Tuyuhun吐谷渾

Tuyuhun was the elder half-brother of Murong Hui, born of a secondary wife. His father Shegui divided off seventeen hundred households of the tribe and put them under him. When Shegui died and Hui succeeded to his place, the horses of the two divisions fought, and Hui said in anger, "Our late lord made a separation when he set us up. Why do you not keep far apart, but let the horses fight!" Tuyuhun said, "Horses are only beasts, and fighting is their nature. Why be angry at a man for it? To part is very easy. I shall go ten thousand li away from you." And with that he set out.

Hui repented of it and sent his chief clerk Shina Loufeng, together with the old men who had served his father, to go after him and bring him back. Tuyuhun said, "Our late lord spoke of what the divining said, that his two sons would prosper and that the blessing would flow down to their descendants. I am the lowly son of a secondary wife, and by reason the two of us cannot grow great together. That we now part because of horses is surely Heaven opening the way! Try, sirs, to drive the horses eastward. If the horses turn back east, I shall go along with you." Loufeng had two thousand horsemen of his following press the horses several hundred paces to the east, but every time they neighed mournfully and ran off to the west. When this had been done more than ten times, Loufeng knelt and said, "This is not a matter of men," and so he gave it up.

The Xianbei call an elder brother agan (阿幹). Hui thought of him with longing afterward and made the Song of the Agan, and at the year's end, when his longing was deepest, he would always sing it.

Tuyuhun said to his tribe, "We brothers will both hold a country, but for Hui it will be no more than a hundred years and some, down to his great-grandsons and their sons. It is after my own great-great-grandsons, perhaps, that we shall prosper!" Thereupon he went west and settled against Mount Yin. When the disorder of Yongjia came, he first crossed the Long range and went west, and afterward his sons and grandsons held the land of Gansong west of Xiling, reaching several thousand li as far as Bailan.

Yet though they had walled towns they did not live in them. They moved after water and grass, took tents for their houses, and made meat and milk curd their food. For offices they set up a chief clerk, a marshal and a general, and they knew writing well enough. The men mostly wear long skirts and put on caps or veils. The women dress their hair with golden flowers, braid it and wind it behind, and hang beads and shells on it. In marriage a rich house sends out a heavy bride gift, and the girl is carried off by stealth. When a father dies they take his other wives to wife, and when an elder brother dies they take his wives. As for mourning clothes, they put them off once the burial is done. The country has no fixed tax; when what they need falls short they levy on rich houses and merchants, and they stop when they have enough. One who kills a man or steals a horse is punished with death, and for other offenses goods are taken from him in redemption. The land suits barley and has many turnips, and there are a fair number of beans and millet as well. It yields Shu horses (蜀馬) and yaks. The mixed tribes of the northwest call them the Achailu (阿柴虜), and some call them the Yelu (野虜).

Tuyuhun died at seventy-two, and he had sixty sons. The eldest, Tuyan, succeeded him.

Tuyan was seven feet eight inches tall, and his bearing was bold and towering, so that the Qiang barbarians (羌虜) feared him and called him Xiang Yu. He was lofty in nature and did not mix with the crowd, and once, stirred to strong feeling, he said to those under him, "A great man who was not born in China in the age of Gaozu and Guangwu cannot run beside Han Xin and Peng Yue, Wu Han and Deng Yu across the Central Plain, settle who under Heaven is the cock and who the hen, and leave his name hanging on bamboo and silk. Instead he hides away in remote mountains, shut off among strange customs, never hearing the rites and teaching of the capital, never setting his name down in the treasury of Heaven (天府); living, he herds with elk and deer, and dead, he becomes a ghost in felt and fur. Though he steal a look at sun and moon, can he alone feel no shame in his heart!"

He was harsh and cruel by nature, and he trusted in his own cleverness and could not care for those below him, and so he was stabbed by Jiang Cong, a chief of the Qiang. With the sword still in his body he said to his general Hebani, "The knave has stabbed me, and the fault is mine. Above I have failed our late lord, and below I am ashamed before the men and women. It was because of me that the several Qiang could be held in check. After I die, help Yeyan well and make haste to hold Bailan." When he had finished speaking he died. He was in power thirteen years, and he had twelve sons; his eldest son Yeyan succeeded him.

Yeyan was ten years old when his father was killed by Jiang Cong, a chief of the Qiang. Every morning he bound straw into the shape of Jiang Cong and wept as he shot at it; when he hit it he cried aloud, and when he missed he glared and shouted. His mother said to him, "Jiang Cong has already been cut to pieces by the generals. Why do you do this?" Yeyan said, weeping, "I know well that shooting a man of straw is no help against the enemy of my dead father. It is only to give out a grief that has no bound." He was utterly filial by nature, and when his mother fell ill and did not eat for five days, Yeyan did not eat either.

