The Xianbei Spring Assembly

In the last month of spring the Xianbei held a great assembly by a river.^[1] Two accounts describe it. One is the Hou Han Shu. The other is an earlier history of the Wei that Pei Songzhi quotes in his commentary on the Sanguozhi.^[1] In both, the assembly is a feast at which marriages were made.^[1] The Hou Han Shu names the river as the Raole.^[2]

The Hou Han Shu

The Hou Han Shu makes the Xianbei a branch of the Donghu. They settled apart by the Xianbei mountain and took their name from it.^[2] The chapter says that their language and their customs were those of the Wuhuan, whose funeral the same chapter describes.^[2] It then names what was their own. At marriage they first shaved the head. In the last month of spring they held a great assembly on the Raole river. When the drinking and the feasting were over, the couples were matched.^[2]

By the same chapter, the Wuhuan shaved the head for ease. A woman let her hair grow when she married.^[2] A Wuhuan man first carried off the girl and lived with her for half a year or a hundred days. Then he sent cattle, horses and sheep as the bride-price. He served in his wife’s household for a year or two.^[2] Against that background, the shaving at marriage and the spring assembly are the two Xianbei customs that the chapter sets apart.

The Wei history

On the Wuhuan and the Xianbei, Pei Songzhi’s commentary on the Sanguozhi quotes at length from a history of the Wei.^[3] Pei completed the commentary in 429. The history he quotes is usually identified as that of Wang Chen. It too says that the Xianbei shared the language and the customs of the Wuhuan.^[3] Then it describes the assembly. They always held a great assembly in the last month of spring and made music by the river, 作樂水上.^[3] They gave their daughters in marriage and took wives. They shaved their heads, and they drank and feasted.^[3]

In one phrase the two accounts differ by a single character. Where the Hou Han Shu has the assembly 饒樂水上, on the Raole river, the Wei history has 作樂水上, made music by the river.^[1] One of the two may be a copyist’s change of the other. The texts do not show which. The order differs as well. In the Hou Han Shu the couples are matched after the feast. The Wei history names marriage, shaving and feasting in one sentence without a sequence. Beyond these points the two agree closely, down to the list of the animals of the Xianbei country. The Hou Han Shu is the later and shorter of the two. It gives the same tradition rather than a second report.

The Raole river

The Hou Han Shu does not say where the Raole river lay.^[2] In 801 the Tongdian of Du You placed the Kumo Xi north of the Raole river. It derives this people from the Xianbei. It called that land the old country of the Xianbei.^[4] The river, it adds, was also called the Ruluohuan, a corruption of Raole.^[4]

The autumn sacrifice

A second gathering of the Xianbei is known only from a note of the Tang period.^[5] Yan Shigu, a commentator of the Han Shu, wrote that the Xianbei held a sacrifice in autumn, by a custom handed down from of old.^[5] Where no trees stood, they set up willow branches. The riders galloped round them three times before they stopped.^[5] Yan Shigu gave the custom to explain Dailin, the autumn assembly of the Xiongnu. He took Dailin for a sacrifice made by going round the trees of a wood.^[5] His note is quoted in a Tang commentary on the Shiji.^[5] Neither the Hou Han Shu nor the Wei history mentions an autumn sacrifice of the Xianbei.^[1] The spring assembly on the river is the one gathering of the Xianbei that both histories describe. They describe it as a feast at which marriages were made.