Chapter 8: The Asian World

China Reunified

The Sui Dynasty

• The Han dynasty came to an end in 220, and China fell into chaos.
• Sui Yangdi, the second emperor of the dynasty, completed the Grand Canal, built to link the two great rivers of China, the Huang He (Yellow River) and the Chang Jiang (Yangtze River).
  • Both rivers flowed from west to east.
  • The new canal linked north and south, making it easier to ship rice from the south to the north.
• Sui Yangdi was a cruel ruler.
  • He used forced labor to build the Grand Canal.
  • The emperor was murdered, and his dynasty came to an end.

The Tang Dynasty

• A new dynasty, the Tang, soon emerged.
• It would last for almost three hundred years, from 618 until 907.
• Tang rulers worked hard to restore the power of China in East Asia.
  • They brought peace to northwestern China and expanded their control to the borders of Tibet, an area north of the Himalaya**.**
• Like the Han, however, the Tang sowed the seeds of their own destruction.
  • Tang rulers were unable to prevent plotting and government corruption.
• One emperor was especially unfortunate.
  • Emperor Tang Xuanzang is remembered for his devotion to a commoner’s daughter.
  • Finally, the emperor’s favorite general led a bloody revolt.
• During the eighth century, the Tang dynasty weakened and became prey to rebellions.
• Tang rulers hired Uighurs, a northern tribal group of Turkic-speaking people, to fight for the dynasty.
• Continued unrest, however, led to the collapse of Tang rule in 907.

The Song Dynasty

• In 960, a new dynasty known as the Song rose to power.
• From the start, however, the Song also experienced problems, especially from northern neighbors.
  • These groups crossed into northern China and occupied large parts of Chinese territory.
  • Because of this threat, Song rulers were forced to move the imperial court farther south to Hangzhou
• The Song dynasty could never overcome the challenge from the north.

Government and the Economy

• The era from the beginning of the Sui dynasty to the end of the Song dynasty lasted nearly seven hundred years.
• During the long period between the Sui and Song dynasties, the Chinese economy grew in size and complexity.
• China was still primarily a farming society.
  • In Chinese cities, technological developments added new products and stimulated trade.
  • Gunpowder was also invented during the Tang dynasty and was used to make explosives and a primitive flamethrower called a fire-lance.
• Long-distance trade had declined between the fourth and sixth centuries as a result of the collapse of both the Han dynasty and the Roman Empire.
• Trade with regions near China also increased during the Tang and Song dynasties.

Chinese Society

• Economic changes had an impact on Chinese society.
• For wealthier city dwellers, the Tang and Song Eras were an age of prosperity.
• There was probably no better example than the Song capital of Hangzhou.
• In the late thirteenth century the Italian merchant Marco Polo described the city to European readers as one of the largest and wealthiest cities on Earth.
• For rich Chinese during this period, life offered many pleasures.
• The vast majority of the Chinese people still lived off the land in villages.
• Most significant was the rise of the landed gentry.
  • This group controlled much of the land and at the same time produced most of the candidates for the civil service.
  • The scholar-gentry, as this class was known, replaced the old landed aristocracy as the political and economic elite of Chinese society.
• Few Chinese women had any power.
  • An exception was Wu Zhao, known as Empress Wu.
  • As in other parts of the world, female children were considered less desirable than male children.
  • In addition, a girl’s parents were expected to provide a dowry (money, goods, or property) to her husband when she married.
• Poor families often sold their daughters to wealthy villagers.

The Mongols and China

The Mongol Empire

• The Mongols were a pastoral people from the region of modern-day Mongolia who were organized loosely into clans.
• Temujin, born during the 1160s, gradually unified the Mongols.
  • In 1206, he was elected Genghis Khan (“strong ruler”) at a massive meeting somewhere in the Gobi.
  • From that time on, he devoted himself to conquest.
• The Mongols brought much of the Eurasian landmass under a single rule, creating the largest land empire in history.
• After the death of Genghis Khan in 1227, the empire began to change.
• Following Mongol custom, upon the death of the ruling khan, his heirs divided the territory.
  • The once-united empire of Genghis Khan was thus split into several separate territories called khanates, each under the rule of one of his sons.
  • It may be that only the death of Genghis Khan kept the Mongols from attacking western Europe.
• In their attack on the Chinese, the Mongols encountered the use of gunpowder and the firelance.

