The chiefs of the Xiongnu came together three times a year.[1] In the first month they held a small assembly at the court of the chanyu and sacrificed there.[1] In the fifth month they held a great assembly at Longcheng and sacrificed to their ancestors, to Heaven and Earth, and to the spirits.[1] In autumn, when the horses were fat, they held a great assembly at Dailin and counted the people and the herds.[1] The Shiji of Sima Qian sets out this calendar. The Han Shu copies it.[2] The histories also show princes who had fallen out with the chanyu staying away from the assemblies.[3][4][5] The spring assembly may have been the most important of the three. It confirmed the rule of the chanyu and chose him, and it had horse races and camel wrestling.[5] The same view relates the assemblies to the later toy.[5] In that case the order of the Xiongnu state, with a central command, an army ordered by tens, wings to the left and right and an assembly of the ruling men, was of the steppe and not of China.[6]

The calendar of the Shiji

Sima Qian gives the three assemblies in his account of the Xiongnu order, after the offices of the realm and before its laws.[1] The first was the small one. In the first month of the year the chiefs, 諸長, met at the chanyu’s court and held a sacrifice.[1] The text does not say to whom it was offered.[1] The great assembly of the fifth month met at Longcheng. Its sacrifice went to the ancestors of the Xiongnu, to Heaven and Earth, and to the gods and spirits, 鬼神.[1] The third met in autumn at Dailin, when the horses were fat.[1] There the Xiongnu checked and reckoned the numbers of their people and their animals, 課校人畜計.[1]

The same passage records the chanyu’s daily rite. In the morning he went out of his camp and bowed to the rising sun. In the evening he bowed to the moon.[1] Of the days marked by the Chinese cycle of ten, those of wu and ji were held highest.[1]

The Han Shu repeats the passage word for word, except that it writes Longcheng 龍城 where the Shiji has 蘢城.[7] On the assemblies it copies the Shiji. It is therefore not a second witness.

Longcheng

The two spellings of the name differ in one element. 龍城 means Dragon City. Sima Zhen, who wrote a commentary on the Shiji under the Tang, noted both forms.[1] He quoted an explanation by Cui Hao, a minister of the Northern Wei emperor Taiwu.[8] Cui Hao said that all the Hu of the west served the dragon god. Therefore they called the place of the great assembly Dragon City.[1] Sima Zhen then quoted the Hou Han Shu on the three dragon sacrifices of the Xiongnu.[1]

The Shiji does not say where Longcheng lay.[1] A Han army reached it once.[1] In the autumn of the fifth year after the failed ambush at Mayi, the Han sent four generals with ten thousand horsemen each against the Xiongnu.[1] The general Wei Qing went out from Shanggu as far as Longcheng and took seven hundred heads and prisoners.[2] Longcheng and Dailin may have had permanent buildings for religious and political purposes and for storing food, and may have been becoming towns.[9]

Where Longcheng lay has been argued, and the answers differ. Proposals put it on the Orkhon, near Noyon Uul north of Ulaanbaatar, south-west of Ulaanbaatar, on the Tamir, and in the southern Gobi. One proposal sets a second Longcheng in the Ordos.[10] Longcheng has also been placed in the valley of the Ongin river.[11] The name may instead mean the camp of tents that served as the Xiongnu centre, or at most a walled camp. Its place would then have moved with the troubles of the empire. Three walled Xiongnu enclosures without lasting settlement, examined on the Tamir in 2005, have been taken for it.[12] In 2017 a Xiongnu settlement was found in Ölziit district of Arkhangai province. After excavations in 2020 it was proposed as Longcheng.[12]

The Chinese sources also write the place as Longcheng 籠城, “basket city”, as Longci 龍祠, “dragon shrine”, and as Longting 龍庭, “dragon court”.[13] The Hou Han Shu’s closing comment on the campaigns of Dou Xian and Geng Kui says that the Han columns, pursuing the enemy three thousand li to the north, broke the dragon shrine and burned the felt tents.[14] The dragon shrine is sometimes identified with Longcheng, which the Han then burned in AD 89.[13]

A dragon cult has been inferred from the name.[13] Not everyone accepts the inference. The Shiji’s character for long means long grass and not dragon. The name may be a Chinese rendering of a Xiongnu word, and no find supports a Xiongnu dragon cult.[10] A modern Japanese commentary judged long a foreign word of unknown meaning that has nothing to do with the dragon.[15] Another argument takes the “dragon” of the Hou Han Shu as the place name Ongin and denies a dragon cult among the Xiongnu and the Göktürks.[16] A third argument holds that the dragon came to the steppe from China in very early times, and finds it in the name of the meeting place.[17]

