The Faded Buddhist Country: A Brief History of Ancient Yunnan Constitution

If we want to talk about the ancient Yunnan civilization, we must first define the time span of this civilization. The ancient Yunnan civilization began very early, dating back to the prehistoric times. As for its ending time, I think it can be fixed at the time when the whole political, religious and cultural systems that made ancient Yunnan a civilization was destroyed by the Ming dynasty destroyed Dali in 1382. However, the remnants of the ancient Yunnan civilization did not end until the last chieftain was wiped out in the 1950s. Yunnan is located in an exceptional geographical position. It is at the crossroad linking several civilizations. To its north is a north-south corridor in the Hengduan mountains, which connects to Inner Asia and is called the “Zang and Yi corridor”. To its east is the Xijiang river basin, which is connected with Cantonia and can be connected with Baiyue. There are several rivers in Yunnan, which originate in Yunnan and flow all the way to Southeast Asia. One is the Lancang River, which is also called the Mekong River, that enters Thailand. One is the Nu River, which enters Myanmar and is also known as the Salween River. To the west are the traffic roads between Yunnan and India through the Gaoligongshan mountains on the Myanmar border. They go all the way to India through Myanmar. This is known as the “Sindhu Road”. In the history of Yunnan, the Inner Asians went to Yunnan through the south-north corridor of the Hengduan mountains and the Baiyue people went into Yunnan through Xijiang, who brought population and order to Yunnan. Meanwhile, Indian civilization exported civilization and order into Yunnan through the Sindhu Road. Southeast Asia was the place to accept the order from Yunnan because the Yunnanese could move into Thailand and Burma from the upper streams of several rivers.

Yunnan can be divided into several regions. First of all, the area of Lijiang in northwest Yunnan, which is relatively close to Tibet, is culturally similar to Tibet and once occupied as a place in the feudal system of Tibetans. The south and southeast regions are close to Southeast Asia, close to the Xijiang river. In the vast central area, Dali in the West Yunnan and Kunming in the East Yunnan are the two centers. This area is the original part of Yunnan and belongs to the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. There are many mountains, and many flatlands between them as well. There are two big lakes, the Dian Lake is on the edge of Kunming, and the Erhai Lake is on the edge of Dali. Between the mountains and the lakes, there are small pieces of ground called “Bazi”. Such a fragmented landscape suggests that it would be hard to establish an authoritarian regime in Yunnan without outside interference.

The ancient people of Yunnan were like the Baipu of Guizhou and Sichuan, who had their own tribal organizations. They were able to fully communicate with the Inner Asian ethnic groups by crossing the Zang and Yi corridor in the mountains. During the Zhou dynasty’s war to eliminate the Shang dynasty, many Inner Asians and Baipu tribes joined the war as allies of the Zhou Dynasty. After the 8th century BC, the Scythians began to rise in Inner Asia. In the following 500 years, they continued to enter Yunnan through the Zang and Yi corridor. The Anner Asian tribes established the two states of Ailaoguo and Kunming Kingdom in western Yunnan. The Ailaoguo and Kunming Kingdom were more like tribal alliances than states. In the east of Yunnan, the people of Baiyue entered Yunnan in the 3rd century BC and established the Dian Kingdom near the Dian Lake in the east of Yunnan. The ruler of the Dian Kingdom was said to be a Baiyue general of the Chu Kingdom. However, the warrior group in the Dian Kingdom had many Inner Asians. Therefore, the ruling class of the Dian Kingdom should be the Baiyue people and the Inner Asians, who together ruled the conquered Baipu people. In central Yunnan, Indians established the Baizi Kingdom.

In the last 300 years before Christ, the trade routes from Yunnan to India were very prosperous, and Indian expatriates appeared in west Yunnan. Goods from Sichuan and Yunnan went through Sindhu Road from Myanmar to India, all the way to what is now Afghanistan. During this period, some basic features of ancient Yunnan civilization had appeared. First, the relationship between Yunnan and India was very close. Secondly, there was the duality of Yunnan in geography and culture. Eastern Yunnan and western Yunnan became quite different. Thirdly, the ancient Yunnan civilization had many characteristics of Inner Asia. Since then, the Inner Asians had been the dominant class and warriors of the ancient Yunnan civilization. Fourthly, the characteristics of Baiyue people in the ancient Yunnan ruling class also appeared at this time. Baiyue people established Gouding Kingdom in the southeast region of Yunnan. When Emperor Wu of the Han invaded Yunnan, the Dian Kingdom was conquered and the Gouding Kingdom became strong. In this way, the pattern that the Baiyue people mainly in the south and the Inner Asians mainly in the north was settled.