When he grew up he was steady and firm, and he loved to ask about the making and changing of Heaven and Earth and about the years and reigns of emperors and kings. His marshal Boluolin said, "Your servants are unlearned, and in truth we do not know whose sons the Three Sovereigns were, or of what mothers the Five Emperors were born." Yeyan said, "Since the time of Fuxi the tokens of the mandate and the signs in the heavens have been set out clear and plain, and yet you gentlemen stand as though facing a wall. How mean that is! The old saying has it, 'The summer insect does not know winter ice,' and truly it is no empty word." He said again, "The Book of Rites says, 'The son of a duke's grandson (公孫) takes the courtesy name of his grandfather (王父) for his clan name.' Our ancestor came first from Changli and settled in glory in this land, and to take Tuyuhun now for our clan name is the meaning of honoring the ancestor." He was in power twenty-three years and died at thirty-three. He had four sons, and his eldest son Bixi succeeded him.

Bixi was kind and generous and merciful by nature. When he first heard of the greatness of Fu Jian he sent an envoy to present fifty horses and five hundred catties of gold and silver, and Jian was greatly pleased and appointed him General Who Pacifies the Distant. At that time Bixi's three younger brothers were all willful and overbearing, and the chief clerk Zhong Edi, fearing they would be the ruin of the country, said to the marshal Qi Suyun, "Long ago Duke Zhuang of Zheng and King Zhao of Qin doted on a single younger brother, and the ancestral altars were all but overturned. How much more now, when three sons of concubines are proud together, will they surely be a trouble to the altars of the state. You and I unworthily hold the place of chief counselors. If we keep our heads and go down into the earth with them, and our late lord asks us, what words shall we have for him? I shall now put them to death." Suyun asked to tell Bixi of it, but Edi said, "Our king has no resolve. He must not be told." So, when the officers went in together to court, they seized the three brothers and put them to death.

Bixi threw himself down upon his couch, and Edi and the others ran to hold him up and said, "Last night your servant dreamed that the late king told him, 'Your three brothers will make rebellion and disorder. Be quick to get rid of them.' Your servant has respectfully carried out the late king's command." Bixi had always been loving toward his brothers, and from this he was dazed and fell sick, and he said to the heir Shilian, "My calamity has reached to the destroying of my own brothers. With what face shall I meet them under the earth? Take the business of the country in hand yourself, great and small alike. For my remaining years and what is left of my life, I shall only be fed and live on." And so he died of grief. He was in power twenty-five years and was then forty-two years old. He had six sons, and Shilian succeeded him.

When Shilian ascended the throne he entered into friendly relations with Qifu Gangui, and was appointed King of Bailan. From his youth Shilian was honest and careful and had a firm will, and because his father had died in grief he did not look to the affairs of government; for seven years he neither drank wine nor went out hunting. Zhong Edi came forward and said, "A lord of men drives his age with virtue and orders the multitude with awe; he nourishes himself with the five flavors and takes his pleasure in music and beauty. These four are what the holy emperors and the enlightened kings put first, and my lord leaves them all aside. Long ago Duke Zhao was sparing and stinting and lost his state, and King Yan perished through benevolence and righteousness; so benevolence and righteousness are the way to keep oneself, and also the way to destroy oneself. What governs a country is virtue and rite; what saves an age is punishment and law. If either of these two goes wrong, the great cords lose their threads. Your lordship carries on the light of many generations, and your kindness is bound up with the western lands. Even though your benevolence and filial duty spring from your own nature, you should still take the Duke of Zhou and Confucius for your rule, and you must not follow only the benevolence of King Yan of Xu and leave punishment and virtue cast aside and unset." Shilian said, weeping, "Our late king followed his grief for his brothers and passed away in sorrow and anger. Though I have taken up his work, I am no more than a corpse still standing. How could music and beauty and sport bring me ease? The great cords, and punishment, and rite, I leave to the days to come."

At his death he said to his son Shipi, "Our high ancestor the lord Tuyuhun always said that among his sons and grandsons there would surely be one who would rise, and would be forever the western hedge of China, and that the blessing would flow for a hundred generations. I have not come to it, and you will not see it either; it will surely be in the time of your own sons and grandsons." He was in power fifteen years and then died. He had two sons: the elder was Shipi and the younger Wuheti.

