Levirate

Among the Göktürks a dead man’s widows were married by the men of his family who came after him.^[1] The Chinese histories record the rule, and the marriages of the Chinese princesses at the khans’ courts show it at work.

The rule

The Zhou Shu gives the rule among the customs of the Göktürks.^[1] When a father, an elder brother or an uncle died, his sons, younger brothers and nephews took as wives the stepmothers, the uncles’ wives and the elder brothers’ wives, 妻其後母、世叔母及嫂.^[1] The Bei Shi repeats the sentence.^[2]

The Sui Shu is shorter.^[3] When a father or an elder brother died, the sons and younger brothers married the father’s wives and the elder brother’s wife.^[3] Every woman in either list belongs to the family by marriage. None is related by blood to the man who takes her.

The closing clause

The Zhou Shu closes the rule with the clause 唯尊者不得下淫. It is understood in different ways.^[1] It may forbid men of the older generation to marry women younger than themselves.^[4] An older French translation found in it a bar between women of high rank and men of low condition.^[5] A later translation of the Chinese accounts calls that rendering mistaken.^[4]

A third view holds that the marriage served only to secure the widow’s place in the tribe. Sexual relations within it were forbidden.^[6] Widows in the steppe, it is argued, were destitute and open to attack, and the marriage gave them some protection.^[6]

The princesses

The marriages of the Chinese princesses sent to the khans followed the rule. In 579 the Northern Zhou court named a daughter of the prince of Zhao as Princess Qianjin and promised her to Taspar Khan. In 580 his envoys came to fetch her.^[1] The Sui Shu later names Qianjin as the wife of Ishbara Khan, a son of Taspar’s brother Issik.^[3] A nephew had married his uncle’s widow, as the Zhou Shu’s rule allowed.

Princess Yicheng of the Sui was given to Yami Khan after the death of his first Sui bride.^[3] When Yami died, his son Shibi asked by memorial to marry her. The emperor decreed that their custom be followed, 詔從其俗.^[3] After Shibi, his brother Chula took her as wife. In 620 another son of Yami, Ilig, did the same.^[7] She was thus the wife of a father and of three of his sons in turn.

The shad of Kunduz

The biography of the pilgrim Xuanzang records a case among the Western Göktürks.^[8] At Kunduz, beyond the Oxus, Xuanzang found Tardu Shad, the eldest son of the Yabgu Khan, ill and mourning his wife, a sister of the king of Gaochang.^[8] The shad then married a young khatun. At the prompting of his son by an earlier marriage, she poisoned him.^[8]

The princess’s son was still a child. The elder son, a tegin, seized his father’s rank of shad and married his stepmother.^[9] Since the princess was already dead, the stepmother he married was the young khatun.

Custom and law

The rule belongs to the customary law of the Göktürks, the Töre. To the Chinese historians it was the custom of a foreign people. The Sui emperor’s decree that their custom be followed shows that the court gave way to it when one of its own princesses was concerned.