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The Death of the Last King of Hsi-Hsia
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This article first appeared in the MES Journal Vol 18/19, 2004/5
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This tradition is a Buddhist tale illustrating beliefs of the Central Asian ancestors of the Dene in the early decades of the thirteenth century, and the long association of the Toba kings of Hsi-Hsia with Buddhism. From 386 - 557 A.D., part of North China was ruled by the great Wei dynasty of the Toba. When the dynasty fell, some of the Toba retired to the Sino-Tibetan border, and for the next five centuries ruled over the Ch'iang, or Tang-hsiang tribes. Shortly after the fall of the T'ang, in 939 A.D., they moved into In-hia, the Ordos region, to establish the independent kingdom of Hsi-Hsia. Before the end of the next century, the kingdom expanded to include most of the Ordos, North Shensi and all of Kan-su.1 Throughout the whole period, 386-1227 A.D., nearly eight and a half centuries, these Toba rulers were looked upon as reincarnated Buddhas. Because Buddha was considered to be one of the incarnations of Vishnu, the third god of the Hindu Triad of Mahayana Buddhism, these kings were also viewed as incarnations of Vishnu.2. Before examining the Dene tradition concerning the death of the last King of Hsi-Hsia, we must know something of the circumstances that led to his execution. After more than thirty years of studying Dene traditions, the rise and fall of Asiatic empires, their people and cultures, I firmly believe that the Dene ancestors were men of the tattered remnants of the Hsi-Hsia army - men who faced the certainty of execution when the inevitable surrender to the Mongols took place. In 1218 A.D., the King of Hsi-Hsia received into his kingdom a small number of fugitive Altai Naiman, whose Khan was the “Man Without Country” of Dene tradition. These were followed by men of the Southern Tarim, mainly warriors of the Mounted Regiments driven eastward by the tumans of the Mongol General, Jebe. Finally came fugitives from the uprising of ten thousand men of the Liu-sha regiment of Qara-Khodja in the Northern Tarim Oases of Turfan. In 1225, another very small band of Naiman managed to escape into Hsi-Hsia. All were incorporated into the Hsi-Hsia army. The Altai Naiman and the men from Qara Khodja became the ancestors of the Kutchin tribes; those from the Southern Tarim were the ancestors of the Apache the Navaho and the sixteen small offshoots of the Pacific Coast. All other Dene tribes are descended from conscripts and regulars from all the towns and prefectures of Hsi-Hsia. All Kutchin traditions tell of the experiences of the Naiman and the men of Qara-Khodja. All other Dene traditions relate the progression of events that destroyed the Kingdom of Hsi-Hsia - of events that led to the death of its last King. According to Howorth, he was executed in September of 1227 as he emerged from his capital to give himself over to the enemy. The first of the Dene traditions concerning the Mongol destruction of Hsi-Hsia tells of the raid of 1205 in which the young son of the Commander of Kan-chou was captured and adopted as a son by Genghis Khan. During this raid, that of 1207 and the full-scale invasion of 1209-10, many women along the northern Kan-su border of Hsi-Hsia were raped by the Mongol soldiery and left to bear unwanted children. By 1225-27, the male children of these women were of military age and more. The Dog-Rib tribe of the Dene are descended from the half-Mongol sons of Hsi-Hsia women. Other events of those years in Dene tradition are the flooding of the Mongol camp, negotiations between the Imperial tutor and the King of Hsi-Hsia, delivery of the tribute, the Hsi-Hsia raid on Jurchen Chia-chou, and the withdrawal of the Mongol army across the Gobi. The Mongol campaigns in North China 1211-1218 and the escape of the Naiman Khan to the protection of the Buddha King of Hsi-Hsia have their place in Kutchin lore because the few surviving Naiman joined the Kutchin tribes. The next events bring us to the siege of Sa-cu (Tun-houang) in 1224 A.D., and from there to the extremely cold winter of 1225-26, the incident of the owl and the magpie, and the white camel hair apparel of the Hsi-Hsia