Horses in Göktürk Law

The Chinese histories give the laws of the Göktürks in one sentence. Three of the penalties in it name the horse.^[1] The sentence appears in four histories, and the four are not four witnesses.

The Zhou Shu

The Zhou Shu lists the capital crimes of the Göktürks: treason, murder, adultery with another man’s wife, and the theft of a horse’s tether.^[2] A man who seduced another man’s daughter paid heavily in goods and had to marry the girl.^[2] A man who wounded another in a fight paid in goods according to the wound.^[2] The thief of horses and other goods repaid more than ten times the value.^[2] The Chinese word for the tether, ban, means a tether or hobble. The Zhou Shu does not say why the theft of such a small thing was a capital crime.

The Sui Shu

The Sui Shu words the rules differently. Treason and murder are punished by death, and an adulterer is castrated and cut in two at the waist.^[3] A man who injured the eye of another in a fight paid with a daughter, and if he had none he paid the property of his wife.^[3] A man who broke a limb paid a horse.^[3] A thief repaid ten times the value of the stolen goods.^[3] The Sui Shu does not name the tether.^[3]

The Bei Shi and the Tongdian

The Bei Shi gives a sentence that combines the two. It has the tether and the repayment of the Zhou Shu, and the eye, the limb and the horse of the Sui Shu.^[4] The Tongdian repeats the Sui Shu.^[5] Both are later compilations, and the Bei Shi has its sentence from the two older histories.

The horse as a unit of value

In the Sui Shu’s rules the horse is a unit of payment. A broken limb is paid with one horse, an eye with a daughter, and a theft with ten times the loss.^[3] The rules therefore set a horse beside a daughter and beside the property of a wife. The Chinese texts give no price for the horse, and they do not say how the horse was handed over.

The Tuyuhun

The Tuyuhun, who were ruled by a khan and lived in domed tents, had a shorter rule. Killers and horse thieves died, and other offenders paid goods or were beaten.^[2] The Sui Shu repeats the rule and adds that the customs of the Tuyuhun were much like those of the Göktürks.^[6] The Jiu Tang Shu and the Xin Tang Shu repeat it again.^[7] The Tuyuhun therefore put the theft of the horse itself on the same level as murder.

Gaps in the sources

The Chinese histories do not say who judged the cases or how a penalty was carried out. They do not say whether the horse paid for a broken limb went to the injured man or to the khan. The rules are summaries by Chinese historians.