The Anfu Ouyangs of the ninth and tenth centuries
The late ninth and tenth centuries are often thought of as a low point in institutional development in China — a retreat from the heights of the Tang system; an uneasy prelude to the Song renaissance. Yet some scholars have long questioned whether developments in this period sowed the seeds of later growth. While the North China Plain was repeatedly devastated by the raging armies of the so-called “Five Dynasties,” other regions played host to other, often-overlooked polities — the so-called “Ten States.”
Gradually, scholars have begun to show ways in which these supposedly lesser states refined Tang-era paradigms in innovative ways — with major implications for the period that followed. In the southeast, the ports of Min 閩 engaged in a greatly-expanded south seas trade; in the Yangzi Delta, Wuyue 吳越 began building massive systems of polders and irrigation ponds; in the southern interior, the Wu 吳 and Southern Tang 南唐 further refined late-Tang tax reforms. Thus, when the Song reunified much of the former Tang empire between about 960 and 980, they took over areas of south China that had already developed many key aspects of the Song economic system.
Nor were tenth century innovations limited to the state and the economy. As I have previously suggested, many of the flagship lineages of the Song were neither Tang holdovers, nor Song developments, but emerged during the period of division starting with the sack of Jizhou 吉州 in 878 and ending with the Song conquest of the area in around 975.
I would like to return to Ji’an with an investigation of one of its most important lineages — the Ouyang House of the Prefect of Anfu 安福令歐陽氏.
The background image above, taken in April 2014, is the tomb of Ouyang Wan 歐陽萬, the eponymous Prefect of Anfu. Here is a close-up of the inscription — probably of Ming vintage, with more recent repairs to the left end.
The tomb is substantially damaged — it has clearly been robbed more than once — and it is no longer at its original site, having been moved sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. But it is still a site of worship of the Anfu Ouyangs — a lineage that claimss such luminaries as Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 (1007–1072), Ouyang Xun 歐陽珣 (1081–1127), (1208–1273) and Ouyang Xuan 歐陽玄 (1283–1357). Nor have the fortunes of the house faded entirely since the Song and Yuan: I was taken to the site by an Ouyang lineage elder recently retired for post as Assistant County Head of Anfu County 安福县副县长, a title we historically might have translated as sub-Prefect of Anfu, a single rank below that of his lineage founder.
Along with the descendants of Confucius and a few imperial houses, the Anfu Ouyangs are easily one of the three or four most famous lineages in Chinese history. This is largely due to Ouyang Xiu’s 1055 comiplation of the “Ouyang House Genealogy Charts and Preface” 歐陽氏譜圖序. Together with Su Xun 蘇洵, who compiled his genealogy the following year, Xiu is widely credited with reinventing genealogy after the collapse of the Tang. Yet as I suggested above, we should perhaps be careful to examine the earlier roots of this innovation. Indeed, it appears that Xiu’s major contribution may have been the reorganization and popularization of genealogical developments his forerunners started one or two centuries prior.
Xiu’s genealogy is quite pedantic at points, as he puzzles out the specifics of his family’s pedigree while also pondering genealogical practice more generally. In his search for the origins of his lineage, Ouyang Xiu presents us with several possible starting-points: the origins of civilization with Yu 禹, the founder of the legendary Xia Dynasty in the third millennium BCE; the origins of his surname Ouyang in the third century BCE; the beginnings of his charts (tu 圖), probably in the late fifth century; the beginnings of his biographies — and of the local descent-group in Ji’an, probably in the late seventh century; or to the descendants for whom he has written records — the house of Anfu — probably starting in the late ninth or early tenth century.
To keep this short and on-point, I will skim past the Kings of Yue 越王 and the Counts of the Ouyang Pavilion 歐陽亭侯, from whom Ouyang Xiu claimed descent, but who he was essentially unable to document beyond a few generalities that he probably gleaned from the histories. Instead I will start with Jingda 景達 from around the fifth or sixth century; this is the point where Xiu has enough names to construct a descent-line in his charts.
Cong 琮, Xiu’s first biography and the first Ouyang in Ji’an, is another tempting place to mark the roots of a true lineage tradition. But while Xiu claims that Cong’s descendants are the current residents of Jishui County 吉水, Jizhou (今爲吉州吉水人也), he is unable to document the next seven generations, writing that the charts are missing (譜亡).
