The Uighur Empire, According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories: A Study in Sino-Uighur Relations 744-840

236 Pages·1972·12.452 MB·English

by  Colin Mackerras

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COLIN MACKERRAS
The Uighur Empire
According to the T'ang Dynastic
Histories
This book was published by ANU Press between 1965–1991.
This republication is part of the digitisation project being carried
out by Scholarly Information Services/Library and ANU Press.
This project aims to make past scholarly works published
by The Australian National University available to
a global audience under its open-access policy.
ASIAN PUBLICATIONS SERIES NO. 2
The Uighur Empire
According to the I ang Dynastic Histories
ASIAN PUBLICATIONS SERIES
1 Julia Ching (trans. and ed.),
The Philosophical Letters of Wang Yang-ming,
1971
The Uighur Empire
According to the T’ang Dynastic Histories
A STUDY IN SINO-UIGHUR RELATIONS 744-840
Colin Mackerras, Editor and Translator
AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY PRESS
CANBERRA 1972
© Colin Mackerras 1972
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing
for the purposes of private study, research, criticism,
or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no
part may be reproduced by any process without
written permission. Inquiries should be made to the
publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card no. 79-164369
National Library of Australia Card no. and
ISBN 0 7081 0457 6
Book designed by Richard Farmer
Maps drawn by Peter Daniell, Department of Geography, SGS, ANU
Text set in Monotype Imprint
and printed on 85 gsm Woodfree
by Dai Nippon Printing Co., (International) Ltd, Hong Kong
IV
Preface
This work is a translation with introduction and notes of those sections of
the chiian on the Uighurs in the Chiu T’ang-shu and Hsin T’ang-shu
referring to the period 744 to 840. It was first published in 1968 as an
occasional paper by the Centre of Oriental Studies, Australian National
University, Canberra, under the title The Uighur Empire (744-840)
According to the 1 ang Dynastic Histones. In this second edition, however,
I have greatly expanded the introduction and notes to the translations and
revised some of my earlier conclusions, although the translations themselves
have been left as they were apart from a few, mainly stylistic, changes.
This remains a primarily Sinological work. Although I have used transla­
tions of Turkish and other non-Chinese early sources, I have paid very
little attention to linguistic matters, since these lie outside the sphere
of my competence.
Parallel texts in the translations section are placed opposite one another
except when otherwise stated. Dates given in brackets in the translations
refer normally to the main verb immediately preceding. Otherwise an
explanatory note is added. The dates are accompanied where necessary
by a reference to the appropriate text. Unless otherwise stated, references
to the Chiu T ang-shu, Hsin T’ang-shu, and T’ang hui-yao are to chiian
195, 217, and 98 respectively of these three works. Dates in parentheses
are Western equivalents of a Chinese date just mentioned. Wherever
possible the day, month, and year are indicated in completely numeral
form. A date such as 27/3-24/4/822 refers to a point of time between 27
March and 24 April 822, but does not indicate the whole period.
4 he names and titles of Uighurs are normally romanised directly feom
their Chinese transcriptions, titles given by the Chinese emperor to a
khaghan, khatun, or Uighur minister being placed in inverted commas
as 'well as italicised. 1 have followed standard systems of romanisation
throughout: the Wade-Giles for Chinese, but omitting the circumflex
over the e and the breve over the u, and the ‘Berlin School’ for Turkish as
exemplified in the Türkische Turfan Texte. In the introduction, note
numbers in parentheses, e.g. (n. 159), refer to the notes to the translations.
Many of the texts parallel to the basic sources in Chiu T’ang-shu 195 and
Hsin T’ang-shu 217 have been found through Haneda Toru’s great work
on the Uighurs during the T’ang, ‘Tödai Kaikotsushi no kenkyü’, and
Preface
my debt to Dr Haneda will be clear. I should like to thank Professor E.G.
Pulleyblank of the University of British Columbia, who supervised me in
the preparation of this work as part of a thesis at the University of Cam­
bridge and made helpful suggestions on the revised manuscript before its
publication, and Professor Liu Ts’un-yan of the Australian National
University, who went to great trouble to check the translations. I am also
grateful to Vera Zaitseff for translating the Russian material for me and
Nobuko Gardiner for her assistance with some of the Japanese works used.
Finally, I should like to thank Professor A. von Gabain for her useful
comments on my first edition and for helping me to decipher which of the
Chinese transcriptions referring to individual Uighurs are titles or ranks
(given in italics), and which are proper names.
COLIN MACKERRAS
Canberra 1971
vi
Contents
Preface page v
Maps viii
Abbreviations ix
Introduction 1
The Sources 1
The History of the Uighur Empire 7
Sino-Uighur Relations 14
The Chinese Texts 53
Notes on the Translations 126
Appendix A. Two Problems in the History of the Uighur
Empire 184
i. The Identity of the ‘Heavenly Khaghan’ in the
Chinese Karabalghasun Inscription 184
ii. The Dates of the Khaghans ‘Huai-hsin’ and ‘Pao-i’ 187
Appendix B. Chinese Emperors and Uighur Khaghans
(74T-840) 191
i. Chinese Emperors 191
ii. Chinese Court Mourning and the Deaths of the
Uighur Khaghans 191
iii. Uighur Khaghans According to the Standard
Histories 192
Appendix C. Glossary of Official Terms 194
i. Chinese Official Terms 194
ii. Titles Used among the Uighurs 196
Works Cited 197
Chinese Sources (Pre-1912) 197
Western, Japanese and Post-1911 Chinese Sources 199
Lost Works of the T’ang Cited through Other Sources 203
Index 207
vii
Maps
1 Central Asia and Western China page 11
2 Northern China 16
3 The Ho-Lo Region 19
4 The Environs of Ch’ang-an 22
5 Ch’ang-an 33
6 The Ta-ming Palace 51
viii