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Bai Fa Yi, an avid fan of Tibetan history, has written more than one million words of articles on Tibet, including "The Past and Present of the Snowy Plateau", "Tibet in the Mythical Age and the Mythical Age of Tibet", "Before and After of the Liangzhou Alliance" and other articles. This article is an exclusive contribution of NetEase History Channel, welcome to forward to the circle of friends.
The Tubo Dynasty is a special case among the regimes established by ethnic minorities in China's frontiers. Among the regimes established by China's border ethnic minorities, there are very few that can be called dynasties, but the Tubo dynasty is obviously proud enough to be listed.
On the one hand, it existed long enough, from August 638 AD (the twelfth year of Tang Zhenguan), after the Tubo Dynasty under the rule of Songtseng Gampo first competed with the Tang Dynasty under the city of Songzhou (present-day Songpan), until 842 AD, when the last Tubo Zamplangdama was assassinated and the Tubo Dynasty collapsed, Tubo has been the most important political force in the region at the junction of East Asia and West Asia for more than 200 years.
On the other hand, compared with many small countries that are old and do not have many existences, the Tubo Dynasty is a behemoth that cannot be lacking.
When its territory was at its largest, the east was basically bounded by Longshan (Liupanshan) in the east with the Tang Dynasty, and the Hexi Corridor and Longyou were swallowed by it;
The Helan Mountains, which stretched to the north to Ningxia, fought bloody battles with the Tang Dynasty over Lingzhou (present-day Wuzhong, Ningxia), and even once touched the Ordos Plateau;
In the southeast, he took Nanzhao (present-day Dali) as a vassal state, gave the name "Zampu Zhong" (Zampu's brother), and captured Victoria Prefecture (present-day Li County) in Jiannan, threatening the security of the Chengdu Plain from time to time;
In the western part of the territory, in addition to completely disintegrating the Tang Dynasty's rule in the Western Regions and represented by the four towns of Anxi, it also expanded into Central Asia, collecting the vassal states of the Tang Dynasty in those years, and competing with the black-clothed food (Abbasid dynasty) for a long time. In the Arabic historical records, the "Tubo Khan" and "Tubo King" are the existence that causes him a great headache.
Directly south of the empire, although the Himalayas were a natural barrier and the humid and hot climate of the Indian subcontinent was not suitable for Tibetan survival, historical records still showed that Tubo still sent troops to invade Zhongtianzhu at least twice, and hammered the local state to erect iron pillars on the banks of the Ganges River to mark the territorial boundaries.
From these historical records, it can be seen that during the peak of its national strength, Tubo's territory swung thousands of miles, attacking the Tang Dynasty in the east and refusing the Great Food in the west, which can be called the best in Asia.
How did such a powerful empire collapse?
To illustrate this problem, it is necessary to analyze and interpret it from both domestic and foreign levels.
First of all, let's talk about the international situation, in the east of the territory, in the history of exchanges between Tubo and the Tang Dynasty for 200 years, there have been more than 190 battles in history, which can be described as a year without battle.
To be fair, Tubo did beat the Tang Dynasty enough during its strong period, and in almost a hundred years, pressing the Great Tang to the ground and rubbing it repeatedly, probably only Tubo can do it.
So much so that every autumn, the border Tang generals would burn the grassland on a large scale to weaken the Tubo attack by increasing the supply pressure of the Tubo cavalry, which is known in history as "autumn defense".
However, throughout the history of the war between the two countries, the reason why Tubo was able to occupy the overwhelming battlefield advantage, in addition to the advantages in physical geography and arms, also depended on the huge consumption of the Tang Dynasty by the Anshi Rebellion, which was that the Tang Dynasty itself did not play well, was bent by An Lushan, and could not complain about others.
In fact, from the Battle of Songzhou under Emperor Taizong of Tang to the reign of Emperor Xuanzong's Tianbao, the two countries of Tang and Tang were basically in a balance of power, and Tubo did not achieve absolute strategic superiority.
Although the Tubo army god theory Qinling was indeed very capable of fighting, he never tasted a defeat in his life, and attacked the Tang army in "Dafeichuan, Chengfengling, Hushan" and other places, hundreds of thousands of Tang troops were killed in battle, and the Tang history recorded: "(Tang army) corpses are high and heavenly qi."
