Wei Jie was an official of the Sui court under the emperor Yang. The Sui Shu calls him an attendant censor (侍御史). It names him, with Du Xingman, as the envoy sent to the lands of the western barbarians.[1] In 610 a censor of the same name carried the emperor’s summons to Heshana.[2] The Tongdian quotes a Xifan ji, the “Record of the Western Barbarians”, under the name of a Wei Jie.[3] The three may be one man, the author of a memoir on the western countries.[4] None of the passages gives his origin, his age or his end.[5]

The mission to the western lands

The preface of Sui Shu 83 tells of the journey in one sentence. In the time of the emperor Yang, the court sent the attendant censor Wei Jie (韋節) and Du Xingman (杜行滿), a clerk of the Sili, to the western barbarian countries.[1] They came to Jibin (𦋺賓) and obtained an agate cup. At Wangshe cheng (王舍城) they obtained Buddhist scriptures. At Shi (史國) they obtained ten dancing girls, lion skins and the hair of the fire rat. Then they returned.[1] Some identify the hair of the fire rat with asbestos.[6]

These three names are the only stops that the preface gives.

Jibin was an old name that the Chinese applied sometimes to one land of north-western India and sometimes to another. The same chapter says that the realm of Cao was the Jibin of the Han.[1] The Jibin of the envoys has been placed in Gandhara or on the north-western border of India.[7]

Wangshe cheng means “city of the royal residence”. The Wei Shu and the Zhou Shu say that Badiyan, the seat of the Hephthalite king, is the Wangshe cheng.[8] The scriptures may therefore have come from the Hephthalite royal seat. Others identify Wangshe cheng with Rajagriha in India.[6][9] The article on the Hephthalites sets out both proposals.

Shi, written 史, has been identified with Kish.[6] The Sui Shu describes it as former Kangju land with a king of the family Zhaowu. It lies 240 li south of Kang and 500 li north of Tokharistan, and its customs are like those of Kang.[1] It is not the Shi of Chach, which the text writes 石 and treats in an entry of its own.[1]

The entry on An names Du Xingman alone. It says that he was sent to the western regions after the emperor’s accession. He reached that country and came back with five-coloured salt.[1] An is Bukhara. The text does not say whether this was the journey of the preface. It names no companion.[1] Nor does it say whether Wei Jie went to An.

The date of the journey

The preface gives no year. It tells of the journey first. Then it says that the emperor again ordered Pei Ju to travel between Wuwei and Zhangye and draw the foreign states to court.[1] Pei Ju wrote a report from his inquiries there, the Illustrated Record of the Western Regions (《西域圖記》). The Zizhi tongjian dates it to the tenth month of 607.[10] The journey therefore falls before that month. A dating to 606, immediately before Pei Ju’s posting, has been proposed.[11] An earlier translation had put it in 610, against the order of the text.[6] On this dating, Pei Ju did not yet have Wei Jie’s report when he wrote his own.[7]

The article on the assembly at Mount Yanzhi tells of Pei Ju’s report and what followed from it.

The summons of 610

In the sixth year of Daye, 610, the emperor was about to tour the west.[2] According to the Sui Shu, he sent the attendant censor Wei Jie to summon Heshana (處羅), the khan of the western Göktürks, to meet the imperial train in the Dadouba valley (大斗拔谷).[2] Heshana’s people would not agree. He excused himself to the envoy on other grounds. The emperor was furious but could do nothing.[2] The Tongdian gives the same year and almost the same words. It says, however, that the emperor was about to march against the Tuyuhun.[12]

Just then Shegui sent an envoy to ask for a marriage. Pei Ju proposed to split the khanate by making Shegui Great Khan.[2] The article on the fall of Heshana tells what followed.

