.105 of Les Ouighours a!'epoque des Cinq Dynasties. The languageis referred to as huyu M -rg which meansgenerically Inner Asian or 'Barbarian' speech;it is probably Turkic but could possibly beSogdian, Sogdians having strong links withTurkic peoples at this time. Many people ofSogdian background had the surname Kang.An was also a common name amongst thosewith a Sogdian inheritance. On the linkagebetween Kang and An and Sogdiana, seeTongdian, juan 193, p.1039.226 See the biography of An Zhonghui inXin Wudai shi, juan 24, p.252. In anotherversion of the same incident, An Zhonghuiinforms the emperor that "Xiazhou 1'1'[the key Tangut centre in the Ordos] hasviolated an imperial order and sent in tribute;your servant has put a stop to it," to whichMingzong replies, "Good." Then, when thecourt audience has ended, the emperorsecretly orelers those around him to bringthe bird back. See Jiu Wudai shi, juan 40,p.555. A French translation of the story isgiven by James Hamilton (who gives thedate of 24 November 929 for this event) inLes Ouighours a I 'epoque des Cinq Dynasties,p.lOS. Hamilton translates the words whichI have given as "put a stop to it" as "brokenoff the treaty": both readings are plausible.He also translates the bird as "eagle."Wittfogel anel Feng translate ying as 'eagle'in their The history of Chinese society: Liao,e.g. p.236.227 See Wudai huiyao, juan 29, pp.462-3.French translation by James Hamilton, LesOuighours a L'epoque des Cinq Dynasties,p.107. See also Xin Wudai shi, juan 74,p.912, Jiu Wudai shi, juan 40, p.549. Seealso Ruth Dunnel, "The Hsi Hsia," in HerbertFranke anel Denis Twitchett, eels, TheCamhridge history of China, vo1.6, p.165,anel the French translation of the passage inthe Xin Wudai shi by James Hamilton in LesOuighours a !'epoque des Cinq Dynasties,p.105.228 See Xin Wudai shi, juan 74, p.914.

62229 On the 932 and 933 expeditions topunish the Tangut for their raids on Uyghuremissaries see Xin Wudai shi, juan 74,p.912, and Dunnel, "The Hsi Hsia," p.165.230 See Ksenia Kepping, "The name of theTangut empire," T'oung Pao 80 (1994): 355-76. On p.370 she explains that in Tangutrhetoric whiteness was associated with thesun, the earth and the east, maternal power,and the Yellow River; paired with andopposed to Loftiness, which is associatedwith the west, the male principle, the Helan111 mountains and heaven. She suggeststhat this is linked with the geography of theTangut royal tombs situated on the rightbank of the Yellow River and the Helanmountains to the west. The state is thusimagined as a unity of male and femaleprinciples. The sacred Tangut mountainwas known in Tangut as "the White andLofty Mother," pp.370-3. This reverence forwhiteness tallies with the privileged positiongiven to whiteness amongst the Qiangicpeoples of whom the Tanguts were anoffshoot.231 Zizhi tongjian, juan 278, p.9078. Thenotes give an explanation of the expression"goshawk gaze." The same phrase is foundin the biography of Li Congrong in XinWudai shi, juan 15, p.163.232 The Latter Tang was destroyed when aninternal rebellion supported by the Khitanoverthrew the dynasty and established theregime of the Latter Jin, largely regarded asa puppet of the Liao. For an account of theKhitan involvement in the overthrow of theLatter Tang, see the Denis Twitchett andKlaus-Peter Tietze, "The Liao," in Twitchettand Franke, Cambridge history oj China,vol.6, pp.70-l.233 Liao shi Jit.rJ:. [History of the Liaol,juan3 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1974), p.27.234 Schafer argues that the haidong qingwas a gyrfalcon. See "Falconry in T'angtimes," p.309. However, Dou Gong's poemrefers to a white goshawk from the east ofthe sea. (See Schafer, The golden peaches ojSamarkand, p.94.) In the description of thespring hunts in the Liao shi (juan 40, dili zhi4, p.496), haidong qing is used as anattributive for hu falcon, as it is in mostplaces in the Liaoshi and in other Liaosources. (See Fu Lehuan, "Liaodai sishi nabokao wu pian," pp.42-4.) Song sources suchas the Qidan guo zhi ft;E; [Monographon the Khitan state] by Ye Longli LEWIS MAYOpunitive raids on Tanguts who had been attacking emissaries from the westcrossing the Ordos,229 or that the Tangut white goshawk that so temptedMingzong in 929 was offered in the same year that the Latter Tang forces wereseeking to re-establish control of Tangut-dominated regions. This history ofstruggles to