Dingling

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

The Dingling were a people north of the Xiongnu. They enter the Chinese histories among the northern peoples whom Bagatur subdued after he had broken the Donghu and driven the Yuezhi west. They remain in the histories for nearly three centuries. In them they appear as a people that rose against the Xiongnu when the chanyu was weak.^[1] Later Chinese histories connect the Tiele with them.^[2]

Subdued by Bagatur

The Shiji names five peoples that Bagatur then subdued in the north: the Hunyu, the Qushe, the Dingling, the Gekun and the Xinli. After that, the Xiongnu nobles and ministers all submitted. They held Bagatur to be a worthy man.^[1] The Shiji names no year.^[1] Some scholars place the northern conquests around 201 BC.^[3] One proposal identifies the Gekun with an early form of the name Kirghiz.^[4] Its supporters count the Gekun, the Dingling and the Xinli among the ancestors of the Turkic-speaking peoples of the Han period. They identify the Xinli with the Sir of the Orkhon inscriptions and the Xue of the Tang sources.^[5]^[6]

The Shiji does not say where the Dingling lived.^[1] Modern accounts place them from Lake Baikal to a little beyond the Yenisei.^[7] Other scholars hold that the notices of the Hunyu and the Dingling continue after the fall of the Xiongnu empire. These notices point to South Siberia north-west of the Mongolian steppe, perhaps Cisbaikal, Tuva or the Russian Altai.^[8]

A king for the Dingling

The Xiongnu court tried to set its own men over the northern peoples. The Han Shu says that the chanyu made the surrendered Han general Li Ling King of the Right Xiao. It says that he made Wei Lü King of the Dingling (丁靈王). Both were held in honour and had a part in affairs.^[9] Wei Lü’s father was a Hu of Changshui. Wei Lü himself had grown up among the Han. He had fled to the Xiongnu when the family of his patron was seized.^[9] Some scholars see the appointment as an attempt to hold a subject people through an outsider who owed everything to the chanyu.^[10]

The Dingling appear once more in the biography of Su Wu. The Xiongnu sent the Han envoy, who would not yield, to herd rams on the shore of the North Sea, where no one lived. A brother of the chanyu, a king, gave him food and clothing. When the king died, his people moved away. That winter the Dingling stole Su Wu’s cattle and sheep, and he fell into want again.^[9]^[11]

Raids and the attack of 71 BC

In the last years of Xulüquanqu’s reign the Dingling raided the Xiongnu three years running. They killed and carried off several thousand people and drove off horses and cattle. The Xiongnu sent more than ten thousand horse after them. They caught nothing.^[12]^[13]

The Han Shu then tells how the Dingling joined the great attack on the Xiongnu. The Han and the Wusun had struck the Xiongnu hard. The chanyu then led ten thousand horse against the Wusun. A snowfall a zhang deep caught him, and hardly one man in ten came back. Then the Dingling attacked from the north, the Wuhuan came in from the east and the Wusun struck from the west. The three killed tens of thousands of men and took tens of thousands of horses and many cattle and sheep. Starvation then took three in ten of the people and half the herds. The peoples subject to the Xiongnu also fell away.^[12] The year was 71 BC.^[14]^[15]

Under Zhizhi and Wang Mang

After Huhanye had gone over to the Han, his elder brother and rival Zhizhi moved west. The Han Shu says that he struck the Wujie, who submitted. With their troops he broke the Jiankun in the west. He also brought down the Dingling in the north, and so joined the three peoples. Jiankun lay seven thousand li from the chanyu’s court and five thousand from Cheshi. Zhizhi stayed there and made it his capital.^[12] Some scholars call the Wujie, the Kirghiz and the Dingling kin of the Xiongnu, without naming a ground.^[16] The conquest of the Dingling has been dated to 49 BC.^[17]

When Wang Mang prepared a war on the Xiongnu, Yan You commanded Wuhuan and Dingling troops at Dai. Their wives and children were held as hostages in the commanderies.^[18] Wang Mang’s plan of campaign called for three hundred thousand men with provisions for three hundred days. They were to go out in ten columns at once and pursue the Xiongnu to the end. They were to push the Xiongnu into the land of the Dingling, divide that land and set up the fifteen sons of Huhanye.^[12]^[19] Yan You warned against it.^[12] In this plan the land of the Dingling is the far side of the Xiongnu world.

