Ethnicities of ancient China royal clan

heavenlykaghan said:

I honestly can't believe that articles such as this are still being published in the second decade of the 21st century. Han, and especially the concept during the Tang, was never a genetic one. The figure of 75% is also meaningless as it assumes that the Xianbei themselves were "pure blooded" whatever that implies. The Xianbei has been intermarrying with the "Han" for decades, there are no grounds to suppose that the Dugu or the Zhangsun clans themselves were "pure" Xianbei. Thus the figure of 75% is neither provable or even meaningful as ethnicity at the time was not determined by blood, but by patrilineal descent. Furthermore, after Tang Gaozong, Tang rulers were less and less associated with Xianbei.

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In similar ways, many Qing rulers had more Mongol and Han "blood" in them. Kangxi for example, had a Mongol grandmother, and a Han banner mother. This mean he was only 25% "Manchu". Similarly, Qianlong's mother was a Han bannerman, that doesn't mean he was less "Manchu" as the idea of Manchu during the Qing was more socio-political than genetic. The idea of genetic purity and blood percentage is only a modern concept. To many ancients it is the paternal line which carries the lineage, while the maternal line serves as nothing but a child bearer, and hence the dynasty is defined through the paternal side.

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Also, one should step back and take a look at the word "Han", ironically, the first dynasty which used the term to refer to itself was the Tang. Native Dynasties after the Tang and before that, never used the term Han to such an extent, and when it was used, it was usually by the steppe people on the Chinese than by the Chinese to refer to themselves.

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The Xianbei families would still be mostly Xianbei in blood if most of the noble population was of Xianbei origin. And I think this was likely the case since the Xianbei were the dominant nobility of the Northern Wei. Say a Han family married Xianbei, which puts them at 50% Xianbei. If the Xianbei are the majority within the nobility, chances are, this 50-50 Xianbei-to-Han person will have to marry another pure blooded Xianbei, which puts them at 75% Xianbei (not unlike the Tang emperor). It's safe to assume there was just more Xianbei blood going around in the nobility, since they were the dominant ethnicity, and over the long run, the percentage will converge towards the original ratio of Xianbei nobles to Han nobles when they started mixing. (And let's not forget all the bastard children the Xianbei would have fathered all over China through prostitutes and mistresses)

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I don't know where you getting this. None of those imperial-mothers were Han Chinese.

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A word isn't very useful if we're constantly have to step back and re-examine it... for the sake of communication, lets just agree that the Han are the Huaren as a starting point, and that someone who is majority Huaren in blood is Han.

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Hansaram said:

The Xianbei families would still be mostly Xianbei in blood if most of the noble population was of Xianbei origin. And I think this was likely the case since the Xianbei were the dominant nobility of the Northern Wei. Say a Han family married Xianbei, which puts them at 50% Xianbei. If the Xianbei are the majority within the nobility, chances are, this 50-50 Xianbei-to-Han person will have to marry another pure blooded Xianbei, which puts them at 75% Xianbei (not unlike the Tang emperor). It's safe to assume there was just more Xianbei blood going around in the nobility, since they were the dominant ethnicity, and over the long run, the percentage will converge towards the original ratio of Xianbei nobles to Han nobles when they started mixing. (And let's not forget all the bastard children the Xianbei would have fathered all over China through prostitutes and mistresses)

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heavenlykaghan said:

You are mostly wrong here. There were plenty of instances of Han families married into prominent Xianbei nobilities.

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And as I stated before, dynastic origin is determined by patrilineal origin, percentage of blood was not a concept back then and is only relevant to modern biologists.

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You are not up to date with recent researches on the Qing emperors. Kangxi's mother was from the Tungiya clan. If one examine the history of this clan, one finds that under Nurhachi, they were originally part of the Han banner that got elevated to the status of Manchu banners although the elevation was done decades before Kangxi came to power, so their "Han origin" is only of relevance to modern scholars. This is old knowledge in academia. Whats new is Qianlong's mother's origin.

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Recent research has confirmed that Qianlong's mother had the original surname of Qian, and was instead changed to Niu Guru to elevate her status.
For the Yong Xianlu volume two records this:
(雍正元&#24180冬十有二月丁卯。午刻上御太和殿。遣使册立中宫那拉氏为皇后。诏告天下，恩赦有差。封年氏为贵妃，李氏为齐妃，钱氏为熹妃，宋氏为裕嫔，耿氏为懋嫔。

Then the imperial edict in the first year of Yongzheng(1723) compiled and just published in the June of 2008, under the title "Yongzheng chao hanyu huibian":
雍正元年二月十四日奉上谕：尊太后圣母谕旨：侧福金年氏封为贵妃，侧福金李氏封为齐妃，格格钱氏封为熹妃，格格宋氏封为裕嫔，格格耿氏封为懋嫔。

This means that in the first year of Qianlong, the concubine Xi was conferred on to the princess of the Qian clan(Han surname).

