Sui and Tang China

INDIA, THE INDIAN OCEAN BASIN, and EAST ASIA HIST 1301 | History Sui and Tang China Three nations reigned over China when the Han Empire fell in 220 CE: the Wei in the north, the Wu in the south, and the Shu in the west. From 265 to 316, China had a brief period of unity under the Western Jin dynasty. However, from 316 until 589, China was once more split between the north and south. Buddhist customs were introduced into China by traders who built monasteries, convents, and shrines along the Silk Roads. For this reason, Buddhism was widely embraced by Chinese traders, especially under the Sui period. Yang Jian, a northern Chinese Mongol commander, was a devout Buddhist. He became so well-known for his military prowess that he was able to arrange a marriage between one of his daughters and a prince from the north. As his authority grew, he eventually deposed the king and gave his grandson the title of regent after the death of the former. In 581, Yang subsequently assumed the name Wen and became the first emperor of the newly formed Sui dynasty. Emperor Wen won the support of his troops by giving them territory taken over by conquest, a protracted operation that brought the majority of the ancient Han realms back together. Emperor Wen established a strong, centralised administration with obedient officials in charge of overseeing the empire's many provinces in order to solidify his hold on power. Wen frequently relocated them to other regions, requiring them to establish new networks from start, in order to prevent the possibility that these strong provincial administrators could gather supporters into a rebel army. Yang Guang, Emperor Wen's son, succeeded his father. Emperor Yang Di, as Yang was called, was a pompous and ambitious man, much like his father had been. He carried on his father's habit of using forced labour to construct massive public works during his reign, finishing the Grand Canal in 609 to link Luoyang in central China with Hangzhou in the south. Unimaginable quantities of goods and food could now be moved between the north and south thanks to the canal. Rice originated in the south due to its warmer and more humid environment, whereas wheat and millet originated in the north due to its drier and colder temperature. The canal's connection to Chang'an, the Sui capital and the eastern end of the Silk Roads, was a significant milestone in the economic integration of overland trade as it eventually extended all the way north to Beijing. This section of the canal took seven years to build, and up to five million laborers—sometimes whole populations— were needed to complete the job. Anybody who refused to labour was subjected to physical punishment by an early version of the police force. The administrative and economic unification of the recently restored Chinese empire under the Sui was dependent on the Grand Canal. By enabling the government to tax the items being conveyed, the canal improved income generation while also making transportation of goods simpler. Because officials could now move more swiftly between the north and south and deliver messages more freely across the Chinese heartland, it also significantly increased communication and the efficacy of the administration. Another essential component of Sui's foreign strategy was the canal, which made it possible for Chinese soldiers in the north to reach Korea's frontiers, from where Yang Di began his fruitless invasion attempts. Ultimately, even with the Grand Canal's many advantages, the Sui was overextended during construction. Due to the enormous labour and material costs, the canal became a major source of resentment for the millions of Chinese workers who were compelled to ignore their families and farms in order to complete the construction. The combination of a natural disaster—the Yellow River flooded the North China plain, causing widespread starvation throughout the countryside—and a military setback—the Sui invasion of Korea was repulsed in 612—worsened the situation. Yang Di continued unfazed, launching a second invasion operation that ended only when the weary soldiers rose up in rebellion. During a time of unrest in the area, the emperor was slain. In 618, regional governor Li Yuan declared the establishment of the Tang dynasty and took the throne. Just as Islam sprang out of Arabia and stormed throughout North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and central Asia, the Tang Empire, which lasted until 907, came into being. Similar to the powerful Islamic empires that flourished in this era, the Tang fostered a cosmopolitan culture that was significantly enriched by broader global advancements. Members of the Sasanian royal family, for instance, were compelled to evacuate to the protection of the Tang court at Chang'an, at the eastern end of the Silk Roads, in 674 due to the oncoming wave of Arab troops from the west. Whole communities