East Asian History - ANU

BIRDS AND THE HAND OF POWER63the border of Korea, and the northern periphery of the North China plainmade possible and was registered in Khitan royal claims on hunting birds,most Significantly a variety of raptors distinguished for their whiteness, thehaidong qing &*w. 234Khitan political life was organised around an annual cycle of royal hunts,in which the emperor and his entourage progressed between four seasonalhunting grounds, located in different parts of Khitan territory. The sequenceof hunts created a political ordering of both time and space and set forth ahierarchy of precedence in socio-political relationships. Divisions of powerin the Khitan empire were articulated in the systematic ranking of theprivileges and responsibilities of those participating in the hunt. Inclusion inor exclusion from various practices in the hunt enacted contrasts betweenKhitan and non-Khitan, royal clan and subordinates, noble and base. In thespring hunt, held in the wetlands in the Northeastern part of Khitan territoryon the borders of Manchuria,235 haidong qing were flown at the swans andwild geese who had arrived in the north at just the time when the snowsbegan to thaw.236 The birds, whose name, East of the Sea Green, links themto the oceans on the eastern border, and to greenness associated with springand the east, the sacred direction for the Khitans,237 were procured throughlevies on non-Khitan subjects,238 most Significantly the Jurchen tribes ofManchuria. Through a series of correspondences the haidong qing were partof the political appropriation the energies of the spring thaw, linked with thearrival of migratory birds from the south, as well as with water and grass(through the wetlands where they were hunted and in the maritimeassociations in their name), and with the symbolic energies of both whiteness/dong qing), while in the Uyghur and Turkicrealms of central Asia near the Guiyi jun it wasa white goshawk (baiying). The five-languageQing dictionary marks the formidablecontinuity of Mongolian/Khitan, Chinese,Manchurian and Turkic interests in whitegoshawks and gyrfalcons, spreading from thetime of Tuyuhun in the early middle ages tothe Manchu-Qing empire of the eighteenthcentury. The Manchus were, as noted,successors to the Tungusic peoples-theJurchen and before them the Mohe-who hadsupplied white goshawks and gyrfalcons tothe Khitan and the Tang. The white goshawksand gyrfalcons collected at the Qing courtwere thus heirs to a powerful political history.235 See Liao shi juan 40, diU zhi :f;'lli:Elll.7&. 4,p.496, and Wittfogel and Feng, History ofChinese society: Liao, p.134. These huntinggrounds were located in the upper reaches ofthe Sungari river (Songhua jiang t 1Ern atthe confluence of the Nen jiang rI andTao'er he ¥3711tiiJ. This is at the border ofpresent-day Jilin a# and Heilongjiang / rI. See the detailed discussion of thelocation of the spring hunting grounds in FuLehuan, "Liaodai sishi nabo kao wu pian,"pp.46-54.236 Liao shi, juan 32, yingwei zhi f$J;:5; 2,pp.373-4, and Wittfogel and Feng, History ofChinese society: Liao, p.132. See also Qidanguo zhi, juan 23, p.226.237 Liao shi, juan 45, baiguan zhi 1, p.712and Wittfogel and Feng, History of Chinesesociety: Liao, p.267.238 Concerning the tribute of 30 haidong qingfrom the Zubu li " (Tartars) in the 932 seeLiao shi, juan 3, p.34, also ibid., juan 70,p.1130. Exactions became more active in theeleventh century: in 1052 agents of the Liaowere sent to the Five Nations CWu guo E..,a group of peoples living in the coastal littoralto the east of the Jurchen territories inManchuria) to obtain haidong qing, Wittfogeland Feng, History of Chinese SOCiety: Liao,p.360, and Liao shi, juan 69, pp.1108-9. Onthe Zubu, see Wittfogel and Feng, id., pp.l01-2, and on the Five Nations see id., p.92.Figure 9Manchu, Tibetan, Mongolian, Turkicand Chinese names (with Manchutranscriptions follOWing the Tibetanand Turkic) fo r the gyrfalconhaidong qing, fro m the Sunja hergenkamciha Manju gisun-i buleku bithe/Wu ti Qing wen jiant(