hello there students welcome to our next lecture on this one we're going to sort of update ourselves on asia in general particularly east asia what you would think of today as china of course so mostly talk about china we'll talk a little bit about south asia and india and our main sort of um our main focus will be on the spread the popularization and spread of the religion of buddhism but also again just the general uh set of events in chinese history now we're getting ahead of our of our class timeline a bit here so in our class timeline in general we're still in the years bce right for instance the lecture on alexander the great right that was in the 320s and 330s bce today in this lecture we're going to get all the way up to year 1000 ce in other words quite ahead of where we are uh when talking about the mediterranean world um that's just kind of the way the semester breaks in terms of the way the course is designed so just you know just pay attention to the years if you get a little lost in the timeline and you can find your way back if you pay attention to the years so the last time we discussed china we got as far as the establishment of the han dynasty which takes power in 202 bce after the chu han contention following the rule of qin xi wang and his reunifying of china after the warring states period right so the han will take power in 202 bce and they will rule for 400 plus years until the year 220 ce right so through the year zero as i've already mentioned uh the han dynasty rules through a vast bureaucracy that was largely shaped on the principles of the of the chinese political philosopher confucius right this is something we discussed the last time we talked about china the han dynasty the government controlled iron and salt industries and according to the all the works of scholarship we have about the period and the honda ice would have its own would have its own um historians the the han were one of the first societies with historians uh and according to their own records the the happiness and healthiness of the peasantry was a real con central concern mostly because china had just so many peasants right and so if they were angry that would be bad for china if they were sick or underfed that would be bad for china uh the peasants were crucial not just for feeding the population but they also generated the wealth they made urbanization possible right the farmers feed the people in the cities and then the peasants also served as most of the troops in armies in war right and so keeping the peasantry uh happy and healthy was crucial for any chinese government but it was a central concern of the han dynasty uh and the huns need peasants for the wars for the military because the hans are fighting lots of wars right they expand china in every direction and they created a really complex network of tribute states a tribute state is similar to like a vassal but different tribute states would have different rules and different things expected of them and basically the chinese had just surrounding them other societies would pay them tribute usually on a yearly but sometimes you know on a yearly basis but sometimes every other year every five years or every 10 years right these various peoples the chinese had defeated in war but allowed to continue to exist right would pay china a tribute that's what a tribute state means um and the hans also maintained a vast military system um one of the major problems that was constantly plaguing the han uh were these people called the zhongnu the we're step nomads in the north of china right so step nomads is something you should be familiar with by now um and the ones that were plaguing china uh for most of the han period were called the jungnu that's the chinese term for them uh we don't know what the people called themselves all right so remember like uh the the step nomads who were plaguing the kinid persian empire were called scythians where the scythians call themselves scythians we don't know what the jeongnu called themselves the chinese called them the zhongnu eventually the han would defeat the zhongnu and in so doing as i'll discuss in a little more detail on the next slide the han chinese connected uh china into the the already existing trade routes that were going through asia at the time and this created what historians call the silk road so let's talk about the silk road silk road is an overland trading system linking china korea and japan to the mediterranean world right mediterranean world but ultimately mean europe so and the silk road would continue until the 1500s ce right so it lasts for me you know like 1700 years or so um and again it brings so beginner on one yeah there we go and it brings chinese and southeast asian trade goods to europe um these are primarily so the chinese big three is silk tea and porcelain right and then southeast asia would add a lot of spices and a lot of ivory and when we say spices we mean mostly pepper and cinnamon nutmeg cloves cardamom chili powder and various other ones as well but so the biggies are always pepper and cinnamon that would come out of southeast asia particularly a set of islands that are in modern day indonesia called the malukas which the europeans always called the spice islands europeans still call them the spice islands but most people call them the malukas in central indonesia so anyway those goods would so the spices would travel from indonesia into china and then the chinese big three and those spices would travel sort of across china into asia and then through asia down the silk road into europe right so silk road brings chinese and southeast asian trade goods to europe europe in exchange typically sent gold and silver right china doesn't really want a lot of other european goods other things spread down the silk road as well not just uh trade goods right ideas and religion also spread down the silk road that's directly relevant today because we're gonna talk about how buddhism travels the silk road uh and