scouting units. Then comes the intercession of the adopted son of Genghis Khan that saved the people of Kan-chou. The last battle in which the Hsi-Hsia army faced the Mongols at Halachar is also there. Throughout these events rings that ancient cry of despair, “All the People are Dead”.3 The siege of the Hsi-Hsia capital began in January or February of 1227 A.D. and continued until a month or more after the death of Genghis Khan in mid August of that year. Probably it was after Genghis Khan's adopted son, accompanied by Li Hsien's Queen, left Chung-hsing for the Mongol Headquarters at Chęn-jung in the southern Ordos that the King arranged the escape of what was left of his army. Using the multiple decked river boats that could carry both men and horses, they departed from the capital at night to avoid detection by the siege force. In bidding farewell to the Naiman Khan, the leader of the fugitives, the King gave to him the symbols of his Buddha power and spoke of his forebodings:
They set out, but soon found their passage almost blocked by the thousands of dead bodies that had come down river from the terrible carnage that had accompanied the capture of towns along the river above Chung-hsing. Of the ten million people of the area, only half a million survived the slaughter. Nevertheless, after-many vicissitudes, the men reached a place which they called “There where the human heart alone lives”. Without doubt, this was the headquarters of their kinsmen, the rebel Khitan, the only peonle in East Asia still resisting surrender to the Mongols.5 It was here that word came of the death of Genghis Khan and the execution of the King of Hsi-Hsia. The arrival of the news is not related in Western prosaic style, but in the language of Buddhist and Central Asian thought:
This means that upon death, the blood of the reincarnated Buddha King of Hsi-Hsia had retained the vault of Heaven, Buddha's place in the firmament. The Man Without Country was the Naiman Khan, who, twenty years previously, had lost his country to Genghis Khan. “Grandfather” is a polite Central Asian designation for a man of higher status which the King of Hsi-Hsia was in relation to the dispossessed Naiman Khan.7 Since the fugitives appear to have left Chung-hsing almost immediately after the negotiations for surrender ended, they knew nothing of the murder of Genghis Khan by the Queen of Hsi-Hsia, nor of her suicide that followed. Those details were kept secret and were recorded in the Secret History of the Mongols and appear to have survived only in a Mongol document translated by Russian scholars.8 What does appear in Dene tradition is an account of the wound Genghis Khan is said to have received at the Battle of Halachar.9 After that he did not again lead his tumans against Hsi-Hsia strongholds. The fugitive ancestors of the Dene believed that his death was caused by the wound he received at Halachar. Dene names for the King of Hsi-Hsia will lead us to the account of his death given in their traditions. Most of these names are Buddhist; only two are secular. He Who Sees Before and Behind refers to Buddha's power to see whatever went on, whether before or behind. Buddha is sometimes portrayed with two or more faces, sometimes with more than one head.10 He Who Sits at the Zenith also refers to the Buddha status of the King of Hsi-Hsia. One of the cults of Buddha portrayed him as the Supernal Sun whose place was at the Zenith, that is, as the Sun-Bird of Central Asia. “In the Zenith hangs the Supernal Sun”.11 Stump of a Tree is a name used by the King of Hsi-Hsia to describe his helpless situation in 1227 A.D. at the Battle of Halachar and when he bade farewell to his Naiman friend who left Chung-hsing with remnants of the army. The name comes from the description of Buddha as the Tree of Life. By August of 1227 the end of all hope had come of any further resistance to the Mongols. In metaphorical language, the Tree of Life had become the Stump of the Tree of Life.12 The Wise is a name for Vishnu. In the later Mahayana School of Buddhism, Buddha was held to be one of the reincarnations of Vishnu, the third god of the Hindu Triad who had a number of manifestations. In one, Vishnu was looked upon as the Universal Intellect, the repository of all Knowledge and Wisdom. In the Mahabarata and the