Dailin

The commentators on the Shiji explain Dailin, 蹛林, in two ways.[1] One group of glosses explains it as the place where all the Xiongnu gathered for their autumn sacrifice, 秋社, in the middle of the eighth month.[1] The commentator Jin Zhuo supported this with a line from a letter of Li Ling, a Han general who fought for the Xiongnu, in which men “vied to hurry to Dailin”.[2] Another gloss calls Dailin simply the name of a place.[1]

The second understands the word as a rite. Yan Shigu, a commentator of the Han Shu under the Tang, explained 蹛 as going round the trees of a wood to sacrifice.[1] He wrote that the Xianbei had a custom handed down from of old.[1] At their autumn sacrifice, where no trees stood, they set up willow branches. The riders galloped round them three times before they stopped.[1] He took this for what remained of the Xiongnu rite.[1][18] His note is quoted in the Zhengyi, a Tang commentary on the Shiji.[1] The link between the Xiongnu and the Xianbei is his own. Neither the Shiji nor the Han Shu describes what was done at Dailin beyond the count. It has been argued that the sacrifice at Dailin is better attested for the time of the Tuoba, and suspected that the place name Linhu points to a cult of the forest.[19]

That count is the one thing the text states plainly. In autumn the people and the herds were reckoned there.[1] It has been understood as a rough census of people and livestock, probably for taxes and perhaps for raising warriors.[20]

The dragon sacrifices of the Southern Xiongnu

The Hou Han Shu describes the ritual year of the Southern Xiongnu, who had placed themselves under Han protection.[14] By Xiongnu custom there were three sacrifices in the year, always on a wu day of the first, the fifth and the ninth month, to the spirit of heaven.[14] After the southern chanyu had submitted to the Han, he sacrificed to the Han emperor as well.[14] At these sacrifices the tribes assembled to discuss the affairs of the state. For their pleasure they raced horses and camels.[14]

The first and the fifth month are the months of the Shiji’s first two assemblies. The ninth month falls in the autumn of the Chinese year, the season of Dailin. The wu day is one of the two days the Shiji names as the most esteemed.

The ninth month is not the eighth. The Shiji’s commentators put the autumn gathering in the middle of the eighth month, and the Hou Han Shu names the ninth.[21] The date of the autumn feast, some scholars hold, was moved from the eighth month to the ninth over time. Alternatively, the Hou Han Shu’s third sacrifice is taken to be a rite apart from the autumn gathering.[22]

The line on the three sacrifices survives in two versions. One text of the chapter has 歲有三歲祠, three yearly sacrifices.[14] Sima Zhen’s commentary on the Shiji quotes the same line as 歲有三龍祠, three dragon sacrifices.[1] The chapter itself, telling the events of AD 47, speaks of the dragon sacrifice of the fifth month, 五月龍祠.[14] The version with the dragon is therefore the better attested. The line has also been taken to mean “three Dragon Festivals”, 三龍祠, on the strength of the Shiji commentary, and the three festivals of the three months have been identified with the Dragon Festivals.[23]

Attendance and absence

Coming to the assemblies showed where a man stood with the chanyu. The Han Shu records men who stopped coming. Under the chanyu Hulugu, the chanyu’s mother had his half-brother, the Left Great Commandant, secretly killed.[24] The commandant was able and popular, and she feared that the chanyu would make him heir instead of his own son.[24] The dead man’s full brother never again came to the gatherings at the chanyu’s court.[24]

Hulugu, dying, asked the great men to make his younger brother, the Right Guli King, chanyu, because his own son was young.[24] When he died in 85 BC, his consort and the counsellor Wei Lü hid his death, forged his order and made the son chanyu instead, as Huyandi.[24] The Left Worthy King and the Right Guli King, passed over, plotted to go over to the Han or to the Wusun.[24] When the plot came out, the two kings withdrew to their own lands. They never came again to the assembly at Longcheng.[24] The Wusun may have been among the Turkic speakers who attended the great sacrifice at Longcheng while they were subject to the chanyu. The Han Shu says that the Wusun served the Xiongnu at first, and that once they had grown great they were no longer willing to go to the court assemblies.[25][26] That they attended the Longcheng sacrifice is an inference and no statement of the source.