constitute sovereignty which structures the fate of the whitegoshawk and falcon was, like the birds themselves, colour-coded: the Xia state that the Tanguts would later found in the Ordos desert, which wouldeventually conquer both the Ganzhou Uyghurs and the Guiyi jun, was knownas the Great State of The White and The Lofty, succeeding to the long historyof whiteness as a mark of political pre-eminence in these regions.230 Therejection of white hunting birds as an assertion of sovereign powers is linkeda wider series of anxieties in the Latter Tang about the usurping drives ofraptorial subordinates and affiliates: the political ambitions of Mingzong's sonLi Congrong *1Jt, the prince of Qin *, are marked by his "goshawk gaze"(yingshi lI:fJD, glossed as the restless surveillance of a raptor seeking hisquarry and waiting for the moment to seize it231-the predatory qapghantendencies which distinguished the tuyghun-white goshawk in Uyghurrhetoric.But the most spectacular engagement between birds and political forcein this era occurred in the state which would ultimately bring about thedownfall of the Latter Tang,232 the Liao empire of the Khitan. Hunting birdsdistinguished for their whiteness had a central role in the constitution ofKhitan imperium. A white goshawk captured by a hunter along with a whitedeer presaged the future political success of the Liao emperor Taizong, acontemporary and rival of Mingzong of the Latter Tang. 233 The dominationof the Khitan ruling house over other Khitan clans and over the lands andpeoples of the Mongolian steppelands, the southern fringes of Manchuria and/ [liiil (frequently refer to the haidong qing asa goshawk. In the five-language Qing dictionaryof c.1787, haidong qing is given as theChinese for the Manchu word songkoro, forwhich the Mongolian is toyiyon songqor. (SeeSunja hacin-i hergen kamciha Manju gisunibuleku bithe or Wuti Qing wen jian.lifttllfj(. [Annotated translation of theMirror oj the five types oj language oj the Qingl[Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe, 19571, vol.l,p.4132.) The Japanese commentary on theentry states that songkoro is an alternativename for sanyan songkon, bai haiqingS#!JW in Chinese and cayan songqor inMongolian: the Japanese commentary alsostates that this bird is bigger than the songkon(haiqing #!JW, Mongolian songqor) and thatthe feathers on its back are white. See TamuraJitsuzo, Imanishi Shunju, and Sato Hisashi,Gotai Shinbunkan yakkai [Annotatedtranslation of the Mirror oj the five types oj lan-/guagel (Kyoto: Kyoto Daigaku Nairiku AjiaKenkylljo, 1966), voU, p.883. The bird inquestion is a gyrfalcon. Cayan songqor (oreayan Singqor in Middle Mongolian) is thewhite gyrfalcon in the Secret History oj theMongols which appears carrying the sun andmoon in its claws in the dream of ChingghisKhan's father-in-law discussed below. (I amgrateful for Igor de Rachewiltz's advice onthis, and on Mongolian spelling.) Haidongqing in Chinese, toyiyon songqor in Mongolianand songkoro in Manchu are thus names for akind of white gyrfalcon. As pointed out infootnote 92 above, Svetlana Jacquessonsuggests that the word tuyghun is not linkedto a particular category of birds, eithergoshawks or or gyrfalcons, but denotes raptorsdistinguished by whiteness. Thus in theManchurian and Mongolian homelands of theTuyuhun and the hunting grounds of theKhitan, tuyghun was a white gyrfalcon (hai-

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER63the border of Korea, and the northern periphery of the North China plainmade possible and was registered in Khitan royal claims on hunting birds,most Significantly a variety of raptors distinguished for their whiteness, thehaidong qing &*w. 234Khitan political life was organised around an annual cycle of royal hunts,in which the emperor and his entourage progressed between four seasonalhunting grounds, located in different parts of Khitan territory. The sequenceof hunts created a political ordering of both time and space and set forth ahierarchy of precedence in socio-political relationships. Divisions of powerin the Khitan empire were articulated in the systematic ranking of theprivileges and responsibilities of those participating in the hunt. Inclusion inor exclusion from various practices in the hunt enacted contrasts betweenKhitan and non-Khitan, royal clan and subordinates, noble and base. In thespring hunt, held in the wetlands in