AD 990-1227 - Western Xia / Xi Xia / Western Hsia / Later Hsia
Hsia is a word, the éclat of which has not died away to this day. “The Flowery Hsia” is perhaps the fondest designation of this country in the usage of native Scholars. Looking at the old forms of the character, attention is arrested by one consisting of two common characters, “upright, correct,” and “destiny.” This yields the sense of “rightful succession,” and shows that this idea was associated with the name. One of the earliest traces of the word is in connection with Shen-nung, the father of Chinese agriculture. A writer of the Han dynasty states that Shen-nung of the southern country administered the Hsia.
The name western Hsia is given to a nation in the west with which King Yau engaged in war. There is also a “Great Hsia beyond the shifting sands,” mentioned subsequently, being probably the same nation. Early scholars suggested that the great western Hsia was the Scythian people, who, according to the ancient geographers of the west, occupied central Asia up to the borders of China. The name of Tangut, applied to an independent State on the north-west of China, was well known to mediaeval travellers through central Asia, and Marco Polo devotes several chapters to an account of the five provinces into which it was divided after its final conquest by the celebrated Genghis Khan in the year 1227. It was then first called Kansu, a combination of the names of two of its chief cities, Kanchou and Suchou, and its boundaries were, generally speaking, those of the modern Chinese province of the same name.
The native tribes were called by the Chinese T'ang-hiang; by the Mongols Tangit, or, with the plural suffix, Tangut, and it was from the Mongols that the West first got the name. They were closely allied to the Tibetans, who border them on the southwest, as is shown by the vocabulary of their language.
The ruling house belonged to the Toba tribe, and claimed kinship with the Toba Dynasty which had reigned in Northern China, under the Chinese title of Wei, from A.D. 386 to 557. They first came prominently to the front in Chinese annals during the T'ang Dynasty in the year 884, when their chief, then feudal governor of Yuchou on the northern frontier, aided the emperor in the recovery of his capital, Singan fu from the rebel Huang Ch'ao, and was rewarded by being given the imperial surname of Li, and hereditary rule over five chou cities in the upper valley of the Yellow River, the chief of which was Hsiu-chou, the modern Ning-hsia-fu, which became ultimately the capital of the new State.
They held their ground during tho short-lived Five Dynasties which succeeded the T'ang, and until the year 982, when a grandson of Li Ssii-kung, the military chief alluded to above, appeared at the court of the second emperor of the rising Sung Dynasty to tender his submission and surrender his five cities to the Chinese.
But he was disavowed by tho rest of his house, and tho standard of revolt was raised by a younger brother named Li Chi-ch'ien, who reconquered tho country after many romantic adventures, gained a princess in marriage with a dowry of three thousand horses from the Kitan Dynasty, then ruling over Northern China, and became the real founder of a new independent dynasty, of which he was afterwards canonized as T'ai Tsu, the "Great Ancestor." He took the important walled city of Liang-chou in 1002, but died the same year from the effect of an arrow wound received in a riot incited by the Chinese after the city had capitulated.
His grandson, Li Yuan-hao, who succeoded in 1032, at once threw off the nominal fealty which his father had adopted in his relations with the Sung emperors, assumed the title of Huang Ti for himself, and that of Ta Hsia for his dynasty, claiming descent from the llsia of the second millennium BC, the first of the Three Ancient Chinese Dynasties. Hence the title of Usi Hsia, "Western Hsia," which tho Chinese give to the dynasty. His claims were set forth in a formal despatch sent to the Sung emperor, the test of which is preserved in the annals.
Ch'ung-tsung of the Western Hsia Dynasty came to the throne in 1087 AD. During his reign of fifty-three years, he changed the name of the era nine times, of which Yuan-te (1119-1126 AD) and Ta-te (1135-1139 AD) are examples.
The official histories of the contemporary Chinese dynasties, the Sung (A.D. 9G0-1279), the Liao (91G-1119), and the Chin (1115-1234), are, in fact, the sources to which we must refer for authentic information about the Tangut rulers, as no hooks in their own script have survived. The special Chinese hooks on the subject that appeared since consisted mainly of extracts from the dynastic histories, strung together by the compiler to form a connected narrative.
The Tangut rulers owed their independence for nearly two centuries to their skill in guerilla warfare and to the politic wiles which they exhibited to the rival dynasties which flourished at the time in northern and southern China, accepting valuable presents and high-sounding titles from each in turn. Their closest alliances were with the Kitan emperors, who gave them princesses in marriage, and the last of the Kitan line fled for refuge to the Tangut court in 1123 when hard pressed byr the Juchen Tartars, but only to be sent back again across the Yellow River the following year and delivered up to his hereditary enemies.
At the same time the Tangut ruler offered his allegiance to the Juchen, who had established a new dynasty at Peking under the title of Chin or "Golden," on the condition that their country should not be invaded. Their relations with the Altun, or "Golden" Khans were generally friendly, and the names of many Tangut envoys sent each year to congratulate the Chin sovereign on his birthday, and at the New Year's festival, are to be found in the Chin History, the historian plaintively remarking that they continued to send missions for presents even when invading and plundering the southern borders of their entertainers.
Genghis Khan appeared on the scene in the beginning of the next century, the thirteenth, and he invaded Tangut three times in the intervals of his other conquests. The first invasion was in 1209, when the Tangut sovereign An-ch'iian offered his submission and allowed the Mongol hordes to be led through his territory east of the Yellow River to attack the Juchen.
The second was in 1217, when the Mongols invested the capital, and the new ruler, Tsun-hsien, who had meanwhile succeeded, fled to Liang-chou. He subsequently refused to fulfil a promise to send a contiugent of horsemen to aid Genghis in his incursion into Transoxiana, and thus gave a pretext for the final declaration of war on the return of the Mongol Khan from the borders of India. The last campaign which followed was in the winter of 1225, Etzina and the walled cities of Kanchou, Suchou, and Liangchou falling in rapid succession. In 1226, Lingchou and Yenchou on the right side of the Yellow River were captured, the river was crossed, and a great battle was fought under the walls of the capital in which Genghis was victorious.
The Tangut sovereign came afterwards to the tent of the conqueror, with golden images of Buddha, vessels of gold and silver, and many other precious gifts, including pages and damsels, camels and horses, in multiples of nine, a favourite number among the Mongols, but he was ill received. He died the same year of grief for the sufferings of his people, who were being relentlessly massacred by the Mongols in their usual fashion in spite of his surrender.
A nephew named Hsien was proclaimed his successor and bravely defended the capital against the Mongol generals who were left to besiege it, while Genghis himself passed on to attack the Chin empire, taking the frontier city of Chishih-chou in the defile west of Shensi, where the Yellow River enters China, and many other important places in quick succession including Lin-t'ao-fu. But his career was now approaching its close, and he died in the 7th month of the next year (AD 1227) in the Liu-p'an mountains, on the borders of the province of Shensi, where he had retired for the hot season.
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