The Mongol Dynasty in China

• In 1279, one of Genghis Khan’s grandsons, named Kublai Khan, completed the conquest of the Song and established a new Chinese dynasty, the Yuan.
  • Kublai Khan, who ruled China until his death in 1294, established his capital at Khanbaliq (“the city of the Khan”) in northern China.
• Later the city would be known by the Chinese name Beijing.
• Under the leadership of the talented Kublai Khan, the Yuan (or Mongol) dynasty continued to expand the empire.
• Mongol armies advanced into Vietnam, and Mongol fleets were launched against Java and Sumatra and twice against the islands of Japan.
  • The Mongols had more success in ruling China.
• Over time, the Mongol dynasty won the support of many Chinese people.
  • One such visitor was Marco Polo, who lived in Khanbaliq during the reign of Kublai Khan.
• The Mongol dynasty eventually fell victim to the same problems that had plagued other dynasties: too much spending on foreign conquests, corrup- tion at court, and growing internal instability.

Religion and Government

• By the time the Mongols established their dynasty in China, religious preferences in the Chinese court had undergone a number of changes.
• Buddhism was brought to China in the first century A.D. by merchants and missionaries from India.
  • The growing popularity of Buddhism continued into the early years of the Tang dynasty.
  • Buddhism was criticized for being a foreign religion
  • The government reacted strongly.
• During the later Tang period, it destroyed countless Buddhist temples and monasteries and forced more than 260,000 monks and nuns to leave the monasteries and return to secular life.
• Official support went instead to a revived Confucianism.
  • Neo-Confucianism, as the new doctrine was called, served as a Confucian response to Buddhism and Daoism.
  • Neo-Confucianists divide the world into a mate- rial world and a spiritual world.
  • Humans form the link between the two worlds.

A Golden Age in Literature and Art

• The period between the Tang and Ming dynasties was in many ways the great age of Chinese literature.
• It was in poetry, above all, that the Chinese of this time best expressed their literary talents.
  • Li Bo and Duo Fu were two of the most popular poets during the Tang Era.
  • Where Li Bo was carefree, Duo Fu was a serious Confucian.
• During the Song and Mongol dynasties, landscape painting reached its high point.
  • Influenced by Daoism, Chinese artists went into the mountains to paint and find the Dao, or Way, in nature.
  • Chinese artists tried to reveal the hidden forms of the landscape
• Daoist influence was also evident in the potrayal of human beings as insignificant in the midst of nature.
• Next to painting in creative accomplishment was the field of ceramics.
• In particular, Tang artisans perfected the making of porcelain—a ceramic made of fine clay baked at very high temperatures.

Early Japan and Korea

The Geography of Japan

• Chinese and Japanese societies have historically been very different.
• One of the reasons for these differences is geography.
  • Whereas China is on a vast continent, Japan is a chain of many islands.
• The population is concentrated on four main islands: Hokkaido, the main island of Honshu, and the two smaller islands of Kyushu and Shikoku.
• Japan’s total land area is approximately 146,000 square miles (378,000 sq km)—about the size of the state of Montana.
• Like China, much of Japan is mountainous. Only about 11 percent of the total land area can be farmed.
  • Because of their geographical isolation, the Japanese developed a number of unique qualities.

