Posted on 04/20/2004 4:34:11 PM PDT by blam
Curtain raised on mysterious ancient ethnic regime in NW China
www.chinaview.cn 2004-04-20 14:48:08
YINCHUAN, April 20 (Xinhuanet) -- The mystery of the ancient ethnic Xixia regime that once reigned over part of northwest China will be revealed as some 100,000 pages of historical documents of the regime collected in Russia become accessible to Chinese experts for the first time.
"We will get the complete copy of the Heishuicheng manuscripts collected in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies (IOS) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, all precious firsthand historical materials for the research on the history of the Xixia Dynasty (1038-1227)," said Du Jianlu, director of the research center of Xixia studies of Ningxia University, northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
A regime in northwest China, the Xixia Dynasty established by Dangxiang, a branch of the Qiang nationality, an ancient ethnic group in China, had been balancing the power of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) in central China and the Liao Dynasty (916-1125)in northeast China, and then the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279)in south China and the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) in central and northeast China respectively.
But the history of such an important regime remains a mystery to Chinese historians because of the lack of historical materials.
Unlike other regimes in China's history, Xixia has no official historical documents written by successive regimes as most evidence of the regime was destroyed by the Mongolian soldiers whooverthrew the Xixia Dynasty after six invalid wars and later unified China again and established the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).
At the beginning of the 20th century, Pyotr Koslov, a Russian commander, discovered the Heishuicheng city site in the desert of today's north China's Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, a desolated city of the Xixia Dynasty.
At the site, Koslov excavated a large amount of cultural relicsand documents and sent them to Russia, among them the precious manuscripts on Xixia Dynasty.
"Now about 100,000 pages of documents of the Xixia Dynasty werecollected in Russia, covering 80 percent of the total documents unearthed by Koslov," said Jing Yongshi, a research member with the Academy of Social Sciences of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
"For years, Chinese experts had to look for clues of the Xixia Dynasty from the less than 10 percent unearthed documents collected in China, which severely restricted China's Xixia studies," said Jing.
As for Jing as well as many Chinese historians on Xixia studies,access to all the 100,000 pages of Xixia collected in the IOS is agood news for them to see the real face of the mysterious dynasty.
The opportunity was obtained when China offered funds and experts for the repair of thousands of pages of the manuscripts collected in the IOS.
"The repair work will cost us three years and some 10 million yuan (1.2 million US dollars," said Wu Jianwei, director of SocialAnthropology and Ethnology Research Institute with the Second Northwest University for Minorities in Ningxia.
Among those documents include the oldest typographic presswork and a large amount of manuscripts on politics, military affairs and culture of the regime.
"Those firsthand materials will be strong basis for writing a history of the Xixia Dynasty, as all documents of the regime collected in China are printing sutra," said Du Jianlu, director of the Xixia Research Center in Ningxia University.
Now the most strong evidence of the Xixia regime is the cone-shaped tombs in the northern desert of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Also called the "Oriental Pyramids", those tombs are the destination of nine of all twelve emperors of the Xixia Dynasty. Enditem
Professor Li Fanwen, an authority on the research of the Xixia (Western Xia) civilization, will published "The General History of Xixia" which comprises the highest achievements in the field later this year.
Li's monumental works also include "Xia-Mandarin Dictionary", " Northern Chinese Dialects in Song Dynasty" and "Studies on Identical Sounds".
Xixia, an ancient kingdom that existed a thousand years ago in the northwest part of China, disappeared mysteriously like the Mayan Culture, leaving a question mark in world civilization history.
Ironically, studies on the remote Xixia history, which is an important part of Chinese history, have been based outside China for a long time.
The birthplace of Xixia studies has long been recognized as Russia where a great amount of historical records and relics of the Xixia culture were discovered in 1909.
Such remarks as "Xixia studies in Japan or Russia" often embarrass Chinese scholars.
"We must preserve the precious cultural legacy," said Professor Li, adding that he wants to tell the world "although China started the research comparatively late, Chinese scholars are confident at taking the lead in the research because it is our own history."
But it's easier said than done, said Li, also a visiting professor at a number of prestigious universities including Beijing University, Nanjing University and Fudan University.
The Xixia kingdom, established by a Dangxiang clan in the 11th century, was short-lived, with a history of only 190 years, before the fierce Mongolian army troops razed it to the ground.
"The Xixia culture was then severely damaged, with few books and records remained," Li said.
What adds to the difficulty in understanding the Xixia history is the abstruseness of Xixia characters, which were named "words from heaven."
For nearly half a century, Li exerted his utmost effort to work on a series of academic books including the 500,000-word "The Northern Chinese Dialects of the Song Dynasty (960-1279)" and the 700,000-word "Studies on Identical Sounds of Ancient Chinese".
Li was also in charge of compiling "The General History of Xixia", which synthesizes a great amount of unearthed relics and archaeological records. According to Li, it will be a milestone in China's research on Xixia studies and will play an important role in international studies on Xixia.
"Understanding Xixia characters, to me, is only the first- stepping stone to final success," Li said, "My ultimate goal is to complete a thorough study system on the General History of Xixia and to pass on my knowledge to the youth."
Li's 40-year endeavor in studying of the mystery of the ancient kingdom is deeply touching. His love for the "words from heaven" began in 1955, when he was an undergraduate at the Central China University for Nationalities and happened to come across some Xixia characters while reading a piece of ancient relic paper by chance.
Despite opposition from his relatives and even a divorce from his wife, he carried on his life-long journey in China's barren and desolate west.
In 1972, encouraged by the late Premier Zhou Enlai, who was interested in Xixia studies, Li began to stay at the excavation sites day and night to keep up with the firsthand information.
He spent seven years near the mausoleums, scrutinizing 3,270 tombstones. The note cards he made numbered more than 30,000, weighing nearly 100 kilograms.
Afterwards he devoted his time to the compilation of the 1.5 million-word "Xixia Mandarin Dictionary", of which 800,000 characters were finished under oil lamps in tents near the mausoleums.
For phonetic notation of the dictionary, he scaled mountains and crossed streams to visit the posterity of the Xixia people.
Nowadays, Li still rushes about in Taiwan, Japan and Russia collecting historical records, and making academic exchanges with his overseas counterparts.
In order to popularize knowledge on the Xixia civilization, he is now planning to publish a simplified Xixia-Mandarin dictionary.
Beijing University, Nanjing University and Fudan University are inviting Li to tutor graduate students, and he will choose one of them, to "pass his knowledge on".
"The cultural legacy must be preserved, and I will devote my life to Xixia research." Li said.
What exactly does this mean?
1. That the wars were not valid [legitimate]?
2. That the wars were fought by a bunch of disabled soldiers?
Don't know. Remember this has been translated at least once.
Perhaps like some of those manuals for the VCRs when they first came out. I always thought that those manuals were translated from the Norwegian by a Korean.
Language difficulty is a two way street. After many years of attempting to master Thai, I am very capable of delighting friends with my "American thinking" statements. A more serious point would be that it is not possible to get a very deep understanding of a culture without understanding the language and thus the way of thinking.
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