Puranas, Vishnu is the Supreme God and Creator, encompassing all the powers of Brahma, Siva, and, of Buddha.13 This is why Dene Shamans (the word means Buddhist Priest)14 drew upon the power of Siva in profound sleep, and upon Vishnu in the dream. However, by the late 19th century, after more than six hundred years in Northwest America, their knowledge of the Buddhist faith of their ancestors had shrunk very considerably. The Man With the Double-Face appears to come from the well-known vacillating propensity of the Ch'iang (the Tang-hsiang) which the Kings of Hsi-Hsia constantly emulated to their own perceived advantage. Their subjects were known as the Double-Faced Ch'iang.15 The Kings of Hsi-Hsia had preserved their independence for 200 years by such methods. It is more than possible that as rulers of the Double-Faced Ch'iang, the Kings of Hsi-Hsia were known as The Man with the Double-Face. Inkfwin Wetay is a double name identifying the origins of the Kings of Hsi-Hsia. The Dene of Fort Good Hope used it for the Supreme God and Creator of their Divine Triad. This means that the Dene ancestors regarded the Buddha Kings of Hsi-Hsia as a reincarnation of Vishnu who was the Supreme God and Creator of Central Asian Buddhism. In the first part of the name, Inkfwin, Ink fwi(n). In is an abbreviation of In-hia, a name for the Ordos region of the Yellow River.16 After the break-up of the T'ang dynasty, about 939 A.D., the Hsi-Hsia line of the Toba entered the Ordos (In-hia) and established the base for the independent kingdom of Hsi-Hsia. In the next century, it expanded to include most of the Ordos and Shensi and all of Kan-su. The last syllable, hia, was dropped as was the case with many Central Asian place names, e.g., Kan, Su, Sa, etc, from which chou was dropped. In this case, it was discarded because a different ending was desired. It means In-hia, the Ordos of the Yellow River. Kfwi(n), transcribed from sound, is the Dene word for Head, and Kfwi-detele for Bald Head, but Kfwi alone, could have that meaning.17 The first Toba Emperor had the name, Shi-fkwi, and Toba was associated with the nickname, Bald Heads.18 The final n is the archaic Turkish plural suffix giving to Kfwin the meaning, Bald Heads.19 It is well to keep in mind that as early as 125 B.C., the Chinese envoy to the Western Regions found that the people of Central Asia spoke dialects that were full of borrowings from other languages. Inkfwin, In-Kfwin, means Bald Heads of In-hia, that is, they were Toba of the Ordos of the Yellow River. Wetay, transcribed from sound, appears to be Wei-t'ai, the Great Wei, that is, the Bald Heads of In-hia were descended from the Toba of the Great Wei dynasty 385-557 A.D. Kun-yan is a temporal title for the kings of Hsi-Hsia. It combines a Chinese title bestowed upon the Kings of Hsi-Hsia by the Sung, and a Northeast Tibetan adjective which follows the noun as was customary in Tibetan. Kun, Kün, Kiun is a transliteration of the Chinese Chün - Lord, Ruler;20 yan is a transcription from sound of hyan - superior, and, by extension, of the Chinese term, exalted.21 Kun-yan means Exalted Lord, Exalted King. Nayeweri is the last of the Dene names for the King of Hsi-Hsia. As with the others, this name, too, was transcribed from sound. It is composed of the Sanskrit name, Nârâya-na, and the Northeast Tibetan verb, hwer-hi. The Hares of McKenzie River were a tribe of six bands of Chinese, Yueh-che, Toba, and Uighur ancestry. Their Na-Kotcho Kutchin neighbours were mainly Turco-Uighur, Yueh-che, Wu-sun, and Chinese. In Chinese, there is no r sound; in Tarim speech, the r, especially the medial r, is often, though not always, suppressed; in Turco-Uighur the r was habitually suppressed.22 Nârâya-na had the sound Nâyâ-na. When another ending was used to convey a new meaning, the last syllable was dropped, and in combinations of that sort, Nâyâ-na was reduced to Nâyâ.23 Northeast Tibetan had the r sound, but it had its variations.24 Weri, again, transcribed from sound, is the Northeast Tibetan verb, hwer-hi, hwe-hi, do, make, create.25 Weri has the sound of hwer-hi. Hi, with variations between e and ehi, can be a sentence-ending particle following consonants, as it does here, or it can be extra-metrical.26 It is unknown in ordinary Tibetan, but was common in Northeast