Another man of the name

The Zizhi tongjian names a Wei Jie in 619 among the chief clerks (長史) of Wang Shichong.[13] Wang Shichong took the imperial title that year.[13] Wei Jie and Yang Xu, with others, were ordered to draw up the ceremony of abdication. Wang Shichong then made him Neishi (內史).[13] Nothing in these passages joins him to the envoy. Nothing separates them either.[13]

The Xifan ji

The Tongdian names the work as the 西蕃記 of Wei Jie.[3] Du You finished the Tongdian in 801.[14] In chapter 193, he quotes the Xifan ji twice: once in the entry on Kang and once in the entry on the Hephthalites.[3] An account of 1925 knew only the first quotation.[7]

The first quotation describes Kang, a state of Sogdiana. All its people, it says, are skilled traders. A boy of five is set to learn writing. When he has some understanding of it, he is sent to learn trade, since making a large profit is held to be good. The people love music. The year begins on the first day of the sixth month. On that day the king and the people put on new clothes and cut their hair and beards. For seven days they shoot from horseback in the grove east of the city. On the last day a gold coin is set out on a mark. Whoever hits it is king for a day.[3]

The people serve a heavenly god. They say that the god’s child died in the seventh month and that its bones were lost. Every seventh month, those who serve the god put on black pleated cloth and go barefoot. They beat their breasts and wail, with tears streaming. Three to five hundred men and women scatter over the open country to look for the child’s bones. After seven days they stop.[3] Outside the city, more than two hundred households attend to the dead alone. They keep dogs in a separate enclosure. They take each corpse there and let the dogs eat it. Then they collect the bones and bury them without a coffin.[3]

The second quotation stands in the entry on the Hephthalites. In the Sui period, the Tongdian calls their country Yida (挹怛). Du You first cites the Liang dian of Liu Fan. According to it, the state of Hua had the family name Yeda. Its descendants made the family name the name of the country, which was corrupted to Yida. Its origin is said to be Cheshi, Gaoche or the Great Yuezhi.[3] Then Du You adds what the Xifan ji says: the author asked the people of that country in person, and all called themselves Yitian (挹闐).[3] The Tongdian does not say where he asked them. The Sui Shu names no Hephthalite stop on the journey of the preface.[1]

The form differs from the Sui Shu’s 挹怛 in its second character. Du You sets it beside the Han Shu. There a vice-king of Kangju bears the name Yitian (挹闐) at the time of Chen Tang’s campaign against Zhizhi. Du You suggests that this may be a people of Kangju stock.[3]

The remark on the origin of the Hephthalites

After the comparison with the Han Shu, the Tongdian continues: what is passed on from distant countries is distorted by foreign speech, the years lie far back, nobody knows the root of the matter, and it cannot be decided.[3] The sentence stands outside the quotation of the Xifan ji, after Du You’s own comparison. It appears to be his conclusion.[3] A modern account attributes it to Wei Jie.[15] The Tongdian does not attribute it to him. What the Xifan ji itself gives of the Hephthalites is a name: the people it asked called themselves Yitian.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83
  2. ^ a b c d e Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Tongdian, juan 193
  4. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 375
  5. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Tongdian, juan 193
  6. ^ a b c d Herrmann 1925, p. 579
  7. ^ a b c Herrmann 1925, p. 580
  8. ^ Wei Shu, juan 102; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  9. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 224
  10. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 180
  11. ^ Herrmann 1925, p. 579–580
  12. ^ Tongdian, juan 199
  13. ^ a b c d Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 187
  14. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 133
  15. ^ Kurbanov 2010, p. 112

Sources

Literature

  • Albert Herrmann, Die Hephthaliten und ihre Beziehungen zu China (1925)
  • Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
  • Aydogdy Kurbanov, The Hephthalites: Archaeological and Historical Analysis (2010)

Related

What links here6

Persons
Shegui Khan
Battles & Events
Assembly at Mount Yanzhi (609) · Fall of Heshana Khan (611)
Peoples
Hephthalites
Sources
Sui Shu (Book of Sui) · Tongdian

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Wei Jie.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/persons/wei-jie/

Last revised: 8 November 2026