Shipi was brilliant and decisive by nature and had great plans. Once, at his ease, he said to the erudite Qian Bao, a man of Jincheng, "The Book of Changes says, 'Movement and stillness have their constancy, and so the hard and the soft are decided.' Our late king ruled the age with benevolence and did not use awe and punishment, and for that reason the hard and the soft were not decided, and he was held cheap by the neighboring enemy. When benevolence is at stake one does not yield; how then should a man fold his arms and keep silent! Now I mean to feed the horses and sharpen the weapons and contend with China for the beam of the scales. What do you think of it, sir?" Bao said, "What my great king says is a plan that stands above the age, and it is what the heroes of Qin and Long would wish to hear." Thereupon he opened his heart and took men in kindly, and the multitude came to him as if coming home.

Qifu Gangui sent an envoy to appoint him Commissioner with Authority, Commander of all military affairs west of Longhe, Governor of Shazhou, and King of Bailan. Shipi would not receive it, and said to the messenger, "Since the way of Jin lost its great cords, crafty men of might have chased one another; the Liu and the Shi have wrought cruel disorder, and Qin and Yan run wild. The King of Henan holds a strong and commanding land, and he ought to gather the righteous troops and chastise those who will not obey. How is it that he lends out offices to others on his own, and apes the whole crowd of villains! I have received the fine achievements of five forefathers, and I have twenty thousand men who draw the bow. I mean to sweep the evil vapors from Qin and Long and to clear Shazhou and the northwestern Liangzhou yonder, and then water my horses in the Jing and the Wei, cut down the knaves who ask the weight of the cauldrons, seal Dongguan with a single pellet of clay, close the road of Yan and Zhao, and welcome the Son of Heaven to the Western Capital, so fulfilling the duty of a far hedge. In the end I cannot puff myself up like Wei Xiao and Gongsun Shu. Say this to the King of Henan for me: why does he not set up merit for the imperial house and put his name down in the royal office, raising the achievement of his own day and leaving his fragrance to the ages that come after!" Gangui was greatly angered, but he feared his strength, and at first he even made friendship with him, though afterward he sent his host to attack him after all. Shipi was badly beaten and fell back to hold Bailan. He was in power eleven years and died at thirty-three. His son Shuluogan was young, so he passed his place to Wuheti.

Wuheti was also called Dahai. He was weak by nature and gave himself up to wine and women and did not care for the affairs of the country. When Qifu Gangui entered Chang'an, Wuheti raided his borders again and again. Gangui was angered and led his horsemen against him. Wuheti was badly beaten and lost more than ten thousand people, and he took shelter with the Southern Liang and at last died in the land of the Hu. He was in power eight years and was then thirty-five years old. Shuluogan, the son of Shipi, ascended the throne.

Shuluogan lost his father at nine years old. His mother, of the Nian family, was clever and handsome, and Wuheti took her to wife and favored her, and so she had the affairs of the country in her hands. At ten Luogan called himself the heir, and at sixteen he succeeded to the place and led the several thousand households under him in flight to the Mohe River, where he called himself Grand Commander, Grand General of Chariots and Cavalry, Great Chanyu, and King of Tuyuhun. His teaching was carried out among his people, and the common folk delighted in their work, and they called him the Wuyin Khan (戊寅可汗); the mixed tribes of Shaqiang all came over and attached themselves to him.

Then he made a proclamation: "It is seven generations down to me since my forefather came to this land for refuge, and I would make the fair inheritance flourish together with all you worthy men. Now our men and horses are stout and we have tens of thousands who draw the bow. I shall shake out my might over the Liangzhou of Shu and Yizhou, call myself the overlord of the Western Rong, review my troops in the Three Qin, and then go far off to court before the Son of Heaven. What do you gentlemen think of it?" The multitude all said, "This is a matter of abundant virtue. May our great king urge himself on!"

Qifu Gangui feared him greatly, and led twenty thousand horsemen and attacked him at Chishui. Shuluogan was badly beaten and at last surrendered to Gangui, and Gangui appointed him General Who Pacifies the Di and Protector General of Chishui, and made his younger brother Tuhuzhen General Who Takes Captives and Commandant of Cengcheng. After that he was broken again and again by Qifu Chipan, and he held Bailan once more, and from shame and anger he fell sick and died. He was in power nine years and was then twenty-four years old. When Chipan heard of his death he said with delight, "This barbarian was stout and strong. He was what is called a pig with white hooves." He had four sons, and his heir Shiqian succeeded him, and after that the succession did not fail.