that's how buddhism gets propagated throughout the ancient world buddhism is not the only religion that will travel to silk road right once it's created christianity also travels the silk road and then 500 years after that once it's created islam will travel the silk road right so religion goes up and down the silk road as well and so do ideas right ideas about say plato's philosophy or athenian democracy or chinese ways of uh conducting commerce and trade so ideas and religion also go up and down silk road another thing that goes up and down the silk road is technology right uh so europe learns about chinese paper making and chinese gunpowder via the silk road technology usually traveled from china to europe europe doesn't have much to teach china but china has a lot to teach europe that's a technology would travel the road as well again like the knowledge of how to make paper or how to make gun powder one final thing that travels the silk road is disease this is sort of the ugly side the most famous disease that travels the silk road is the bubonic plague which will cause so much death and destruction in medieval middle east and medieval europe and uh you know it was sort of hitchhiking the road um the bubonic plague is carried by fleas that infest rats so basically there were rats on carts full of goods traveling the silk road those rats had fleas infected with the bubonic plague and so the rat the rats kind of hitchhiked their way again the way the silk road is created is worth talking about so let's do that in some greater detail here right so again it's an overland trading route trading system right it's not one road uh it's called the silk road but there were several routes and several sort of nodes along the silk road eventually even india would be incorporated right um and again this is the various goods that travel it so how did it develop so it begins with alexander the great right as we discussed in the previous lecture we talked about contact and sort of uh the legacy of alexander the great and one of the things that alexander does is he links the caspian sea basin with europe right the caspian sea basin would be central asia again modern-day turkmenistan and modern-day uzbekistan and modern-day russia alexander conquered into those regions as he was chasing various persian princes right um and trying to make himself the king of asia uh and so he links that area with europe and after alexander dies uh greeks or people you know of hellenic culture continue to govern the area that is modern-day afghanistan whereas called the indo-bactrian kingdom they continue to govern that area until about 10 ce and as long as greeks governed that area that area remained in constant contact with europe once greeks stopped governing that area it still stayed in fairly strong contact with europe right not quite as constant but there was still a lot of contact between afghanistan and europe even after the hellenic greeks stopped ruling it directly so that's uh that's sort of the western side of the silk road right that's the caspian sea to europe so how do we get from china to the caspian sea that's through the han dynasty um around 113 bce the hans connect china to the caspian sea through their wars against the zhonggu uh mostly the zhong neuhugen our step nomads wanted to trade with china and so chinese merchants would explore out of china and on to the steppe and china would trade silk and grain to the xiangnu and then the zhongyu would trade um really good horses right china wanted better horses to fight the genre so basically when i say step nomads so this is a different step nomad group remember the step there's not one people who live on a step right there's hundreds of people who live on the step and so china is basically fighting one group of step nomads who call themselves the zhongnu and there's another group of step nomads who don't like the zhong nu either and them and china make friends and we don't know what they're called are these other step nomads who don't like the genre either so you know on the principle the enemy of my enemy is my friend china and these other step nomads become friends they make a trade deal where china gives those step nomads silk and grain and then no stone step nomads give the chinese better horses because the chinese need better horses to fight the zhongnu right this initiates the idea of trading from east to west right and these step nomads that the chinese are trading um silk and grain to they live in the caspian sea basin so then chinese merchants begin traveling along the step into the caspian sea basin where they meet greeks from alexander the greats conquest right and then the greeks trade the chinese and then these greeks trade with europe right and then europe goes wow these chinese goods are great and that sort of establishes the silk road the silk road would get more advanced over time particularly once the romans take over in egypt and mesopotamia which we'll talk about next week this further strengthened the silk road ties between the various kingdoms and because the romans were great traders and great seafarers and also brought in maritime commerce with india as well so that indian goods began joining the silk road in addition to the chinese goods and so we get this whole sort of uh eurasian trade system and again we call that eurasian trade system the silk road but it's facilitated both by alexander the great and his enormous conquest in the central asia and then the han dynasty's uh desperation to defeat the zhong nu by getting better war horses and that leads to silk road and again these trading ties and trading networks would be maintained for you know well over 1500 years uh and just to show you the extent of the trade right archaeologists have found roman glassware in sites as far away as korea right so koreans were trading for roman things you know in the year zero or so and uh that's pretty stunning uh to most people when they first hear it uh most historians would be wow