The Imperial Clan

To begin on a semantic note, I am using the term "imperial clan" for the Chinese tsung-shih because by the Southern Sung it did in fact approximate the anthropologist's "clan"—that is, "a unilineal descent group of widest extent, in which the most inclusive relationships are not reckoned through a genealogy" (Goody 1983:295).^[3] A caveat is necessary because the clan had what it called the Office of the Jade Register (Yü-tieh-so ), which maintained a comprehensive genealogy (SS 117:3890). By the thirteenth century, however, when thousands of clansmen were scattered around the empire and frequently related to each other only to the twelfth or thirteenth degree, the House of Chao acted far more like a clan than a lineage. This was especially true because the dynastic flight south at the end of the Northern Sung re-suited in a loss of genealogical records that exhaustive efforts at reconstruction could not fully remedy.

At the beginning of the Sung, the House of Chao consisted of the Chao brothers K'uang-yin (929-76), Chiung (939-97), and T'ing-mei (respectively the emperors T'ai-tsu [r. 960-76] and T'ai-tsung [r. 976-97] and the prince of Wei) and their families,^[4] and it seems to have functioned with a minimum of organization. By the middle of the eleventh century, however, the Chaos' numbers and residences had proliferated, and they had their own bureaucracy, staffed at first by clansmen, which issued increasingly detailed regulations for the clan.^[5] This organization was necessary because of the clan's spectacular growth during the Northern Sung. A twelfth-century enumeration, by generation and branch, of the clan's genealogy is shown in table 4.1. There are problems with interpreting the figures for the later generations on the list, for they were still being produced at the time of its compilation. Record keeping was also disrupted by the Jurchens' capture of much of the clan during the 1126 invasion. For the earlier generations, however, we can see a truly remarkable record of growth. The twenty-three clansmen (clanswomen were not included) of the first generation grew to almost six thousand by the seventh. This fecundity, which I believe reflects the ready supply of concubines available to the Chao clansmen more than any unusual fertility on the part of Chao wives, presented the government with two problems.

First, the clan was becoming expensive. In 1067 the monthly support (in cash and grain) for the clan exceeded 70,000 strings, and this did not include expenses for birthdays, marriages, and funerals or the seasonal clothing allowances. This sum compared with 40,000 for the entire capital

TABLE 4.1 The Sung Imperial Clan: Generation Names and Membership
Generation No .	T'ai-tsu		T'ai-tsung		Wei-wang
	Generation Name	No.	Generation Name	No.	Generation Name	No.	Total
1.	Te	4	Yüan	9	Te	10	23
2.	Wei	8	Yün	19	Ch'eng	32	59
3.	Ts'ung and Shou	24	Tsung	75	K'o	127	226
4.	Shih	129	Chung	388	Shu	561	1,078
5.	Ling	564	Shih	1,499	Chih	1,425	3,488
6.	Tzu	1,251a	Pu	2,130	Kung	1,774	5,155
7.	Po	1,645	Shan	2,431	Yen	1,824	5,900
8.	Shih	1,490	Ju	1,022	Fu	1,666	4,178
9.	Hsi	1,140	Ch'ung	413	Shih	253	1,806
10.	Yü	110	Pi	19	Jo	24	153
Total		6,365		8,005		7,696b	22,066b
SOURCE : CYTC 1.1:24. This information, which CYTC gives in this form though without the totals at the right, is also found in WHTK 259:2056-7, but CYTC is earlier (1203) and the probable source for the WHTK . (The CYTC's source was the Hsien-yuan lei-p'u , the official imperial genealogy.) The table does not include those in the eleventh and twelfth generations, which had been named, nor does it include the direct descendants of Ying-tsung or Hui-tsung or the Nan-pan-kuan clansmen. aWHTK gives 1,221, but that is an error, for it does not tally with the T'ai-tsu ten-generation total. bCYTC gives 7,296 and 21,666 respectively, but the Wei-wang total is in fact 7,696 and the grand total 22,066.

bureaucracy and 110,000 for the capital armies (SHY:TH 4:31b). Second, the clan in the mid-eleventh century had begun producing children who were not mourning kin of the emperor—that is, beyond the already marginal fifth degree of kinship (t'an-mien ). According to Han and T'ang precedents, they should have been sent out of the capital, given land, and then severed forever from imperial support. This would have solved the problem of the escalating costs of the clan. Yet, in two stages, the late Northern Sung emperors and their reform-minded chief councillors chose to break with tradition and support the nonmourning kin, albeit at reduced levels.

In 1069 the emperor Shen-tsung (r. 1068-85) ordered that kin of the sixth generation and below no longer be given names and official rank by the throne. Records of their births and deaths, however, were still to be maintained, and the men were to be permitted to take special examinations for entry into officialdom (SHY:CK 20:5b-6a). The following year sixth-generation kin were also ordered out of clan housing, a move prompted by severe overcrowding (SHY:CK 20:6a; SHY:TH 4:20b). One noteworthy change that eventually followed from the 1070 order occurred in 1082 when clansmen of the fifth degree and below were permitted, after the death of their parents, to form separate households and divide the family property (except for "fields held in perpetuity" [yung-yeh t'ien ] and sacrificial objects). This practice, standard among commoner families, was said to have "never occurred" in the clan; hitherto, all of their support had come from the government (SHY:TH 5:8a-b). These distant clansmen and women now found themselves in a limbo of partial recognition and limited privilege, which as we shall see below informed their marriage relations as well.