the Northeastern part of Khitan territoryon the borders of Manchuria,235 haidong qing were flown at the swans andwild geese who had arrived in the north at just the time when the snowsbegan to thaw.236 The birds, whose name, East of the Sea Green, links themto the oceans on the eastern border, and to greenness associated with springand the east, the sacred direction for the Khitans,237 were procured throughlevies on non-Khitan subjects,238 most Significantly the Jurchen tribes ofManchuria. Through a series of correspondences the haidong qing were partof the political appropriation the energies of the spring thaw, linked with thearrival of migratory birds from the south, as well as with water and grass(through the wetlands where they were hunted and in the maritimeassociations in their name), and with the symbolic energies of both whiteness/dong qing), while in the Uyghur and Turkicrealms of central Asia near the Guiyi jun it wasa white goshawk (baiying). The five-languageQing dictionary marks the formidablecontinuity of Mongolian/Khitan, Chinese,Manchurian and Turkic interests in whitegoshawks and gyrfalcons, spreading from thetime of Tuyuhun in the early middle ages tothe Manchu-Qing empire of the eighteenthcentury. The Manchus were, as noted,successors to the Tungusic peoples-theJurchen and before them the Mohe-who hadsupplied white goshawks and gyrfalcons tothe Khitan and the Tang. The white goshawksand gyrfalcons collected at the Qing courtwere thus heirs to a powerful political history.235 See Liao shi juan 40, diU zhi :f;'lli:Elll.7&. 4,p.496, and Wittfogel and Feng, History ofChinese society: Liao, p.134. These huntinggrounds were located in the upper reaches ofthe Sungari river (Songhua jiang t 1Ern atthe confluence of the Nen jiang rI andTao'er he ¥3711tiiJ. This is at the border ofpresent-day Jilin a# and Heilongjiang / rI. See the detailed discussion of thelocation of the spring hunting grounds in FuLehuan, "Liaodai sishi nabo kao wu pian,"pp.46-54.236 Liao shi, juan 32, yingwei zhi f$J;:5; 2,pp.373-4, and Wittfogel and Feng, History ofChinese society: Liao, p.132. See also Qidanguo zhi, juan 23, p.226.237 Liao shi, juan 45, baiguan zhi 1, p.712and Wittfogel and Feng, History of Chinesesociety: Liao, p.267.238 Concerning the tribute of 30 haidong qingfrom the Zubu li " (Tartars) in the 932 seeLiao shi, juan 3, p.34, also ibid., juan 70,p.1130. Exactions became more active in theeleventh century: in 1052 agents of the Liaowere sent to the Five Nations CWu guo E..,a group of peoples living in the coastal littoralto the east of the Jurchen territories inManchuria) to obtain haidong qing, Wittfogeland Feng, History of Chinese SOCiety: Liao,p.360, and Liao shi, juan 69, pp.1108-9. Onthe Zubu, see Wittfogel and Feng, id., pp.l01-2, and on the Five Nations see id., p.92.Figure 9Manchu, Tibetan, Mongolian, Turkicand Chinese names (with Manchutranscriptions follOWing the Tibetanand Turkic) fo r the gyrfalconhaidong qing, fro m the Sunja hergenkamciha Manju gisun-i buleku bithe/Wu ti Qing wen jiant(

64LEWIS MAYO239 Liao shi,juan 32, ying wei zhi 2, pp.373-4, and Wittfogel and Feng, History of Chinesesociety: Liao, p.132.240 Wittfogel and Feng, ibid., p.436.241 See Liao shi, juan 110, p.1487, andWittfogel and Feng, Historyof Chinese society:Liao, p.236, n.66. Significantly this citationinvolves the granting of the right to hunt withhaidong qing to a non-Khitan subject, ZhangXiaojie 13'IE, as a special favour.242 See Wittfogel and Feng, ibid., pp.450-3on the hereditary claim of the Xiao to theoffice prime minister of the NorthernDivision.243 See Wittfogel and Feng, ibid., pp.93,142, and esp.237, n.3.244 Liao shi, juan 21, p.258, and Wittfogeland Feng, Histmy of Chinese society: Liao,p.236.245 See the discussion of this idea by FuLehuan (who expresses reservations aboutit as an explanation) in "Liaodai sishi nabokao wu pian," p.159.246 "The Jurchen had been subjects of theLiao for more than 200 years; there had beenhereditary succession to their militarygovernorship, which passed from brother tobrother ... . In the northeast they had theFive Nations as neighbours. The east part ofthe territory of the Five States bordered onthe great ocean and it produced a famousgosha wk. Beca use it came from east of thesea, it was called East of the Sea Green. Itwas small and very brave and strong, andcould catch geese and herons, the ones withwhite