East Asian History - ANU

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.