wow i didn't realize right so there are quite extensive trading uh networks going through eurasia let's return to han china so again the han chinese create um the silk road by 100 bce um the han control most of what is modern-day china in addition to the entire korean peninsula and the northern areas of what today we would call vietnam and cambodia right which the the the chinese called cochin china or indochina at the time right um and so the han china is very large it's even bigger than modern-day china um just for a sense of how large it is in the year two ce uh the chinese took a census and they counted nearly 58 million people now we've talked about the chinese and sensai before right to have a huge army you need really great records you need to know how many people live in your country so you know how many people can serve in the military right and so china here is way more bureaucratically advanced than anywhere else in the world there's nowhere else in the world that can take a really good census and there's nowhere else in the world that has nearly 60 million people right so the fact that china can do this is indicative of china's in med you know immense power it'd only be a couple years later that the romans would uh also join them right so rome and china are really the only two ancient powers that are this advanced and it's no surprise in the china and rome sort of emerge as the dominant societies in the ancient period right because they are the most bureaucratically advanced and it takes bureaucratic advancement right to make military might you can't have military power without bureaucratic power uh it's kind of the the unsexy side of ancient warfare right it's the logistics and the censuses uh and being able to feel the big army right it's not just a matter of having a great military shortly after this high water mark in han chinese history crisis strikes in the year nine ce the crisis is two-pronged pronged there's a disputed secession with a pretender on the throne right disputed secession usually means civil war right and there's absolutely just devastating flooding in the yellow river valley which is where you know a lot of the population lived and it uproots the peasantry there and really creates a humanitarian crisis in china and again the han at this very moment were particularly ill-suited to handle the humanitarian crisis because there's a disputed secession that's threatening civil war right and so the combination sparks a disaster for the han dynasty and basically social order breaks down there's a 15-year civil war widespread mandatory massive suffering and things are looking quite bleak but the han dynasty uh wins the civil war restores itself creates a new capital in 25 ce and so then the han period can be broken into two smaller periods 202 bce to 9 ce is the western han period 25 ce to 220 ce is the eastern han period begin with this 15-year interregnum in between of civil war and catastrophe so the eastern han would continue for another 200 years controlling a vast territory with an enormous population a robust international trading network and this very complex confucian bureaucracy over time both new forces and old forces would emerge to threaten han stability right the old forces are the same forces that we have periodically seen uh challenging various uh the the stability of various chinese dynasties right throughout the ancient period factionalism political intrigue really ambitious uh governors and sort of sub-rulers uh and really complex and uh tightly you know held personal rivalries um these those all re-emerge to haunt the han dynasty and challenge its stability and so do some new forces right things like religious rebels particularly from a new religion called taoism that was really taken hold in the early han period eventually the old forces and new forces combine in the 190s ce to create a catastrophe there's again a disputed secession that led the nobility to revolt into civil war right so basically most of the nobility backed one candidate but the han nobility backed a different candidate so the non-han nobility revolts against the han nobility creating this huge civil war this happened simultaneously with a taoist uprising led by secret taoist sex uh among the peasantry called the yellow turbine rebellion this created 30 years of multi-factional civil war right it's not one side versus a second side right several people several sides fighting each other at the same time right again nothing new to chinese history we saw similar things say the warring states period sorry excuse me a hiccup um but again it all becomes from a secession dispute and you know factionalization and personal rivalries um and eventually the country devolves into warlordism there's a huge famine because most of the peasants are fighting in the yellow turbine rebellion right on one side or the other and so the han no longer really governed so the government the country becomes more or less impossible to govern uh and the han dynasty collapses into the three kingdom period right the last han emperor is a guy called john who resigns in 220 ce uh and china is again no longer unified right the china had been unified for close to 500 years but is no longer unified it breaks into three smaller kingdoms since the name three kingdoms period the three kingdoms are way shu and uh and for 60 years rebellions and factions as well as the chaos from the fall of han just batter china this is the one of the most devastating periods any society and world history has ever suffered through uh i have numbers in a bit uh to first resolve the three kingdoms period then we'll discuss the numbers for how devastating this was uh in 263 c 263 ce way would conquer shu uh and then way would have a change in government and change its name from way to the jin dynasty right it's away conquer shoe and then changes its name to the jin dynasty in 265 and then the jin dynasty would conquer wu and reunite china right and though jhin would rule