Tongpu Duwei

The Tongpu duwei, 僮僕都尉, was the office through which the Xiongnu held the oasis states of the Tarim Basin.^[1] Its title is rendered “Commandant of Slaves”.^[2]

The subject states

The Han Shu opens its account of the Western Regions with a remark on the way of life of their people. Most of the states, it says, were settled. They had walled towns, fields and herds. Their customs differed from those of the Xiongnu and of the Wusun. For that reason, the text concludes, all of them were subject to the Xiongnu.^[1] Fields and towns gave the Xiongnu something to tax.

The office

The Rizhu King commanded the Xiongnu on the western border. He set up the Commandant of Slaves and put him over the Western Regions.^[1] The commandant resided between Yanqi, Weixu and Yuli.^[1] From there he levied taxes on the states and took wealth and supplies from them.^[1] The Han Shu does not say what the taxes consisted of.^[1]

The three states of the seat lay close together. Yanqi was the largest, with 4,000 households and 6,000 men under arms.^[1] Weixu, a hundred li from Yanqi, had 700 households and 2,000 men under arms.^[1] Yuli, three hundred li from the later seat of the Han Protector, had 1,200 households and 2,000 men under arms.^[1]

Some scholars hold that the office could also call up forced labour. They count the Western Regions among the sources of both goods and men for the Xiongnu.^[3] Others regard the farming towns of Eastern Turkestan as a granary of the Xiongnu empire.^[4]

The end of the office

In 60 BC, the second year of Shenjue, the Rizhu King turned against the chanyu. He came over to the Han with his people.^[1] Zheng Ji, the Han officer who protected the states west of Shanshan, received him.^[1] The court made the Rizhu King a marquis and Zheng Ji a marquis as well. It also put Zheng Ji in charge of the northern road, and the office of Protector-General, duhu, began with him.^[1] The Commandant of Slaves was abolished. The Han Shu says that the Xiongnu grew weaker and could no longer come near the Western Regions.^[1]

The Han then moved its military farms. They were set up at Beixuqian and opened up the land of Yarkand. The colonel in charge of the farms came under the Protector for the first time.^[1] The new seat of the Protector, Wulei, lay near the Han field officers at Quli. The land there was fertile and, in the Han Shu’s words, central to the Western Regions.^[1] The Han farms thus took the place of the Xiongnu levy.

The Xiongnu did not give up their claim at once. A modern study notes that the state of Yarkand sent yearly tribute to the Xiongnu after 60 BC. It adds that the Northern Xiongnu demanded in the years between AD 107 and 123 that all the states pay their arrears.^[5]