claws being especially valued. TheLiao people deeply loved them, and yearafter year they sought it from the Jurchen.The Jurchen had to go to the Five Nationsand could only get it after fighting. TheJurchen could not surmount this difficulty.When TianZllo J(rF [the last Liao emperorwith any substantive powerl came to thethrone, the demand for tribute was especiallyonerous: whenever the celestial emissaryarrived, he asked time and time again forthings from the tribes and if they didn't obeyeven in the very smallest degree, hesummoned their elders to beat them withthe cane and in serious cases had them putto death-all the tribes were anxious andrebellious." , Qidanguozhi [Monograph onthe Khitan state], juan 10 (Shanghai:Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1985), p.102.and greenness and to the reaffirmation of ties to the foundations of the Khitanstate: the first wild goose or swan caught in the hunt was taken as an offeringto the imperial ancestors.239 The spring hunt was generally dominated byofficials of the Northern Region (Beimian :ltOO) 'the Khitan, and moregenerally non-Han part of the government apparatus. 240 Haidong qing werethus part of the ceremonial consecration of Khitan pre-eminence in relationto other subject peoples and to the pre-eminence of the royal family inrelation to the rest of the social and political order. The use of these birdsfacilitated the consolidation of internal relationships in the Khitan imperialelite, affirmed through the ritually charged solidarities of the hunt. They werealso associated with the legal regulation of status divisions which structuredthe Khitan socio-political order: hunting with haidong qing was restricted tothe emperor and to the prime minister,241 who was normally a representativeof the imperial family's consort clan, the Xiao .,242 a family with Uyghurheritage 243 The birds were thus part of the transmission between the twogreat royal lineages of the Khitan state. In 1061 an imperial decree forbadethe keeping of haidong qing by commoners.244 Furthermore, both thelocation of the hunt and the source of the birds involved dominance of theNortheast and its peoples. It has been argued that a major purpose of thespring hunt was to receive tribute missions from the Jurchen and otherManchurian peoples who came to see the emperor in his camp.245 Thehaidong qing was both a medium for this political interchange and the reasonfor its existence. As the cycle of hunts was formalised as the institutionalstructure at the heart of the Khitan ritual and political order, demand for thebirds took the form of compulsory exaction rather than voluntary donation.A lineage of hunting birds set apart for its whiteness was thus central tothe constitution of a multi-ethnic state founded on the production andreproduction of codified status divisions within and between peoples. At thesame time, the reproduction of this codified order of status divisions,endowed with specific obligations, functions and duties, was the mechanismby which the Khitan state secured control of privileged hunting birds. But theintense investment in both haidong qing and in the preservation of thepolitical order which secured domination of them was ultimately linked tothe political collapse of the Khitan imperial system. The imposition ofmandatory tribute of haidong qing on the Jurchen tribes who were forced tofight in hostile territory to secure them, was one factor in the Jurchen rebellionagainst the Khitan which culminated in the overthrow of the Liao. 246 Loss ofcontrol over haidong qing thus coincided directly with the disintegration ofa political order whose founders' fortunes had been foretold by theauspicious sign of a white goshawk. The story of haidong qing in the Liaostate is part of the much longer history of political investments in the whitegoshawks and gyrfalcons in the Manchurian borderlands. It is not coincidentalthat haidong qing were procured from the same lands that had sent tributein white goshawks to the Tang ruling house, and that this region was nearthe original homelands of the Tuyuhun prior to their westward migrationwhere their history would be tied with that of white goshawks, white falcons

