East Asian History - ANU

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