Tibetan dialects along the Sino-Tibetan border, where, after 557 A.D., Toba tribes lived among the Ch'iang for up to 700 years. Nârâya-na-hwer-hi had the sound Nâyâ-wer-i. Nayeweri is Nârâya-na Create, and implies the true function of Vishnu in his incarnation of Nârâya-na, the Creator. Nayeweri is the Dene name for the Buddha King of Hsi-Hsia as a reincarnation of Vishnu in his manifestation of Nârâya-na. According to Mahayanist belief, when Vishnu sleeps, the universe dissolves into a state represented by the primal ocean. The rest of the manifestation becomes the serpent, Vestige, coiled and floating on the boundless deep. He is then called. Nârâya-na - Resting on the Waters, Dwelling Place of Man, Fountain of Knowledge. In this incarnation, Vishnu is in that dream state in which, as Dene tradition affirms, he was thought to have the power to make things happen at his will - to control events, to do, to make, to create.27 In referring to their Divine Triad of Vishnu, the Creator, Durga, the Great Earth Mother of Central Asia, and Maitreya as the Compassionate One, Dene tradition states, “They go to bed, sleep, dream, and all happens at their will”.28 The many references in 19th century Dene tradition to the acquisition of power through sleeping and dreaming may date back to pre-Buddhist Shamanism in Central Asia. If so, it was incorporated into the Buddhism of the Dene ancestors, and was continued by their descendants on this continent. In 1986, an Ankara journalist said that the Turks (who were Buddhists for many centuries before they turned to Islam) still hold this belief. While Nayeweri, He Who Created by Thought, describes Vishnu as the Universal, all-pervading Intellect, the Dene phrase, An-Nayeweri means He Who is Awaited.29 This belief comes from the Central Asian ancestors of the Dene in a new incarnation of Vishnu as the awaited new Buddha, Maitreya, appointed by Buddha, himself, as his successor. The cult of Maitreya appeared in Central Asia around the fifth century A.D. At Qara-Khodja, a temple was dedicated to Maitreya in 469 A.D. But, it was during the struggle of the Chinese, the Tibetans and the Turks for supremacy in Central Asia that Maitreya became the hope of the indigenous population who were subjected to all the attendant miseries. It was then that the cult reached the height of its influence on Buddhist thought. The ingrained effect these teachings had on the Dene ancestors is clear from William Lucas Hardisty's account of the belief of their Peel River descendants on the hereafter, which exactly parallels that of Central Asians in those troublous times:
It should be noted here, that like Central Asian Buddhists, the Dene believed in the reincarnation of the Dead in human or animal form."31 The doctrine of the awaited new Buddha, Maitreya, reinforced earlier Buddhist teaching on the after-life. Eberhard, on the introduction of Buddhism into China where missionaries were regarded as second-rate persons, wrote:
The beliefs recorded by Hardisty at Peel River in 1845 bear a striking resemblance to Eberhard’s account of Central Asian Buddhist teachings brought by Buddhist missionaries into China in the first millennium of our era. Nayeweri is a Hare tradition. Father Petitot cited six nineteenth century contemporary Chinese names among the Hares.33 Their six band names relate to Kha-ba, the Hsi-Hsia name for Liang-chou at the head of the caravan route. The Tat’lit of Peel River a lso had a Chinese connection, but only one Peel River family survived the epidemics of the 1860's. Other Dene moved into the empty hunting grounds. The Buddhism of the Kan-su section of Hsi-Hsia was Chinese Buddhism with beliefs recorded by Eberhard. What we have here is the Buddhist doctrine of the hereafter implanted in the fifth century A.D. by the hope of the coming of a new Buddha, Maitreya, whose mission was to save the oppressed from the evils of their condition. It can be understood that after more than six centuries of separation from their Central Asian culture, the Dene remembered very few of the conventional names of their Buddhist gods. Nayeweri is a name for Vishnu, An-Nayeweri for Maitreya. Now, let us examine the tradition that tells of the journey of Li-hsien, last King of Hsi-Hsia to the abode of the Dead in the month of September, 1227 A.D.