After the continuous attack of the Han Dynasty, all the above states were destroyed except for the Baizi Kingdom. However, the civilization of Yunnan itself did not break down. A country like Kunming is an alliance of tribes, and China brought down its national organization only to return it to a tribal state. In order to control Yunnan, the Han Empire forced large Numbers of noble families to immigrate to Yunnan. The intention of the Han Empire was undoubtedly to kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, it could use immigrants to suppress the indigenous resistance of Yunnan. On the other hand, it could use this to exile the noble families of the empire. However, these noble families were relatively more autonomous. For example, the family of Lv Jia, the prime minister of South Yue, was such a big family. After their community entered Yunnan, they fully integrated with the native tribes, and the common law of the two sides gradually merged into one. It was entirely possible for these noble families to rebuild the community in the manner of their families in the South Yue, and then marry and communicate with the local tribes, gradually blending into each other. These forced immigrants, many of whom were originally the noble families of the ethnic groups just conquered by the Han Empire, were not much different from the indigenous tribes of Yunnan, and their common laws were relatively easy to connect. The common laws could continuously grow and merge. For example, the British common law was the product of various ethnic groups joining their own common laws at different times. In Yunnan at that time, the customs of different ethnic groups merged. Thus, by the late Eastern Han Dynasty, Yunnan entered the era of noble families’ politics.

In the 2nd century, more than a dozen noble families appeared in Yunnan. Most of these noble families seemed to have Chinese names, such as Cuan, Meng, and Huo. These people generally claimed that their ancestors came from north China, but it was hard to tell whether they were actually “Han” people. First of all, those noble leaders often intermarried with the aboriginal tribes of Yunnan and became very close to each other. When immigrants were wanted for violating the brutal laws of the Han Empire, the natives often protected them. In the event of a dispute among the aborigines, these noble leaders were skilled in using Yunnan’s customary law to adjudicate. This customary law was called “Yi Jing” by the Han people. Since these noble families knew “Yi Jing”, aboriginal people were also willing to resort to these noble families for judgment when they encountered disputes. This showed that these noble families had become no different from the local aborigines. They had become the local community leaders in Yunnan.

As the customary law, the content of “Yi Jing” must be very complex. It was definitely based on the indigenous customary law of Yunnan, but it certainly also included the customary laws that immigrants brought from all parts of the Han Empire. In any case, the framework must be based on Yunnan. As these noble families fully intermarried with these aborigines, they became the same after several generations. At this time, a dozen noble families suddenly all claimed to be from north China, which was quite suspicious. This was similar to the invention of northern ancestors by many Cantonese clans after the 16th century.

In the Three Kingdoms period, for these noble families, the exiled power of Shu Han was not so close. On the contrary, the Cantonese Shi Xie’s regime and Goetlnish Dongwu Empire’s regime, these self-governing regimes, made them feel closer. If Shu Han and Cao Wei were to fight for supremacy in the north, they would have to occupy Yunnan and exploit local resources. Therefore, the Zhuge Liang’s invasion took place. The Zhuge Liang’s invasion was later invented as a kind of myth, but the stories in it were obviously untenable. In this myth, it seemed that Zhuge Liang promoted benevolence and government in Yunnan, won the local people’s hearts, and convinced the local people through “the Seven Captures of Menghuo”. However, a few years after Zhuge Liang’s invasion, until the death of Shu Han, the noble families in Yunnan had continuously rebelled. Therefore, these noble families did not yield to China because of the attack of Zhuge Liang but had been fighting with the Chinese. After the extinction of Shu Han, they supported the Jin Empire and fought with the Dongwu for a better relationship. After the Jin Dynasty destroyed Wu, they had a fierce struggle with the Jin Dynasty. Only when the Di people established the Chenghan Empire in Sichuan had they quickly surrendered to Chenghan. Therefore, in the eyes of these noble families, the Di people, such as the Inner Asians, were far closer to them than the Chinese. As for the noble families who remained loyal to the Jin Dynasty, they were destroyed by the Cuan family. The Cuan family had been the ruler and monarch of Yunnan. After the Jin Empire conquered the Chenghan Empire, it was also usurped by the Southern Dynasties. The Southern Dynasties were far beyond the reach of Yunnan. The southern regimes could only declare its sovereignty over Yunnan on the map. In so doing, the Cuan family became a truly independent state.

