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War Captives, Left-Behind Wives, and Buddhist Nuns: Female Migrants in Early Medieval China (4th–6th Century CE)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2021
Abstract
Using received texts and excavated funerary epitaphs, this article examines the intricacies of gender and migration in early medieval China by exploring women's long-distance mobility from the fourth century to the sixth century, when what is now known as China was divided by the Northern Wei and a succession of four southern states—the Eastern Jin, Liu-Song, Southern Qi, and Liang. I focus on three types of migration in which women participated during this period: war-induced migration, family reunification, and religious journeys. Based on this analysis, I propose answers to two important questions: the connection between migration and the state, and textual representations of migrants. Though the texts under consideration are usually written in an anecdotal manner, the references to women, I argue, both reveals nuances in perceptions of womanhood at the time and elucidates the contexts within—and through—which long-distance travel became possible for women.
- Type
- Early Imperial and Early Medieval China
- Information
- Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊 , Volume 5 , Special Issue 2: The State and Migration in Chinese History , July 2021 , pp. 227 - 244
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
1 There were several waves of southward migration from the Eastern Jin throughout the succeeding four dynasties in the south—the Liu-Song, Southern Qi, Liang and Chen (557–589 CE). According to the Chinese historian and cartographer Tan Qixiang's interpretation of a government record from 464 CE, the total increase in the population resulting from southward migration was around one million, approximately one-sixth of the registered population of the Liu-Song regime. See Tan Qixiang 譚其驤, “Jin Yongjia sangluan hou zhi minzu qianxi 晉永嘉喪亂後之民族遷徙,” in Changshui ji 長水集 (Beijing: Renmin, 1987), 199–223. The record from 464 CE is provided by the “Zhoujun zhi 州郡志 (Treatises on Provinces and Commanderies)” of the Song shu 宋書 (History of the [Liu]-Song dynasty). See Song shu (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1974), 35.1027–1209.
2 See, for example, Ebrey, Patricia, “China's Repeated Reunifications,” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences 70.2 (2017), 82–83Google Scholar.
3 See Hu, Axiang, “The Population Migration and Its Influence in the Period of the Eastern Jin, the Sixteen States, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties,” Frontiers of History in China 5.4 (2010), 576–615CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schottenhammer, Angela, “China: Medieval Era Migrations,” in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, edited by Immanuel Ness (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), vol. 2, 995–1004Google Scholar; Wen-Yi Huang, “Negotiating Boundaries: Cross-Border Migrants in Early Medieval China” (PhD diss., McGill University, 2018).
4 Female migrants have not been widely studied in pre-modern Chinese migration and gender studies. The few exceptions include Hu, Ying, “Re-Configuring Nei/Wai: Writing the Woman Traveler in the Late Qing,” Late Imperial China 18.1 (1997), 72–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fong, Grace, “Authoring Journeys: Women on the Road,” in Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008), 85–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mann, Susan, “The Virtue of Travel for Women in the Late Empire,” in Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China, edited by Goodman, Bryna and Wendy Larson (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 55–74Google Scholar.
5 See Hu, “The Population Migration and Its Influence”, Schottenhammer, “China: Medieval Era Migrations”, and Huang, “Negotiating Boundaries,” especially chap. 2.
6 The fourth-century work Baopuzi 抱朴子 (The master who embraces spontaneous nature) shows that southern women attended weddings and funerals, visited relatives, went on excursions, and traveled frequently to Buddhist temples. See Baopuzi waipian jiaojian 抱朴子外篇校箋, annotated by Yang Mingzhao 楊明照 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1991), 25.616–619. Evidence also suggests that many elite women had opportunities to accompany their husbands, sons, fathers, or even brothers from post to post. For example, the wife and two daughters of the Liu-Song official Xie Hui 謝晦 (390–426 CE) traveled with him from the capital Jiankang 建康 (today's Nanjing; in the lower reaches of the Yangzi River) to his post in Jiangling 江陵 (in modern Hubei province; situated in the middle reaches of the Yangzi River). Accordingly, Xie Hui had to send them back to Jiankang when the sisters were later bestowed on two Liu-Song princes. See Song shu 44.1349.
7 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 比丘尼傳校註, annotated by Wang Rutong 王孺童 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2006), preface.
8 Wei shu (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1974), 43.964.
9 Wei shu 43.965–966.
10 Wei shu 47.1062.
11 Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑑 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1956), 120.3791.
12 Wei shu 66.1476
13 Wei shu 70.1551.
14 See Jennifer Holmgren, “The Making of An Elite: Local Politics And Social Relations in Northeastern China during The Fifth Century A.D.,” Papers on Far Eastern History 30 (1984), 1–79.