The Rise of the Japanese State

• The ancestors of present-day Japanese settled in the Yamato Plain near the modern cities of Osaka and Kyoto in the first centuries A.D.
• Eventually, one ruler of the Yamato clan achieved supremacy over the others and became, in effect, ruler of Japan.
• In the early seventh century, Shotoku Taishi, a Yamato prince, tried to unify the various clans so that the Japanese could more effectively resist an invasion by the Chinese.
  • Prince Shotoku wanted a centralized government under a supreme ruler.
  • Shotoku Taishi’s successors continued to make reforms based on the Chinese model.
  • After Shotoku Taishi’s death in 622, political power fell into the hands of the Fujiwara clan.
  • Though the reforms begun by Prince Shotoku continued during this period, Japan’s central government could not overcome the power of the aristocrats.
• In 794, the emperor moved the capital from Nara to nearby Heian, on the site of present-day Kyoto.
• In fact, the government was returning to the decentralized system that had existed before the time of Shotoku Taishi.
• With the decline of central power, local aristocrats tended to take justice into their own hands.
  • Called the samurai (“those who serve”), these warriors resembled the knights of medieval Europe.
  • Like knights, the samurai were supposed to live by a strict warrior code, known in Japan as Bushido (“the way of the warrior”).
  • Above all, the samurai’s code was based on loyalty to his lord.
• By the end of the twelfth century, rivalries among Japanese aristocratic families had led to almost constant civil war.
• Finally, a powerful noble named Minamoto Yoritomo defeated several rivals and set up his power near the modern city of Tokyo.
  • To strengthen the state, he created a more centralized government under a powerful military leader known as the shogun (general).
  • In this new system—called the shogunate—the emperor remained ruler in name only, and the shogun exercised the actual power.
  • At first the system worked well.
• The Japanese were fortunate that it did, because the government soon faced its most serious challenge yet from the Mongols.
• Fighting the Mongols put a heavy strain on the political system.
• The power of the local aristocrats grew during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
• Heads of noble families, now called daimyo, “great names,” controlled vast landed estates that owed no taxes to the government.
• By 1500, Japan was close to chaos.
  • Central authority disappeared.
  • Powerful aristocrats in rural areas seized control over large territories, which they ruled as independent lords.
  • Their rivalries caused almost constant warfare.

Life in Early Japan

• Early Japan was mostly a farming society. Its people took advantage of the limited amount of farmland and abundant rainfall to grow wet rice (rice grown in flooded fields).
• Manufacturing began to develop during the Kamakura period.
• In early Japan, women may have had a certain level of equality with men.
  • Although women did not possess the full legal and social rights of men, they played an active role at various levels of society.
  • Women often appear in the paintings of the period along with men.
• Early Japanese people worshiped spirits, called kami, whom they believed resided in trees, rivers, streams, and mountains.
• In Japan, these beliefs evolved into a kind of state religion called Shinto (“the Sacred Way” or “the Way of the Gods”), which is still practiced today.
  • In time, Shinto evolved into a state doctrine linked to a belief in the divinity of the emperor and the sacredness of the Japanese nation.
  • Shinto, however, did not satisfy the spiritual needs of all the Japanese people.
• Some turned to Buddhism, which Buddhist monks from China brought to Japan during the sixth century A.D.
• Among the aristocrats in Japan, one sect, known as Zen, became the most popular.
  • Zen beliefs became part of the samurai warrior’s code of behavior.
  • In Zen Buddhism, there are different ways to achieve enlightenment (a state of pure being).
• During much of the history of early Japan, aristocratic men believed that prose fiction was merely “vulgar gossip” and was thus beneath them.
• From this tradition appeared one of the world’s great novels, The Tale of Genji.
• The novel was written by court author Murasaki Shikibu around the year 1000.
• In Japanese art and architecture, landscape serves as an important means of expression.

The Emergence of Korea

• The Korean Peninsula, only slightly larger than the state of Minnesota, is relatively mountainous.
  • Its closeness to both China and Japan has greatly affected its history.
  • Indeed, no society in East Asia was more strongly influenced by the Chinese model than Korea.
• In 109 B.C., the northern part of the Korean Penin- sula came under the control of the Chinese.
• Gradually, the kingdom of Silla gained control of the peninsula.
• In the thirteenth century, the Mongols seized the northern part of Korea.
• After the collapse of the Mongol dynasty in China, the Koryo dynasty broke down.
• In 1392, Yi Song-gye, a military commander, seized power and founded the Yi dynasty.
• The Korean people were once again in charge of their own destiny.

India after the Guptas

The Decline of Buddhism

• For hundreds of years, Buddhism had retained its popularity among the Indian people.
• The teachings of the Buddha came to be interpreted in different ways, however.
  • People did not always agree on the meaning of the Buddha’s teachings.
  • As a result, a split developed among the followers of Buddhism in India.
• One group believed that they were following the original teachings of the Buddha.
  • They called themselves the school of Theravada, “the teachings of the elders.”
  • Followers of Theravada see Buddhism as a way of life, not a religion that is centered on individual salvation.
  • They continue to insist that an understanding of one’s self is the chief way to gain nirvana, or release from the “wheel of life.”
• Another view of Buddhist doctrine was emerging in northwest India.
  • Here, Buddhists stressed that nirvana could be achieved through devotion to the Buddha.
  • This school, known as Mahayana Buddhism, said that Theravada teachings were too strict for ordinary people.
• In the end, neither the Mahayana nor the Theravada sect of Buddhism remained popular in Indian society
• Despite their decline in India, though, both schools of Buddhism found success abroad.
• Carried by monks to China, Korea, Southeast Asia, and Japan, the practice of Buddhism has remained active in all four areas to the present.