Then, in 1102, chief councillor Ts'ai Ching (1046-1126) proposed an ambitious plan for two large residential complexes called the Halls of Extended Clanship (Tun-tsung yuan ). Supported by charitable estates (i-chuang ) endowed out of local governmental resources, the residences were to be established at the Western and Southern capitals, that is, Lo-yang and Ying-t'ien fu (SHY:CK 20:34a-b). This proposal, which was accepted by the emperor Hui-tsung (r. 1101-25), entailed two new bureaucracies known jointly as the Two Capitals Offices of Imperial Clan Affairs (Liang-ching tsung-cheng-ssu ), which provided housing and support (in the form of cash and grain allowances, wedding and funeral expenses) for these clansmen and women. Their scale was impressive: in 1120 the southern Hall of Extended Clanship reported holdings of 44,000 ch'ing of fields (roughly 660,000 acres) and more than 23,600 rooms (chien ) of buildings (fang-lang ); even then there were complaints about insufficient resources and space (SHY:CK 20:36b-37a).

The decision of Shen-tsung and, then, Hui-tsung to support the non-mourning kin is an interesting issue that can only be touched upon here. Moroto Tatsuo has linked this decision to the Sung policy of elevating the civil over the military and suggests further that it was part of a general Sung

ideology of benevolence (onkeishugi ) (1958:628), though he does not say why that benevolence was applied at this time and to the imperial clan. One plausible explanation is that they were influenced by the renewed interest in the tsung (extended kinship group, or clan) voiced by such men as Ou-yang Hsiu (1007-72), Su Hsun (1009-66), and Ch'eng I (1033-1107) (Ebrey 1984a: 229-32). At a time when the scholar-officials were advocating stronger tsung , it would have looked amiss for the emperor to cut off most of the imperial clan, which was the quintessential tsung . This hypothesis, however, will have to await further consideration elsewhere.

The Extended Clanship Halls as well as the clan's entire K'ai-feng establishment came to an abrupt end with the loss of northern China to the Jurchen in 1126, though this was far from the end of the clan. Those who escaped fled pell-mell to the south. By the time a measure of stability and order were restored, the clan had two offices in Fu-chien—at Fu-chou and Ch'üan-chou (continuing the old Western and Southern Capital administrations)—and in Shao-hsing fu (Liang-che-tung) and Lin-an, the capital (CYTC 1.1:25-26). But few Southern Sung clansmen lived at the capital, partly because the government, citing high housing and living costs, early on discouraged them from settling there (SHY:TH 6:12b-13a). The general infertility of the Southern Sung emperors also meant that the clan had few close imperial kin. Thus Fu-chou, Ch'üan-chou, and Shao-hsing prefectures became the main centers of clan resettlement, with Ch'üan-chou claiming some 2,244 clansmen in the early thirteenth century (CWCKCC 15:11a); clansmen could be found in every part of the empire, often supervised only loosely by local officials and clan elders.

The dispersed and diminished circumstances of the imperial clan, however, were paralleled by a growth in the political power of many clan families. Although they had first been permitted to hold local offices (wai-kuan ) in the 1070s, the disordered conditions of the early Southern Sung saw them employed in large numbers to fill vacancies in the bureaucracy and even the army. So widespread were they that quotas were established limiting the numbers of clansmen who could serve in a given county or prefecture (SHY:TH 5:32b-33a). Thereafter, though producing two chief councillors and a number of high-ranking officials in the court, they were most prominent in local government. The Chaos also became a major presence in the examinations, in which they were given preferred treatment (see Chaffee 1985: 106-8). There was a paradox here. The growing numbers and increasing genealogical distance of most Chaos from the emperor led to general reduction in status and affluence, but their humbler, less-threatening position undoubtedly facilitated their assumption of real, if limited, power. Thus they became more like the shih-ta-fu elite even while maintaining their imperial clan status, with its attendant privileges and regulations.

The Sung imperial clan thus underwent radical changes over the course of

the dynasty. The wealthy, centralized, though politically powerless clan of the mid-eleventh century bore little resemblance to the Southern Sung clan, which was much humbler and more dispersed, yet contained many individually consequential members. Likewise, there were vast differences between the immediate imperial families, the holders of hereditary noble titles, and the distant kin who were, at times, reduced to poverty.^[6] Yet all of them branched from the Son of Heaven in the eyes of the emperor and his officials and were governed by the same sets of concerns and regulations. As we turn to the clanswomen and their marriages, we must therefore keep in mind both the clan's diversity and hierarchy and also its unity, when viewed from the outside.