Central and Eastern Asia, 400 – 1200 C.E.

I. The Sui and Tang Empires, 581 – 755 C.E.

A. Reunification under the Sui and Tang

1. The fall of the Han dynasty in China, 220 C.E., left a power vacuum.

2. That vacuum was filled by many small kingdoms with various political styles.

3. The Sui dynasty was distinctive in that it had a strong political influence from Buddhism, Daoism, Nestorian Christianity, and Islam.

Sui Dynasty

4. The Sui (581 – 681 C.E.) unified China again since the Han dynasty.

5. Prior to this, China was politically fragmented.

6. The Sui conducted a lot of improvements such as the Grand Canal, which connected the Yellow River in the north to the Yangzi River in the south.

The Grand Canal

B. Buddhism and the Tang Empire

1. In 618 C.E., Li Shimin (lee shir-meen) ended Sui rule and created the Tang Empire.

2. The Tang rulers politically used Buddhism by expanding westward.

3. They considered themselves to be bodhisattvas – enlightened individuals who postpone nirvana to help others achieve enlightenment.

4. This type of Buddhism is referred to as Mahayana Buddhism which is popular in East Asia.

5. Faith in Bodhisattvas allowed the religion to absorb local gods and goddesses into Mahayana sainthood.

6. The spread of Buddhism in Central and East Asia was fostered by trade and the westward growth of Tang China.

Tang Dynasty

C. To Chang’an by Land and Sea

1. The Tang emperors located their capital at Chang’an which connected to the south via roads and the Grand Canal.

2. Chang’an was also the destination for ambassadors and students.

3. The purpose was the tributary system – independent countries acknowledge the supremacy of the emperor based in China by sending tribute.

4. During the Tang dynasty, the city of Chang’an had probably reached to over a million people.

5. Market roads, major long-distance roads, caravan routes, sea routes, and canals all brought people and commerce toward Chang’an.

II. Fractured Power in Central Asia and China, to 907

A. Reaction and Repression

1. By 840 C.E., the Tang Empire decided to crush the economic influence of Buddhist monasteries.

2. The deeply rooted Confucius traditions of China grew weary of “foreign” influence.

3. Buddhism was pointed to as proof of this influence.

4. One of the reasons for this crackdown dealt primarily with the tax exemptions given to monasteries.

5. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people had entered monasteries and nunneries.

6. Tang rulers were also worried about how Buddhism allowed women to play a role in politics. This brought into question the Confucian idea of family.

B. The End of the Tang Empire

1. The Tang decline can be attributed to (1) the extent of the empire and (2) a complex tax collection system.

2. The disintegration of the Tang’s political system led many would be dictators to chance a takeover.

3. The most devastating uprising was the Huang Chao rebellion of 879 to 881.

C. The Uigur and Tibetan Empires in Central Asia

1. The original homeland of the Turks was in the northern part of modern day Mongolia.

2. Eventually, they migrated south and then west to Central Asia and then to Anatolia.

3. Between the Han and Tang dynasties, the Turks were in Central Asia.

Turkic Migration

4. One of these Turkic groups who came to dominate in Central Asia was the Uigurs.

5. Under the Uigurs, Central Asias’s great cities of Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent enjoyed a literate culture with strong ties to both the Islamic world and China.

6. They adopted the Sogdians’s syllabic script to the writing of Turkic.

Uigur Empire

7. Tibet at this time was critically positioned at the meeting point of China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Central Asia.

8. The Tibetans took the Indian alphabet and learned mathematics, astronomy, divination, and cultivation from both China and India.

9. Tibetan kings encouraged the growth of Buddhist religious establishments.

III. The Emergence of East Asia, to 1200

A. The Liao and Jin Challenge

1. Immediately after the overthrow of the last Tang emperor, a new state emerged in the north called Liao (lee-OW).

2. They were made up of an ethnic group called the Kitan.

3. They established their rule in what is now Beijing.

Liao

4. In the western part of China, another state emerged called the Tangguts.

5. They called themselves the Tangguts to show their connection with the former Tang dynasty.

6. They were made up of the Minyak peoples who are closely related to the Tibetans to the south.

7. By 960, a new dynasty emerged in central and southern China known as the Song.

8. The Song had made an alliance with the Jurchens destroying the Liao capital in Mongolia renaming the dynasty Jin.

9. The Jin turned on the Song pushing them south of the Yellow River.

Song Dynasty

Song and Jin

B. Essential Partners: Korea, Japan, and Vietnam

1. Korea, Japan, and Vietnam were very much like their Song counterparts.

2. Agriculture was the primary economic activity.

3. These three East Asian cultures resembled Tang China with a blending of both Confucian ideas and Buddhist philosophy.

4. The state of Korea centralized in 668 C.E. when the Silla conquered its neighbors and brought the Korean peninsula under its control.

5. When the Tang dynasty fell, so to did the state of Silla.

6. The peninsula was united under the ruling house of Koryo (KAW-ree-oh) in the early 900s.

Korea

7. Like Korea, Japan’s early history was actually recorded by the Chinese.

8. Japan was politically fragmented due to geographic reasons similar to Greece.

9. The Japanese unified sometime in the 4th or 5th centuries possibly due to horse-riding warriors from Korea.

Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku

10. Vietnam had contact with the Chinese as early as the 3rd century B.C.E.

11. Vietnam itself was split into two separate kingdoms, Annam and Champa.

12. The Champa kingdom had more cultural similarities with India and Malay then did the Annam people who were closely linked to the southern Chinese.

Annam and Champa

Map of Central and East Asia