The eastward transmission of the divination techniques from the Western Regions and the issue of Barbarianisation of the Northern Qi Dynasty
After the division of the Northern Wei,whenever there was a war between the western and the eastern divisions,a fight between a group of yellow ants and that of black ants would be held in Yexia(邺下)beforehand to predict the outcome of the conflict.The yellow ants represented the Eastern Wei,while the black ants stood for the Western Wei.The group that survived in the fight between the two heralded the military victory of the side it symbolised.This is a divination technique originated in the Western Regions.In kingdoms such as Kucha and Dayuan,fighting on the first day of the new year to predict the harvest of the following year had been a popular tradition,and was based on the same princi-ple as the ant fight in Yexia.The eastward spread of the divination techniques from the Western Regions implied the event of eastward migration of the western Hu(胡)people.By the end of 5th century CE.,the annexation of various kingdoms in the Western Regions by the Hephthalites led to the height of migra-tions of the western Hu people towards the hinterland.Following the establishment of the Eastern Wei,Gao Huan(高欢)moved the capital to Yecheng(邺城)and welcomed the populations from the border-land of He-Long(河陇)region.This again prompted waves of eastward migrations of the western Hu.The Eastern Wei court established Liangzhou(凉州)as the migrated province to support new immigrants,while the leaders of chiefdoms and the merchant Hu that had been bureaucratised at the end of the Wei Dynasty were also integrated into the polity.Multiple groups of Hu people coalesced in Yecheng,creating a Hu settlement that was highly cohesive and culturally distinguished.This in turn profoundly influenced the traditions in Hebei region.The practice of divination in Yexia and the old customs in Taiyuan(太原)not only reflected the feature of barbarianisation of the lower classes,but also the fact that the barbariani-sation was a continuous process and more influential in the Northern Qi than the Eastern Wei regime.It is an important criterion for assessing the degree of barbarianisation of the Northern Qi Dynasty.
The Northern Qi DynastyThe Western RegionsLiangzhouTechniques of divina-tionBarbarianisation
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