The Later Han

In the Han period Dingling groups also came into China. Some scholars regard them as subject tribes that had been taken into the armies of the Southern Xiongnu.^[20] In the eighties of the first century AD the Northern Xiongnu, worn down by drought, locusts and desertion, were attacked from all sides. The Southern Xiongnu pressed them in front, the Dingling behind, the Xianbei on the left and the Western Regions on the right. The Northern Chanyu could no longer hold his place and fled far away.^[21] The year is AD 85.^[22] In AD 88 the Southern Chanyu reported that the Northern Chanyu had fled far off to the west of the Anhou river. The Northern Chanyu had been hurt by the southern army and was afraid of the Dingling and the Xianbei.^[21] The Xianbei chief Tanshihuai took over the old Xiongnu lands. He held off the Dingling in the north.^[18]

Name, speech and the Tiele

丁零ChineseShiji
丁令ChineseHan Shu
丁靈ChineseHan Shu

The sources record no word of Dingling speech.^[1] Their language has been regarded as Oguric Turkic.^[3] Another scholar counts the Ogurs and the Dingling among the peoples that the Chinese record as subject to the Xiongnu state and calls both Turkic, without giving a ground.^[23] If the Dingling spoke Turkic, that shows Turkic speakers among the subjects of the Xiongnu. It does not show the speech of the ruling stratum. A different proposal connects them with the Tagar culture of the Minusinsk basin. It does not necessarily regard them as Turkic.^[17]

Chinese historians connect the Tiele of the sixth century with the earlier Dili, Chile and Dele. They connect these with the Dingling, in whose country the Tiele are later found.^[2] The southern groups of the Dingling are identified with the Tiele in the Chinese accounts of the following centuries.^[24] One line of derivation traces Tiele, Dingling and the later Chinese name Gaoche, ‘high carts’, to one Turkic word for ‘cart’, perhaps tegreg. The derivation is conjectural and awaits support.^[25]^[26]^[27] The earliest proposal derives the name behind Dingling and Tiele from a Turkic word of the shape tegreg, judging from the Chinese spellings in -ng and -k.^[27] A further suggestion is that the Chinese name “high carts” is related to the meaning of the Turkic name, “circle” or “hoop”, and does not only describe their wagons.^[26]

That derivation raises the question whether the Dingling of the Han histories and the Tiele of the sixth century are one people under two names. The sources do not answer it.

References

^ a b c d e Shiji, juan 110
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 93
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 61
^ Pulleyblank 1962, p. 123
^ Pulleyblank 1990, p. 21
^ Pulleyblank 1962, p. 226
^ Sinor 1990, p. 120
^ Miller 2014, p. 17
^ a b c Han Shu, juan 54
^ Miller 2014, p. 17–18
^ Ögel 2015, p. 90–91
^ a b c d e Han Shu, juan 94
^ Ögel 2015, p. 123–127
^ Golden 1992, p. 62
^ Ögel 2015, p. 117–118,122,127
^ Ögel 2015, p. 148,224
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 94
^ a b Hou Han Shu, juan 90
^ Ögel 2015, p. 202–203
^ Pulleyblank 1990, p. 21–22
^ a b Hou Han Shu, juan 89
^ Sinor 1990, p. 148
^ Rásonyi 1993, p. 67,88
^ Golden 1992, p. 95
^ Golden 1992, p. 93–94
^ a b Pulleyblank 1990, p. 22
^ a b Pulleyblank 1962, p. 230

Sources

Shiji, juan 110
Han Shu, juan 54, 94 (after Shiji)
Hou Han Shu, juan 89, 90

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
Bryan K. Miller, Xiongnu “Kings” and the Political Order of the Steppe Empire (2014)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Bahaeddin Ögel, Büyük Hun İmparatorluğu Tarihi II (2015)
Edwin G. Pulleyblank, The 'High Carts': A Turkish-Speaking People Before the Türks (1990)
Edwin G. Pulleyblank, The Consonantal System of Old Chinese, Part I (1962)
Edwin G. Pulleyblank, The Consonantal System of Old Chinese, Part II (1962)
László Rásonyi, Tarihte Türklük (1993)