Under the rule of the Cuan family, after about two centuries of evolution, the Yunnan people split into two caste-like groups, called Baiman and Wuman. Today, they are regarded as the predecessors of the Bai people and the Yi people. There were more Baiman in western Yunnan and more Wuman in eastern Yunnan. Of course, this distribution was not absolute. There were also a certain number of Wuman in western Yunnan and Baiman in eastern Yunnan. Baiman engaged in farming and commerce. In the biggest bazi in Yunnan, the Dali bazi between the Cangshan Mountain and the Erhai Lake, was a group of Baiman settlements. As for Wuman, they often lived in the mountains, maintaining nomadic habits and a relatively complete tribal organization, and thus had a stronger fighting power.

In A.D. 570, the Cuan’s leader Cuan Zan, on his deathbed, made a profound and significant decision of Yunnan ancient civilization. He divided his kingdom two parts, where his eldest son Cuan Wan ruled “Baiman”, and the second son Cuan Zhen ruled Wuman, which were also named the Western Cuan and the Eastern Cuan. Thus, for the first time, he divided the two groups into two political entities. Later, the constitutional system of Nanzhao and Dali was formed by the game between these two entities. The significance of this event to Yunnan was similar to Charlemagne dividing the Carolingian Empire to his three sons, which laid the foundations of Western Europe. The 570-year separation of the Cuan family led ancient Yunnan to run counter to absolutism completely. The breakup of the Carolingian Empire also prevented Europe from reuniting after the Roman Empire.

Soon after, Sui Dynasty’s invasion into Yunnan conducted a predatory war before leaving, killing Western Cuan’s leader Cuan Wan. The authority of Western Cuan had declined since then. The ruling class of the Western Cuan was the Baiman near Dali. These people were very good at business. Their merchants were all over Southeast Asia and India, but they were not strong enough in the military. The real fighters were the Wuman. At this time, Wuman around the Erhai Lake and Cangshan Mountain had established six kingdoms, which we call “Six Zhaos”. In 652, another significant event occurred. The Baiziguo King of Erhai Lake and Cangshan Mountain, “Zhang Lejinqiu”, gave his dominion to the most southern Monsho Zhao King Xi Nuluo in the six Zhaos. As we know, Baiman was an ethnic group good at farming and business, which was slightly influenced by East Asian culture and adopted Chinese surnames. At that time, in the vicinity of Erhai Lake, the Baiman noble families mainly had family names like Zhang, Zhao, Yang, Dong, Gao, Duan and so on. These people handed over the power to the Monsho Zhao’s King Xi Nuluo. They made a deal with the Monsho Zhao: they made the monarch of the Monsho’s King Xi Nuluo as their king and asked him to provide them with military protection, and Xi Nuluo also relied on them to rule Yunnan. This established the underlying political pattern where the Baiman acted as ministers and the Wuman as military warriors. This pattern remained unchanged until the end of ancient Yunnan civilization. The political legitimacy of this pattern was derived from Zhang Lejinqiu’s desire to make way for Xi Nuluo in 652 AD.

The agreement was made under a large iron pillar in the Dali area. At that time, both Baiman and Wuman had a lot of primitive tribal beliefs, and each tribe worshiped different gods, which Baiman called “Benzhu”. This iron pillar is a very important miracle around Dali. This belief in pillars should come from the primitive penis worship, which was common in ancient Southeast Asia. From the location of the abdication, this agreement had sacred legitimacy, and it also determined the most core constitutional structure of the ancient Yunnan civilization for over 700 years.

