The Chile Song

The Chile Song is a short song about the land of the Chile below the Yin mountains.^[1] Chile was the name by which the peoples of the north called the Gaoche, the “high carts” of the Wei Shu, whom the later histories call the Tiele.^[2] Three histories record one performance of the song. In the winter after the failed siege of Yubi in 546, the sick Gao Huan had his general Hulü Jin, a Chile, sing it before the nobles. Gao Huan joined in himself.^[3] The words survive in the Yuefu shiji, an anthology of songs compiled under the Song.^[1] The Wei Shu says of the Gaoche that they loved to sing long songs with drawn-out voices, like the howling of wolves.^[2]

The songs of the Gaoche

The Wei Shu begins its chapter on the Gaoche with their names.^[2] At first they were called Dili. The peoples of the north called them Chile, 勑勒, and the Chinese called them Gaoche and Dingling.^[2] Chile is one of several Chinese forms of the name that the Sui and Tang histories write Tiele.^[4] The annals of the Wei Shu use it for Gaoche groups inside the Wei realm, as in 498 for the rising of the Chile Shuzhe.^[5]

The chapter explains the singing of the Gaoche by a story that it gives as popular tradition.^[2] A chanyu of the Xiongnu had two beautiful daughters and set them on a high tower in an empty land in the north, to give them to Heaven.^[2] In the fourth year an old wolf came. It howled at the tower day and night and dug a hollow beneath it.^[2] The younger daughter took the wolf for a sign from Heaven. She went down and became its wife, and her children grew into a people.^[2] Since the younger daughter becomes its wife, the wolf of this story is male. In the origin account of the Göktürks the wolf is a she-wolf.^[6]^[7] For that reason, the Wei Shu says, the Gaoche loved to sing long songs with drawn-out voices that sounded like the howling of wolves.^[2]

Their girls had a ditty about a chief.^[2] Beihouli, head of the Hulü tribe of the Gaoche, went over to the Wei under the emperor Daowu and was made Duke of Mengdu.^[2] The northern peoples stopped a crying child by saying “Beihouli is coming”, and the girls sang: “If you seek a good husband, he should be like Beihou.”^[2] The Bei Shi, as transmitted, lacks these sentences.^[8] Song belonged also to the great gatherings of the Gaoche. At the sacrifice to Heaven under the emperor Wencheng they sang and chanted with joy. At their thanksgivings those in good fortune sang and danced, while the families of the dead chanted in grief.^[2]

Hulü Jin

Hulü Jin, styled Aliudun, was a man of the Chile tribe of Shuozhou.^[9] Some scholars see in Aliudun a transcription of Turkic altun, “gold”, which would match his given name Jin, “gold”.^[10] They also see in the name of his ancestor Beihouli the Old Turkic bayayu, “rich”, and count both names as evidence that the Chile spoke a Turkic language.^[10] His great-great-grandfather was Beihouli, the chief of the girls’ ditty; both histories make Beihouli Duke of Mengdu under Daowu.^[11] Hulü Jin made war in the manner of the Xiongnu.^[12] From the dust he could tell how many horsemen and foot soldiers were coming, and by smelling the ground how far away an army was.^[12]

As an army captain under Yang Jun, the commander of Huaishuo, he escorted the Rouran khan Anagui back to the north. Anagui watched him shoot at the hunt and admired his skill.^[9] In the rising of the Six Garrisons he joined the rebel Poliuhan Baling, who gave him the title of king.^[12] Then he submitted to the Wei, was beaten by Du Luozhou and escaped to Erzhu Rong.^[12] When Gao Huan rose against the Erzhu, Hulü Jin was among those who backed him.^[9] In 546 he took part in the siege of Yubi. On the way back Gao Huan gave him command of the main army as far as Jinyang.^[9]

On his sickbed Gao Huan told his heir whom he could trust.^[3] “Kudi Gan is an old Xianbei, Hulü Jin an old Chile; both are upright by nature and will never fail you.”^[3] Hulü Jin died in 567, at eighty by Chinese reckoning.^[9] His biography in the Bei Qi Shu does not mention the song.^[9]

