Representing Power in Ancient Inner Asia: Legitimacy, Transmission and the Sacred

460 Pages·2010·16.067 MB·English

by  Isabelle Charleux, Grégory Delaplace, Roberte Hamayon, Scott Pearce

REPRESENTING POWER
IN ANCIENT INNER ASIA
Center for East Asian Studies
Western Washington University
516 High Street
Bellingham, WA, USA
98229064
Studies on East Asia, Volume 30
Representing Power In Ancient Inner Asia:
Legitimacy, Transmission And The Sacred,
edited by Isabelle Charleux, Gregory Delaplace,
Roberte Hamayon, and Scott Pearce
The Center for East Asian Studies publishes scholarly
works on topics relating to China, Japan, Korea and
Mongolia
Managing Editor:
Scott Pearce
REPRESENTING POWER IN
ANCIENT INNER ASIA:
LEGITIMACY, TRANSMISSION
AND THE SACRED
edited by
Isabelle Charleux, Grégory Delaplace,
Roberte Hama yon, and Scott Pearce
Center for East Asian Studies,
Western Washington University
©2010
by Center for East Asian Studies
Western Washington University
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval, or transmitted in any form
or by any means without prior permission in writing from
the copyright-holder, or as expressly permitted by law.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Representing power in ancient Inner Asia : legitimacy,
transmission and the sacred / edited by Isabelle Charleux,
Gregory Delaplace, Roberte Hamayon, Scott Pearce.
p. cm.
(Studies on East Asia ; v. 30)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-914584-31-5
1. Power (Social sciences)—Asia, Central—History—
Congresses. 2. Legitimacy of governments—Asia,
Central—History—^Congresses. 3. Asia, Central—
Politics and government—Congresses. 4. Symbolism
in politics—Asia, Central—Congresses. 4. Mongols—
History—To 1500—Congresses. 5. Power (Social
sciences)—Asia, Central—Terminology—Congresses.
I. Charleux, Isabelle. II. Delaplace, Gregory. III.
Hamayon, Roberte. IV. Series.
DS327.5.R465 2010
Manufactured in the United States of America
Table Of Contents
Preface..........................................................................................ix
Peter Golden
Figures.............................................................. following p. 260
Introduction...................................................................................1
Isabelle Charleux, Grégory Delaplace and
Roberte Hamayon
CHAPTER 1
The Acquisition, The Legitimation,
The Confirmation And The Limitations
Of Political Power In Medieval Inner Asia.......................... 37
Denis Sinor
CHAPTER 2
Legitimizing A Low-Born, Regicide Monarch:
The Case Of The Mamluk Sultan Baybars
And The Ilkhans In The Thirteenth Century........................61
Denise Aigle
CHAPTER 3
Explaining Rituals And Writing History:
Tactics Against The Intermediate Class...............................95
Christopher P. Atwood
CHAPTER 4
Rivalry Between Mongols And Tayici’ut For
Authority: Kiyat-Borjigin Genealogy..................................131
Tatiana D. Skrynnikova
CHAPTER 5
To Impress The Seal:
A Technological Transfer......................................................159
Françoise Aubin
CHAPTER 6
From Ongön To Icon: Legitimization,
Glorification And Divinization Of Power
In Some Examples Of Mongol Portraits............................ 209
Isabelle Charleux
CHAPTER 7
Nurhaci’s Names.....................................................................261
Nicola Di Cosmo
CHAPTER 8
Siilde. La formation d’une terminologie
militaro-politique chez les nomades
médiévaux d’Eurasie..............................................................281
Sergei V. Dmitriev
CHAPTER 9
Structure Of Society And Power In The
Ancient Inner Asian Nomadic Empires:
Xiongnu And Xianbei............................................................307
Nikolai N. Kradin
CHAPTER 10
Une « dualité » du pouvoir ? Empire terrestre
et inspiration divine dans la légende arabe
d’Alexandre et de Khidr.........................................................343
François de Polignac
CHAPTER 11
Pax Mongolica / Pax Mongolorum......................................357
Tseveliin Shagdarsürüng
CHAPTER 12
The Headless State In Inner Asia:
Reconsidering Kinship Society And
The Discourse Of Tribalism..................................................365
David Sneath
Index.........................................................................................417