About a century after this, the Monsho Zhao relied on the support of the Baiman to unify the six Zhaos in the era of Pi Luoge. In 748, King Pi Luoge of the Nanzhao Dynasty and the last chief of the East Cuan met to establish a united kingdom, and the East Cuan yielded the Nanzhao royal family, who always married with the royal family of East Cuan since then. By the standards of medieval Europe, this was a typical contractual relationship, not exterminating a state. There was no invasion from the Nanzhao. It was only a natural continuation. In the two abdication events of 652 and 748, the legitimacy was passed down unbroken. The transfers of real power were achieved by constant contracting.

Another thing Pi Luoge did was to move almost all the Baiman from eastern Yunnan to Western Yunnan. In this way, the eastern Yunnan, centered on the Dianchi Lake, was left with only the Wuman. Later, Nanzhao also established the Tuodong city near the Dianchi Lake, also known as the Shanchan city, which is now Kunming city. He tried to control the Wuman warriors in eastern Yunnan through this stronghold. In this way, the kings of Wuman and the ministers of Baiman occupied the Cangshan Mountain-Erhai Lake region, taking Dali as a center to control the western Yunnan and the Shanchan city in eastern Yunnan as the other center to control the binary structure of the Wuman warriors. The autonomous warrior group in eastern Yunnan formed thirty-seven subgroups, which were very similar to the eastern samurai in Japanese history. Later, the successor to Pi Luoge, Luo Feng, mainly relied on the fighting power of Wuman worriers and the alliance with the Tibetans, twice defeated the invasion of the Tang dynasty, and expanded to Myanmar, all to way to the Irrawaddy River. In the city of Dali, the king of Nanzhao could rely on his own identity of Wuman, so that the worriers of Wuman in eastern Yunnan remained loyal to him. Meanwhile, due to the existence of the Baiman aristocracy among the ministers, it was difficult for the Nanzhao monarchs to establish a centralized system. Compared with the Nanzhao monarchs, those Baiman aristocrats were more familiar with the customary laws in the Dali area. They had a strong legitimacy. If a monarch misbehaved, these nobles could kill him.

In the middle period of Nanzhao, such a thing happened. King Long Sheng went amok, and the noble Wang Cuodian killed him. According to the understanding of Chinese people, the Wang Cuodian committed regicide, which meant that he must want to usurp the throne. However, instead of that, Wang Cuodian had embraced the next two monarchs and showed his loyalty. He made a valid restriction to the sovereignty. Nevertheless, Wang Cuodian and the second King Quan Fengyou were zealous expansionists. During the Wang Cuodian and Quan Fengyou Dynasty era, Nanzhao aggressively expanded to Southeast Asia, sending the two forces to invade Myanmar and Cambodia. Their troops in Myanmar also fought with the Sri Lanka army that encountered them across the sea in 859. After Quan Fengyou died, his son Shilong killed Wang Cuodian , and attacked the Tang Dynasty. He fought with the Tang Dynasty for more than ten years. In order to support the war, Shilong carried out a total-war system, ordering that all the men over the age of 15 in the territory must join the army. Through the continuous crazy war, the Nanzhao monarch unprecedentedly expanded the power of the monarchy. Shilong killed the Wang Cuodian and destroyed the balance of power between the monarch and Baiman nobles. There was one detail worth noticing. Nanzhao royal family was Wuman, whose way of naming followed the habit of Di people. They had no family names but only given names. Also, the son would continue the last part of his father’s name. For example, the successor to Pi Luoge was named Ge Luofeng, the son of Ge Luofeng was named Feng Jiayi, and the father of Quan Fengyou was called Xun Gequan, etc. However, Shilong did not inherit his father’s name. He was not called You Shilong. This was because Quan Fengyou indulged in the culture of the Tang Dynasty. He thought that the joint name between father and son was primitive, so he took away the part of “Quan” inherited from his father and called himself “Fengyou”. Influenced by him, Shilong directly did not inherit the word “You”. It was Quan Fengyou who indulged in the culture of the Tang Dynasty that started the Nanzhao’s aggressive expansion and the path to the absolute monarchy. Therefore, in the era of Fengyou and Shilong, Yunnan was in danger of becoming the kind of authoritarian centralized state like China. This juncture was a major crisis in the history of ancient Yunnan civilization.