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER 65and tuyghun, Uyghurs, Tanguts and the Guiyijun. The word for haidong qing in Mongoliantowhich both the Tuyuhun language and thatof the Khitans are thought to be relatedcontainsthe element toyiyon, phoneticallyrelated to and, in the Uyghur script in whichMongolian was written, graphically almostidentical with tuyghun, the fierce, usurpingmember of the nine-fold lineage of descendantprincesknown in the tenth-century Uyghurpolitical rhetoric from the Gansu corridor.A white hunting bird was involved in theconstitution of the most famous hand ofpower in Inner Asian history and with its bestknown instance of imperial expansion­Chinggis khan and the Mongol empire. In theSecret History of the Mongols, Yisiigei, thefather of Chinggis khan, takes his son to thecamp of Dei Secen, father of Borte, Chinggis'sfuture wife.Dei Secen tells Yisi.1gei that he has had adream that a white gyrfalcon carrying the sunand the moon in his claws alighted on hishands. He states that the gyrfalcon in thedream was Yisiigei bringing the gift of anexceptional son to him whom he wishes tobetroth to his daughter. 247 The exceptionalwhite hunting bird is thus present in theformation of an alliance between distingu ishedlines. The energies and struggles fused in thismeeting of lineages-energies and strugglessimultaneously physical, symbolic andpolitical-initiate an imperial project of allianceand capture, which would eventually expandto take over all the spaces whose avian andhuman political histories have been narratedin the preceding pages. This project, theMongol empire, has become in the rhetoric ofmodern politics the archetype of a rapacious,Figure 10Section of the Secret HistOlY of the Mongols that details Dei Sewn 'sdream about the white gyrfalcon which presages the arrival of theju ture Chinggis khan. Mongolian text in Chinese characters, withinterlinear Ch inese translationo$l. -6J ftlfA;- -t-It;247 Paragraph 63 of Chapter 1 of the Secret History o/ theMongols. For a translation see Igor de Rachewiltz, tr.,"The Secret History of the Mongols," chs 1 and 2, Paperson Far Eastern History 4 (1971): 130. For a transcriptionof the original text, see Paul Pelliot, Histoire secrete desMongols: restitution de texte Mongol et traduction Fran-/r;aise des chapitres I it Vl(Paris: Libraire d'Amerique d'Orient, 1949), p.l3. For theoriginal Chinese character version, see Menggu mishi jiao kan ben [Corrected andedited text of the Secret History oftheMongolsl,juan 1 (Hohhot: Neimenggu RenminChubanshe, 1980) p.66, Modern Chinese translation on p.931. The bird in questionis translated into Chinese as bai haiqing.

66LEWIS MAYOFigure 11Section of the SecretHistory of theMongols about DeiSeam 's dream aboutthe white gyrfalcon.Mongolian text inUyghur script.Yeo lrincen, ed.,''Mongyol-unniyuca tobciyan, "Journal of InnerMongolia University(1985. 1) 107. Ithank Igor deRachewiltz fo r.furnishing this copypredatory state in which authority exists to seize and do nothing more, andwhich secures its objectives with a monstrous ferocity, contrasting, in thisconceptualisation, with the calm, observing gaze of rational institutions,founded on thought and persuasion. But the strategic rapport between birdsand the hand of power involves a politics that is something more than thestruggle of legitimate law against irrational barbarity. Through a history of thegeo-political forces structuring avian life, politics appears as a supple,diversified, and discontinuous series of engagements, where the forms,sources and targets of authority are not single but plural, a field of force inwhich spaces and histories, the material and the symbolic, the human and thenon-human, fuse as an indivisible whole.Birds and the hand of kindnessThis article is dedicated to the memory of my great friend Matthew Cimino Theabove picture ofMatthew with a Kazakh hunting eagle was taken in Mongoliawhere he worked fo r UNICEF. Matthew died in an accident during a disaster reliefmission in Western Mongolia inJanuary 2001, putting into practice theunassuming concern fo r other people which was the hallmark of his life . As hisbrother Jonathan writes, Matthew left two legacies: a body of work that will endurefo r its originality, discipline and influential energy, and his human qualities.Donations in Matthew's memory can be made to:Lewis MayoMelbourne Institute of AsianLanguages and SocietiesUniversity of MelbourneParkville Vic. 3010lmayo@unimelb.edu.auMatthew Gimin Scholarship Fund Foundation Northwest,221 N Wall, Suite 624Spokane, WA 99203, USAEAST ASIAN HISTORY 24 (2002)