This was different from the record of the official Qing Shilu:


谕礼部：奉皇太后圣母懿旨：侧妃年氏，封为贵妃；侧妃李氏，封为齐妃；格格钮祜禄氏，封为熹妃；格格宋氏，封为懋嫔；格格耿氏，封为裕嫔。尔部察例具奏。


The Qing Shilu records that Niu Gulu(Manchu) was the surname of concubine Xi, while Yong Xianlu and Yongzheng chao hanyu huibian mentioned the surname of concubine Xi as Qian(Han Chinese). Yet the edict was given out in the same year so it meant they are the same person.

The Yongzheng chao hanyu huibian is a primary source which included the edict itself, hence its reliability was greater than the Qing Shilu, the explanation is simple, to elevate Qianlong's mother's status, her surname was changed from Qian to Niugulu, meaning that she was in all likelyhood from the Han banners.

In another word, both Kangxi and Qianlong had mothers who were of Han bannerman origin. Qianlong's mother's Han banner origin was more immediate and clear while Kangxi's mother's clan was already considered Manchu at the time Kangxi was born. This further shows that "ethnicity" during the Qing wasn't determined by modern genetic concepts, since we have instances of Han being promoted to the status of Manchus, which isn't racial, but social.

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heavenlykaghan said:

But that doesn't appear to be how the Tang defined Han or Hua. If one examine Tang records, Hua and Han were purely cultural concepts. The Gongyang school of anyone who adopted hua culture is huaren is the prominent school during the Tang, opposed to the Song and Ming concepts of Hua. Also, why should we agree on the anachronistic concept that anyone who is "majority huaren in blood is Han"? Huaren was never a genetic concept and even during the Song through Qing, it was hardly based on "blood" in the modern sense, but on patrilineal lineage. I already showed that people who were Han can be elevated to the status of Manchu under the Qing, while Manchus can also be degraded to the status of "commoners"(min). The idea of blood and racial purity was not a pre-modern concept so the idea that this people is "X%" of this race makes no sense.

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Hansaram said:

I never said there weren't. Please, can we keep this discussion objective?
The Xianbei were likely the majority within the Northern Wei aristocracy. If this is true, then intermarriage between a large Xianbei and small Han population, within the nobility, will result in majority Xianbei bloodlines in both the Xianbei-origin and Han-origin noble families.
Don't you find it a bit ridiculous that the emperor was about 7/8 non-Han, and you're still calling it a Han dynasty.
No. She was actually from a Jurchen family who had been living in China for generations.
I've never heard of the Manchu royal family marrying Han. Just because her family name used to be Qian doesn't mean she was Han Chinese. It's actually pretty common for non-Han families to adopt a Han-style last names. I think you're grasping at straws here.

Ethnic definitions change and shift depending on the time period. Bloodlines however, are absolute. Also, people did care about bloodlines in pre-modern times. I don't know where you're getting this information.

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Han Chinese are the dominant in philosophy, politics,economy and military which means Han Chinese are the majority in nobility.

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I never said there weren't. Please, can we keep this discussion objective?
The Xianbei were likely the majority within the Northern Wei aristocracy. If this is true, then intermarriage between a large Xianbei and small Han population, within the nobility, will result in majority Xianbei bloodlines in both the Xianbei-origin and Han-origin noble families.

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Don't you find it a bit ridiculous that the emperor was about 7/8 non-Han, and you're still calling it a Han dynasty.

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No. She was actually from a Jurchen family who had been living in China for generations.

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I've never heard of the Manchu royal family marrying Han. Just because her family name used to be Qian doesn't mean she was Han Chinese. It's actually pretty common for non-Han families to adopt a Han-style last names. I think you're grasping at straws here.

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Ethnic definitions change and shift depending on the time period. Bloodlines however, are absolute. Also, people did care about bloodlines in pre-modern times. I don't know where you're getting this information.

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heavenlykaghan said:

I don't know what this "objective" of yours mean. But calling the Tang emperors as none-Han when Han was a very fluid concept in history and never solely based on genetics, even today hints at something other than academic interest on your part.

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You made a statement which cannot be verified, you claimed that Xianbei are more likely to marry other Xianbei families, nothing in the primary sources indicate anything of the sort. The samples I showed proved that there was virtually no boundary between the Xianbei nobles and the Han shizu by the 6th century. And even if Xianbei was the prominent bloodline, it still puts the 75% figure for blood of Taizong into question as Xianbei has being marrying Han for over a century, and there are no pure xianbei at this period, that was all there was to it.