Shilong expanded the imperial power and conducted the total war arbitrarily. After his suppression over the aristocracy and the attempt to establish an absolute monarchy, his minion, the Zheng family, began to meddle in politics. This family was initially the captives from the Tang Dynasty. The powerful minister Zheng Maisi by the end of the Nanzhao Dynasty was a typical despicable man even by the standard of the Ming Dynasty. He was a treacherous courtier who depended on the king for promotion. He and his family were nothing compared to the real Baiman nobles. His regime was not likely to be acknowledged by the nobility of Dali who had a long tradition. Therefore, although Zheng Maisi massacred the Nanzhao royal family and usurped the throne to establish the Da-Changhe Kingdom, he could not rule for a long time. Then, the Baiman big noble Yang Ganzhen supported Zhao Shanzheng and killed the entire Zheng family to gain power. After that, Yang Ganzhen abolished Zhao Shanzheng and usurped the throne. This was the source of the next two regimes: Da-Tianxing and Da-Yining.

Although Yang Ganzhen was a Baiman noble, his power was not supported by the warriors of Wuman in eastern Yunnan. He also abolished Zhao Shanzheng, who was also a Baiman noble, and arbitrarily ascended to the throne. This was an arbitrary act of disrespecting the legitimacy. One thing happened under the circumstances. In 937, Duan Siping, a grand nobleman whose mother was from a Wuman warrior family and his father was a Baiman noble minister, occupied Dali with the troops from the 37 warrior tribes of Wuman. Duan Siping’s army was not only supported by the 37 tribes in eastern Yunnan, but also by the nobles in Dali city, and the public as well. His army entered Dali with little resistance. As a figure supported by both the noble ministers and the warriors, Duan Siping showed noble political virtue. He did not kill all Yang’s family, only made Yang Ganzhen become a monk. In the early days of Dali, Yang’s family still had great power. In this way, Duan jumped out of the vengeance loop started from Zheng Maisi, who slaughtered the whole Nanzho royal family and whose family was later butchered by Yang Ganzheng. If Duan Siping killed Yang Ganzhen and killed Yang’s family again, it was estimated that the political behavior of Yunnan people from then on would be without any bottom line like the Chinese people, and there would be no legitimacy. Therefore, Duan Siping’s action in AD 937 was extremely great. It was equivalent to the Magna Carta movement in Britain, or the “Jōkyū War” in the Japanese history. Duan Siping was like Hōjō Masako in the Jōkyū War. They protected the local feudal freedom of Yunnan and Japanese civilizations respectively. In the meantime, Duan Siping, after entering Dali city, continued to employ Baiman aristocrats. In fact, the people who followed him, such as Gao family and the Dong family were Baiman aristocrats. In this way, the binary pattern formed by the Baiman aristocrats and the Wuman warlords was preserved, and the contract made by Zhang Lejinqiu and Xi Nuluo in AD 652 was acknowledged again. As a great defender of legitimacy, Duan Siping should enjoy the highest praise.

Duan Siping also did a critical thing. He combined the local Yunnan tantric Buddism introduced from India with the Yunnan constitution, which was further developed due to this. In the later period of Nanzhao, the royal family had converted to tantric Buddhism through the missionary work of Indian monks. Duan Siping stipulated that in Dali national territory, all people should respect Buddhism, and the children of the nobility should accept the full religious education in the temple before they could become officials. The official system of Nanzhao was modeled after that of the Tang Dynasty. Of course, there were some detailed differences. For example, the prime minister of the Tang Dynasty was the counterpart of the Qingping official of Nanzhao. There were six ministries in the Tang Dynasty while nine in Nanzhao, which were called the “Nine Shuang”. Of course, Nanzhao officials were basically hereditary nobles. However, Nanzhao itself also had a system of imperial examinations. This kind of imperial examination system, like the Imperial Examination in the Heian period of Japan, was a less important supplement to the hereditary system. However, in the era of Shilong, with the unprecedented power of the monarchy and the vendetta without a bottom line between the Zheng and Yang families, the Yunnanese were likely to embark on the road of centralization, and the imperial examination system was likely to become a tool to undermine the constitution of Yunnan. However, the Buddhist education system was totally different from the imperial examination system. Under this system, a royal or aristocratic child must pass the monastic education in order to gain political power. In this way, it almost virtually eliminated the possibility that the low-class literati, the unsettling intellectuals, and the captives would gain a high rank only through their intellect and the closeness of the monarch. The degree of Buddhism education was a standard to measure the size of secular power that aristocrats could obtain. In this way, the bureaucratic system, the official ranks, and the official names that imitated those the Tang Dynasty became only the titles of honor. The evolutionary path of Yunnan thus stayed away from the bureaucratic state.

