著者

渡邊 美樹

出版者

東洋文庫

雑誌

東洋学報 = The Toyo Gakuho (ISSN:03869067)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.102, no.3, pp.63-94, 2020-12-17

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In the research to date on the history of the Liao Dynasty, the reign of Emperor Shengzong 聖宗 (982–1031) is regarded as the turning point in the Dynasty's tribal system, based on the facts that Shengzong 1) reorganized the six nomadic tribes under the leadership of Xiwang 奚王 that had existed since the founding of the Dynasty and 2) formed subjects not of Qidan 契丹 ethnic origin—the Ordo 斡魯朶 people and imperial slaves—into tribes. Since there is no record of any new tribal formation in the Liaoshi 遼史 histories from that time on, Shengzong's reign is regarded as marking the completion of the Dynasty's tribal system. Referred to in the Liaoshi as "Shengzong's thirty-four tribes" (Shengzong Sanshisibu 聖宗三十四部), the research to date has inferred that this tribal collectivity was formed for the specific purposes of firmly establishing a centralized system of governance and expanding the tribal defense forces on the borders, despite the fact that no attempt have yet been made to ascertain the circumstances under which each individual tribe was formed. In order to fill this gap, the present article examines from which tribe each of Shengzong's thirty-four tribes originated through a careful survey of the background and motivation for each tribe's formation. What this survey reveals is the possibility of classifying the thirty-four tribes into two distinct groups: those people already under the Liao rule prior to Shengzong's reign and those people organized on the occasion of the acquisition of human resources in the expeditions during Shengzong's reign. Furthermore, the purposes behind formation varied from tribe to tribe: for example, compensating for population scarcities, accounting for war captives, the restoration of order on the frontier, and appeasing groups of people to submit to Dynasty rule. In other words, Shengzong's thirty-four tribes were not formed collectively under a consolidated policy of political centralization and border defense, but rather formed separately and incrementally in the process of the Liao Dynasty attempting to solve domestic and foreign problems that had arisen during Shengzong's reign. Despite the fact that the research to date has viewed the Liao tribal system as depicted in the Liaoshi as a self-evident conclusion and has avoided any discussion other than the aims of creating the system as a whole, the author concludes that tracing the circumstances of formation tribe-by-tribe casts doubt on the argument of the research to date that Shengzong conceived his own master plan when reorganizing the tribal system. In the future, only careful examination of conditions evolving over time promises to reveal the actual raison d'etre of the tribes formed under the Liao Dynasty.