The Eastward Expansion of Islam

• In the early eighth century, Islam became popular in the northwestern corner of the Indian subcontinent.
  • One reason for Islam’s success in South Asia is that it arrived at a time when India was in a state of great political disunity.
• When the Arab armies reached India in the early eighth century, they did little more than move into the frontier regions.
• At the end of the tenth century, however, a new phase of Islamic expansion took place when rebellious Turkish slaves founded a new Islamic state known as Ghazni, located in present- day Afghanistan.
  • When the founder of the new state died in 997, his son, Mahmud of Ghazni, succeeded him.
• Resistance against the advances of Mahmud and his successors into northern India was led by the Rajputs, who were Hindu warriors.
• By 1200, Muslim power had reached over the entire plain of northern India, creating a new Muslim state known as the Sultanate of Delhi.
• In the fourteenth century, this state extended its power into the Deccan Plateau.

The Impact of Timur Lenk

• During the latter half of the fourteenth century, the Sultanate of Delhi began to decline.
• Near the end of the century, a new military force crossed the Indus River from the northwest, raided the capital of Delhi, and then withdrew.
  • As many as 100,000 Hindu prisoners were massacred before the gates of the city.
• It was India’s first meeting with Timur Lenk (Tamerlane).
  • Timur Lenk was the ruler of a Mongol state based in Samarkand, to the north of the Pamir Mountains.
  • The death of Timur Lenk removed a major menace from the various states of the Indian subcontinent, but the calm did not last long.

Islam and Indian Society

• The Muslim rulers in India viewed themselves as foreign conquerors.
  • They tried to maintain a strict separation between the Muslim ruling class and the mass of the Hindu population.
  • Like rulers elsewhere at this time, many Muslim rulers in India were intolerant of other faiths.
  • Most Muslim rulers realized that there were simply too many Hindus to convert them all.
• Overall, the relationship between Muslim and Hindu was that of conqueror and conquered, a relationship marked by suspicion and dislike rather than friendship and understanding.

Economy and Daily Life

• Between 500 and 1500, most Indians lived on the land and farmed their own tiny plots
• Although the vast majority of Indians were peasants, reports by foreign visitors between 500 and 1500 indicate that many people lived in the cities.
• Rulers, of course, had the most wealth.
  • One maharaja (great king) of a small state in southern India, for example, had more than a hundred thousand soldiers in his pay, along with nine hundred elephants and twenty thousand horses.
• Agriculture was not the only source of wealth in India.
  • Internal trade within India probably declined during this period, primarily because of the fighting among the many states of India.
  • Wealthy Hindu merchants with close ties to the royal courts carried on much of the foreign trade.

The Wonder of Indian Culture

• Between 500 and 1500, Indian artists and writers built on the achievements of their predecessors while making innovations in all fields of creative endeavor.
  • Between 500 and 1500, religious architecture in India developed from caves to new, magnificent structures.
• Probably the greatest examples of Hindu temple art of this period are found at Khajuraho.
  • The use of prose was well established in India by the sixth and seventh centuries.
• One of the greatest masters of Sanskrit prose was Dandin, a seventh-century author.
  • In The Ten Princes, he created a fantastic world, fusing history and fiction.
  • His powers of observation, details of everyday life, and humor give his writing much vitality.

Civilization in Southeast Asia

The Land and People of Southeast Asia

• Between China and India lies the region that today is called Southeast Asia.
  • It has two major parts.
  • One is the mainland region, extending southward from the Chinese border down to the tip of the Malay Peninsula.
  • The other is an extensive archipelago, or chain of islands, most of which is part of present-day Indonesia and the Philippines.
  • Ancient mariners called the area the “golden region” or “golden islands.”
• Mainland Southeast Asia consists of several north- south mountain ranges.
• These geographical barriers may help explain why Southeast Asia is one of the few regions in Asia that was never unified under a single government.
• The geographical barriers encouraged the development of separate, distinctive cultures with diverse cultural practices, such as different religions and languages.

