The Great State of White and High: Buddhism and State Formation in Eleventh-Century Xia

Chapter 3 Buddhism under the Regencies (1049–1099)

50 CHAPTER 3 Buddhism under the Regencies (1049–1099) After Weiming Yuanhao’s death the vital role of Tangut empresses in promoting Buddhism emerges in sharper focus. Owing largely to the youth of later emperors, their mothers occupied prominent political and military positions. Three empresses, a Mocang and two Liang, along with their male kin and allies dominate the historical records to the end of the eleventh century. Like the Yeli before them, the Mocang and the Liang were two prominent clans in the Tangut elite that supplied military leadership and royal consorts to the Xia court. During the second half of the eleventh century, the throne requested and received four more copies of the Buddhist canon from the Song court.1 By the end of the century the Xia court had produced a roughly complete translation of the canon into Tangut, an act with profound cultural and political implications. Any discussion of Xia history in the latter half of the eleventh century must take note of Song expansion along its northwest frontier from 1067 onward.2 Officials under the Song emperor Shenzong (r. 1067–1085) and his successors (with a pause during the regency of the Empress Dowager Gao for Zhezong from 1086 to 1093) pursued an aggressive border policy in the northwest that aimed to “pacify” the Tibetans, occupy Kokonor and adjacent areas, assert Chinese control over trade with Central Asia, and if possible conquer Xia. Systematic implementation of Song policy began with Wang Shao’s establishment of Xihe Circuit in 1072–1074, in the Huang and Tao river valleys west and north of Qinfeng Circuit (see map).3 At the same time, during the 1070s, in the Xia state Liang Yimai and his sister, the first Liang empress dowager, consolidated their control over the military, excluding or banishing uncooperative Weiming princes and their supporters. Perhaps the Liang felt justified Buddhism under the Regencies 51 in their grip on power by the threat posed by Song advances along the Tanguts’ southern perimeter and redoubled Chinese efforts to enroll Tibetans in espionage and military actions against Xia. From Chinese accounts one can deduce that the Liang saw the Weiming as too willing to compromise with Song in an effort to stabilize and strengthen royal power. The Song exploited these tensions fully by, among other things, trying to make separate deals with powerful Tangut chieftains. As in Liao, however, the lines of dissension in eleventh-century Xia did not so much divide Liang and Weiming as cut across these and other clan groups. Despite alleged attempts by the maternal clan chief ministers to set aside the “legitimate” emperor, the real issue at stake was not who was going to occupy the throne, but how power was going to be delegated. Moreover, rivalry and division arose within the consort clan, as they did within the royal clan and between the two. Like their Liao counterparts, Xia empresses sought to promote (and control) their imperial offspring as a way to preserve their own personal influence, and this brought them into conflict with their own clan, specifically with their brothers, the chief ministers.4 Patronage of Buddhism allowed the Xia empress dowager to cultivate a wide range of allies across clan lines and outside the military elite. Through her Buddhist activities and SaΩgha allies, the empress dowager expressed personal piety, gained support for her rule on behalf of the Weiming emperor, and defended the throne against domestic and foreign threats, real and perceived. For the latter she also relied on and guarded her access to military power. Like her Liao counterparts, she probably promoted and employed distant Weiming (Li) princes over the emperor’s agnates. With the death of the second Liang empress dowager in 1099, however, the Weiming clan elders closed ranks around the young emperor Chongzong (r. 1086–1139) and sponsored a series of reforms in the early twelfth century to strengthen the central government’s authority over the military aristocracy. The Weiming Restoration marked a turning point in the fortunes of the Xia state, and these changes must also have affected the Buddhist establishment, although our evidence for this period remains spotty. Historians of Xia, myself included, have generally understood Yuanhao’s accomplishments as the founding emperor to have given the state its characteristic institutions and administrative apparatus. Yet the reforms carried out during the Weiming Restoration in the 52 Buddhism in Eleventh-Century Xia early part...