for 140 years until 420 ce as a very image in the three kingdoms period is brutal right the chinese population declines from 56 plus million in the 156 ce census to only just over 16 million in the 280 ce census again just absolutely devastating more than 40 million people died during the three kingdoms period from rebellion from famine from disease again you won't find suffering on that level in really any other society and known history um that percentage of the population right 40 million out of 56 million people are gone right maybe they didn't all die maybe some fled as refugees for instance right but vanished from the society the three kingdoms period was also ironically uh has been remains um sort of a magnet for cultural portrayals right so there's very few periods in history again in any other society including chinese society have ever been so often portrayed in art and literature and film than the three kingdoms period there are you know literally tens of thousands of books and poems about the three kingdoms period there are hundreds probably thousands by now films about the period um and a lot of what what you would think of is like you know if you were to watch a film about chinese warfare ancient chinese warfare it's probably set during the three kingdoms period just because it is such a brutal period that it is ripe for artistic portrayal um so china will have to recover from this so the general rule again from 280 to 420 ce so let's talk a little bit about the dynasty in the aftermath of the three states period so chinese unity under the gin is very short-lived the country will soon split again into a north and a south the gin would continue ruling in the south right so when i said the gen would rule until 420 ce they really only rule southern china uh in the north barbarians so-called usurp the government we should talk for a minute about the meaning of barbarian so most societies in the ancient period had people they referred to as barbarians and barbarians were typically just people who didn't live in that society and they were also typically people who uh were less technologically advanced than that society right so the chinese have people they call barbarians those are usually step nomads in this case they are right step nomads to the north of china are barbarians they're not as technologically advanced as china and they're not chinese right and the word barbarian derives from the way foreign languages sound to romans right so the romans would also have barbarians and they called them barbarians because to the romans the way the barbarians talked just sounded like barbara barbara barbara because they couldn't understand their language right it's a way of making fun of or denigrating another society right and again you wouldn't say barbarians are people who are more technologically advanced than you right the chinese wouldn't call the romans barbarians even though they're a different society the romans wouldn't call the chinese barbarians even though a different society because they're roughly they're close to level in terms of technological advancement so barbarians were people that you saw as behind you on the technological scale people you saw as backward or slow or sort of you know rednecks or you know country rubes right those were barbarians so in the north so-called barbarians usurped the gen government and created an array of small dynastic states they get very confusing very quickly right they're called the 16 states of the five barbarians we're not going to look at them in detail again they get really confusing really quickly if you look at it the chaos of all of this right the collapse of gin into sort of two pieces right where the north is lost to barbarians and the gin keeping south doesn't end in 420 ce and the gin collapse right so the gin will collapse in civil war uh and then the civil war will spill over into the north into the 16 states of the five barbarians region um and uh the civil war would last for another 160 years uh in a period called the northern and southern dynasty periods right so just again more suffering so china really still hasn't recovered from the three kingdoms period and then more civil war more instability uh and just more brutal politics in 581 ce finally the emperor win of sway uh unites all of china again and like chin chi wang way back in 221 bce right 700 years earlier uh when the sway was able to stabilize china and really set it up for prosperity in the future right much like the the qin dynasty set up uh china for prosperity under the han dynasty right remember the han dynasty period was a golden age right the sway dynasty uh would help stabilize china and set it up for a future golden age again so before we talk about that let's talk about the spread of buddhism so buddhism as a very mentioned developed in india around 400 bce uh as part of the thramana movements right the buddha is a guy called siddhartha gautama again or the buddha you can call me the one right the buddha led a sramana movement right in india during the mahajanapada period um after he dies a religious following develops around him and these people you know venerate siddhartha gatama as the buddha and they call their religion buddhism right and it was a sort of a very minor religion practice in only a little corner of india but it began to grow very rapidly during the reign of a king called ashoka the great who ruled from 268 to 232 bce he converted to the religion and he had a really touching conversion experience right so part of being a king in the ancient period you're typically leading or directing major wars right and the ashoka was no different and basically to become king he had to win this enormous battle and in this battle so many people die uh and ashoka said you know my religion of hinduism it can't uh it can't explain this this level of violence right my religion does not allow me to cope with killing on this scale i need a new religion i need a religion that is opposed to human