15 Wei shu 47.1062.
16 Wei shu 55.1219.
17 Wei shu 61.1369–1370.
18 For her epitaph, see Zhao Junping 趙君平 and Zhao Wencheng 趙文成, He Luo muke shiling 河洛墓刻拾零 (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan, 2007), 28.
19 Liang shu 梁書 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1973), 50.701.
20 Nan shi 南史 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1975), 49.1219.
21 The reason for her crossing is not explicitly stated in our sources, but given that her natal family hailed from Licheng, the administrative seat of Qi province 齊州, and that several of her family members held posts in Qi and Qing 青 provinces, including her uncle, Shen Tan 申坦 (d. ca. 457 CE), who was Regional Inspector of Xu province 徐州 (administrative seat Pengcheng 彭城) from 454 CE to 457 CE, Lady Shen may have lived in Qi province by the time the Northern Wei took Licheng. For Shen Tan's biography, see Song shu 65.1725.
22 According to Edwin Pulleyblank, Gaoche (lit. the High Carts) refers to a Turkish people spread out over Western Mongolia, the Altai, and Zungaria in the fifth and sixth centuries. See Edwin G. Pulleyblank, “The ‘High Carts’: A Turkish-Speaking People. Before the Türks,” Asia Major, third series 3.1 (1990), 21–26.
23 For Lady Shen's story, see Wei shu 86.1883.
24 Wei shu 94.2019.
25 For the inscription of Lady Yang, see Zhao Chao 趙超, Han Wei Nanbeichao muzhi huibian 漢魏南北朝墓誌彙編 (Tianjin: Tianjin guji, 2008), 126.
26 For the ranking of Neisi, see Wei shu 13.321.
27 Her noble title is “District Mistress of Gaotang” (Gaotang xianjun 高唐縣君). See Zhao Chao, Han Wei Nanbeichao muzhi huibian, 126.
28 The deceased was Liu Asu 劉阿素 (454–520 CE), who served as Gongnei dajian 宮內大監 before she died. For her epitaph, see Zhao Chao, Han Wei Nanbeichao muzhi huibian, 114–115.
29 Wei shu 94.2019.
30 For Lady Li's biography, see Wei shu 13.331. Lady Li's Wei shu biography does not mention her father's official post under the Liu-Song dynasty, but the biography of her brother Li Jun 李峻 (n.d.) in the Wei shu says that their father, Li Fangshu 李方叔 (n.d.), was a Governor of Jiyin 濟陰. See Wei shu 83a.1824.
31 Lady Li's hometown was Meng county, Liangguo (present-day Meng city, Anhui province), which was located north of Shouchun. According to the biography of Li Hongzhi 李洪之 (d. ca. 492 CE) in the Wei shu, Lady Li and her younger sister were both taken to the north by the prince Tuoba Ren 拓拔仁 (d. 453 CE). See Wei shu 89.1918.
32 For discussions of this practice, see Holmgren, Jennifer, “The Harem in Northern Wei Politics, 398–498 A.D.,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 26.1 (1983), 71–96Google Scholar; Tian Yuqing 田餘慶, Tuoba shi tan (xiuding ben) 拓跋史探 (修訂本) (Beijing: Sanlian, 2011), 1–49.
33 Lady Xie was from the Xie family of Chenjun 陳郡謝氏, which stood at the top of the social hierarchy in the south, along with the Wang family of Langye 琅邪王氏, to which her husband belonged.
34 See Wei shu 63.1412. It should be noted that Lady Xie and her three children went to the Northern Wei at nearly the same time as her husband's younger brother and nephews, but no evidence indicates whether the two groups traveled together. The brother's and nephews’ escape is recorded in the epitaph of Wang Song 王誦 (481–527 CE), one of Wang Su's nephews. For Wang Song's epitaph, see Zhao Chao, Han Wei Nanbeichao muzhi huibian, 241–243.
35 Her entombed stele was discovered in 1925 in Luoyang. For the epitaph of Wang Puxian, see Zhao Chao, Han Wei Nanbeichao muzhi huibian, 69–70.
36 It is unclear when Wang Shao's entombed stele was discovered, but we know that it was found in Luoyang city. For Wang Shao's epitaph, see Zhao Chao, Han Wei Nanbeichao muzhi huibian, 82–83.
37 The Chinese is 極罰.
38 On the two-wives situation, see Lee Jen-der, “Women and Marriage in China During the Period of Disunion” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 1992), 175–186; Tsai Hsing-Chuan 蔡幸娟, “Fenlie shidai renmin de hunyin yu jiating: yi Wei Jin Nanbeichao wei kaocha zhongxin 分裂時代人民的婚姻與家庭: 以魏晉南北朝為考察中心,” Chengda lishi xuebao 21 (1995), 68–71; Tang Qiaomei, “Divorce and the Divorced Woman in Early Medieval China (First through Sixth Century)” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2016), 128–69.