Yubi, 546

In the ninth month of 546 Gao Huan, who governed the Eastern Wei, laid siege to Yubi, which Wei Xiaokuan held for the Western Wei.^[13] The fortress did not fall. The siege lasted fifty days by the Bei Qi Shu and sixty by the Zhou Shu.^[13] The Bei Qi Shu counts seventy thousand dead, buried in one mound.^[14] A star fell into the camp. Gao Huan fell ill.^[14] In the eleventh month he withdrew, carried in his sickness.^[14]

The Western Wei put it about that he had been struck by a crossbow bolt.^[15] In the Zizhi tongjian the rumour starts in Gao Huan’s own army. The Wei take it up in an order: “The strong crossbow shot once, and the evil one fell by himself.”^[16] Gao Huan heard of it and forced himself to sit up and receive the nobles.^[3] He had Hulü Jin sing the Chile Song and joined in himself.^[3] He was moved to grief and wept.^[3]

The Zizhi tongjian sets the scene in the twelfth month of that year, which corresponds to January 547.^[16] Gao Huan died in the first month of 547.^[14] The Bei Qi Shu and the Zizhi tongjian say that he had Hulü Jin 作 the song, a verb that means both to make and to perform.^[17]

The words

The Yuefu shiji, compiled by Guo Maoqian under the Northern Song, gives the words among its miscellaneous songs and ballads.^[1] It introduces them with a passage from an earlier work on songs, the Yuefu guangti.^[1] There Gao Huan attacks Yubi. Four or five in ten of his soldiers die, and he falls ill with rage.^[1] The king of Zhou issues an order: “Gao Huan, that rat, attacked Yubi in person; the crossbow shot once, and the chief villain perished.”^[1] Gao Huan sits up to calm his men. He calls all the nobles and has Hulü Jin sing the Chile, and he joins in himself.^[1] The passage calls the enemy Zhou, a name the western state took only in 557. The histories of the time say Western Wei.

After the quotation the anthology adds a note.^[1] The song, it says, was first in the Xianbei language and was turned into the language of Qi. Therefore its lines are of unequal length.^[1] The music treatise of the Sui Shu says of the pieces of the great horn in the band of drums and pipes that their words all went back to the Xianbei.^[18]

敕勒川，陰山下。天似穹廬，籠蓋四野。天蒼蒼，野茫茫，風吹草低見牛羊。

The plain of the Chile, below the Yin mountains. The sky is like a domed tent and covers the wilds on every side. The sky is grey and blue, the wilds are boundless; the wind blows, the grass bends low, and cattle and sheep come into view.^[1]

Yuefu Shiji (Collection of Yuefu Songs)

The lines have three, four and seven characters. The histories that tell of Yubi give the title of the song, not its words.^[3] The words are known from an anthology compiled more than four centuries after Hulü Jin sang them. Hulü Jin was a Chile, and the anthology calls the song Xianbei.^[9] In which language he sang it, no source says. Some scholars hold that it was not a Xianbei song but a song of the Chile themselves. The dying Gao Huan speaks of Hulü Jin as a Chile, in contrast to an elder statesman who was a Xianbei.^[10] What survives is a Chinese version of a song that its own anthology calls a translation.

References

Sources

Wei Shu, juan 4, 7, 103
Bei Qi Shu (Book of Northern Qi), juan 2, 17 (after Bei Shi)
Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 6, 98 (after Wei Shu, Zhou Shu and Sui Shu)
Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 2, 50
Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 150, 159 (after Wei Shu, Zhou Shu, Sui Shu and Bei Shi)
Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 15

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Guo Maoqian 郭茂倩, 樂府詩集 Yuèfǔ shījí (Northern Song)
Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Mitolojisi (Kaynakları ve açıklamaları ile destanlar) I (1993)
Edwin G. Pulleyblank, The 'High Carts': A Turkish-Speaking People Before the Türks (1990)