Besides, it’s worth noticing that the deity system of the Yunnan tantric Buddism was different from those of other countries in the world. The Acarya Avalokitesvara could only be seen in the tantric Buddhism in Yunnan. As for Emperor Duan, he was the incarnation of Mahākāla in the Yunnan tantric Buddism. In the ceremony of Yunnanese, Emperor Duan had to play the role of Mahākāla who protected his country by force. Through such a unique belief, Yunnanese were distinguished from all the surrounding ethnic groups. Before this, for example, during the era of Cuan family and Nanzhao, Yunnanese probably felt no more fundamentally different from the rest of Asia, such as the Chinese, the Chenla people, or the Pyu people in Myanmar. Yunnan back then was Asian. However, after Buddism influenced the whole Yunnan society and the Yunnan tantric Buddism controlled the primary level of the society in the early days of Dali Kingdom, Yunnanese believed that they were completely different from other Asians. They were Yunannese of Yunan, Dian people of Dian region, and Dali people of Dali. The significance of this event was similar to Japan’s unique Shinto theory defining Japan as a “divine kingdom” during the Nanboku-chō period, which set it apart psychologically from other Asian countries.

When Duan Siping died, he left behind a very complicated constitutional structure. For more than 100 years at the beginning of the Dali Kingdom, the Yang family, which had waged two separate rebellions, remained their power. The emperor put down the two rebellions by the Gao family, and later made two contracts with the Gao family: First, he enfeoffed the Shanchan city in eastern Yunnan to the Gao family. Secondly, the Dali prime minister would be inherited by the Gao family. Prime minister Gao Shengtai only usurped the throne for just two years before he made his son return the throne to emperor Duan in 1096, so Duan and Gao made the third contract: since then, the Duan family would act as the incarnation of Mahākāla and become the unshakable religious and spiritual leader, whereas the Gao family was responsible for the secular power. The relationship was very similar to that between the Emperor and the Shogun in feudal Japan. The event that the Gao family returned the throne to the Duan family was a process of making a covenant. No matter how much secular authority the Gao family had or how they despise the powerless Duan family, they could not challenge the divine authority of the emperor based on the Yunnan tantric Buddism covenant. Even in the religious sphere, the Gao family could only believe in Zen Buddhism and dared not dabble in the Yunnan tantric Buddism. It is worth mentioning that among the 22 emperors in the Dali Kingdom, 10 of them retired to the temples. As Buddhism was an inviolable secular power, the emperors strengthened their religious authority by becoming a monk in order to strike a balance with the Gao family. The relationship was similar to that between the emperors and Fujiwara clan of the Heian era in Japan. At that time, Many Japanese emperors were also able to balance with the Fujiwara clan by becoming monk emperors.