39 This was a special but by no means new phenomenon in the period under discussion. It certainly happened in the pre-Qin period (before 221 BCE), but it did not become salient until the end of the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE). One example is Huang Chang 黃昌 (fl. 140 CE). He was a native of Guiji 會稽 (modern Shaoxing, Zhejiang province). When his first wife went to visit her parents, she was abducted on the way and then sold to someone in the Shu 蜀 area. Years later Huang Chang went to Shu as the new governor and accidentally reconnected with his first wife. Huang Chang immediately took his first wife back even though he had remarried. See Hou Hanshu 後漢書 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1966), 77.2497. Many two-wives cases occurred because war separated married couples who then lost contact with each other. One example is Wang Bi 王毖 (n.d.). According to the Jin shu, “in the first year of the Taikang (280–289 CE) period, Sima Mao 司馬楙 (d.311 CE), Prince of Dongping, sent in a memorial in which he asked: ‘My Administrator Wang Chang's father Wang Bi originally lived in Changsha and had a wife Xi. At the end of the Han, Wang Bi was sent to the Central Kingdom as emissary. At the time the Wu rebelled. Wang Bi [stayed on and] served the Wei as the Gentlemen of Palace Gate. He was separated from his former wife Xi, and remarried Wang Chang's mother.’” See Jin shu 晉書 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1974), 20.635–639. Translation after Tang, “Divorce and the Divorced Woman,” 133–34. Of note, xi 息 is a surname but could also mean “son.” Some two-wives cases happened for political reasons. For example, Jia Chong 賈充 (217–282 CE) and Liu Zhongwu 劉仲武 (n.d.). Their first wives were both sentenced to exile after their fathers were killed while participating in coups against Sima Shi 司馬師 (208–255 CE) in 254 CE and 255 CE. According to the legal code of the Cao-Wei (220–266 CE), a married woman would be implicated by her natal family members who committed treason. See Jin shu 30.926. Thus, both Jia Chong and Liu Zhongwu remarried after their first wives were banished to the borderland.
40 See Luoyang qielan ji jiaoshi 洛陽伽藍記校釋, annotated by Zhou Zumo 周祖謨 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010), 3.109. For a detailed discussion of Wang Su's marriages and the poems exchanged between Lady Xie and the princess, see Tang, “Divorce and the Divorced Woman in Early Medieval China,” 143–69.
41 The Chinese is 孝文馮皇后，宣武髙太后逮諸夫嬪廿許人，及故車騂將軍尚書令司空公王肅之夫人謝氏，乃是齋右光禄大夫吏部尚書之女，越自金陵，歸蔭天闕。以法師道冠宇宙，德兼造物，故捐（合）拾華俗，服胸法門，皆為法師弟子. Shi Sengzhi's funerary epitaph says that Shi Sengzhi died in 516 CE, which indicates that Lady Xie was still active at that time. For Shi Sengzhi's funerary inscription, see Zhao Junping and Zhao Wencheng, He Luo muke shiling, 20. For a full English translation of Shi Sengzhi's epitaph, see Stephanie Balkwill, “Empresses, Bhikṣuṇīs, and Women of Pure Faith: Buddhism and the Politics of Patronage in the Northern Wei” (PhD diss., McMaster University, 2015), 328–33. Note that Balkwill mistranslated one part of Shi Sengzhi's inscription: “Madam Xie wife of Wang Su who was the General of the Carriages and Horses, and the Minster of Works. There was even the daughter of The Secretariat of the History Section, Zhuang, who was also the Great minster of the Glowing Blessing of the Office of Fasting of the Right. All of them returned from Jinling to hide away in the Imperial Palace” (故車騎將軍尚書令司空公王肅之夫人謝氏, 乃是齊右光祿大夫吏部尚書莊之女, 越自金陵, 歸蔭天闕). My translation is: “Lady Xie wife of Wang Su who was General of the Carriages and Horses, Director of the Department of State Affairs, and the Minister of Works. Lady Xie was the daughter of [Xie] Zhuang, who was the Grand Master of the Right for Glowing Blessing and the Minister of the Personnel Bureau of the [Southern] Qi. She returned from Jinling to submit to the Imperial Palace.”
42 For example, she intervened in the domestic violence case of her sister-law Grand Princess Lanling 蘭陵長公主 (ca.480-ca.520 CE) and her husband Liu Hui 劉輝 (d.525 CE). For a detailed analysis of this case, see Lee Jen-der, “The Death of a Princess: Codifying Classical Family Ethics in Early Medieval China,” in Presence and Presentation: Women in the Chinese Literati Tradition, edited by Sherry Mou (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 1–37.
