Beihai

Beihai, 北海, the Northern Sea, is the northern bound of the Göktürk realm in the Chinese histories.^[1] The Zhou Shu describes the land of Mukan Khan after his wars.^[1] From the desert in the south it ran north to the Northern Sea, five or six thousand li.^[1] The Bei Shi and the Tongdian repeat the sentence.^[2] The Zizhi tongjian enters the passage under 555. It keeps the five or six thousand li north of the desert and leaves out the name of the sea.^[3]

In the Sui Shu

The Sui Shu’s chapter on the Göktürks uses the name twice more.^[4] After Bagha Khan had taken Apa prisoner, he wrote to the Sui court to ask whether Apa should live or die.^[4] The chancellor Gao Jiong advised sparing him. The emperor agreed, and Gao Jiong raised his cup to the emperor.^[4] Gao Jiong said that since the Yellow Emperor the northern Xunyu had often troubled the frontier. Now, he said, the Sui reached as far as the Northern Sea, and all were its subjects.^[4]

The chapter on the Tiele places a people at the sea itself. It says the Dubo and others lived south of the Northern Sea.^[4] The Tiele had no ruler of their own and were divided between the eastern and the western Göktürks.^[4]

Identification

The histories give the sea a direction and a distance. They do not locate it.^[5] One translation renders the Northern Sea as Lake Baikal in the Zhou Shu’s description of the realm.^[6] It does the same in Gao Jiong’s toast and in the chapter on the Tiele.^[7] The same equation appears for the Northern Sea in the Tongdian’s notice on the Basmil.^[8] The French translation of 1864 renders the name as the North Sea and does not place it.^[9] Lake Baikal is therefore a reading of the translators, not a statement of the histories.