Register
What the sources do not say
The places where the work looked and found nothing: statements checked against the sources and marked as unattested, and the fields the record leaves empty. A silence here is a finding, not a gap; it means the question was asked and the sources did not answer it.
62 silences in 40 articles.
Persons
- In the settlement that followed, Amrak, located on the Tola river, was proclaimed second khan, with Ishbara supreme at Ötüken and Töremen as Apa Khan.{status=attested src=suishu-84,golden-1992} After that the sources lose him. Nothing is recorded of his part in the civil war, of his death, or of any descendants.
- Nothing else is recorded of him.
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
- Year of death: not recorded
- What became of Anluochen himself the sources read here do not say.
- The Göktürk left no record of him.
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
- For the years before the war he appears without a title. Modern literature commonly styles him yabghu, which is plausible given the rank held by earlier Ashina leaders, though the sources do not use it of him.
- How that support was obtained, and which groups joined, is not recorded.
- The manner and month of his death are not recorded.
- Why the eastern Göktürk, with whom there had been no war, should have wanted him dead is a question this work raises and cannot answer.
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
- Year of death: not recorded
- Of his life before 552 nothing is recorded that is his alone.
- This work credits the two of them jointly with the War of Independence, and there is no reason to doubt that the younger brother rode in it; but the Zhou Shu names Bumin alone, and what Istemi did between 546 and 552 is not recorded.
- How a steppe army took a walled city, and with what engines, the sources do not say.
- Where the two kings had come to terms, and through whom, nobody recorded.
- The manner of his death is not recorded.
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
- Year of death: not recorded
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
- Of the woman herself the chapter says nothing beyond the name and the year: not her age, not her father, not what became of her after 552.
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
- They did not. No member of the Ashina, no beg and no commoner is recorded as converting in these years; the Göktürk kept to Tengri.
- Year of death: not recorded
- When Tonyukuk died is not recorded, and his own monument, which Radloff took to be raised in 716 and Thomsen at about 720, was cut while he lived.
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
- Whether Apa rode with it is not recorded.
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
- Year of death: not recorded
- Circumstances of death: not recorded
Polities
- Who these Khazars were before that, and where they came from, he leaves open.
Conflicts
- The Göktürk left no record of the war at all.
- The field wars between the two Weis — the campaigns of Gao Huan for the east and Yuwen Tai for the west along the Yellow River bend — belong to the Chinese histories of the Wei, the Qi and the Zhou, and this article does not tell them; its subject is the western court's turn to the steppe.
- This work credits the two brothers jointly with the war; the Zhou Shu names Bumin alone, and what Istemi did in these years is not recorded.
- For four years the record is silent. Bumin spent them assembling support among other Turkic groups, an inference from the size of the force he commanded in 552; how that support was obtained, and which groups joined, is not recorded.
Battles & Events
- This work reckons the size of the raiding party in the hundreds or thousands; the source gives no number.
Places
- No Chinese account of the cave or of the mountain points east.
- The Chinese texts do not support it and do not contradict it: on the cave they are silent, and silence is what a reading has to work with here.
- Nothing is recorded beyond the fact of the offering: no victim, no words, no season.
- It rests on a modern account, and its name does not occur in the Chinese chapters read here.
- The Wei Shu's chapter ends in the 540s and the Zhou Shu's account is a paragraph, so that a capital built in Anagui's last years could stand in neither; the silence is a silence of the sources read here, and the account stands with the status its source gives it.
- Archaeology has not found the site, and its location is not identified.
- The yabgu, the fifth month for the cave and the distance to it are not in the Zhou Shu: it names no month and no place for the cave, and the five hundred li belong to the mountain of the earth-spirit.
- The difference between the two Chinese readings is one character: the Zhou Shu and the Pien-i-tien write 四, "four", where the Bei Shi and the Tongdian write 西, "west", so that one text gives four or five hundred li without a direction and the other five hundred li westward.{status=attested src=zhoushu-50,beishi-99} No text sends anyone east.
- Where the cave was is unknown; the inscriptions never mention it; and what was done there beyond the sacrifice the Chinese did not learn.
Peoples
- What the Rouran called themselves is unknown.
Institutions and Titles
- Modern literature commonly styles him yabgu for those years, which is plausible given the rank the Ashina leaders are said to have held, but the sources do not use it of him.
- The banishment for cattle-raiding, the protection of a beaten enemy and of widows and orphans, and the distinction between disgrace and crime that are sometimes added are not in the Zhou Shu.
Religions
- No member of the Ashina, no beg and no commoner is recorded as following him.
- No Manichaean text, and no Göktürk of the first or second khaganate professing the religion, is in this work's sources; what is recorded is Uyghur and Sogdian.
- The banishment for cattle-raiding, the protection of a beaten enemy and of widows and orphans that are sometimes added to this list are not in the Zhou Shu.
Sources
- Where the Bei Shi gives something the earlier works do not, the question is whether it drew on a source now lost or elaborated what it had. That question is answered case by case.
- Whether the Tang histories draw on the Sui Shu for the years before 618, and how the Old and New Books relate to each other, is an open question.
- Whether and how far the Sui Shu draws on the Zhou Shu is an open question; both were compiled at the Tang court within the same period.
- The chapter heading and the list of peoples treated alongside the Göktürk are taken from a digital catalogue entry and have not been checked against the text; the digitisations are blocked from this working environment.
- Its value as attestation is nil. It stands more than five centuries after the events and carries nothing the earlier works do not, unless it can be shown to have used a source now lost.
