Xiongnu Herds

The Shiji sorts the domestic animals of the Xiongnu into two groups. The animals they kept in greatest numbers were horses, cattle and sheep.^[1] The rarer ones were camels, donkeys, mules and three kinds of equid that the text calls jueti, taotu and tuoxi.^[1] The Han Shu repeats the list almost word for word. The two texts are therefore one witness. The three last names belong to rare equids, and their exact identity is not certain.

Living from the herds

The Shiji says that the Xiongnu followed their livestock in times of peace and lived by hunting birds and beasts. In times of danger every man trained for war and raiding.^[1] Children rode sheep and shot birds and rats with a bow. When they were older, they shot foxes and hares for food.^[1] From the ruler downward, all ate the flesh of their livestock. They wore hides and were clothed in felt and furs.^[1]

The Han defector Zhonghang Yue advised the chanyu to cast away Chinese food. It would show, he said, that Chinese food was less convenient and less pleasant than milk and curds.^[1] He also taught the chanyu’s attendants to keep records. With them the court could count its people and its livestock.^[1] The count was kept at the autumn assembly, held when the horses were fat. It is treated in The assemblies of the Xiongnu.^[2]

A Han envoy charged that the Xiongnu despised their old people. Zhonghang Yue answered that the Xiongnu lived by war. Their custom, he said, was to eat the flesh of their livestock, to drink its juice and to wear its hides, while the livestock ate grass, drank water and moved with the seasons.^[1]

When Modu destroyed the Donghu, he took their people and their livestock.^[1] In 133 BC the Han left herds spread over the fields near Mayi without herdsmen.^[2] The chanyu saw them, thought it strange, and attacked a post instead of the herds.^[2] The story is told in The ambush at Mayi.^[2]

Counts in the Han annals

The Han annals count Xiongnu animals mostly where the Han took them. In 127 BC Wei Qing attacked the Loufan and Baiyang kings south of the great bend of the Yellow River.^[3] The Han Shu says that he took more than a million sheep.^[3] The Shiji has more than a million cattle and sheep.^[2] The two figures are not the same.

In 72 BC five Han armies reported captured horses, cattle and sheep in widely different amounts. The reports were ten thousand and more, two thousand and more, seven thousand and more, a hundred and more, and seventy thousand and more.^[3] The emperor judged that the general with the largest figure had come late and had inflated what he took. He and the general of Qilian, who had known where the enemy stood and had not advanced, were handed to the judges. Both killed themselves.^[3] The largest total of the year belongs to the officer Chang Hui, who marched with the Wusun. He took more than 700,000 head of horses, cattle, sheep, donkeys, mules and camels at the court of the Right Guli King.^[3]

The Xiongnu took herds from others in the same way. In 166 BC a force of 140,000 horsemen entered Zhaona and the Xiao pass.^[1] They killed the Han commandant and carried off many people and livestock.^[1]

After the division of the Xiongnu

After the Xiongnu split in AD 48, animals moved between the Han and both halves. In AD 50 the Southern Chanyu sent two camels and ten decorated horses with his memorial. The Han court answered with silk, grain and 36,000 head of cattle and sheep to feed his people.^[4] In AD 53 it sent him several tens of thousands of sheep.^[4]

The Northern Xiongnu gave and sold animals in the same years. In AD 52 their chanyu sent horses and fur coats to the Han court.^[4] In AD 83 a Northern Xiongnu chief surrendered at the Wuyuan pass with 38,000 people, 20,000 horses and more than 100,000 cattle and sheep.^[4] In AD 84 the Northern Chanyu sent a chief to drive more than 10,000 cattle and horses to the frontier and trade them with Han merchants. The Han officials set up lodgings for the Xiongnu who came first. The Southern Chanyu heard of it, sent light cavalry out through Shang commandery, and seized cattle and horses on the way.^[4]

The figures

The counts are Chinese reports of booty, gifts and trade. They give the size of single herds and single transfers. They do not give the size of the herds of the whole people. The Han Shu itself shows that figures of booty were open to doubt.^[3] The finds of bones from Xiongnu settlements give a different record of the herds, and it is treated in The Xiongnu.