After the throne-returning event, the Gao family was enfeoffed to various regions, and formed a series of lords centered on Dali called the “Yucheng Party”. With Kunming as the other center, another group of lords also formed a clique known as the “Guanyin Party”. Over the next century, the feudal system at the heart of Yunnan was finally established, with the old bureaucracy replaced by the feudal system of the feudal lords who fought against each other. Many complicated battles, alliances, and contracts between the Yucheng Party and the Guanyin Party and among the lords of the same party were generated over the position of the prime minister and the lord of Shanchan. As for disputes between small territories, they were countless. By 1147, the lords of the Wuman thirty-seven tribes in eastern Yunnan engaged war with the Lord Gao of Shanchan in Kunming. From this time on, the tribes and lords in the marginal areas of Yunnan began to establish their own feudal states. The 37 lords in northeast Yunnan actively expanded their land into the mountainous areas of Guizhou. The lords of southeast Yunnan traded huge amounts of war horses for silk with Guangxi under Song Dynasty. There was the independent Lijiang regime in northwest Yunnan; the two Baiyue forces, Gold Teeth Baiyi in the western Yunnan and the Jinglong Jindian state in the southern part of Yunnan, became autonomous. The two states then expanded outward into Southeast Asia and established other smaller feudal territories. This kind of feudal expansion was completely different from the total-war expansion in the late Nanzhao period. Let’s take Thailand’s predecessor, the Cheli Kingdom, as an example to see how this expansion worked. The Jinglong Jindian state was the regime formed by the Baiyue people from the southern Yunnan who colonized southward. They established a feudal loyalty to the Dali state. Some of them continued to colonize southward, establishing the Cheli Kingdom in the hinterland of Indo-China Peninsula. The feudal system expanded like a tree that kept growing. It would be hard to imagine that given the time, how complex a constitutional system this feudal system would be. In this era, after the mid-12th century, Dali entered its own Sengoku period. During the Sengoku period in Dali, as in Japan of late Muromachi and early Sengoku period, the constitutional complexity reached unprecedented levels, and the possibility of the path ahead became ever more diversified. Under such a feudal system, any piece of land would not have a single property right, but rather a very complex one. It might simultaneously have links with the Emperor Duan of Dali, the prime minister Gao, the local lord, and the Buddhist temple. To change its ownership would require complicated diplomacy or repeated feudal wars. If the feudal system of Dali’s Sengoku period continued without external intervention, how magnificent it would become. It would probably evolve into Yunnan’s own multinational system. Under such circumstances, maybe the whole of Southeast Asia, Guizhou, and Sichuan would feudalize and join the feudal multinational system of Yunnan. A country like Japan that straddled Southeast Asia and the upper reaches of the Yangtze River would come into being.

However, with the successive invasions of the Mongols and the Ming Dynasty, the system was destroyed by the powerful external forces. The Mongols were much better than the Ming dynasty. When the Mongol army invaded, Gao Taixiang, the last prime minister, could have turned to Mongolia and sell the emperor. Since he held the actual power of Dali Kingdom, he would be more valuable if he surrendered to the Mongols. However, he kept the pact his ancestors made with the emperor more than a century ago, sacrificing himself to protect the emperor. He first fought valiantly in the city of Dali, then returned to his fief and continued fighting until his death. It was a very moving scene. The emperor and his lords in the western and southern parts of Yunnan chose to surrender to Mongolia. The 37 tribes in the eastern part of Yunnan chose to resist. The Mongol army was reduced to 20, 000 from 100, 000 to roughly crush the resistance in eastern Yunnan. To completely suppress these resistances, the Mongolian army spent seven years. It only took the Mongols four years to utterly destroy the Southern Song Dynasty after they took Xiangyang. This was because there was only one central court in the Southern Song Dynasty. Once the central court was eliminated, the resistance of various other places would be nothing. The Dali Kingdom was different. It actually had dozens of feudal entities dealing with the Mongols. Some of them chose to fight, and some chose cooperation. The complex diplomatic relationship brought about by this complicated feudal system not only made the Mongolians exhausted, but also preserved civilization to the maximum extent possible. It’s as if you don’t put eggs in the single basket, but in dozens of baskets, then there are always some eggs that can be preserved. The Mongols indeed preserved the emperor Duan clan and other feudal lords. With the inherent feudalism from Inner Asia, they also set up a king to control the eastern part of Yunnan though they set up the Yunnan Province centered in Kunming. After several generations, the Mongolian king had also become more localized. Therefore, at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, in fact, Yunnan civilization was still very dynamic.

However, Mongols’ fear of Duan’s family ruined the chances of Yunnan civilization. The Mongols first used Duan Gong to repel the invasion of the bandits and then murdered Duan Gong, which led to a complete break between Yunnanese and Mongols. Therefore, the Ming Dynasty took advantage of the conflict between them to destroy the Mongol regime in Yunnan first, and then attacked Dali with treachery and destroyed the Yunnan civilization. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, those Dali lords were incorporated into the local orders of Southeast Asia. Thailand was born in this way. In local Yunnan, they became the “chieftains” in the eyes of the Ming and Qing empires. Although the Ming and Qing dynasties continuously massacred them through bureaucratization, they never completely eliminated these lords. The complex feudal system of the Sengoku period in Dali was not completely destroyed until 1950. The system lasted for nearly 700 years, almost as long as Nanzhao and Dali Dynasties added up together. Such a legitimacy as the remnant of the civilization that lasted into the 1950s also made these chieftains the orthodox groups that Yunnan must consider after its independence today.