The tradition begins by introducing us to Nayeweri, He Who Created by Thought. As seen above, he is Vishnu in his incarnation of Nârâya-na, the Creator. Vishnu became a major deity with the doctrine of his descent to earth in various incarnations, including that of Buddha, to save mankind from wickedness and suffering. How, then, could his look have the power of giving death? According to Danielou and Dowson, the powers of the Hindu Triad were thought to be interchangeable. As Creator, Vishnu was also Brahma; Siva and Vishnu were thought of as interdependent, as Creator and Destroyer, that is, there is no life without death, and no death without life. Like Siva, Vishnu had the power to give death.35 At this point in the first paragraph, the narrator switched from Buddhism to Nestorian Christianity. Father Petitot recorded a number of rites practised by the Dene which he thought were shamanist. All but one are Nestorian Magic ceremonies; that one is Buddhist.36 At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Nestorian Church was second only to Buddhism in the Eastern Tarim and the Kingdom of Hsi-Hsia. While Islam was strong in the Western Tarim, it barely had a foothold in the East. The Manichaean Church, so powerful in the ninth century, had declined and lost its following. In their history of the Liao Dynasty, Wittfogel and Fëng wrote of the combination of Buddhist and Nestorian ideas and symbols.37 The Nestorian Old Testament hero, David, who saved the Israelites from the Philistines, has a place because he had an affinity to the King of Hsi-Hsia who had saved the male ancestors of the Dene from death by assisting them to escape from Chung-hsing before its surrender to the Mongols. The name Manes appears in the first paragraph and is used four times in the tradition. Manes is a Latin word for Souls of the Dead and comes from the Italo-Celtic dialect of the Little Yueh-che. [The Kutchin words for Souls of the Dead are Nini dhut Vunkkyo Kwundie.] In the struggle between Chou and Chin, the Secretary of State for Chou explained a rite being performed by the enemy – “They are offering prayers to the Manes of the deceased rulers of Chin.” In Sui times, the Chinese Princess, who was the wife of a Turkish Khan, expressed great sorrow at the utter extinction of her family Manes.38 Also, in the first paragraph, is an account of how Nayeweri journeyed to the abode of the Dead in the autumn of 1227 A.D. But, it is not the Buddhist abode of the dead that is described; it is the Chinese Yellow Springs which had similarities to the Buddhist underground town of Yama. According to ancient Chinese belief, in autumn, the Manes, the souls of the dead wandering on earth, the migrating birds, including the Thunderbird of Chinese and American Indian belief, and the waters of the rivers, returned, at the approach of winter, to an underground cavern called the Yellow Springs. There, they were imprisoned until the warmth of spring permitted them to return again to their own country.39 It was not death that brought Nayeweri, last King of Hsi-Hsia to the underground home of the Dead. It was autumn. Li-Hsien, last king of Hsi-Hsia was put to death in September of 1227 A.D., as he emerged from Chung-hsing to give himself over to the Mongol destroyers of his kingdom. With the long-continuing influence of Chinese ideas in Central Asia, the Buddhist population could not have failed to note the similarity of the Chinese concept of the Yellow Springs and the town of Yama, the Buddhist god of the Dead. Since this is a Hare tradition, the use of the name, Manes, and the reference to the Yellow Springs affirm the Chinese connection of the Hare bands of the Dene which was noted by Father Petitot in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The use of the syllable, Kha, as a preface to some of their band names means that they came from Kha-ba (Liang-chou) in the kingdom of Hsi-Hsia. In 1845, William Lucas Hardisty wrote of the difference in the dialects of the Hares and other McKenzie Valley tribes, and those of the closely related Chipewyan, Kutchin, and the Ko-yu-kon and Khotana of Alaska.40 Edward Sapir, formerly Director of the National Museum of Canada and later a linguist at Yale University, wrote that Dene dialects are related to the Sino-Tibetan-Siamese group.41 Nayweri is a name related to the Sanskrit of Buddhism and to the Northeast Tibetan of the Sino-Tibetan border. The second paragraph describes Nayeweri's arrival at the Buddhist town of Yama. Its location far to the