But for a huge country like the Tang Dynasty, the defeat of one city and one place was not enough to break its bones. This can be seen from the early Tang Dynasty, the four towns of Anxi in the Western Regions were abandoned and repeatedly built, the Tang Dynasty was not completely powerless to fight back, and the Tang generals Wang Xiaojie, Lou Shide, and Heijie Changzhi of the Wuhou Dynasty had made the Tubo army suffer a lot.
Especially after Emperor Xuanzong came to the throne, the Kaiyuan prosperous era made the national strength of the Tang Dynasty increase rapidly, and in the border war with Tubo also began to regain a city, Gao Xianzhi, Feng Changqing, and Geshuhan had many victories, especially the battle example of Geshuhan hard pulling the stone castle city, which is enough to show that in the early years of Tianbao, the Tang Dynasty was already strong in the land of Jiuqu in Hexi.
The reason for going back to these war examples is not to prove how powerful the Tang army is, but to illustrate the war potential and national resilience of the Tang Dynasty, which will be the only advantage that the Tang Dynasty can rely on in the middle and late Tang Dynasty.
However, the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion reversed the situation between the two countries, and after that, the Tang Dynasty had to lie on the ground and be beaten.
However, the Tang court and the public were not idle, and they were also pondering how to weaken Tubo's strategic strong position at all times. Li Yu, a minister of the Dezong Dynasty, presented the emperor with a clever plan of "North and Hui, Nantong Nanzhao, Xijie Great Food, Tianzhu, in this way, Tubo will be trapped by itself".
What is valuable is that Li Yu, who lives in the Central Plains, was able to accurately judge the strength of the black-clothed food, and clearly understood the national contradiction between the big food and Tubo, and he said to Dezong: "The big food is the strongest in the Western Regions, from the green ridge to the western sea, and the land is almost half the world, and the Tianzhu admires China, and the agent is the enemy of Tubo, and the minister knows that it can be recruited." ”
It can be seen that the united front is not only used by this dynasty, and every mature politician knows this well.
Of course, we now have no way of knowing how this strategic alliance was negotiated and coordinated. However, after the implementation of this strategic plan, especially after the Tang, Hui, and Empress Qin, the Hui did begin to fight in the Western Regions and Tubo, and the Nanzhao state also got out of Tubo's control and became an ally of the Tang Dynasty again.
From then on, although Tang Bo fought each other, Tubo was still in the dominant position of the attacker, but the momentum of expanding to Guanzhong began to gradually weaken both in intensity and intensity.
To be fair, although Tubo is indeed very heroic in blocking the Great Tang in the east, resisting the Great Food in the west, resisting Hui in the north, and forcing Nanzhao in the south, it is difficult to fight with two fists and four hands, and no matter how good the body plate is, it can't stand a group of hungry wolves to come up and bite, and Tubo's body plate is not so good.
Sparse population and low productivity have always been hard wounds for the Tubo dynasty, and when the Tubo territory expanded rapidly, a large number of servant troops appeared in the Tubo army. These servant troops, calling themselves "Wen Mo", were composed of Tang people, Tuyuhun, Bailanqiang and other ethnic groups, and even a part of the Tubo Tibetans, numbering hundreds of thousands. In the process of long-term cooperation, various ethnic groups gave up their own living habits and ethnic concepts, and began to regard themselves as "Wen Mo" ethnic groups.
The formation of the "end of temperature" is enough to explain two problems:
First of all, the Tubo military was already stretched, and Tibetan soldiers were not enough to support the rapid expansion of the country, and had to be supplemented by soldiers of other ethnic groups to solve some low-level military and political work.
In addition to the army servant unit "Wen Mo", in 801 AD (the seventeenth year of Zhenyuan), in the Battle of Xichuan (Battle of Dulu) of Tang Dynasty, among the Tubo prisoners captured by the Tang army, there were "black-clothed and big food and other soldiers".
This shows that there was indeed a war between Tubo and Dashi in Central Asia, and the captured soldiers of Dashi were escorted to the western Sichuan Army to continue their service. From this, we can also see the lack of human resources in the Tubo army.
In addition, these self-proclaimed "Wen Mo" ethnic groups did not integrate well into Tubo society. Although there are many Tubo people in the "Wen Dynasty", it is clear that these people are at the bottom of Tubo society and do not fully agree with the rule of Tubo society.
