East Asian History - ANU

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).