In 60 BC a succession followed closely on an assembly at Longcheng.[24] The chanyu Xulüquanqu had set aside his consort. She had become the lover of the Right Worthy King.[24] The Right Worthy King had come to Longcheng for the assembly and was leaving when she told him that the chanyu was gravely ill and that he should not go far.[24] A few days later the chanyu died. The kings were summoned. Before they arrived, she and her brother made the Right Worthy King chanyu.[24]

The Hou Han Shu tells the same of Bi, a grandson of Huhanye, in the first century AD.[14] Bi’s uncle, the chanyu, killed his own younger brother, who stood next in line, in order to pass the throne to his son.[14] Bi spoke out in anger. From then on, full of suspicion and fear, he seldom came to the assemblies at court.[14] In AD 47 two Gudu marquises who had been set to watch him denounced him to the chanyu at the dragon sacrifice of the fifth month.[14] Bi’s brother heard it in the chanyu’s tent and rode to warn him.[14] A year later eight southern tribes made Bi chanyu. The split of 48 was never undone.[14]

The fifth month among the Göktürks

The Chinese histories record a sacrifice of the fifth month among the Göktürks as well.[27] The Zhou Shu says that in the middle ten days of the fifth month they gathered at the Taren river to worship the spirit of heaven.[28] Every year, it adds, the khan led the nobles to sacrifice at the cave of the ancestors.[28] The Sui Shu has them kill many sheep and horses in the fifth month to sacrifice to heaven.[29] It closes its account of Göktürk custom with the remark that it was broadly the same as that of the Xiongnu.[29] The comparison is the historians’ own. No source says that the Göktürk rite continued the Xiongnu one. The question belongs to the debate over Turkic origins.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab Shiji, juan 110
  2. ^ a b c Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 94
  3. ^ Han Shu, juan 94; Hou Han Shu, juan 89
  4. ^ Kurakichi 1930, p. 25–29
  5. ^ a b c Kafesoğlu 1997, p. 258–260
  6. ^ Kafesoğlu 1997, p. 62–63
  7. ^ Han Shu, juan 94; Shiji, juan 110
  8. ^ Shiji, juan 110; Wei Shu, juan 4
  9. ^ Golden 1992, p. 66
  10. ^ a b Erkoç 2026, p. 239–240
  11. ^ Kafesoğlu 1997, p. 258
  12. ^ a b Erkoç 2026, p. 240
  13. ^ a b c Erkoç 2026, p. 239
  14. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Hou Han Shu, juan 89
  15. ^ Pulleyblank 1962, p. 241
  16. ^ Kafesoğlu 1997, p. 312–313
  17. ^ Shiji, juan 110; Ögel 1995, p. 566
  18. ^ Kurakichi 1930, p. 55
  19. ^ Ögel 2015, p. 193–194
  20. ^ Golden 1992, p. 65–66
  21. ^ Shiji, juan 110; Hou Han Shu, juan 89
  22. ^ Erkoç 2026, p. 250
  23. ^ Kurakichi 1930, p. 25–26
  24. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Han Shu, juan 94
  25. ^ Han Shu, juan 96
  26. ^ Kurakichi 1930, p. 28–29
  27. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  28. ^ a b Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  29. ^ a b Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84

Sources

Literature

  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Hayrettin İhsan Erkoç, Asya Hunlarında Dinî İnançlar (Religious Beliefs of the Xiongnu) (2026)
  • İbrahim Kafesoğlu, Türk Millî Kültürü (1997)
  • Shiratori Kurakichi, On the Territory of the Hsiung-nu Prince Hsiu-t'u Wang and His Metal Statues for Heaven-worship (1930)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Mitolojisi (Kaynakları ve açıklamaları ile destanlar) II (1995)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Büyük Hun İmparatorluğu Tarihi I (2015)
  • Edwin G. Pulleyblank, The Consonantal System of Old Chinese, Part II (1962)

Related

What links here13

Persons
Huyandi Chanyu · Wei Qing · Xulüquanqu Chanyu
States
Xiongnu
Places
Cave of the ancestors
Institutions and Titles
Army of the Steppe Empires · Xiongnu Herds
Religions
Horse Sacrifice · Riding Round the Dead
Customs & Pastimes
Culture of the Turkic Peoples · Horse and Camel Races at the Xiongnu Sacrifices · The New Year on the Steppe · The Xianbei Spring Assembly

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “The Three Xiongnu Assemblies.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/customs/xiongnu-assemblies/

Last revised: 8 November 2026