suffering uh that you know emphasizes human goodness and can answer these questions that hinduism cannot answer he finds buddhism and converts to buddhism uh once he once he converts the religion he then promotes it very actively throughout india he builds 84 000 stupas a stupa is the buddhist version of a temple right it's what a buddhist would call his or her temple confusingly buddhists also have a second building that they call temples um we won't get into it so just think of a stupa as a place of worship in the buddhist religion ashoka builds 84 000 uh stupa and he also begins sending missionaries out from india right from india south to sri lanka and from india north and west into central asia again what you and i would call afghanistan but obviously no one called it that at the time right into that indo-bactrian kingdom that we were already discussing when we talked about the silk road um ashoka the great and his sort of uh children and great-grandchildren and so on fall from power around 150 bce a new ruling dynasty will take over in india and they are sort of hardcore hindus right and they're very opposed to buddhism they see buddhism as softening the indian people and as pulling the indian people away from hinduism and so they begin persecuting buddhism and buddhist around 150 bce once they take power um meanwhile that indo-greek you know bactrian kingdom right the remnant of alexander's conquest in central asia officially recognized buddhism right it sort of becomes an official buddhist country that says all buddhists should come here where you know we're a safe haven for buddhism in other words the buddhists of india leave right as refugees again a lot of them go north and west into central asia where they find the indo-greek kingdom also called the the indo-bactrian kingdom it changes its name a couple times confusingly don't worry about it or they go south into sri lanka where they go east into modern-day burma so buddhism leaves india again moving north into central asia south and east into sri lanka burma thailand and cambodia it reaches cambodia by 500 ce just to give you a sense of how it spreads right burma by year zero thailand by year 100 cambodia by year 500 against there was already established in 150 bc has already established buddhism is in sri lanka and central asia in this indo-greek kingdom so this is what a stupa looks like this is one of supposedly one of ashoka's stupas in india today so buddhism the silk road and china right because buddhism will come to china and it's not there yet uh like other religions buddhism has sex or factions i think of christianity there's orthodox christianity there's catholics there's protestants right there are various types of catholics there are various types of protestants there are very types of orthodox but there's also um uh oriental orthodox christianity right like egyptian coptics rights there's all kinds of factions within christianity the same would be true of islam or hinduism or judaism right all religions have sex or factions buddhism has two major sects right the northern sect is called mayana buddhism and that's the one that goes to central asia right in that indo-greek or that indo-bhaktrian kingdom that's left from you know that greek kingdom that's left from alexander the greatest conquest right and then the one that's uh that's the one that ends up spreading to china the southern sect or the eastern sect that goes to sri lanka and burma and thailand and cambodia is called terravada taravada you don't pronounce the h um the indo-greek kingdom encompassed modern afghanistan right that the indo-greek king that become a safe haven for buddhism in central asia it was also a major hub in the early silk road trading network and buddhist missionaries have been traversing the silk road trade routes from their inception right because ashoka had already sent out missionaries and so buddhist missionaries are leaving the indo-greek kingdom and traveling the silk road in both directions in particular they begin entering china in large numbers during the eastern han period uh the first real major um buddhist city or town in the indo greek empire is a place called bombiyan um uh it's still called bamiyan province today in modern afghanistan but bamiyan is this enormous valley uh in between just two huge ranges of the hindu kush mountains and it's more or less impossible to travel from china to persia or from china to europe without going through bamiyan and so all trade all communication between europe or persia and china goes right through bamiyan again bamiyan's this major buddhist hub right and so the silk road really plays into the growth and spread of buddhism out of india and into china in the northern and southern period in particular and also that three states period buddhism really flourishes in china and it does so for multiple reasons right one reason is buddhism has a fundamental message of compassion right it's really a religion um about the ubiquity of human suffering right we all suffer right to be human is to suffer in a lot of ways um and so you know you should be compassionate to your fellows or your neighbors you should be compassionate to the stranger because all life is suffering right we're all dealing with suffering and so it's a it's a religion of empathy and compassion and so that message of compassion really appealed to the chinese masses who are going through this just unprecedented period of centuries of suffering and struggle right again it's a really bad time to be chinese and so um a religion of compassion and hope is particularly appealing in that kind of environment the fact that buddhism is a new religion that doesn't belong to any faction really appealed to the chinese elites remember what brings down china in this period is factionalism right and factionalism was often religious right one of the factions was taoism right and so taoism has an established political faction buddhism does not right buddhism is unattached so anyone