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I've already told you, bloodline is not what determines ethnicity, furthermore, it is undeterminable as I already demonstrated, and just because the first three emperors married with Xianbei clans doesn't mean the entire dynasty is Xianbei, emperors after Gaozong never married Xianbei families which meant the majority of the Tang emperors did not have Xianbei influence. So I think what is ridiculous is choosing the second and third emperor of the Tang dynasty and think their maternal clans suffices to label the entire Tang dynasty as a none-Han regime, especially when Han itself appears to be no more than a modern construct.

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The flimsy evidence for this claim came from Tong Guogang 國綱, a brother of Kangxi's mother who publicly requested that his family be removed from the Han Banners and placed in a Manchu Banner. He claimed that he had found genealogical evidence that his family originally belonged to the Manchu Tunggiya lineage “臣曾蒙太祖谕令，与佟佳氏之巴都哩蒙阿图诸大臣考订支派氏族谱，今请归满洲。”Crossley argues that Tong Guogang's claim to be from the Tunggiya lineage was obviously false and A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology has quite a lot of coverage on the origins and changing identity of the Tong family. Furthermore, the family clearly has been marrying with Han people for generations in Liaodong.

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So the Kangxi emperor's mother was officially considered a Han Banner woman during her lifetime, but her family was converted to Manchu Bannermen after her death.

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No I am not grasping straws. You need to do more research, then comment.
While the early Manchus did adopt Han surnames, they are very rare and usually only among the lower families and it usually followed this pattern:
1. Tong 佟, which was originally Tongjia 佟佳, the name of a river in Manchuria.
2. Guan 関/关, which was originally Gua'erjia 瓜尔佳. It was shortened to Guan in the 18th century.
3. Ma 馬, shortened from Majia 马佳 in the 18th century.
4. Suo 索, shortened from Suochuoluo 索绰罗 probably in the 19th century.
5. He 赫, shortened from Hesheli 赫舍里 probably in the 19th century.
6. Fu 富, shortened from Fucha 富察 around the 1840s.
7. Na 那, originally Nala 纳拉, the name of a river in Manchuria. Shortened in the 18th century.
8) Lang, originally from Niukulu 纽祜禄


Qian has never being one of the surnames that were adopted. Qianlong's mother is therefore in all likelyhood a Han banner, which in Qing times was allowed to marry Manchus.

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Tell me you are joking. Bloodlines are hardly absolute as intermarriage between races has been going on since the dawn of humanity.

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Objective means "Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts." I think this can also apply to how you represent, or misrepresent, my argument.

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I actually didn't go as far as to claim the Xianbei were more likely to marry other Xianbei families. I said there were probably more noble families of Xianbei origin, or the majority of the noble bloodlines are Xianbei during the intermarriage with Han families. But you raise something important.

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It is actually known that many Xianbei families were against Emperor Xiaowen's reforms. All we know is that he encouraged marriage with the Han. We don't know if these families actually did it though.

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If ethnicity is indeterminable, then why do you use it?

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What makes it so clear that all the people in Liaodong are Han Chinese? Do you have a source to back up this claim?

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That doesn't imply she was Han.

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How did you get from "usually" to "never"?

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That's an absurd interpretation of I said. I just meant bloodlines are tangible. It is what is being signified by all our ethnic, and even animal classifications. That way we avoid having people claiming this is Han, that is Han, everything is Han. Just for example

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heavenlykaghan said:

You might heed to your own suggestion by placing less emphasis on anachronistic modern genetic concepts such as blood percentage and by stop applying double standards. If you think I am applying personal feelings, then please point it out so we may test the validity of such an accusation under real academic evidence. Just because I told you that you are wrong does not imply personal feeling, it is a statement of fact.

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I'm sorry, but you are just playing with semantics, and it isn't productive. When you say there were more noble families of Xianbei origin, you already implied that Xianbei are more likely to marry other Xianbei, if not, then that begs the question of why you used it as evidence to prove that the Dugu and Zhangsun clans were more likely to be of Xianbei blood than Han in the first place.

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Yet that claim itself is an unverifiable fact and contradicted by first hand evidence. Han scholar-aristocratic (shizu) clans have supplied the majority of government officials to any northern dynasty. They far outnumbered the Xianbei aristocrats, even in the highest government positions. The Northern Wei actually forced the Xianbei tribal nobility to intermarry with the Han scholar-aristocracy, thus creating a new hybrid aristocracy. If one examines the cases of emperors or empresses of the different Northern dynasties, most of them had Han backgrounds of some sort. These are solid evidence that the Xianbei by Tang times were not pure, hence the figure 75% is seriously flawed and virtually meaningless. That was my point, playing with semantics as you are doing now does not invalidate this central issue.

