East Asian History - ANU

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).