who follows buddhism will pull away from any other faction right so buddhism becomes a tool for ending factionalism right it's very novelty helps it to transcend the factions right and then buddhism also is a religion that at its root uh calls for submission right you submit to various types of authority you submit to various types of suffering you submit to one to your own sort of spiritual self right buddhism is a language not a language buddhism is a religion of submission right and so that call for submission also appeals to the political elites who are trying to unify china right so for various reasons buddhism flourishes in china during this period of great struggle right because it appeals both to the masses and to the political elites so the political elites promote it and the masses receive it with open arms right so everyone sort of benefits from buddhism spreading into china at this moment and buddhism would really take hold in china and be a dominant maybe even the dominant religion ideology sort of thought pattern and world view in china for the next five or six hundred years there were occasional crackdowns from chinese political elites against buddhism we'll talk about the most consequential one in a moment right but so the ones that didn't matter as much the less consequential the crackdowns have two different names right one name is the four buddhist persecutions and then the other is the three disasters of wu those are both the same they're talking about the same things right so those were some of the buddhist persecutions but those were fairly minor and didn't have a large effect on buddhism christianity in rome will follow a very similar pattern right where its message of compassion and his novelty appeal to both the masses and the elites but there would be occasional crackdowns so we'll talk about that uh next week uh or you know depending on uh the classic calendar right whenever uh we talk about the roman empire right we will come to that and you'll see that there are parallels without buddhism flourished in china so let's return now to china we were talking about emperor wynn of the suede dynasty who comes to power in 581 ce right and the suede dynasty promoted buddhism as sort of a major component of their rule right so this is after the northern and southern period right this is the end of the northern and southern dynasties period and so buddhism is really flourishing under the sway um and buddhism really helped initiate a period of expansion of art and sculpture because buddhism is very much an iconic religion right where people make icons make religious images of various kind and so as a religion flourishes so does art and sculpture um sway rulers reinstate that large bureaucracy that the han had used uh and then they worked to alleviate rule poverty and stabilize society right again buddhism is helping them uh keep the population united the sway are also famous for undertaking these massive public works projects the most important and so the grandest was called the grand canal to connect the yellow and yangtze rivers they never quite finish it they also greatly expanded the great wall of china they improved and extended the road network various other public works projects unfortunately these projects were accomplished by conscription right forced labor uh which ultimately killed millions of workers right so basically people were forced to work on the canal the roads the great wall of china and the work was so hard and the working conditions so poor that a lot of people were killed because so many people died on these works projects this caused problems for the government and the sway collapsed in civil war in 614 and are completely defeated and disappear from the face of the earth in 618. right so you can imagine how chinese people are feeling like they just emerged from like 300 years of civil war uh and they just want stability and yet here's more war this leads then to the tong dynasty uh and the tongue stabilized the country in the civil war and usher in china's second golden age and again the chinese people suffered enough they kind of deserve this right the population would go from 50 million to 80 million the capital of the tang dynasty is called john and in the 800s john is the world's largest city with a population of around 2 million people which is enormous by ancient standards well this would be medieval standards but either way culture of all sorts flourish in the tang dynasty particularly poetry and painting it's a very much a literary culture right they they've invented paper making by this point and so it's much easier to make books and so books and libraries encyclopedias uh the very process of printing all expand massively under uh the tang dynasty the tang also have an absolutely enormous military and they greatly expand chinese china's territory and influence and create more of these tributary states and win tribute from far and wide there are governments from like a thousand miles away who are paying tribute to the tongue um in the same time period the tongue the chinese really become sort of the great sailors of the early medieval world uh led by so just scientific innovations and technological innovations and sailing technology and so chinese sailors and merchants dominate the indian ocean right connecting um sort of asia to africa asia to the middle east um and again that's all part of what we would call the silk road even though it's technically the ocean right often referred to as the silk road as well and china is dominating that and so people from all over the world want to come here and the tongue prove particularly tolerant and very open to foreign people foreign ideas foreign religions and so people from all over the world and various religious beliefs live together peacefully and prosperously in tang china particularly in the capital jian jiyan will be the world capital of a particular brand of christianity called nestorian christianity that we won't talk about