Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Hunting with East of the Sea Green: Manchurian Gyrfalcons and Imperial Rule of the Khitan

Fri, March 17, 3:00 to 5:00pm, Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Floor: Lower Concourse, Grand Ballroom West

Abstract

For Khitan (907-1125) rulers, gyrfalcons of East of the Sea Green (chin. haidongqing) played a central role not only in hunting but also in their political conduct. Procured through levies on Manchurian subjects, most significantly the Jurchen tribes who later repelled the Khitan empire, these birds were only allowed for the two great royal lineages of the Khitan state: the imperial Yelü clan and its consort Xiao clan. Haidongqing were thus part of the ceremonial consecration of Khitan preeminence in relation to other non-Khitan subjects and to the pre-eminence of the royal family in relation to the rest of the social and political order. Starting with an examination of the general political geography of falconry on the tenth-century Eurasian steppe, this paper aims to comparatively investigate historical writings (official histories, diplomatic reports, travelogues, etc.) and material evidence (jade decorations, gold wares, tomb murals, paintings, etc.) to explore how haidongqing were central to the constitution of a multi-ethnic state founded on the production and reproduction of codified status divisions within and between peoples, in particular how the use of these birds facilitated the consolidation of internal relationships in the Khitan imperial elite and how they were associated with the legal regulation of status divisions which structured the Khitan socio-political order. This analysis of the prominence of haidongqing among the Khitan interlocks with a conception of birds of prey as a matter of political culture and symbols of power on the Eurasian steppe.

Author