The Formation of States

• Between 500 and 1500, a number of organized states developed throughout Southeast Asia.
• The Vietnamese were one of the first peoples in Southeast Asia to develop their own state and their own culture.
• After the Chinese conquered Vietnam in 111 B.C., they tried for centuries to make Vietnam part of China.
  • Chinese influence remained, however.
  • Vietnamese rulers realized the advantages of taking over the Chinese model of centralized government.
• The state of Dai Viet became a dynamic force on the Southeast Asian mainland.
• In the ninth century, the kingdom of Angkor arose in the region that is present-day Cambodia.
• The kingdom was formed when a powerful figure named Jayavarman united the Khmer
• Angkor faced enemies on all sides.
  • To the east were the Vietnamese and the kingdom of Champa.
  • To the west was the Burman kingdom of Pagan.
• With the arrival in the fourteenth century of new peoples from the north—known today as the Thai—Angkor began to decline.
• In 1432, the Thai from the north destroyed the Angkor capital.
• The Angkor ruling class fled to the southeast, where they set up a new capital near Phnom Penh, the capital of present-day Cambodia.
• The Thai first appeared in the sixth century as a frontier people in China.
  • The Thai set up their own capital at Ayutthaya on the Chao Phraya River, where they remained as a major force in the region for the next four hundred years.
  • Although they converted to Buddhism and bor- rowed Indian political practices as well, they created their own unique blend that evolved into the modern-day culture of Thailand.
  • The Thai were also threatened from the west by the Burman peoples, who had formed their own society in the valleys of the Salween and Irrawaddy Rivers.
• The Burmans were pastoral peoples, but they adopted farming soon after their arrival in Southeast Asia.
• During the next two hundred years, Pagan became a major force in the western part of Southeast Asia.
• In the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian Archipelago, a different pattern emerged.
• Two organized states eventually emerged in the region.
• In the eighth century, the state of Srivijaya came to dominate the trade route passing through the Strait of Malacca
• In the late thirteenth century, the new kingdom of Majapahit was founded.
• After the Muslim conquest of northern India, Muslim merchants—either Arabs or Indian con- verts—had settled in port cities in the region and had begun to convert the local population.
• Around 1400, an Islamic state began to form in Melaka, a small town on the western coast of the Malay Peninsula.
  • Melaka soon became the major trading port in the region and a chief rival to Majapahit.

Economic Forces

• The states of Southeast Asia can be divided into two groups: agricultural societies, whose economies were largely based on farming, and trading societies, which depended primarily on trade for income.
• Trade through Southeast Asia expanded after the emergence of states in the area and reached even greater heights after the Muslim conquest of northern India.
• Merchant fleets from India and the Arabian Peninsula sailed to the Indonesian islands to buy the cloves, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, and precious woods like teak and sandalwood that the wealthy in China and Europe wanted.

Social Structures

• At the top of the social ladder in most Southeast Asian societies were the hereditary aristocrats.
  • They held both political power and economic wealth. Most aristocrats lived in the major cities.
• Beyond the major cities lived the rest of the popu- lation, which consisted of farmers, fishers, artisans, and merchants.
• Most of the societies in Southeast Asia gave greater rights to women than did their counterparts in China and India.

Culture and Religion

• Chinese culture made an impact on Vietnam. In many other areas of Southeast Asia, Indian cultural influence prevailed.
• The most visible example of this influence was in architecture.
• Of all the existing structures at Angkor Thom, the temple of Angkor Wat is the most famous and most beautiful.
• Hindu and Buddhist ideas began to move into Southeast Asia in the first millennium A.D.
  • However, the new religions did not entirely replace existing beliefs.
• Buddhism also spread to Southeast Asia. It made little impact, however, until the introduction of Theravada Buddhism in the eleventh century.
  • Eventually, Theravada Buddhism became the religion of the masses in much of Southeast Asia.
  • Moreover, it tolerated local gods and posed no threat to established faith.