At the beginning of the last century, a missionary from Belgium, Colvin, came to inner Mongolia. In an ancient tomb looted by stolen tomb robbers, Colvin found a heavy stone slab. On this stone slab, an ancient script appeared that was very different from Mongolian, Manchu, and Chinese. The missionaries copied these texts and went around looking for professionals, but no one could tell where they came from.
Later, these words were made public by Belgian missionaries. For a time, historians at home and abroad became interested in these bizarre text symbols and wanted to interpret the secrets hidden in the stone slabs. According to Chinese historians, What Colvin found was a Twelfth-century Khitan tomb. So, is the text on this stone slab a long-lost Khitan script?
Combined with the records of the literature, after the founding of the Liao State, the Khitan people already had their own script. Unfortunately, these scripts gradually disappeared after the khitan nation disappeared. A stone slab that allows people to regain memories of the Khitan nation. In later years, archaeologists have discovered a number of Khitan tombs in the north of China, and found funerary items with Khitan characters recorded from them.
At the end of the 1980s, the archaeological team made a major discovery in Tongliao City. In an ancient tomb where khitan princesses are buried, archaeologists have found a large number of Khitan artifacts that are 800 years old. Although the remains of the tomb owner in this ancient tomb have been eroded and decayed by the years, the silver silk clothing and gold mask worn by the tomb owner are telling people about the noble status of the tomb owner before his death.
In addition, in this ancient tomb, there are a large number of jade products, metal products, these exquisite handicrafts, all prove that the Khitan people at that time had the world's leading forging and carving technology. Before that, people remembered the Khitan as a barbaric nation that started out on nomadism and war. Apparently, the discoveries in the tombs overturned the conventional wisdom that the Khitan Dynasty had a thriving culture no less than that of other civilizations of the same period.
Like the difficult symbols on the stone slabs, the Khitan people are extremely mysterious. Linguists explain that the word "Khitan" is a Chinese transliteration of the Khitan language, and the original meaning of these two words is "pickaxe iron". In the Khitan language, the word "Khitan" also means solidity and loyalty.
In the Book of Wei, this nomadic people living on horseback is recorded for the first time. According to the literature, the Khitans and the Mongols had a highly similar way of life. At one time, in the north, where the Khitan tribes were lined up, the Various Khitan forces fought for their own battles, fighting for land and resources. It was not until the birth of Apaoji that these northern tribes were unified and integrated.
Since then, the Khitan people have ceased to be scattered and scattered, but have become a whole - the Khitan people. In 916 AD, Apaoji established the State Order based on the nation. Thirty-one years later, the Khitan state was officially renamed "Great Liao". Whether in real history or in martial arts novels, the country has had a period of prosperity. During the most powerful period of the Liao, its territory stretched from Lake Baikal in the north to the north of the river in the south.
The Liao dynasty was located north of the Central Plains and competed with the Song Dynasty in the south. In the past two hundred years, the two countries have broken up and negotiated peace several times. Even if it was as strong as the Northern Song Dynasty, it was repeatedly suppressed by the Khitan and could only rely on the annual tribute in exchange for peace.
How powerful was the Khitan at that time?
Because of the occupation of the ancient Silk Road, when foreign countries in Eurasia traded with the Central Plains, they could not establish communication with the Song Dynasty and could only do business with the Khitans. Therefore, at that time, most of the central and western Eurasian countries mistakenly believed that the Central Plains Dynasty had changed hands, and the Khitan had become the true master of the Central Plains. Therefore, to this day, Western countries still call China "China". You know, at the beginning of its birth, this word was taken from the harmonic sound of "Khitan". Therefore, the Khitan people have great roots with Chinese culture, and they are also part of the ancient Chinese people.
Although the Khitan was once as strong as it was, the rise of the Khitan nation before that was quite tortuous. As early as the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Khitan people had settled in the north. Like other nomadic peoples, the restless Khitans coveted the rich products of the Central Plains, often plundering the borders and even invading the Central Plains. However, the Sui and Tang dynasties were strong, and the Khitan failed to take advantage of the two Central Plains regimes. During the Sui Dynasty, the Khitans tried to enter the Central Plains, but the ambitions of the Khitans were snuffed out in the cradle by the Sui army.
During the Tang Dynasty, although the Khitan took advantage of the fact that the Tang Had just established the country, they seized the land of Youyan in one fell swoop. However, the Khitans, like most nomadic regimes, were good at attacking cities but not at defending them. Although it annexed the territory of the Tang Dynasty, the Khitan nation failed to gain a foothold in the Central Plains. After the outbreak of the peasant revolt at the end of the Tang Dynasty, warlords in various places fought in chaos, and the central government gradually lost control of the localities. On this occasion, the Khitans finally got a chance. After the integration of the Khitan tribes, the Khitans began to expand their territory.
In the ensuing war, the Khitans defeated the Bohai state and gained the capital to conquer the Central Plains.
It can be said that the civil war between Li Keyong and Zhu Wenshun gave the Khitans excellent opportunities for development. Yelü Abaoji gradually grew to become the ruler of the north, and the Khitan army in his hands developed into a force large enough to shake the central plains.