Preface
Peter B. Golden
Rutgers University
Inner Asia, Central Eurasia or Central Asia, the core region of
the zone described as the ‘heartland’ and ‘pivot of history’ in the
early twentieth century, has remarkably long been a stepchild of
global historical and cultural studies.1 Politically, parts of the
region for a time in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
attracted popular attention in connection with Great Power
rivalries, e.g. the Anglo-Russian contest, often termed ‘the Great
Game,’ and most recently Soviet and American involvement in
Afghanistan. The break up of the Soviet Union and the
emergence or re-emergence of independent Central Asian
polities from Mongolia to Turkmenistan has again brought the
region as a whole to the fore.
Over the last two or three decades, there has been,
comparatively speaking, an explosion of scholarly work in the
English-reading world dealing with Inner Asia’s history,
cultures, socio-political forms of organization and its living as
well as extinct languages (Soghdian, Bactrian and Tokharian, to
mention only a few of the latter), both on a macro-regional scale1 2
1 See Halford J. Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History,’ a
paper presented to the Royal Geographic Society in 1904 and published
as ‘The Geographical Pivot of History,’ The Geographical Journal 23
(1904), pp. 421-37 and expanded as part of his Democratic Ideals and
Reality (New York: Holt, 1919, reprinted in Washington, D.C.:
National Defence University Press, 1996). See the introductory
comments to the book’s 1996 edition for the history of the reception of
Mackinder’s ideas, in particular its embrace by strategists and
practitioners of Realpolitik.
2 See Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge Histoty of Early Inner Asia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), which covers the
period from Antiquity to ca. 1200, now followed by Nicola Di Cosmo,
Allen J. Frank and Peter B. Golden (eds.). The Cambridge History of
Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University
IX
Preface
and in numerous studies of individual peoples, periods,
languages and cultures. The American Historical Association
(belatedly) accorded ‘official’ approval to this area of study as a
bona fide field by including it for the first time in the third
edition of its Guide to Historical Literature that appeared in
1995.3 European scholarship, more closely attuned to
developments in the region, had an older tradition of interest in
and studies about this complex world of steppe and sown.4
Thanks to new discoveries (in particular of inscriptions and
coins) and increasingly more sophisticated and demanding
modes of analysis of already known archaeological, historico-
literary and ethnographic sources, many new perspectives and
orientations have emerged, as Representing Power amply
demonstrates. Indigenous sources have become available in
exemplary text editions and translations, aiding both specialists
and those studying Inner Asia from the perspective of the lands
on its periphery. The field, which has a steep initiation fee in
terms of languages that a scholar has to acquire, has always
welcomed, indeed, encouraged interdisciplinary approaches and
scholars often wear different hats, those of the anthropologist,
archaeologist, historian and philologist, depending on the data
available to them.
Inner Asian political traditions and attendant ideologies,
especially those that accented heavenly mandated rulership and
appeared to imply programs of world conquest have attracted
sporadic attention. A more continuing pattern of engagement
with some of these issues of mentalité and governance began in
Press, 2009), which focuses on the period from ca. 1200 to the latter
part of the nineteenth century. The third volume will deal with the
modem era. See also the History of Civilizations of Central Asia,
published under the auspices of UNESCO (Paris: UNESCO, 1992-
2005), under international teams of editors, in six volumes, in seven
books.
3 The American Historical Association Guide to Historical Literature,
3rd edition, ed. Mary Beth Norton (New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995), 2 vols.
4 See Denis Sinor, Introduction à l ’étude de l ’Eurasie Centrale
(Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1963).
x