43 See Wei shu 70.1555.
44 According to Barbieri-Low and Yates, some of the precedents “were customary procedures that acquired the force of law over time, while others did not have the effect of law but were used as supporting examples or models for making decisions, particularly in administrative matters, in selecting, transferring, appointing, controlling, or otherwise managing officials.” See Anthony J. Barbieri-Low and Robin D. S. Yates, Law, State, and Society in Early Imperial China: A Study with Critical Edition and Translation of the Legal Texts from Zhangjiashan Tomb No. 247 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 85.
45 Wei shu 61.1361.
46 Wei shu 37.857.
47 Wei shu 89.1919. The translation follows Tang, “Divorce and the Divorced Woman in Early Medieval China,” 141.
48 Wei shu 24.634.
49 Yan Gengwang 嚴耕望, Wei Jin Nanbeichao fojiao dili gao 魏晉南北朝佛教地理稿 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2007), 57; 118–21; 130–31.
50 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 2.95.
51 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 2.53.
52 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 2.70.
53 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 2.92.
54 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 3.145.
55 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 3.141.
56 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 3.132 and 4.208.
57 See Liu Shufen, “Art, Ritual, and Society: Buddhist Practice in Rural China during the Northern Dynasties,” Asia Major 8.1 (1995), 46.
58 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 2.88.
59 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 1.15.
60 See Luckhardt, Courtney, “Gender and Connectivity: Facilitating Religious Travel in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries,” Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 44.1 (2013), 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
61 See Wang Su 王素 and Li Fang 李方, Wei Jin Nanbeichao Dunhuang wenxian biannian 魏晉南北朝敦煌文獻編年 (Taipei: Xinwenfeng, 1997), 142.
62 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 4.183.
63 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 2.113.
64 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 3.149.
65 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 2.92; 2.113; 3.125; 3.133; 3.139; 3.150; 3.159.
66 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 1.15 and 2.48.
67 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 4.208.
68 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 3.124
69 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 3.149.
70 See John Kieschnick, “Buddhist Monasticism,” in Early Chinese Religion, Part 2: The Period of Division, edited by John Lagerwey and Pengzhi Lü (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2009), 560.
71 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 1.35–36.
72 Kieschnick, “Buddhist Monasticism,” 561.
73 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 3.160; 4.209.
74 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 2.48 and 3.133.
75 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 3.138; 3.141; and 4.208.
76 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 2.53.
77 Wei shu 114.3038.
78 Wei shu 114.3041. Translation modified from Hurvitz, Leon, Treatise on Buddhism and Taoism, an English Translation of the Original Chinese Text of Wei-Shu CXIV and the Japanese Annotation of Tsukamoto Zenryu (Kyoto: Jimbunkagaku kenkyujo, Kyoto University, 1956), 85Google Scholar.
79 See Liu, “Art, Ritual, and Society,” 27–34.
80 See Hongming ji jiaojian 弘明集校箋, annotated by Li Xiaorong 李小榮 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2013), 12.705. Translation modified from Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 261.
81 Hou Xudong 侯旭東, “Shiliuguo Beichao shiqi sengren youfang ji qi zuoyong shulue 十六國北朝時期僧人游方及其作用述略,” Jiamusi shizhuan xuebao 4 (1997), 31–32.
82 See Lily Hong Xiao Lee, “The Emergence of Buddhist Nuns in China and Its Social Ramification,” in The Virtue of Yin: Essays on Chinese Women (Brodway: Wild Peony, 1994), 52.
83 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 3.125.
84 Translation modified from Lives of the Nuns: Biographies of Chinese Buddhist Nuns from the Fourth to Sixth Centuries: A Translation of the Pi-Ch‘iu-Ni Chuan, translated by Kathryn Tsai (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994), 56.
85 Biqiuni zhuan jiaozhu 2.92.
86 Huan Xuan once attempted to order all Buddhist monks to pay homage to the emperor. Huan Xuan had first argued this case with the eight ministers at court, sending letters back and forth. Perhaps unable to settle the issue, Huan Xuan then sought Huiyuan's opinions in a letter along with his correspondences with the eight ministers, which indicates that he trusted Huiyuan's judgment and Huiyuan's status in the Buddhist community of the South. Huiyuan's reply has been recorded in the sixth-century Buddhist anthology Hongming ji 弘明集 (Collection of the propagation and elucidation of Buddhism). He contended that the Sangha should not pay obeisance to the ruler. For Shi Huiyuan's letter, see Hongming ji jiaojian 12.690–94.
87 Szonyi, Michael, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers: Fidelity and Frugality in the Overseas Chinese Divided Family Before 1949,” Journal of Chinese Overseas 1.1 (2005), 60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
88 Grant, Beata, “Severing the Red Cord: Buddhist Nuns in Eighteenth-Century China,” in Buddhist Women Across Cultures: Realizations, edited by Karma Lekshe Tsomo (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 93Google Scholar.
89 Huang, “Negotiating Boundaries,” 36.