Society of The Song Dynasty - Ethnic, Foreign and Religious Minorities

Ethnic, Foreign and Religious Minorities

Further information: Islam during the Song Dynasty, History of the Jews in China, and Ethnic groups in Chinese history

Much like the multicultural and metropolitan atmosphere of the earlier Tang capital at Chang'an, the Song capitals at Kaifeng and Hangzhou were home to an array of traveling foreigners and ethnic minorities. There was a great amount of contact with the outside world. Trade and tribute embassies from Egypt, Yemen, India, Korea, the Kara-Khanid Khanate of Central Asia and elsewhere came to Song China in order to bolster trade relations, while the Chinese sent embassies abroad to encourage foreign trade. Song Chinese trade ships traveled to ports in Japan, Champa in southern Vietnam, Srivijaya in Maritime Southeast Asia, Bengal and South India, and the coasts of East Africa.

During the 9th century, the Tang seaport at Guangzhou had a large Muslim population. During the Song Dynasty the importance of the latter seaport declined as the ports of Quanzhou and Fuzhou in Fujian province eclipsed it. This was followed by a decline of Middle Eastern sea merchants in China and an increasing amount of Chinese ship owners engaging in maritime trade. However, Middle Eastern merchants and other foreigners were not entirely absent, and some even gained administrative posts. For example, the Muslim Pu Shougeng—of either Persian or Arab descent—served as the Commissioner of Merchant Shipping for Quanzhou between the years 1250 and 1275. There was also the Arab astronomer Ma Yize (910–1005), who became the chief astronomer of the Song court under Taizu. Aside from these elites, Chinese seaports were filled with resident Arabs, Persians, and Koreans who had special enclaves designated for each of them.

Muslims represented the largest religious minority within Song China, although there were many others. There was a community of Kaifeng Jews who followed the exodus of the Song court to Hangzhou once the Jurchens invaded the north in 1126. Manichaeism from Persia was introduced during the Tang; during the Song, the Manichaean sects were most prominent in Fujian and Zhejiang. Nestorian Christianity in China had for the most part died out after the Tang Dynasty; however, it was revived during the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. Followers of Zoroastrianism still had temples in China as well. Prospects of studying Chinese Chan Buddhism attracted foreign Buddhists to China, such as Enni Ben'en (圓爾辯圓; 1201–1280) of Japan who studied under the eminent Chinese monk Wuzhun Shifan (1178–1249) before establishing Tōfuku-ji in Kyoto. Tansen Sen states that Buddhist monks traveling from India to China and vice versa during the Song surpassed that of the Tang Dynasty, while "Indian texts translated under the Song dynasty outnumbered those completed under the preceding dynasties."

There were many native ethnic groups within Song China that did not belong to the Han Chinese majority. This included the Yao people, who staged tribal uprisings against the Song in Guangdong in 1035 and Hunan in 1043, during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Song (r. 1023–1064). Song authorities employed Zhuang people as local officials in what is now Guangxi and Guangdong, where the Song placed them in charge of distributing land to the Yao and other tribal groups. The Yao peoples and others on the empire's frontier were incorporated into a feudal system, or fengjian shehui, which Ralph A. Litzinger says bypassed any possible native development of a primitive slave society, or nuli shehui, since the Yao and others lacked a sedentary tradition. Although mainland Chinese states made efforts to settle parts of Hainan Island since the 3rd century BC, it was not until the Song Dynasty that a concerted effort was made to assimilate the Li people of its highlands, who at times had fought against and repelled Han Chinese settlers. During the 11th century, the Man people of Hainan wreaked havoc by joining bandit gangs of ten to several hundred men. The statesman Ouyang Xiu estimated in 1043 that there were at least several thousand Man bandits residing in a dozen or so prefectures of mainland China.

To counter powerful neighbors such as the Kingdom of Dali (934–1253), the Song made alliances with tribal groups in southwest China which served as a protective buffer between their borders and Dali's. As long as these ethnic tribal groups paid tribute to the Song court and agreed to follow the course of its foreign policy, the Song agreed to grant military protection and allow the tribal leaders hereditary, autonomous local rule. During the 1050s, the Song Dynasty put down local tribal insurrections along their borders with the Lý Dynasty of Đại Việt, while their relations with Tai peoples and alliances with local clan leaders in the southern frontier led to a border war with Lý from 1075 to 1077.