of merchants were moved by this event from Sasanian Persia to the Chinese capital, bringing with them a plethora of luxury commodities and exotic items, including Arab, Persian, and Central Asian music and dance, as well as silver artwork. The Tang aristocracy quickly acquired a taste for these products, and in order to keep up with the demand, an amazing industry of Persian-Arab-inspired goods and services was born. Trade links between the Tang and India flourished as a thirst for Persian-Arab civilization expanded, bringing new sciences, medicines, and mathematics to China. The principal towns of Tang China were the meeting point of these disparate cultural currents, and the presence of merchant groups comprising Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, individuals of the major Indian faiths, and a sizeable minority of Muslims quickly led to the creation of a diversified international culture. Completing the consolidation and expansion started by the Sui was one of Tang China's top concerns for the majority of its rule as the world's most powerful empire. The Tang launched a number of military expeditions into central Asia in order to achieve this. Their vast professional army was divided into two main divisions: a massive peasant infantry, numbering in the several million range and stationed in the interior, and an aristocratic cavalry, including around seven million soldiers, who engaged in regular combat with the mounted nomads of the Inner Asian Steppe. By the 750s, the Uyghurs—a Turkish-speaking tribal group that was the empire's most powerful military force—and other pastoral nomadic peoples from the steppes were becoming more and more dependent on Tang border forces. With time, Tang armies advanced into Tibet, Vietnam, and Manchuria—the region directly to the north of the Korean Peninsula. The Tang army ruled over a region nearly the size of the Islamic world at its height in the late ninth century, when it commanded over four million square miles. Among the Tang's early diplomatic triumphs was the restoration of Chinese sovereignty over Korea in 668, which led to a tributary arrangement with the Silla kingdom on the peninsula. Additionally, the Tang established diplomatic ties with Japan, which were so successful that Japan launched its "Great Reform" in 645, adopting all aspects of Tang culture, including Buddhism, Confucian bureaucracy, and imperial institutions (which the Silla also adopted). Several significant inventions in China, such as the first block printing method ever devised, contributed significantly to the expansion of Tang culture and were advantageous for publishing Buddhist texts. Similar to the Sui, the Tang accepted and advanced Buddhism, whose texts were typically distributed among students through handcopies made by scribes. The majority of regular people and even many elites were unable to obtain these works due to their rarity. However, Chinese artists came up with a method that included carving a text's mirror image onto a wooden block, adding ink, and pressing the block onto paper. The populace were able to access scriptures and other written works, which disseminated ideas from the elites. Right up until the end of the nineteenth century, block-printing was the predominant technique used to transfer pictures onto paper. Buddhism was significant before and after the Sui. In particular, two branches of Mahayana Buddhism saw explosive growth during the Tang period: Chan, which emerged during the fifth and sixth centuries but gained popularity during the Tang, and Pure Land, which had its roots much earlier in India and had followers in China since the fifth century. Amida (also known as Amitabha), the Buddha of the "pure land," or the uncorrupt plane of existence that followers believed they would attain upon their reincarnation, was the subject of a famous school of devotion in Pure Land Buddhism. Pure Land Buddhists believed that, similar to Hindu bhakti groups in India, achieving salvation did not need studying sacred writings but rather participating in universally accessible actions, particularly including the invocation of Amida's name. Chan Buddhism rejected the idea of individual devotion to a saviour, but like Pure Land, it deemphasized canonical study. Rather, in order to gain enlightenment, Chan Buddhism—better known in the West as Zen—emphasized the rigorous practice of meditation and studying the teachings of a Chan master, who endured severe sufferings while carrying out menial jobs and pondering paradoxical problems. While Pure Land Buddhism was more widely practiced by laypeople, Chan Buddhism was more austere and monastic in nature. However, the popularity of Buddhism in Tang China turned into a hotbed of conflict. The Confucian and Daoist officials of the Tang Empire, who claimed that Buddhism constituted an outside influence on the state, were threatened by hundreds of thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns, thus the empire clamped down on them in the middle of the ninth century. It was insufficient, even when this led to the deliberate dismantling of Buddhist monasteries and the seizure of their belongings. Thousands of temples and shrines were destroyed, over 4,000 monasteries were shut down, and hundreds of thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns were compelled to become secular during Emperor Wuzong's blatant persecution. Culturally, the state revived ancient prose forms and the ideas of Confucius and his adherents in an effort to eradicate the influence of Buddhism. There was a significant number of poetry written throughout the Tang era, much of it influenced by the dominant intellectual and religious traditions. For instance, Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism all had an impact on the poetry of the eighth-century poets Wang Wei, Li Bai (Li Bo), and Du Fu, many of whom could be memorised. Poetry travelled alongside China's religious and philosophical traditions via the Silk Roads throughout this time, initially to Korea and then to Japan. Because neither region yet had a written language of its own, fans studied the poets' works in Chinese. Every three years, a merit-based exam was required to gain entry into the Tang bureaucracy. This civil service exam, which was created during the Sui dynasty and was the first entirely written exam of its kind in history, assessed candidates' knowledge of Confucian and Daoist classics as well as their advanced writing abilities. While it was available to everybody in theory, women, sons of merchants, and those unable to pay for a classical education were not allowed to attend until the late Tang era. Due to their circumstances—which prevented them from taking time off from their fields to study—the majority of labourers were likewise barred. In the end, literary accomplishments or the influence of well-known families propelled people into positions of political authority. Contradictory patterns in interpersonal interactions and gender relations were also seen in Tang China. Emperor Gaozong passed the throne to Wu Zetian, his second wife, in 665 due to his illness. Wu maintained all of the actual authority in the realm, but she reigned as empress dowager and regent for her son after Gaozong's death in 683. As a devoted Buddhist, she established Buddhism as the official religion, gave scholars the task of writing biographies of well-known women, and in 690, she made the historic decision to establish the Wu Zhou dynasty (which should not be confused with the much older Zhou dynasty). Wu adopted the Buddhist title "Divine Empress Who Rules the Universe" three years later. Despite her intelligence and skill as a ruler, many saw her establishment of her own dynasty and the assumption of imperial titles as usurper. She immediately faced resistance, which led to her abdication and the Tang dynasty's restoration. Wu's rule was exceptional in China's patriarchal society. Nevertheless, the Tang Empire has been called China's "golden age" for women, possibly because of the nomadic peoples of the north and their mostly egalitarian culture, which fostered a similar mindset among the Chinese. Historians also cite the flourishing poetry writing culture of courtesans, the careers of Empress Wu and her daughter-in-law, Empress Wei, and the custom of Tang daughters marrying prominent foreign officials in diplomatic marriages to create political alliances as proof of the rising prominence of women. But the Tang legal system saw women as property, sumptuary regulations restricted what women could and could not wear, and aristocratic men maintained concubines. Early in the eighth century was the height of the Tang Empire. However, by the middle of the century, the empire's final collapse had begun due to both internal and external issues. The Tang were vanquished externally in 751 at the Battle of Talas River. The united Turkic and Arab troops of the Abbasid Caliphate, which had overthrown the Umayyads and was extending the boundaries of the Islamic empire far into central Asia, routed Tang forces there. Revolts within China in Manchuria, Yunnan (in the country's far south), and Korea diverted attention from the state and made it weaker. Then, in 755, the huge An Lushan revolt shook the Tang Empire. Under the leadership of Tang commander An Lushan, over 150,000 border men rose up against Emperor Xuanzong and the decadent court in Chang'an. China was financially and militarily depleted after the Tang took eight years to put a stop to the uprising. Although the empire was weak, it continued to exist for several decades until Chang'an gave over a significant amount of its military might and civic power to local warlords. After several internal battles, the Tang dynasty fell in 906, bringing about a period of instability until the Song ascended to power in 960.