I will argue that this seven-generation break marks the point marks where Xiu switched his mode of genealogical research, from consulting state records to relying on local memory and house genealogies. For ten generations of charts, from about 500 until about 700, Xiu’s claimed ancestors were high-level officials of dynasties with good records. Indeed later writers noted, Ouyang Xiu was highly reliant on these dynastic histories for early records; he also had good access to them in his capacity as head compiler of the New Tang History.
Why then do the good records end around 650–700, just as the Tang Dynasty was rising and actively documenting the aristocracy? Paradoxically, this post-Cong gap probably occurs for the same reason that Xiu wanted to make Cong the first biography — because he was the first Ouyang in Ji’an. After his posting in the provinces, Cong was no longer worthy of note at the Tang capital, so Xiu cannot find his descendants in the court records. Yet Cong lived so long ago that the local house had lost records or memory of his immediate descendants.
Indeed, Ouyang Shoudao would later roundly criticize his forerunner for inaccuracies in this portion of the charts and biographies. For example, Ouyang Xiu wrote in Cong’s biography that Cong led the local resistance against the Huang Chao rebels (circa 880). Shoudao notes that this is impossible, given the 11-generation count between Cong and Tuo 託’s son Chen 郴, who served the Southern Tang (938–76). Shoudao locates another Ouyang who probably was the one to fight Huang Chao, and argues that Cong was an early Tang figure. He guesses that Ouyang Xiu must have used a loose array sources to fill in this portion of the genealogy, and argues that it is fundamentally unreliable.
After Wan however, the records get much better and are probably of local provenance. Following Wan, Xiu is able to name more individuals — including less famous ones: “Wan begat He; He begat Ya; Ya begat Xiao; Xiao begat Tuo, Tuo begat my great-grandfather” (萬生和，和生雅，雅生效，效生託, 託生). Xiu’s great-grandfather Chen 郴 “had eight sons…the descendants listed in these tables are all from these eight ancestors, who descend from the Founding Ancestor of Anfu. (府君生子八人，於世次爲曾祖。今圖所列子孫皆出于八祖，自安福府君以來). Xiu’s charts actually branch out two generations before Chen and the eight ancestors, showing Xiao’s brother Chu 楚, and the five brothers and cousins of Tuo:
The ability to list multiple branches of the descent-line is a clear indication that Xiu had received genealogical records from this point on, and perhaps as early as Wan himself. This segment of the tree is far too complex to be entirely based in human memory.
The gap between Cong and Wan suggests that there were not good records for this interval, a period when central record-keeping of the Tang was generally quite good. The resumption of good records in the ninth or tenth century suggests that a local tradition had emerged, distinct from the court records Xiu used to reconstruct his house’s earlier history.
In other words, Ouyang Xiu had local genealogical records from at least the late tenth-century, and possibly going back as far as the ninth. As I previously suggested, in Ji’an, the ninth and tenth centuries were far from being periods of institutional decline. Indeed, many of the region’s most important lineages — including the Anfu Ouyangs — innovated key aspects of genealogy in the ninth and tenth centuries. Descendants in the Song and later periods certainly changed and expanded these practices, but they benefited from the earlier roots laid down by regional elites in the waining years of the Tang and the tenth century period of division.
References
Ouyang Shoudao 歐陽守道, “Yonghe genealogy preface” 永和譜序 (1260)，Xuxiu Anfu ling Ouyang gong tongpu [Anfu Prefect Lord Ouyang Revised Comprehensive Genealogy] 續修安福令歐陽公通譜, 1750, reprinted 1912–1949
Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修，“Ouyang House Genealogy Charts and Preface” 歐陽氏譜圖序 (1055), Ouyang Xiu ji 歐陽修集 74.
Kobayashi, Yoshihiro. Sōdai jishu no Ōyō shi yi zoku 宋代吉州の歐陽氏一族 In Ōyō Shū: Sono Shōgai to Sōzoku 歐陽修：その生涯と宗族. Tōkyō: Sōbunsha, 2000. He relies on Ouyang Xiu’s literary collection (above), as well as a 1915 edition 仙桃鎮歐陽氏續修宗譜 and the 1937 edition 歐陽安福府君六宗統譜.
