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E-book The Economy of Western Xia : A Study of 11th to 13th Century Tangut Records

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Penilaian

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Western Xia (1038–1227) was a dynastic empire in medieval China, based in the city of Xingqing, later Zhongxing (modern-day Yinchuan of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region). At its height, the Tangut imperium encompassed most of Ningxia, Gansu, northern Shaanxi, western Inner Mongolia, as well as parts of today’s Qinghai and Xinjiang.In the eyes of a historian, one of the most crucial aspects of a bygone empire is its socio-economy. However, when Mongol officials in the Yuan government followed the Chinese historiographical convention to compile chronicles for the preceding Song, Liao and Jin dynasties, they left the history of Western Xia alone unattended. Although the History of Song, History of Liao and History of Jin devoted chapters to the Tanguts, they offer a far too concise account of so complex a regime. This lack of chronicling also means the absence of any specific historical treatise on various aspects of the Tangut society, notably the genre of economic history, known in Chinese historiography as the Records of Food and Goods (Shihuo Zhi). It is also not surprising that references to Western Xia in Chinese archives are made mostly in the contexts of dynastic changes, military conflicts, and inter-state relations between the Song, Liao, Jin, Huihu (Uyghur) and Tubo (Tibetan) regimes. Very little is addressed or even known about the socio-economic history of Western Xia. In the meantime, most of the scarce narratives on the Tangut economy available to historians have been exhausted and regurgitated into common knowledge by Tangutologists throughout the past decades. As early as the 1980s, Wu Tianchi offered a com-prehensive and commendable analysis of the Tangut economy in his Xixia Shigao (A History of Western Xia), which was based on surviving literatures documented in Chinese archives.1 Further progress was made in 1994 when Qi Xia and Qiao Youmei published their study, Liao Xia Jin Jingjishi (An Economic History of Liao, Xia, and Jin Dynasties), where the Dangxiang Tangut economy is discussed within the compass of a chapter.2 The ensuing years, however, wit-nessed a stagnation in this field of study. Handicapped by a remarkable lack of primary sources, experts in Tangut Studies struggled to break the ground. As a result, our understanding of many aspects of the Tangut economy remained vague, if not altogether void.In the early 20th century, a team of Russian explorers discovered a large pile of manuscripts at the site of Khara-Khoto (part of modern-day Ejin Banner, Inner Mongolia) in north-western China, most of which are written in the Tangut script. The Russians took the entire corpus home, a tragic loss of pre-cious archaeological finds for the Chinese. Nonetheless, this event proved a key catalyst in the birth of the modern field of Tangutology.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

950 SHI t

Penerbit

China : BRILL., 2021

Deskripsi Fisik

602 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9789004461321

Klasifikasi

950

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

History of Asia

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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