41. For Taiwu, see WS 5.123. For Xiaowen, WS 7B.177, 31.743; and ZZTJ 141.4430. In the time of the latter, in fact, demands from the military budget forced the monarch to reduce the stipends given to peers (WS 7B.176); and made the Prince of Pengcheng feel a need to dip into his own fortune to help bail out the state, giving back a year’s worth of “the stipend of his fief, his salary as an official, and the ‘charity’ given him as a kinsman” of the imperial clan 国秩,职俸, 瞒恤: WS 21B.574; ZZTJ 141.4429.
42. WS 24.609; He, “Fu bing zhi qian,” 319.
43. As has been noted, the stirrup seems to have had a more far-reaching import in Europe than in East Asia: see Dien, “The Stirrup”; Lynn White, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964). For general discussion of the stirrup in East Asia, see also Dien, Six Dynasties Civilization, 334–36.
44. Yates, “The Horse in Early Chinese Military History,” 62–63.
45. Dien, “The Stirrup,” 37.
46. See Graff, Medieval Chinese Warfare, 42–43.
47. See note 7; and discussion of the Anak Tomb No. 3, dated 357, built for a man who fled the Murong into Koguryǒ, in the region that is now northern North Korea: So Tetsu (Su Zhe) 苏哲, “Goko Jūrokkoku Hokuchō jidai no shukkōto to roboyō” 五胡十六国·北朝 时代の出行图と卤簿俑, in Higashi Ajia to Nihon no kōkogaku, ed. Gotō Tadashi and Mogi Masahiro, 4 vols. (Tokyo: Dōseisha, 2002): 2: 115–120.
48. [domain], accessed 26 August 2019; and the same image in Roderick Whitfield, Susan Whitfield, and Neville Agnew, Cave Temples of Mogao: Art and History on the Silk Road (Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000), 19. For discussion of Cave 285, with inscriptions dating it to 538, 539, in the Western Wei period (535–557), see Ma De 马德, Dunhuang Mogao ku shi yan jiu 敦煌莫高窟史研究 (Lanzhou: Gansu jiao yu chu ban she, 1996), 67–69.
49. Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 667–68. An early example would be a fellow referred to in Wei shu as Mo Ti 莫题, a man of Dai, who in the very earliest years of the regime under Daowu was a “banner commander, who commanded guard troops 猖兵”: WS 28.683. For the apparently Serbi group from which he came, see Yao, Bei chao Hu xing kao, 122–24. In terms of the decimal units: needless to say, as with the units of every army, the theoretical number rarely matched the number on the ground.
50. Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 667–68; WS 103.2291.
51. David Sneath, “Introduction,” in Imperial Statecraft: Political Forms and Techniques of Governance in Inner Asia, Sixth-Twentieth Centuries, ed. David Sneath (Bellingham: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University and Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge, 2006), 9–10; Di Cosmo, “Ethnogenesis,” 47. Di Cosmo suggests that the ultimate origin may have been the Persian Achaemenids.
52. For the Mongols’ units of 1,000s and 10,000s, see Rachewiltz, Secret History of the Mongols, 1: 133–34, nos. 202–3, and 2: 762–63.
53. Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 666. It will be noted, however, that the Rouran also defined their 100-man units by a flag, in a way similar to that of the Taghbach: “1,000 men were a regiment, . . . [and] 100 men a pennon; [for each] pennon one man was established as leader” 千人为军，. . . 百人为幢，幢置帅一人: WS 103.2290.
54. For the Manchu banners, see Mark C. Elliott, The Manchu Way; The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001).
55. For the descent of the Han (Poliuhan) family, see Chen Lianqing 陈连庆, Zhongguo gu dai shao shu min zu xing shi yan jiu: Jin Han Wei Jin Nan bei chao shao shu min zu xing shi yan jiu 中国古代少数民族姓氏硏究: 秦汉魏晋南北朝少数民族姓氏硏究 (Changchun: Jilin wen shi chu ban she, 1993), 43–44. This is just one of a number of transcriptions of the same Xiongnu name. See Yao, Bei chao Hu xing kao, 136–38.
56. WS 51.1127. It needs noted here that Poliuhan Han “bore the pennon for the central army” 为中军持幢, from which we can infer that “pennons” did not just mark 100-man companies, but larger military units as well.
57. Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 154. See Zhang (Jin wei wu guan, 2: 680–81) on apparent earliest dates for establishment of the Huben. Though we don’t have a systematic description of the organization of the guards, Zhang has labored to recover what he can from anecdotes and snippets taken from various sources, and general statements can be given about their interrelations, such as that the Yulin were more prestigious than the Huben.
58. Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 697–98; on the fact that this was a separate, distinct group, not under the Yulin or earlier units, see 2: 702.
59. See, for instance, the story of “Big Thousand” Lai: WS 30.725.
60. Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 696, 702; Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 56. And see NQS 57.985, where the functions of the palace steward position are described. On the number of stewards, see Zhang, Jinwei wuguan, 2: 698.
61. Tang, Wei Jin Nan bei chao Sui Tang shi san lun, 193; Yan, Bei Wei qian qi zheng zhi zhi du, 154.
62. Such practices are found in other societies as well. See the comments by Armin Hohlweg on the appearance and disappearance of such units within the late Byzantine state (Beitr·ge zur Verwaltungsgeschichte des Ostr·mischen Reiches unter den Komnenen, 61), quoted in Marc C. Bartius, The Late Byzantine Army: Arms and Society, 1204–1453 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 272: a new ruler might doubt the loyalty of groups; there might be difficulties recruiting guards for certain units (particularly those based on ethnicity); an emperor might wish to create his own personal guard division.
63. Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 692, points out that a series of titles in Chinese translation (in this case, not transcription)—nei xing ling 内行领, nei xing zhang 内行常, nei xing zhang zhe 内行常者, nei xing a gan 内行阿痔—all apparently translate/transcribe the same original guo yu term.
64. See Zhang Qingjie 张庆捷 and Li Biao 李彪, “Shanxi Lingqiu Bei Wei Wenchengdi ‘Nan xun bei’” 山西灵丘北魏文成帝《南巡碑》 WW (1997.12): 72; and Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 713–45.
65. NQS 57.985; Zhang Qingjie 张庆捷 and Guo Chunmei 郭弃梅, “Bei Wei Wenchengdi ‘Nan xun bei’ suo jian Tuoba zhi guan chu tan” 北魏文成帝《南巡碑》所见拓跋职官初探, Zhongguo shi yan jiu (1999.2): 59–61. The reconstruction of huluozhen is by Shimunek, Languages of Ancient Southern Mongolia and North China, 151–52. Zhang Jinlong (Jin wei wu guan, 2: 717–20) has suggested that this term may refer to the Yulin or Huben; Boodberg (“Language of the T’o-pa Wei,” 227), on the other hand, has suggested that this was a reference to the “officer who girdled (the ruler·) with weapons.”
66. Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 716. The name lists on the stele are reproduced in many sources: see, e.g., Matsushita, Hokugi Kozoku taiseiron, 75–86. Di Nicola, “Aristocratic Elites,” 27, points out that the highest-ranking Xiongnu aristocrats had dual titles: “one was a title linked to a specific political and government post and the other was a generic military title.”
67. Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 682–83.
68. Thomas Allsen, The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 129. I will point out that Allsen is drawing here on Mencius. More blunt about the linkage between hunting and war would be the statement made by Ernest Hemingway, in his article “On the Blue Water” (Esquire, April 1936): “Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter.” One way to get a taste of this state of mind would be examination of the scenes of hunting (and war) on the carved panels of Ashurbanipal (r. 669–ca. 631 bce) that are kept in the British Museum, where showing “an image of vigor and authority,” “The King Pursues a Herd of Wild Asses with a Pack of Hounds,” or “Ashurbanipal, on Horseback, Kills a Lion with a Spear”: Gareth Brereton, ed., I Am Ashurbanipal, King of the World, King of Assyria (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2018), 72–73 figure 78, 71 figure 77. Such themes are pervasive—“The royal lion hunt,” the text tells us, “played a significant role in the artistic scheme of the carved reliefs of the North Palace.” Somewhat reminiscent of the written account of how in 391 Shegui made the north loop of the Yellow River “run red with blood,” on pp. 268–69, figure 279, of I Am Ashurbanipal, “The River Ulai Is Filled with Corpses, Horse Carcasses and Broken Chariots.” The organization and large scale of the Manchu hunt, in many ways similar to that of the Taghbach, is described in Mark Elliott and Ning Chia, “The Qing Hunt at Mulan,” in New Qing Imperial History, 66–83, esp. 77, where we are told that the hunt, as an “emblem of the warrior origins of the horse-riding, tiger-hunting Manchu nation,” had become “a sacred Qing institution,” for which, in both Chinese and Manchu, the Jiaqing emperor (r. 1796–1820) wrote a valedictory in 1807.
69. Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 401–6. Hunting would certainly fit in with “war and other types of conflict,” which according to Walter Pohl were the ways in which in early medieval Europe “a community acquired the capacity to act as a collective”: see his “Strategies of Identification: A Methodological Profile,” in Strategies of Identification: Ethnicity and Religion in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Pohl et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 45.
70. ZZTJ 115.3624.
71. See Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 682–83, for examples; and also Liu Meiyun 刘美云 and Wei Haiqing 魏海清, “Shou lie xi su dui Bei Wei qian qi zheng quan de ying xiang” 狩猎习俗对北魏牵期政权的影响, in Bei chao shi yan jiu, ed. Yin Xian (Beijing: Shang wu yin shu guan, 2005), 423–27.
72. WS 29.705. And see Zhang’s analysis of these events: Jin wei wu guan, 2: 682–83.
73. WS 113.2972.
74. BS 85.2844 (WS 87.1891). After his death, the person who seems to have killed the wise lord—Empress Dowager Wenming—bestowed upon the guardsman’s family 200 bolts of silk.
75. WS 30.725.
76. See Anthony D. Smith, “War and Ethnicity: The Role of Warfare in the Formation, Self Images and Cohesion of Ethnic Communities,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 4.4 (1981): 375–97. An excellent description of these ties is given in Junger’s Tribe, beginning with his definition of “tribe” as “the people you feel compelled to share your last bite of food with” (xvii); but it is perhaps summed up even more succinctly in the famous speech placed by Shakespeare in the mouth of Henry V at Agincourt: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother.”
77. Loosely based on the translation given by Kwa and Idema, Mulan, 3; though otherwise fine, “marched” has been removed from their translation, since the poem itself makes clear they were on horseback. This incorporation of the concept of xiao in the course of the evolution of the Mulan story within the Chinese world is an interesting example of remaking in the course of cultural borrowing.
78. For the role of members of the imperial house and cadet branches in the guard units, as both leaders and soldiery, see Liu, “Lun Bei Wei qian qi zong shi zai jin jun zhong de di wei ji zuo yong.”
79. WS 113.2974, 2.32; Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 688; Gao, Wei Jin Nan bei chao bing zhi yan jiu, 304. These groups are part of the 100,000 transported by Daowu.
80. WS 113.2983, 2985, 2988. See discussion of these recruitment issues in Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 681; and on p. 702, Zhang also cites an example of a palace steward recruiting High Carts (in this case referred to as Chile; BS 17.639 [WS 19A.450]). This expansion of recruitment, a very important issue, was, of course, true of the larger Wei armies as well, in which over the generations we see increasing numbers of Chinese recruited into the ranks. See Tang, Wei Jin Nan bei chao Sui Tang shi san lun, 190ff.
81. WS 30.730. Many other examples can be found of stewards leading their guard units out to war under the emperor’s command: Zhang, Jin wei wu guan, 2: 703.
82. WS 35.808.
83. He, “Fu bing zhi qian,” 327–30. The first major set of garrisons in Chinese territory were the “eight military headquarters” established by Daowu after the defeat of Later Yan: WS 58.1287.
84. On these see: Tang Zhangru 唐常孺, “Bei Wei nan jing zhu zhou de cheng min” 北魏南境诸州的城民, in his Shan ju cun gao (Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju, 1989), 96–109; and He Dezhang 何德章, “Bei Wei cheng ren yu nong geng” 北魏城人与农耕, in his Wei Jin Nan bei chao shi cong gao (Beijing: Shang wu yin shu guan, 2010), 346–54.
85. BS 16.617 (WS 18.429–30).
86. E.g., WS 54.1202.
87. For the garrison system in general, see Yan Gengwang 严耕望, Zhongguo di fang xing zheng zhi du shi: Wei Jin Nan bei chao di fang xing zheng zhi du 中国地方行政制度史: 魏晋南北朝地方行政制度, 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai gu ji chu ban she, 2007), 2: Chapter 11; and Pearce, “Land of Dai.”
88. Tang, Wei Jin Nan bei chao Sui Tang shi san lun, 194, stresses that the decline was relative, insisting that their station was still much better than the indentured military labor of the Jiankang regimes.
89. WS 38.688. He Ziquan describes preponderance of cavalry in “Fu bing zhi qian,” 318–20; and of occasional early use of Chinese infantry units on pp. 332–33.
90. WS 110.2857, describing development of corvée service; and He, “Fu bing zhi qian,” 334–35; Tang, Wei Jin Nan bei chao Sui Tang shi san lun, 198. Sagawa, “Bei Wei de bing zhi yu she hui,” 49, suggests it was first seriously implanted in 473 under Xiaowen’s father, Xianwen.