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Tell me. have you read anything about the background of Duchess dugu, Duchess Dou or the Zhangsun family?
We know Li Yuan's mother, the duchess Dugu's father was Dugu Xin, but we have no record of who her mother was, but since Xiaowen virtually forced the Xianbei nobility to marry the Han, it is quite plausible that either her mother was "pure Han" or was mixed Xianbei, as Dugu Xin himself might well have been. As for Tang Taizong's mother, the Duchess Dou, there is only speculation that her father Douyi's family were originally from the Hedoulin clan. This clan, in the region of Hexi have been intermarrying with the Han for generations and it became virtually impossible to distinguish Han and Xianbei by the late 6th century, which explains the Sinicization of their clan names. The sources stated that Dou Yi was from Fufeng Pinglin in modern day Shanxi. We know Duchess Dou's mother was from the Yuwen family of Northern Zhou, which we know for a fact, have been marrying with native Chinese for centuries. For example, Yuwen Tai himself, founder of Northern Zhou probably had a Chinese mother with the Surname of Wang. Yuan Humo, the first empress of Northern Zhou, was the daughter of emperor Xiaowen, who was half Han. So it is very clear that Duchess Dou was not pure Xianbei, and hence emperor Taizong was not 75% Xianbei in modern genetic terms, if one needs to be that unnecessarily precise.

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We also have clear evidence that Empress Zhangsun was not 100% Xianbei, for her mother was from the Gao family of the Northern Qi, who had a "Han Chinese" ancestry. Xianbei have been marrying with the Han even before Xianwen's reforms. Xiaowen di's mother was a "Han". And no, we have plenty of evidence that these families did it. I gave you many examples.

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You misuderstood the context of the post, which wouldn't have really happened if you actually paid attention to the content instead of with minor semantics. Ethnicity through genetics is indeterminable, but ethnicity as identities existed and were recorded as such and the Sui and Tang identified themselves with the aristocratic Han clans of the north, not with the Xianbei.

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Strawman argument. I have never said all people in Liaodong were Han Chinese. However, what is clear was that Kangxi's mother was from the Han banners just like how Tang Gaozong's mother was from a Xianbei clan.

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No more than how the Zhangsun clan was considered Xianbei or the even less clear speculation that Duchess Dou, mother of Taizong was Xianbei. We think the former was a Xianbei because of her surname, thats it. The Tang records did not call them Xianbei.

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Not really. It is completely relevant to the discussion. The point was that percentage of blood was not a concept in Qing times and I demonstrated that through the mobility of the Tong clan.

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I don't know how you can describe modern genetic concepts as "anachronistic". They worked the same in the past and present. So I am just trying classify the dynasty properly.

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While it is true that later on the emperor started to marry from families of Han Chinese origin, they were not from the pure blooded Han Chinese Northeast aristocrisy, who despised and refused to marry with the Tang royal family and those of the Xianbeified Northwest aristocracy.

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You are the one refusing to agree to a definition of Han Chinese by claiming its a "very fluid concept". I'm sure it was historically, but you must understand that we have scientific standards today for determining the ethnicity of people in the past. You are ignoring the mother's line like people in the past, except unlike them, you should know better.

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They may have been scholars working the the Xianbei. But that doesn't give them noble status. Do you think they were just giving them away?

The same Han Chinese families have been mixing with Xianbei as well for generations. We don't know for certain which side was the majority within the nobility, but my bet is that it was the Xianbei.

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Maybe she was 80% Xianbei or 90% Xianbei because the Han Chinese families were also Xianbeified.
Like I kind of said already, if 70% of the noble population were initially Xianbei in origin, intermarrying with the Han Chinese inside a restrictive aristocratic class, then over the long run, everyone's bloodlines will tend to average around 70%. It's these initial population percentages that are important for determining how Xianbei and how Han the Tang emperor was. I also think its a safe to assume that for the initial percentages, the Xianbei were the majority, since they were the dominant nobility.

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That wasn't a semantics argument. Also, ethnicity is determinable to a rough degree by looking at who married who and what their backgrounds were.

You're right, but its only part of the story. The Sui and Tang also took part in Xianbei games and past times.

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Liaodong was a place where many non-Han lived. So just because the Manchus called them Han doesn't mean they were right. But I suppose it may be the case that you're merely commenting on the fact that the Manchus believed they were Han. But what does that have to do with you, or any of us people today? If they were in fact non-Han, shouldn't that override the Manchu belief that they were Han?

