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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
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Wolfram eberhard's recent A History of China has attracted great interest. Reviewers have praised it for its readability and broad sweep and for the way in which it goes beyond a mere chronicle of political and cultural events and tries to penetrate to underlying causes. At the same time they have noted many errors of detail and have expressed surprise and incredulity at the many new generalizations presented with an air of established finality. It was, of course, impossible for Eberhard to present detailed evidence or argumentation in support of his views in a brief general history. The subsequent publication of Das Toba-Reich Nordchinas and Conquerors and Rulers has enabled us to form a better judgment of the value of at least a part of his work.
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- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , October 1953 , pp. 588 - 597
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- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1953
References
page 588 note 1 First published as Çin tarihi, Ankara, 1947Google Scholar, then in German as Chinas Geschichte, Bern, 1948Google Scholar; translated into English by Dickes, E. W. and published as A History of China, London, 1950.Google Scholar See especially reviews in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 13 (1950), 565–7Google Scholar; Far Eastern Quarterly 10 (1950–1951), 380–2Google Scholar; Artibus Asiae 13 (1950), 103–6Google Scholar; T'oung Poo 39 (1950), 369–74Google Scholar; Asiatische Studien (1949), 56–9Google Scholar; Journal of the American Oriental Society 71 (1951), 67–71Google Scholar; Times Literary Supplement, 28th 07, 1950.Google Scholar
page 588 note 2 Das Toba-Reich Nordchinas, Eine soziologische Untersuchung, Leiden, 1949.Google Scholar
page 588 note 3 Conquerors and Rulers, Social Forces in Medieval China, Leiden, 1952.Google Scholar
page 588 note 4 Conquerors and Rulers, p. vii.Google Scholar
page 589 note 1 Conquerors and Rulers, p. 13.Google Scholar
page 590 note 1 One must further distinguish between the great Chinese families of East of the Mountains, i.e. the heart of Toba Wei, and those of Kuan-chung dating back to Northern Chou and Sui and often of non-Chinese origin, but I cannot enter here into a detailed discussion of the structure of the T'ang governing class. Ch'ungking, 1944, and Shanghai, 1947. Cf. also Nunome Chōfū
Tōyōshi Kenkyū 10/3 (1947), 168–174Google Scholar, and my forthcoming The Background of the Rebellion of An Lu-shan.
page 590 note 2 loc. cit.
page 590 note 3 Wittfogel, K. A., ‘Public Office in the Liao Dynasty and the Chinese Examination System’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 10 (1947), 13–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in History of Chinese Society; Liao, pp. 456–463.Google Scholar I discuss these statistics more fully in The Background of the Rebellion of An Lu-shan.
page 590 note 4 Conquerors and Rulers, p. 14.Google Scholar
page 591 note 1 Das Toba-Reich, Appendix, and Conquerors and Rulers, ch. 6; cf. Asiatische Studien 1/2 (1947), pp. 19–28.Google Scholar
page 591 note 2 See decree of Chen-kuan 16/6/- (643) in T'ang hui-yao, 83, p. 1528Google Scholar, (Kuo-hsüeh chi-pen ts'ung-shu), and T'ung-tien 179. 5. b.
page 591 note 3 Das Toba-Reich, p. 26.Google Scholar
page 591 note 4 Conquerors and Rulers, p. 119.Google Scholar Cf. Das, Toba-Reich, p. 366Google Scholar, on families Feng, Hsiao, and Hsieh.
page 592 note 1 Das Toba-Reich, p. 366.Google Scholar
page 592 note 2 Conquerors and Rulers, p. 60, n. 1.Google Scholar
page 592 note 3 ibid., p. 59. Cf. Chiu T'ang Shu, 141Google Scholar, Hsin T'ang Shu, 210Google Scholar, biographies of T'ien Ch'eng-ssu.
page 592 note 4 ibid., p. 61 ff.
page 592 note 5 ibid., p. 52.
page 592 note 6 This chapter appeared first in Turkish, in Belleten 41 (1947), 15–26.Google Scholar See also Oriental Art 1 (1949), 50–55.Google Scholar
page 592 note 7 Hsin T'ang shu, 218Google Scholar, Sha-t'o Lieh-chuan. An account of the Sha-t'o in the T'ang dynasty must obviously be based not only on this late compilation but on a comparison of all the scattered texts in T'ang sources, especially in the pen-chi and lieh-chuan of the Chiu T'ang shu and the Ts'e-fu yüan-kuei.
page 593 note 1 Hsin T'ang shu, 218.Google Scholar Cf. Ts'e-fu yüan-kuei 959.32.a, b.
page 593 note 2 Hsin T'ang shu 218Google Scholar; Chiu T'ang shu 195Google Scholar (Hui-ho chuan) and 196B (T'u-fan chuan); Tzu-chih t'ung-chien Chen-yüan 5 (789), end, and 6 (790)/5/-.
page 593 note 3 Hsin T'ang shu 218Google Scholar; Tzu-chih t'ung-chien Yüan-ho 3 (808)/6/-; Ts'e-fu yüan-kuei 956. 32.a; Chiu T'ang shu 151Google Scholar (biography of Fan Hsi-ch'ao). Reasons given for this move in the various texts are not identical.