When Li Ke was dying, he repeatedly told Li Cunxun to attach importance to the Khitan and destroy it if it could, and not to leave a breathing space for the country. However, Li Cunxun was unskilled in governing the country, unable to take care of himself, and had no spare strength to resist the Khitan and failed to fulfill his father's last wish.
After Li Siyuan ascended the throne, the national strength of the Khitan state was no longer the same. At that time, Li Siyuan's chancellor Shi Jingyao harbored evil intentions and planned to usurp power after Li Siyuan's death. In order to gain the military strength to compete with the Later Tang army, Shi Jingyao did not hesitate to admit that he was a thief and willing to become the righteous son of the Khitan Emperor. Shi Jingyao used Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures as a bargaining chip to successfully exchange the help of the Khitan army and seize power in one fell swoop.
After Shi Jingyao's death, his nephew Shi Chonggui succeeded to the throne. However, Shi Chonggui also has political ambitions. Although he was willing to become the titular grandson of the Khitan Emperor, he did not want to become a vassal of the Khitans. Unexpectedly, this move actually caused the dissatisfaction of the Khitan Emperor Yelü Deguang. The enraged Khitan invaded the south en masse, all the way to kaifeng city. From the texts of the Jin Dynasty after the fall of the Liao State, we can see that the Khitan at this time has become a behemoth and has the strength to compete with the entire Central Plains civilization.
In 960 AD, Zhao Kuangyin was born out of nowhere, and the yellow robe was added to quell the chaotic world and establish the Great Song Dynasty. At the beginning of the establishment of the Song Dynasty, the Khitan sent troops to test the military strength of the Song Dynasty many times. However, after a brief probing, the Khitans discovered that the Great Song Dynasty was capable of contending with them. Therefore, during Zhao Kuangyin's lifetime, the Khitan people did not dare to act rashly. After Zhao Kuangyin's death, his brother Zhao Kuangyi was so happy that he launched the Northern Expedition and personally marched. However, Zhao Kuangyi itself was not a piece of war material, so much so that in the original Song-Liao War, the Great Song was repeatedly defeated.
Fortunately, Song Zhenzong endured the humiliation and burden, and at the cost of his posthumous name, signed the "Alliance of Yuanyuan". This seemingly humiliating covenant was exchanged for a hundred years of peace between Song and Liao. Later, the Jurchen nation sprang up and killed in the land of the White Mountains and Black Water, which not only defeated the Liao state and lost its national unity, but also forced the Great Song Dynasty to move its capital to the south, leaving only half of the country.
Although the Jurchens once became the hegemons of the north, the Jurchen population is sparse, and the population of northern China is still dominated by Han and Khitans. Since, in the northern lands, the Han and Khitans were both under the rule of the Jin, there was no longer a gap between the two peoples living in the north. This kind of assimilation of "difficult brothers and difficult brothers" is a historical practice, and similar situations have occurred in the Five Dynasties and Five Hu periods, which is not uncommon.
I have to say that history is a strange circle. Seeing that the Jin people were about to become the ultimate victors of the Central Plains, the rising Mongols shattered the illusions of the Jin people. With the collapse of the Jin Dynasty and the Song Dynasty, the Mongol Yuan rule entered the Central Plains. During this period of oppression, the Han, Khitan and Jurchen people mingled with each other, and the Khitan people were completely assimilated. Since then, the Khitan has ceased to be a complete nation, but a memory.
Whether it is a documentary record or an archaeological discovery, we can see that the Khitan people have an advanced culture.
So why hasn't this culture been passed down?
The author believes that there are two reasons:
First of all, the Khitan Dynasty has been passed down for more than three hundred years since its establishment. In these hundreds of years, the two Song Dynasties, the Jin Dynasty, the Western Xia and the Mongolian Yuan regimes appeared in the Central Plains. We know that the main ethnic groups of these regimes are different, and the ruling strata of each regime belong to different nationalities. In the process of dynastic change, the cultures of various ethnic groups have been blended (due to the large population gap between the various ethnic groups, the vast majority of ethnic groups have been Sinicized), and the culture of some ethnic minorities themselves has been abandoned. From this point of view, the main reason why the Khitan culture was not passed down at that time was that the Khitan people were assimilated by other ethnic groups and lost their own culture.
Secondly, when the Jin Dynasty rose, because the Jurchens did not have their own script, they could only use foreign ethnic scripts. At that time, there were two scripts available for jurchens to choose from, namely Khitan characters and Chinese characters. Because Chinese characters are easier to write than Khitan characters, they were adapted into Jurchen script by the Jin Dynasty. Since then, Chinese characters and Jurchen characters have become the "official script" of the Jin dynasty, and the obscure Khitan script has been abandoned by the Jin rulers. We know that writing is the carrier of culture, and the Khitan people who have lost their own national script are constantly losing their culture.
All in all, this Khitan nation, which had made the Great Song Dynasty deeply jealous, disappeared into the Central Plains. However, due to the speed at which khitan culture disappeared, the reason for the disappearance of Khitan culture is still an unsolved mystery to this day.
Resources:
["The Concept of Ethnic Groups and States in Chinese History", "General History of China, Volume VII: The Middle Ages, The Five Dynasties of the Liao, Song, and Xia Jin Dynasties", "History of Liao", "Historical Enlightenment of the Rise and Fall of the Liao Dynasty"]