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I am speculating that the Xianbei were majority in number within the nobility. But I am doing so with some reasoning, which I already explained.

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But even within the Banners, there were still racial hierarchies. It isn't really like any ethnicity in existence. It seems more like a racial class system disguised as an ethnicity. If it wasn't focused on blood, they wouldn't put different ethnicities in different banners, or move them based on new information about their ethnicity

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heavenlykaghan said:

Because it literally is. Using the percentage of blood to determine an ethnic group is a modern concept plain and simple so it is anachronistic plain and simple.

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No. The northeastern aristocracy did not want to marry the Tang royal family because the Li clan which they purported to be descended from was not a prestigious family, not because they thought the Tang was impure in blood.
There are no evidence that the northeastern aristocracy was anymore pure than those from the northwestern ones nor could we find any first hand evidence that suggested this.

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The Northeast Aristocracy that Mariusj is referring to claimed they were the pure descendants of prestigious Han Dynasty clans - upholders of Han Chinese tradition with unblemished lineage, who had refused intermarriage with the barbarians of the Age of Fragmentation in order to preserve their noble lineage. They held the Northwest Aristocracy, to which the Tang emperors belonged, in disdain because they saw them as socially inferior clans that happened to gain a little political power, though the idea that they were semi-barbaric, since they had mixed with the Wu Hu, might be a contributing reason.

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Furthermore, even modern anthropologists hardly use th term "pure blood" anymore because any claims to pure blood has been revealed to be utter BS.

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If you studied anthropology at all, you should know all modern concepts of ethnicity based on blood are very fluid indeed. So it is you who should know better than follow the outdated theories of 20th century structuralists. We are in the 21st century, update yourself with post modernism. And for your information, a historian should never assume that modern classifications are more relevant to ancient concepts for the simple reason that they are only of interest to modern academics and are completely foreign to the ancients and hence had no historical impact on the period being studied.

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"Noble status" or shizu is not given, they were pre-existing influential clans since the late Han. The Xianbei merely cooperated with these high status aristocrats when they ruled China. In fact there are cases where several 6th century scholars wanted the emperor to bestow upon them the status of shizu, and the emperor told them that he was helpless because a shizu is a prestigious family that existed for generations, not a title which the emperor can casually invest upon. Get your basic facts straight. Your bet appears to be nothing more than a baseless hunch that is completely contradicted by the available first hand evidence where most positions of the court of the Northern dynasties were in the hands of these Han clans and that virtually all of the emperors and empresses recorded had Han background in one way or another.

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Maybe you should stop speculating upon things that you have demonstrated no academic competence on. Evidence, not conjectures makes an argument solid.

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You certainly misinterpreted my post with semantics. Ethnicity is not determined through backgrounds during the Tang, and if you think otherwise provide the evidence.

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The population of Liaodong was around 7 million before Nurhachi took it over, they were all registered Han peasants of the Ming. If you don't believe they were Han, then provide the evidence for empty speculations are of no meaning as anyone can likewise speculate the purity of any ethnic group, including the Xianbei clans of the northern dynasties. So why are you applying a double standard here?

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What you call reason is not supported by any primary source material whatsoever. It is not academical and is irrelevant to the discussion. What you claim for the Tang all applies to the Qing, so if you think the Tang was not a Han Chinese dynasty just because the 2nd and third emperor might have had more "none-Han blood", in a very anachronistically applied outdated anthropological definition, then you might as well claim that the Qing was not Manchu because the second and fourth emperor had more "none-Manchu blood" in them.

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I'm sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about and I suggest you read some basic introduction to the banner system from prominent Qing scholars like Pamela Crossley, Mark Elliot and Edward Rhoads. Manchu identity revolved around the banner, and the banner was never a racial hierarchy, it included Mongol and Han banners, who were considered Manchus, subject to the same legal procedures, not Han. These intermarried on a frequent basis. Different ethnicities were not put in different banners. There was 8 banners total period, not 24; the Han, Manchu and Mongols are mixed in all eight. They have an informal background in their identity but they were all bannerman, and hence officially Manchu. The backgrounds of these bannerman were sometimes moved around from supposedly new information based, for the fifth time, on paternal lineage, not on the percentage of blood of "Manchuness" for "racial purity" was none-existent among the bannerman.

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Hansaram said:

It's not anachronistic. It is the main standard today. You're not going to call an native African who looks African in appearance a Han Chinese. I don't know why you keep trying to say bloodline can't determine ethnicity.

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