page 593 note 4 Conquerors and Rulers, p. 90.Google Scholar
page 594 note 1 Commentary to Tzu-chih T'ung-chien Yüan-ho 4 (809)/6/-; cf. also under T'ai-ho 4 (830)/3/-.
page 594 note 2 Chung-kuo ku-chin ti-ming ta tz'u-tien.
page 594 note 3 Ts'e-fu yüan-kuei 956.32.b says that it was first intended to settle the Sha-t'o on the Ta-t'ung River , but that, as this region neighboured on the ‘wild Hsi’
and it was feared that the Sha-t'o might be tempted to go over to this unsubmissive tribe, they were settled instead ‘in the valley of Hsiang Chou (read: [Ting]-hsiang River,
not
)’ I cannot identify Ta-t'ung River with certainty but it was probably the Yü Ho
which passes east of Ta-t'ung. The passage implies that the Ting-hsiang River valley lay deeper into Shansi than Ta-t'ung.
page 594 note 4 Conquerors and Rulers, p. 91.Google Scholar
page 594 note 5 Chiu Wu-tai shih 58.4275bb. Eberhard's reference here to 55.4270da (p. 91 n. 2) is evidently a repetition of note 3 on p. 90.
page 594 note 6 Cf. Wu-tai hui-yao 25, p. 305Google Scholar (tsu-shui) (Ts'ung-shu chi-ch'eng).
page 594 note 7 Hsin T'ang shu 37–43Google Scholar; cf. Balázs, S., ‘Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte der T'ang Zeit’, Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin 34 (1931), p. 19.Google Scholar
page 594 note 8 Chiu Wu-tai shih, 58.4275bb.
page 595 note 1 Chin, Wu-tai shih 146.4384cb.
page 595 note 2 Chin Wu-tai shih 41.4254ca. On p. 104Google Scholar n. 5, Eberhard cites this passage somewhat more accurately as saying that the population was only 1,000 households in 930, but he misses the point of the text here also.
page 595 note 3 Chiu T'ang shu, 40Google Scholar, under (earlier name for Chieh Chou).
page 595 note 4 Chiu Wu-tai Shih 80.4301bb.
page 595 note 5 Compare the A-shih-na and A-shih-te of the T'u-chüeh.
page 595 note 6 A Sogdian Colony in Inner Mongolia, T'oung Poo 41 (1952), 343–4.Google Scholar I there suggest the identification of Sa-ko with suγuδ (Soghd) and in view of the origin of the tribe this seems very reasonable. As Eberhard points out, however, there was a So-ko tribe among the Western Turks in the 7th century (there is no evidence of any connexion between them and the Sha-t'o). Moreover in T'ung-tien 197Google Scholarso-ko (*sâk-kât) is said to be a Turkish word meaning ‘hair’ (fa
) and used as an official title. Is this perhaps to be identified with the Turkish word saqal ‘beard’ (e.g. Brockelmann)? Sa-ko
(*sât-) or Hsüeh-ko
(*siät-) also appears as the name of a Khitan envoy to China in the 9th century (Ts'e-fu yüan-kuei 972.10a; T'ang Hui-yao 96)Google Scholar, which again may represent the same word. It is possible that the Sha-t'o tribal name is also really Turkish saqal, which is slightly better phonetically than suγuδ, attractive as the latter identification seems on other grounds. May we suppose that the name had to do with the physical characteristics of the tribesmen?
page 596 note 1 ‘Zui Tō jidai ni Shina ni raijū shita saiikijin ni tsuite’ in the Shinagaku Ronsō in honour of T. Naitō.
page 596 note 2 Chiu T'ang shu 129 (biography of Chang Hung-ching); 145 (biography of Lu Ch'ang-yüan). Cf. Toshikazu, Hori, ‘Tōmatsu sho hanran no seikaku’, Tōyō Bunka 7 (1951), p. 78.Google Scholar
page 596 note 3 An Lu-shan shih-chi A. lO.a; B. 5.a; Tzu-chih t'ung-chien T'ien-pao 10 (751)/2/-.
page 596 note 4 An Lu-shan shih-chi A.I.b.; Chiu T'ang shu 200A.
page 596 note 5 An Lu-shan shih-chi A.7.b; Tzu-chih t'ung-chien T'ien-pao 10 (751)/1/chia-ch'en.
page 596 note 6 Hori, , op. cit., pp. 65 ff.Google Scholar
page 596 note 7 Feng shih wen-chien chi chiao-cheng 4. 15.a; cf. P'ei-wen yün-fu.
page 596 note 8 T'ang hui-yao 63, p. 1089.Google Scholar
page 596 note 9 ch. 648.
page 596 note 10 Conquerors and Rulers, p. 99.Google Scholar
page 596 note 11 Wu-tai hui-yao 12, p. 158Google Scholar (quoted in the commentary to Chiu Wu-tai shih 44.4257ca).
page 597 note 1 Das Toba-Reich, p. 4.Google Scholar
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