until after midterm um but i'll mention it then that they that they mostly live in china so there's christians there's buddhists by 900 right there's tons of muslims there's hindus uh there's taoist right there's koreans and japanese and persians and afghans people from the step there's people from europe right and so the tongue the tang dynasty is a really um a unique period in the ancient in terms of the ancient and medieval world right this sort of multicultural cosmopolitan trade dominated uh tolerant multinational sort of uh society where there's general flourishing right it's a really cool uh it would be a really cool place to live and this is also considered the golden age of chinese buddhism right so if i could have lived at any place in the medieval world i would probably pick the tang dynasty in the 800s just an example of some of the chinese this is chinese artwork from the tong period uh so briefly let's talk about from the tongue to the song dynasties because when we return to china after midterm we'll talk about the song dynasty um the tongue have centuries of warfare and economic prosperity uh and this begins to weigh down the government right um it's hard to even in today's world right there's not really a society a society that's maintained 200 years of prosperity right or 200 years of just fighting and winning wars right so that level of just again prosperity can really weigh down a government even today right even more so in the medieval period and so the tone government begins to sort of uh collapse right uh and it's the usual problems that we've seen already throughout the semester right factions begin to rise right so maybe the the faction that likes trading ivory and india is competing against the faction that really likes trading cinnamon to syria right is clashing with the faction that really likes trading horses on the step and so on right so prosperity creates factions and sort of special interest groups and conspiracies and backroom dealing right so factions come from prosperity so does the sort of backstabbing and even the need to backstab and again centuries of warfare even though the army is almost always winning uh soldiers get tired right and so the tongue are grinding down their manpower right so that fewer and fewer citizens who can become soldiers and the soldiers they have are getting tired uh generals are running out of ideas right and so it's just uh it's it's more of a malaise right there's no crisis it's just a slow degeneration from the golden period downward right but just a slow malaise a slow crumbling over time much like a you know a bridge will crumble with use right um in crisis right because it becomes a crisis by the by you know the late by the late 800s the tongue emperors blame foreigners for their issues right this is nothing original right lots of unpopular rulers throughout history and around the world have blamed foreigners for their problems uh in particular they blame buddhism right buddhist is a buddhism is a foreign idea buddhism is the cause of all of our problems right our social stagnation is because we let in this foreign religion as foreign ideology so in 845 they begin the great anti-buddhist persecution meant to quell foreign influence to please certain factions uh and to replenish the treasury basically by stealing all the wealth of the buddhist temples and as you might guess it doesn't work blaming foreigners is rarely a solution because it's never the foreigners fault right none of these issues are caused by foreigners these issues are caused by again just general social malaise uh so this this basically backfires it does um really dampen chinese people's uh dedication to buddhism but not completely and eventually in 907 the tongue will collapse into what we call the five dynasties and ten kingdom period which will last for about 70 years against civil war and instability and the usual things we see in these interregnum in chinese history between these stable dynasties right uh so it's a bad 70 years to be chinese uh and the period ends in 979 when the song dynasty which started it's one of the five dynasties it started in 960 and it's able to sort of restore order and unify china and so the song will reunify china and again re-initiate um stability in in china uh and begin to get china back you know on the path to prosperity right china is a prosperous land with sort of natural sources of wealth so if you look at chinese history from a broad perspective right there are periods of prosperity and periods of suffering right but china bounces back much like we talked about earlier in the semester when we discuss say the ancient egyptians right egypt always bounces back because the nile is always there right and so china always bounces back too and it bounces back under the song the song will invent paper money they will invent gunpowder and they will invent the compass they also have the first permanent or standing navy in world history we've talked about permanent armies or standing armies right so this would be the first permanent standing navy right where you have uh again professional sailors who you know and the government owns ships usually warships right uh and this will become important because uh when the song will go to war with a major foreign invader a couple hundred years after this and uh they will fight naval battles and so the song then again restabilize china and put china back on the path towards prosperity and again when we return to chinese history well after midterm we'll talk about the song so hopefully what you've gotten from lecture today again is a thousand years of chinese history but also a firm understanding of of uh globalization in the ancient world via the silk road and what that means and also a really good idea of how buddhism leaves india right because buddhism is an indian religion and very few indians today are buddhist right how did that happen well now you know and so with that out of the way i shall see you next time alright