This is also the fundamental reason why after the collapse of the Tubo Dynasty, the state's ability to control was weakened, and the great rebellion of the common people that swept through Tibet would break out in the border "Wen Dynasty".
To sum up, from the external environment, Tubo was dragged down by the Tang Dynasty, Black-clothed Food, Huilu, and Nanzhao.
Of course, the above four countries all have structural contradictions with Tubo, so Li Yu's combination and vertical scheme is an out-and-out, upright and almost unsolvable Yang scheme.
So, how did the situation in Tubo push this huge empire to the cliff step by step?
First of all, the relationship between the royal power and local forces has not been well resolved in Tubo, or in other words, the excessive power of local power groups has always been a hidden worry of Tubo royal power.
Even if he was as strong as Songtsen Gampo, he had to spend a lot of time traveling around during his tenure, dealing with contradictions and government affairs in various parts of the country, not to mention other descendants of Zampu.
In the more than 200 years of history of the Tubo Dynasty, many Zampu died for no reason, and you can clearly see the blazing clues of their domestic political struggles. Whenever political contradictions are irreconcilable, there are always ministers of the Hao clan who try to solve the problem by disposing of Zampu, which is enough to see the power of local powerful forces to unite and stir up trouble.
The political system of Tubo is precisely based on the union of royal power and local forces, and the royal power cannot exist independently from the support of all local tycoons, so the local tycoons are only prosperous, and cannot gradually decline over time.
What is more serious is that the local forces in Tubo not only have vast fiefdoms that can be hereditarily replaced, but also have relatively independent private armed forces in the fiefdoms. And, over time, more and more noble children took command of the Tubo border army.
As a result, the use of military merit to seek a more important position in the DPRK and the acquisition of population and financial resources for the family through war plunder have become a golden boulevard that can be used in one day.
In the late Tubo period, the country's top bureaucrats, led by Zampu and Da Yan (Prime Minister), were not unaware that the use of military force had led to the country's internal income and devastation, so Tubo repeatedly negotiated with the Tang Dynasty Alliance in an attempt to buy time for the country to breathe a sigh of relief.
However, as a border general, this is undoubtedly contrary to his family interests and personal interests, so the two countries have appeared, the envoys at the national level have exchanged warmly, and the talk of peace and reconciliation is very popular, while the border line is still full of swordsmen and smoke.
In addition, another striking political manifestation in Tubo is that the union between the regime and the clerical power has become extremely close. When the political power and the clerical power are merged, the country's political system will be solidified to a rigid level, which is very obvious in ancient and modern China and abroad.
Unfortunately, the politics of the middle and late Tubo period also embarked on this lost path, and Tibetan Buddhism first defeated the original Bon religion in the Samye Buddha, and then abandoned the Epiphany (Zen) of Chinese Buddhism, forming a situation in which one family was the only one.
After that, Zampu began to vigorously promote the Dharma in Tubo, and successively introduced a system of preferential treatment for the Sangha such as "seven families raising monks", stipulating that "as a private household and property of the monastery, no taxes, no forced labor, no rent, fines, etc.", and even promulgated the law that "anyone who insults a monk cuts his tongue, viciously accuses the monk with malicious means, cuts off his finger, and angrily looks at the monk and gouges his eyes".
Especially during the Chizu Dezan (Reba Jiao) period, the Zhao Xuebu (monk minister) headed by Niang Ding Azeng and Beji Yundan became the great minister of the imperial court, representing that the Buddhist power had reached the apex of the political power of the Tubo state.
Although Chizu Dezan (Reba) was praised by all the historical sources of later teachings by virtue of his three major systems of "seven families raising monks", "monastic subjects" and "state support" (the so-called "three treasures of offering"), he was able to be called the "Three Dharma Kings of Tubo" together with Songtsam Gampo and Trisong Dezan.
But to be fair, these state policies, which devoted themselves to the construction of Buddhism, were harmful to the body of the Tubo dynasty. The large number of young workers leaving the monasteries and the huge amount of money spent on the construction of monasteries further overwhelmed the already precarious national economy.
For a politician, moving between the demands of various forces and seeking to maximize the interests of (the royal power) is the only way, the so-called "way of balance". There is absolutely no monarch who sits on one bench and balances things on another.
In the case of Songtsen Gampo, for example, many people naturally believe that he is a devout Buddhist believer, because he built Jokhang Temple and enshrined statues such as Shakyamuni.
