States Follow Their Sovereigns: Sign and Symbol in Song Huizong’s Migration into Jurchen Captivity

Abstract

Abstract No Chinese dynasty of the lengthy imperial era surpasses the Song in the amassed volume of oracular literature composed during its span that addresses its own predicted downfall. Much of what we now possess of this store of literature, which we can assume constitutes but a fraction of all that once circulated, derives from oral tradition. Most of this literature consists of prose anecdotes in the “brush jottings” (biji 筆記) vein and, through these as well as other sources, we can discern the outlines of at least three key contours of noteworthy consistency. First and foremost, we may observe that a preponderance of these oracular anecdotes foreshadowing the fall of Song either center on or otherwise involve the person and actions of a single individual—Huizong 徽宗 (r. 1100–1126), the ill-fated de facto last of the early or Northern Song (960–1127) emperors, who himself was physically transferred as a hostage and icon into enemy Jurchen captivity. Second, to the extent that they are really at all datable, most of these anecdotes postdate the extinction of the initial Song, suggesting of course that they are constructions composed after the fact as opposed to having ever been in any way definitively predictive. Third and finally, especially when contrasted with the comparatively fewer examples that augur the destruction of the Southern Song (1127–1279), this subgenre of predictive literature sheds valuable light even as it raises intriguing questions about how Chinese conceptions of sedition against and loyalism toward state and sovereign might have evolved between the distinctive times of the “two Songs.”