East Asian History - ANU

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