But in fact, while building the Jokhang Temple, he also built a chapel for the other three princesses to trust their faith.
Tibetan historical records record: "In order to give birth to a prince, Songtsen Gampo married the elephant concubine Li Di Myanmar, the daughter of the medicine king Rufei Jie Mozun, and the daughter of Dui Long Mangdi Shangjiang, and married a total of five princesses." Among the five concubines, Princess Ruzun built the Jokhang Temple, Princess Wencheng built the Jokhang Temple, Xiangxiong Concubine built Qingpu Guoba Temple, Mangfei Rujiang built Gaze Temple and Zayeba Temple, and Chala Rufu Temple initiated by Princess Jie Mozun. ”
Among them, the location of Xiangxiongguo is the birthplace of Bon, and it is difficult to imagine that Xiangxiongfei will believe in Buddhism, so there is no doubt that Xiangxiongfei should be a Bon monastery.
In addition, in order to balance the Bon forces in the country, when Songtsen Gampo built the Jokhang Temple, he deliberately painted Bon-themed murals inside and outside the Jokhang Temple, adding religious symbols with Bon meaning.
This is the balance between the mature politicians, who himself really need to eliminate the excessive weight of the Bon forces by introducing Buddhist forces, but this is done in a quiet compromise posture. It is not carried out by virtue of the strength of the royal power in a way that supports one side and crushes the other. From this point of view, his descendants are not as good as Naizu!
The result of the "violent propagation of the Dharma" by Chizu Dezan (Reba) not only caused a large consumption of national resources (manpower was also an important strategic resource of the ancient state), but also made the domestic sympathetic Bon forces extremely resistant.
Feeling that Buddhism had moved cheese, the local tycoons united again, and while Chizu Dezan was on parade, he drank high, wrung his neck, and ended his life.
After Chizu Dezan was killed, because he had no heirs, his brother was put on the throne by the minister who participated in the murder, which was the last Zampu of Tubo - Langdama.
After Langdama came to power, the contradictions within the Tubo state became irreconcilable, and soon after he began to promote the mass extermination of Buddha, he was assassinated, reportedly by a Buddhist.
After that, there is no difference from the sunset of previous dynasties. After the death of Rondama , the two sons separated, forming two royal political groups that attacked each other.
With the rise of the common people's rebellion that swept through the entire Tibetan area, the two Tubo royal lineages withered apart, scattered in various places and formed a series of local small regimes. Among them, there were the famous small dynasties such as Guge, Ladakh, Yaze, Mangyu Gongtang (present-day Jilonggou), and Lagari, as well as the Qingtang (present-day Xining) Jiao regime.
Finally, we return to the beginning of the problem, the collapse of a large empire must be caused by a combination of factors, just as the law of nature "animals do not cause the extinction of the population due to the natural death of individuals", the resilience and self-healing ability of large empires are also very strong. The fact that the Tang Dynasty was able to falter for more than 150 years after the Anshi Rebellion is enough to show this.
It must be made clear that history is logical and inertial, if Tubo can successfully break Li Yu's vertical and horizontal connection, will Tubo not perish?
It will definitely be, because there are irreconcilable structural contradictions between these countries, and they all have the demand for outward expansion.
So if Chizu Detsan (Reba Scarf) did not "propagate the Dharma violently" or Langdama did not "destroy the Buddha", would Tubo not perish?
The answer is still the same, because Tubo was already caught in an endless cycle in which foreign expansion led to the decline of people's livelihood but wealth and territory could be obtained, and the spirit of balancing and enveloping local tycoons required Buddhist power, and the social cost of Buddha development needed to be compensated by external expansion.
At that time, Tubo was like a galloping carriage, everyone knew that the galloping could not last long, but the power of the galloping was still there, and the galloping was the best choice that could be accepted, because sudden braking would inevitably lead to fragmentation.
This is the logic and inertia of history, even if the last Zampu is replaced by Songtsam Gampo, it may not be able to reverse this situation, just as some people once hypothesized that replacing Chongzhen with Zhu Yuanzhang would not be the Ming Dynasty would not perish, when the internal contradictions of a country were so sharp that the assassination of Zampu was used as a solution, it was estimated that no matter how wise and powerful the monarch came, it could not solve the problem. Edit | An Liang
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