south, at the foot of heaven, is in keeping with the Buddhist idea of the earth as a flat disc, surrounded by water, and the sky as an inverted bowl resting on its edges.42 The Kutchin (Loucheux) think that the earth is flat, disc-shaded, surrounded by water, and resting upon that element. They thought of the firmament as h emispherical and resting upon the edges of the terrestrial disc. A prop, ya-ottcha-ni’ay, placed obliquely kept it in place.43 Coomaraswamy calls the prop Ya-kash.44 When Kutchin warriors went into battle, they shouted to the enemy, “Go South! Go South!”45 What they were actually saying was “Go South to the town of Yama!” In the 1950's, Peel R iver informants said that they used to think that after death, the dead journeyed south to their final abode, but to get there, had to hurry past two fierce monsters. This idea comes from the Rig Veda and is not found in the Mahabarata or the Puranas. In the extreme south, the sky bowl touched the edge of the earth disc. There, in a great underground cavern, was the town of Yama.46 Nayeveri remained outside the cavern for a time observing its surroundings and activity - the cave wherein the town of Yama was situated, its rivers, the musicians and dancers, the exclusion of the burned dead. The musicians and dancers within the cave uttered an idea that was common to Buddhists, Manichaeans, and Nestorian Christians - that in heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage. The exclusion of the burned dead, those cremated, was an idea of the Hinayana School of Buddhism, which held that salvation was for Buddhist monks and upper classes; prisoners of war, slaves and common people were cremated and remained outside the town of Yama.47 Mahayana Buddhism did not eradicate entirely the Hinayana view, which may have been rooted in the superior status of the male ancestors of the Dene. According to the tradition, when Nayeweri (Vishnu, Buddha, the King of Hsi-Hsia) entered the town of Yama, he proceeded at once to the abode of the Manes. But Nayeweri was a god, and was not reincarnated in human or animal form, but resumed his status of Creator and his function of the Preserver god of Mahayana belief. In the last paragraph of the tradition, is a mixture of Buddhist and Nestorian ideas that a ppear to have been linked with the Central Asian epic, Gesar of Ling, which dates back to the eighth or ninth century A.D. Like Jesus and Gesar, Nayeweri remained in the ground for two days and two nights and came to life again on the third day.48 The Power that brought about his resurrection was that of the Nestorian Lamb of God, the power of the Nestorian Jesus. These views of the ultimate fate of Nayeweri, King of Hsi-Hsia, are in keeping with what Wittfogel and Fëng wrote of the combining of Buddhist and Nestorian Christian ideas, and natural in Dene lore.49 Nayeweri was Vishnu in his incarnation of Nârâya-na. He was the indestructible, supreme god. Like Jesus and Gesar, he rose from the grave on the third day; unlike them, but like Vishnu, he placed his foot on earth, air and sky and once more went striding through the Universe as the compassionate god of Mahayana Buddhism.50 Although Father Petitot was deeply interested in Dene origins and recorded the many Buddhist ideas held by the Dene, he failed to recognize them as Buddhist. The reason is clear. In the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth, Western scholars had little knowledge of Buddhist beliefs and none at all of the peculiar Buddhism of Central Asia. The works of Dawson, Zimmer, Moor, Campbell, Coomaraswamy, belong to the mid-twentieth century; those of Danielou and the Stutleys are very recent. The great archeological expeditions to Central Asia belong to the early twentieth century. As late as the 1960s, many documents brought back from Central Asia still awaited translation. Scholars like Pelliot, Stein, Levi, Hambis, Getty, Le Coq, Henning, Bailey, Burrow, Thomas, and others, belong to the twentieth century. Father Petitot’s work needs to receive careful review in relation to the Mongol invasions. Dene dialects should be treated as spoken language capable of varied interpretations - not as a script. Father Petitot (1838-1917) in preserving what remained in the memory of the Dene, after 600 years of separation from their roots in Central Asia, may have rendered them a service surpassing that of his missionary associates. It is important that the Dene should know of their ethnic origins.
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