East Asian History - ANU

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER59monitoring these distributions and the regularity of the submissions indicatesa control mechanism of great efficiency and consistency. Through hemp, aproduct of diverse uses made available to several constituencies, the militarysupply apparatus is tied into a diverse fabric of relations. The surveillance ofthese distributions by the bird signature secures knowledge of people'sdoings through this lattice of ties and exchanges. The bird-leader occupiesa position of observing superiority, commanding the social landscapebeneath it. Through control and knowledge of the circulation of firewood,wine, sheep and hemp, a comprehensive inventory of what was done (andwho had done it) in the Guiyi jun could be prepared. Thus as much as amechanism for controlling 'profitable resources', the process of signingexpenditure lists is a device for the centralisation of information, and a wayfor authority to insert itself into relationships between people. The record ofthe dispersal provides a kind of social map. The tiresome obligation to reporton the fate of governed objects and lives, and the need to sign these reports,affords a practical command of the territory under control. Petitions from theGuiyi jun Camel Officials219 made in 979-80220 and 99Y21 that report loansof camels for long distance journeys and the fate of their skins after their death(approved with the avian signature, like all the other documents discussedabove) confer on the su pervisory power a control oflong-distance movements.Camels were significant lives, crucial to the maintenance of communicativenetworks across the spaces of desert that separated the Guiyi jun fromKhotan, Qumul, Turpan and Ganzhou. As such, the careful recording of theirfates was, again, not simply a matter of keeping track of governmentproperty. Camel herds, like firewood, were part of the overall apparatus ofdomination. Through the study of where camels had gone, it was possibleto have inSight into those leaving the oasis: by this documentary exchange,action in the spaces beyond Guiyi jun territory could be made at least partlyknowable. Power over camels was an intrinsic part of a broader spatialcommand.Thus the network of inventories extends the reach of control from theinner spheres of household accounts to the open spaces of the desert, fromthe celebration of personal pleasures to the greatest public ceremonies, fromthe entertainment of visiting dignitaries to the protection of sheep from theft.At the apex of this pyramid of transmitted knowledge, signing and observing,hovers the ruling figure, aware, like the white goshawk soaring above theplain where frightened rabbits cower in holes, of the lives beneath it, awareof the small transactions and events carried on below, yet itself above them.In this sense the bird signature occupies the same elevated position in thecontrol structures of the Guiyi jun that living birds have in physical space.Moreover, the control of all of these networks, the mastery of theseasymmetric power relations between authority and delegate, and theensemble of symbolic and material structures which elevate the hand ofpower and endow it with mastery, are the forces and networks which arebrought to bear on all of the birds targeted by power in Guiyi jun history.219 The word used is tuoguan '§'. Thejurisdiction under which these officials fellis not clear, but it seems that they had directresponsibility for the camels in thegovernment herds. A register of the herdsand flocks of the Guiyi jun from 968 lists twocamel officials and the beasts under theircontrol. They appear in conjunction withthe herds of horses and the flocks of sheepunder Guiyi jun control and the officialsresponsible for them. This register is P.2484,transcribed in Ikeda On, Chugoku kodaisekicho kenkyu [Research on ancient registersand accounts from China] (Tokyo: TokyoDaigakll Toyo Bllnka Kenkyujo, 1979),pp.660-2.220 5.2474. Eliasberg, "Les signatures enforme d'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinoisde Touen-houang," p.34. Transcription inTang and Lu, Dunhuang shehui jingjiwenxian zhenji shilu, vo1.3, pp.600-1.221 P.2737. Eliasberg, "Les signatures enforme d'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinoisde TOllen-houang." Transcription in Tangand Lu, Dunhuang shehui jingji wenxianzhenji shilu, vo1.3, p.602.